Tim Roca

I have spoken in this Chamber at some length about defence and the urgency of rearmament, and I was proud to join the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) and Field Marshal Lord Richards in creating the all-party parliamentary group on rearmament. Before I turn to what the Government are doing about defence readiness, I think it is worth pausing, as we always should, on how we got here, because context always matters. A century ago, the Member for Epping—one who understood well what it meant to watch a nation sleep while danger gathered—described the period of neglect and lost opportunity in defence as “the years that the locust hath eaten”. I think we can apply the same epitaph to the years of stewardship of defence of the previous Government and the coalition Government. The locusts were busy: armed forces’ pay was cut in real terms in nine out of 14 years; forces housing was in such a state of disrepair that complaints reached a record 13,000 in a single year; troop numbers fell to the lowest level since the Napoleonic era; frigates and destroyers were cut by a quarter, minehunters reduced by half and ground-based air defence spending was slashed by 70% in their final years in office; and the defence industrial strategy sat on a shelf gathering dust, with a commitment on paper, but nothing in practice. They certainly were the years that the locusts had eaten. That is the inheritance Defence Ministers have to contend with. I have spoken before about the urgency of rearmament, and I will not repeat myself, but I will say that I am incredibly proud of the Government’s Front-Bench Defence team. I believe they have brought coherence, great industry and a genuine patriotic determination to sort out the mess they inherited, and they deserve to be recognised for that. I am glad that the Government are investing over £270 billion across defence during this Parliament—not as an accountancy exercise, but as a genuine strategic commitment to rebuilding our national security from the ground up. As we meet our commitments made at The Hague NATO conference to reach 3.5% in the future, I understand that there will be difficult discussions to be had, just as there were difficult discussions about foreign aid. However, there is no magic bullet when we are talking about increasing defence expenditure, and pretending that one thing will solve the issue is simply not realistic. In the two previous periods during which this country had to rearm significantly—the 1930s and the 1950s—it was a combination of increased taxation, increased borrowing and difficult choices about public expenditure that did it. I am not convinced by wishy-washy words about how just cutting welfare will sort it all out. Crucially, something else this Government understand and the previous Government never grasped is that defence spending is not just a cost. It is an investment and an engine for growth. We spend £32 billion annually with industry, equivalent to £460 for every person living in this country. UK defence supports 463,000 high-quality, well-paying jobs—one in every 60 jobs across the UK.