Rearmament and Warfighting Readiness

I beg to move,

That this House recognises the danger that Russia’s renewed illegal invasion of Ukraine poses to European and British security; further recognises the threat to the international order and the UK posed by China; also recognises the increasing uncertainty surrounding the reliability of the US as an ally within NATO; acknowledges the current shortfalls in the UK’s ability to deploy a credible fighting force; further acknowledges that this lack of military capability is resulting in the coercion of Britain and its interests in the international sphere; and calls on the Government to begin a programme of rapid rearmament to strengthen the defence of the UK and its allies.

The key word of the motion on the Order Paper today is “rapid”—rapid rearmament, not eventual rearmament or rearmament with an asterisk. The reason it is the key word is that the clock is not ours to choose. Three weeks ago, before the defence investment plan came out, the Prime Minister said:

“it is our intelligence assessment, and the assessment of other countries in NATO, that there could be an attack by Russia on NATO as soon as 2030.”

The deadline is not contested. Intelligence confirms it, NATO proclaims it—they are speaking of this in Ankara today—and our Government accept it. We must be ready by 2030.

That is why the defence investment plan is so maddening. I have read it from cover to cover—I am that kind of guy—and I cannot wrap my head around it. It fails the test of its own threat assessment. It does not go far enough, and what it does do, it does too slowly. Large parts of it are also unfunded. It is too little, too late, and there is not enough cash.

It is worth considering how this plan came into being. Lord Robertson, the lead author of the strategic defence review, wanted to have the DIP—that is, the money bit—as an annexe to the SDR. That is really good practice when making strategy: set out a vision, which is the SDR, and then set out the resources, which are the DIP. If a Government do not have the resources to deliver their vision, they need either to downgrade the vision somewhat or to increase their resources. The decoupling of the two documents by a year, with the vision coming a year ago in the SDR, and the money and resources just recently in the DIP, is the greatest failure of statecraft committed by this Labour Government in the two years they have been in office.

First, allow me to speak about the money in some detail. Quite well ventilated in the media is the £4.7 billion that quite blatantly must be found in the next Budget, in the autumn. Although the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) has said that he intends to fund defence seriously, he has not specifically said that he will find those sums in that Budget. As the Government repeatedly tell us, defence of the realm is the most important duty of any Government. So why is £5 billion of that sacred duty in the in-tray of the next Chancellor—a person unknown at this point?

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. The first four years—the near-term investment period—covers the period until the next election. The second half—the longer-term investment period—covers the next five years, all the way up to 2035. However, the DIP is a 10-year plan, so it should in fact go beyond 2035, and beyond two elections’ time, to 2036, which it clearly does not, because the number “2036” does not appear once in the defence investment plan.

This actually speaks to the delay. Had the DIP come out when it was meant to, in 2025, it would have been a 10-year plan, because it would have gone from 2025 to 2035. However, the Government were unable to get their ducks in a row and the DIP was delayed by a year. If we had waited for them to rejig the plan to go up until 2036, I think we might have waited until 2040 for the plan.

This is a DIP of two halves, and the really worrying bit is that most of the investment is in the second half, which is unfunded. Let me give the House some examples. In the air domain there is £27.8 billion before 2030, and £70 billion after—unfunded. In the maritime domain there is £18 billion before 2030, and £32 billion after—unfunded. In the land domain there is £19.2 billion before, and £36 billion after—unfunded. For weapons and munitions there is £11.1 billion before, and £20 billion after—unfunded. It beggars belief. Why bother publishing a plan when, by my calculations, almost two thirds of the investments that the Government seek to make are in the second half, which is unfunded?

One of the reasons that we have pulled this plan together is to give certainty to industry, so that they know how to invest.

My concern is that the only British company offering to build an advanced jet trainer replacement for the Red Arrows Hawk jet, AERALIS, has gone into receivership because of the delay in the DIP, which means it will not assemble those lovely British jets in my constituency.

I think we have all heard stories of firms such as the one in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, whether in our own constituencies or in the conversations we have as Members of Parliament who are interested in defence. It has been catastrophic for British industry, and rushing out an unfunded DIP, which is effectively what this is, has not helped. It has meant that some small capital investments, one third of the total pot for the next four years, can be made by firms. However, for anything that stretches beyond 2030, nobody can be sure enough to make that investment.

The hon. Gentleman is making a very accurate critique. Is he aware that the Treasury Committee, led by the redoubtable hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), was looking at defence funding at lunch time today, and that in that hearing, barely an hour ago, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury admitted under persistent questioning that the Government have done no work on how to get to 3.5% of GDP on defence?

All I will say is that the defence of the realm is the most serious issue for any Government.

