Dr Liam Fox's speech to Scottish Conference
04/03/2006
Liam Fox MP
From the deserts of Afghanistan to the chilly south Atlantic, British armed forces are defending our national interest with valour and bravery. Their task, wherever they serve, is not an easy one. Whether as warriors or bringers of peace and aid, they discharge their duty with an overwhelming sense of honour and discipline. We owe them a deep debt of gratitude. As a nation, we are rightly proud of them.
Yet our armed forces have never been under such a strain. They have never been asked to do so much with so little of our national wealth at their disposal. Consider the theatres of operation in which we are now active. We have a military presence in Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, the Falklands, Iraq and now Afghanistan. Our global commitment amounts to some 15,000 troops – not including those permanently stationed in places like Cyprus and Germany.
Yet as you are all too aware here, the Army is continually being trimmed though. The Scottish Regiments, with their proud traditions and lengthy battle honours, are in the process of amalgamation. Tradition is being trampled on, with no gain in operational effectiveness, in the spurious name of ‘modernisation’. The Government’s plans for infantry ‘restructuring’ are ultimately about saving money rather than the security of our country. We do not believe in scrapping hundreds of years of regimental history and tradition. Our Scottish troops have performed their duties in Iraq for the Government with diligence. They deserve to be treated better than this.
I say to the Secretary of State, stop before you do this. Think before it is too late. A report from the Public Accounts Committee just this week makes clear just how overstretched our armed forces are. The level of defence spending is designed to provide for, at most, no more than one small-scale operation and two medium-scale operations at any one time. Since 1999, though, British armed forces have been operating over and above the Government’s own Planning Assumptions in every year but one. Whilst Gordon Brown, fresh from humiliation in Dunfermline and his grandstanding on HMS Kent, has trimmed the defence budget time and time again, we have asked our soldiers to do more and more. Yet we are spending less on defence – just 2.2% of GDP and falling - than we have at any point since 1930.
The Falklands – should we respond again?
But the threats are not getting smaller. Take the Falklands for example. You may not read about it in the papers, but I warn you that the situation is deteriorating. The Argentines are again increasing the tension in the area with submarine incursions, doubling the size of their air force and fitting new missiles to their fighters and ground attack planes. Their air force has also been testing the response times of our Tornados after an Argentine plane shows up on the Falklands radar.
All these developments are very worrying. And the question is this. Under this Labour government, could we respond to a renewed attack from Argentina? We have slashed our navy to such a size that we could no longer launch an operation such as the Task Force we sent to the Falklands 24 years ago. Since 1997, Labour have cut 3 of our 15 submarines, 4 of our 12 destroyers, 6 of our 23 frigates and 6 of our 19 minesweepers, with more cuts likely.
Worse still, £310 million has been diverted last year from the Royal Navy to the Army and Royal Air Force to make up the gaps. It may have kept the Army moving and Air Force flying, but the Navy’s operational ability has been compromised. Our drugs operations in the Caribbean, for example, are being reduced despite some headline-grabbing successes for the Navy in the region. In the 2005 NAO Report on Military Readiness, the Government actually confessed that “the material state of the fleet will degrade, along with its ability to undertake high readiness tasks”.
No matter how sophisticated the technology, no soldier, ship or aircraft can be in two places at once.
Cuts
Our Territorial Army is on the decline too. The future of the regimental battalions is currently under review. We should have had an outcome by now, but we haven’t. I fear what may emerge. I have already heard rumours of threats to TA Units here in Scotland.
And the TA is not alone. As a former civilian army medical officer myself, I am especially concerned that the Defence Medical Services are so massively under-strength. The Royal Army Medical Corps has only 2,500 of the 3,000 it should have, whilst Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps has only 800 of the 1,000 it should have. This is a significant shortfall impacting on the armed forces capacity to care for its troops. It may not be as high-profile as, say, an aircraft carrier. But it is just as fundamental.
Welfare
As much as anything, however, we must consider the welfare of our soldiers as a consequence of overstretch. Our armed forces are volunteers, and as a consequence, the Government has a duty of care towards them whilst they are enlisted. This relates to the simple things like providing the right equipment which, as we know, has not always happened in Iraq. In an internal army survey, it was found soldiers were spending £300 of their own money on combat clothing due to failures in the supply chain.
But a duty of care also includes things like adhering to the rules on the length of time between operations. Yet the interval between missions is falling – just 18 months in some specialist units.
This increases the pressure on the physical and mental health of soldiers – over 1,000 have returned from the Middle East with mental health problems of some sort in the last two years. And it is not just service personnel themselves who suffer.
With the forces being expected to do more and more with fewer and fewer recruits, our forces spend less and less time with their families. No wonder the divorce rate in the Army is beginning to rise. Service families are being expected to live in sub-standard accommodation in many places, exacerbating the pressure. Service education is not of the standard it should be.
