PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Strategic Defence Review - 14 October 2024 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

The Prime Minister commissioned the strategic defence review within two weeks of taking office. It will ensure that the UK is secure at home and strong abroad, both now and in years to come. The review is the first of its kind in the UK, and I am very grateful to Lord Robertson, General Sir Richard Barrons and Fiona Hill, our three external lead reviewers. They will make their final report to the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and me in the first half of 2025. I will report the SCR to Parliament.

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that answer. I am told that all that three branches of the armed forces still have a long backlog of new recruits trying to get through medical assessments. What assurances can the Secretary of State give us that the strategic defence review will take account of that?

I have said that the strategic defence review will place people at its heart, and we will place people at the heart of our defence plans. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right; we follow 14 years of the previous Government’s recruitment targets for all forces being missed every year. We have a recruitment crisis and a retention crisis. No plan for the future can deal with that without sorting out recruitment.

May I wholly concur with your tribute to the late Alex Salmond, Mr Speaker?

A critical element of the strategic defence review will be the defence of our overseas territories. The Foreign Secretary told the House last week that the deal with Mauritius over the Chagos islands has been concluded. To save us waiting until next year, will the Defence Secretary tell us today how much have we offered to pay Mauritius over 99 years for the privilege of our renting back a military facility that belongs to us in first the place? Crucially, which Department will pay that bill: the Ministry of Defence or the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office?

The Foreign Secretary said in his statement that full details will be properly set out when the treaty comes before the House. At that point, the House can scrutinise the deal and approve it or not. Let me make it clear that we inherited a situation in which the long-standing UK-US military base was put at risk from problems to do with sovereignty and migration. We have made a historic deal that secures the UK-US base for the future, which is why my counterpart the US Defence Secretary so strongly welcomed it when we reached it.

I call the new Chair of the Defence Committee.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I fully concur with your tribute to the late Alex Salmond.

In these particularly volatile times, I fully welcome the Government’s strategic defence review. I for one hope it will include serious analysis of the Indo-Pacific region, because many of us are very concerned about China’s recent launch of military drills around Taiwan. Will the Secretary of State use this opportunity to condemn those highly aggressive and intimidatory manoeuvres? What are the Government doing to work with international allies to de-escalate tensions?

I will indeed. My hon. Friend will know that our party went into the election committed to building on commitments the previous Government made on the Indo-Pacific. I want the strategic defence review to be not just the Government’s defence review, but Britain’s defence review. We are consulting military veterans, industry, academic experts and all parties in this House. I trust that, like me, he will welcome that all-party approach, particularly as he now chairs the Select Committee, and will work with us.

The SDR is welcome and needed. The previous Conservative Government left our armed forces personnel, capabilities and funding depleted. Can the Secretary of State—[Interruption.] Hang fire. Can the Secretary of State assure me that the experts conducting our review will have an ongoing focus on our sovereign defence industrial base, and ensure that regions such as the north-east are pivotal in that?

They will indeed. This is the way we can reinforce the UK’s security and economy. And yes, we can build, through the SDR, on the work that the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) did when he was Minister for defence procurement. Like my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck), I am really angry about the state of defence after the last Government: there are billion-pound black holes in defence plans; service morale is at record lows; and Army numbers are set to fall below 70,000 next year. We will work night and day to make our forces more fit to fight, and to make Britain more secure at home and stronger abroad.

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I associate all of us in my party with your comments about the late Alex Salmond.

The most important point about the SDR is that it must not be used as an excuse to delay increasing the defence budget to 2.5% of GDP. In September, in answers to written questions, the Department said that it would set out a path to spending 2.5% of GDP on defence “as soon as possible”, but last week, at the Dispatch Box, in his middle east statement, the Prime Minister said that the Government would go to 2.5% “in due course”. We all know that there is a massive difference between the two, so which is it?

The Government are totally committed to spending 2.5% on defence to meet the increasing threat the country faces. The Prime Minister confirmed that in his first week in office, when he and I were together at the NATO summit in Washington. Of course, the last time this country spent 2.5% on defence was in 2010 under Labour, and that level was not matched in any one of the 14 years in which the hon. Gentleman’s party was in power.

That is a concern. In 2010, just to remind the House, the black hole in the defence budget was bigger than the defence budget, and we were left a note saying that there was no money left. It is significant if the wording is no longer “as soon as possible” and is now “in due course”. It is in the national interest to go to 2.5% because of the threats we face as a country. If the Secretary of State told us now that he was fighting hard with the Treasury to go to 2.5% in the Budget at the end of this month, he would have our full support. Is that what he is doing?

Fourteen years, Mr Speaker, yet the Conservatives produced their unfunded plan for 2.5% on defence only four weeks before they called the election. It was the hon. Gentleman’s former boss, the Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, who told the truth about their record in government when he said to the House:

“we have hollowed out and underfunded”—[Official Report, 30 January 2023; Vol. 727, c. 18.]

our armed forces since 2010.