The hon. Gentleman is very kind to give way again, as he is right in the middle of unpicking the DIP thread by thread. Does he agree that we need to look at the manifest, substantial disappointment that we and everyone in uniform see in the DIP now that it has been announced, and try to reconcile that with how delayed it was? What does he think the Government were doing, given that there are so many black holes and missing spaces in the DIP? What does he think they were debating over the 11 months that the DIP was delayed?

The original sin is divorcing the strategic defence review from the DIP—divorcing the vision from the resources. For the past year, the Department has been arguing first with itself about whether it can downgrade some of the things in the strategic defence review—there are a couple of instances where that has happened, which I will come on to—and then with the Treasury to get more money to fill the gap. Effectively, it wrote a vision that was far too grand for the money that was ever going to be available.

Let me turn from the money to the metal and have a look at some of the capabilities. I could give a very long speech on military analysis about which capabilities should be in or out, but I will not do that. I think it would test—[Interruption.] I know that right hon. and hon. Members would like me to do that; perhaps I will set up a Substack or something.

Let us look at the Royal Navy—the senior service. At the turn of this century—as someone born in 1982, I still feel weird saying that—the UK had 20 frigates. By the end of this year, we will have five. Pre-DIP, they were scheduled to go out of service in 2035. In a little-noticed line in the DIP, we are bringing forward that date. All five frigates, which have well exceeded their service date, are going in 2033. Their replacements, the Type 26s and the Type 23s, will come into service—you guessed it—in 2030-35. We therefore have old ships retiring on a fixed schedule and new ships coming in on an unfunded one. My back-of-a-fag-packet maths—probably the same quality of analysis goes into the MOD under this Government—shows that we will have three frigates in 2030, the year, according to our intelligence assessments, of maximum Russian threat against NATO. We need a frigate to protect our cables, another to get the carrier group out to sea, and another for our deterrent. According to the rule of three—for every three ships, we have only one at sea at any one time—that is nine frigates. If anything kicks off in the middle east or anywhere else, there is no contingency plan. We can see straightaway that there is a huge gap—the frigate gap, as many call it—and the DIP has made it much worse.

I will give way to the former Minister.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, from sail to ironclad, ironclad to dreadnought, dreadnought to highly capable frigate, we need to make the next generational leap? If we find ourselves caught in programmes that deliver last year’s capability, we will remove any wriggle room or space to make that jump into autonomy and automation.

I agree with everything that the hon. Member has just said, and I thank him. However, all I am highlighting is that, on past performance, going from PowerPoints to ships at sea in nine years with several classes of ship seems extremely risky. Moreover, the DIP sets aside only £1.3 billion in the first funded period to set up those ships. The remainder of the investment falls beyond 2030. I want to move to autonomy because it is the right thing to do, but that seems like an incredibly risky bet.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

I will make some progress because I am having eyes made at me by Madam Deputy Speaker.

The DIP commits £8.6 billion to the global combat air programme, which is the sixth-generation fighter jet that we are building with Italy and Japan. Realistically, we will get the jets in service sometime after 2040. They are manned fighter jets. I ask hon. Members to cast their minds forward to beyond Putin’s death—he will probably be buried by that point—and ask themselves whether, in 2040, humans will be flying fighter jets. I think the answer is no. The Minister is a former pilot, so he will always argue for humans in fighter jets, but I will present my argument.

When we dig into GCAP, we find that it is a crewed rather than an uncrewed system because that is what our Japanese partners wanted.

Will the hon. Member give way?

I am afraid that I will not because I want to make progress.

We are privileging a good diplomatic relationship, which would weather the storm of our pulling out of GCAP, over military capability. We must consider whether we want manned fighter jets in 2040 or a Royal Navy right now. Do we want frigates and destroyers in the next four years? Do we want to transition effectively, in a funded way, to a hybrid Navy, or manned fighter jets in 2040?

The same story is repeated wherever we look: deep precision strike missiles are due in the early 2030s; nuclear-enabled F-35As are due in the early 2030s; putting 76,000 soldiers in the British Army to reverse the Tory cuts is an investment through to 2035. [Interruption.] I know that hon. Members were waiting for that—I had to get one little elbow in the ribs. Time and again, the capability that the threat demands by 2030 is scheduled for after 2030, funded by a spending review that has not happened and has been signed off by no one.

That leaves one final question: does the current Prime Minister believe his own threat assessment? If he does and he is not funding it—not putting his money, or our money, where his mouth is—that is highly negligent. Perhaps he does not believe his own intelligence chiefs’ assessments and those of his partners. In that case, he should tell us. I fear that future generations will look back at this Labour Government’s approach to defence with their heads in their hands.