It is no wonder, therefore, that recruitment and retention rates are both falling. Recruitment into both army and navy is dropping with each year. The famed Parachute regiment is 200 below full strength, for example. I am still waiting for the Government to answer my questions asking for a regiment by regiment breakdown of the manpower crisis. I shudder to think what I will receive.
Impact on Equipment
As the Public Accounts Committee report makes clear, all this overstretch is putting a massive strain on equipment, with damaging long term consequences.
The reliability of equipment is also called into question by the pressures of overstretch. Half the armoured vehicle fleet has a technical glitch of some sort. Only 10 of our 25 Hercules aircraft are ‘fit for purpose’. A quarter of the helicopter fleet is grounded, and the Government themselves admit they are woefully short of lift capacity in this sector. At one point last year, in October, we had no serviceable Tristars for troop carrying, so soldiers awaiting flights back from Afghanistan were left stranded at Kabul Airport.
You might recall a few weeks ago UK troops coming to the aid of some Norwegian troops attacked in Afghanistan in protests against the cartoons. Because the British were so short of aircraft, two round trips had to be made to deliver the troops required. We should be grateful the situation did not become more critical, as we would have been overwhelmed.
Impact
We must also ask what impact these cuts and shortages have on our operational capabilities. The truth is that in an increasingly dangerous world they imperil our forces.
We have recently begun a deployment to Helmand province in Afghanistan, a territory twice the size of Wales which we expect to manage with just 3,300 troops engaged in a wide range of tasks, not all of which are clearly defined. The Government themselves admit the security situation in Helmand is tough. The infrastructure of the Afghan government we are there to support is weak. Jihadists from outside Afghanistan are already reportedly moving into the area. Make no mistake, we strongly support British participation in the war on terror in Afghanistan as it is strategically in our national interest, and our membership of NATO commits us to it. But it is highly questionable given the security situation and a mismatch of strategic goals between pacification and poppy eradication, whether we are sending enough troops to meet the Government’s ambitious success criteria, or to guarantee their own safety. Only time will tell.
Even at home, our ability to deal with potential civil emergencies – such as avian flu – are compromised by a shortage of troops to assist the civil authorities as happened with the fire strike and foot and mouth epidemics.
More critically still, the issue of overstretch restricts our ability to respond to new threats and strategic shocks. One looming crisis is, of course, Iran. Much is still unclear. But uncertainty is never an excuse for inactivity, when dangers on this scale threaten. To permit a state in this volatile region to develop a nuclear weapon which it has the evident capability to deliver against a range of targets would be to take a huge risk. When that state is under the control of a regime whose leader has called for Israel to be wiped “off the map” - a regime which is already destabilising neighbouring Iraq – that is a risk too far.
Clearly, the diplomatic route must continue to be pursued. Iran should be referred to the Security Council. Every pressure must be brought. But it was wrong for the European Union’s foreign affairs spokesman, Javier Solana, to rule out the use of force. It is wrong for Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, to echo him. Frederick the Great once observed that diplomacy without arms was like music without instruments. And though the methods of Frederick the Great are not otherwise to be commended, he was certainly right about this. We must keep all options open if we are to stand any chance of achieving a diplomatic solution to the Iranian crisis.
The threat posed by Iran makes the Government’s prevarication over the replacement of our nuclear deterrent all the more worrying. There can be no more effective guarantee of our national security and sovereignty than the nuclear warheads in our Trident submarines.
But it is only reassuring as long as they remain in service. These submarines will not reach the end of their working lives for some twenty years, but such is the lengthy lead-in time in agreeing, designing and constructing a new system of missile delivery, that the decision to replace Trident must be taken now. The Conservative Party has already committed itself to replacing Trident, and I have yet to be convinced there is a better option than a submarine-based delivery system. The Government had said it would make a decision on Trident some time in this Parliament, but so nervous are they now of their own backbenchers, that John Reid has been softening his language. Now it is only ‘preferable’. Whilst Iran proceeds to construct a nuclear arsenal, at a time when the North Korean nuclear arsenal remains in existence, and when we cannot predict what threats we may face by 2025, we cannot afford to leave ourselves exposed and vulnerable.
Conclusion
We are living in a country where bankruptcies are at an all time high, but the navy at an all time low. Personal debt is at an all-time high, defence spending at a post-war low. Their priorities are the wrong priorities. The PM talks transatlantic in Washington but is increasingly tying us into European procurement and EU structures which will undermine NATO and weaken our bond with the US. How Jacques Chirac must smile at Blair’s gullibility. It is a government whose approach to military law means that our soldiers think not only about their orders but also about the lawyers.
David Cameron has committed himself to a party and a country ‘built to last’. That will mean a Britain strong and secure. That security is best left in the hands of the Conservative Party. We have always stood for the freedom integrity of our country, whatever the cost. It is our history, it is our heritage and it is our promise.
Dr Liam Fox MP is Shadow Defence Secretary