Sir Iain Duncan Smith

Yes, that is quite correct, and my right hon. Friend is exactly right to make the point now. We really must understand that, if the first priority of Government is defence of the realm, then the second priority is defence of those they send to fight to protect the realm. If we cannot defend them, we are not worthy of being here. I say gently to Ministers that the House would support them if they went back to the Government and said about the Northern Ireland position, “This is quite wrong. It is unbalanced and deeply unfair.” I hope that they will do just that. The real reason that I decided to speak today is because I am really, really worried. As I have been saying for some considerable time, we are now in a more dangerous situation than we have been in not since the cold war—at least we arrived at the cold war knowing what we had to do; Governments co-operated, NATO was fairly newly formed, we were full of the attitude that we would defend one another no matter what, and we were armed and ready—but since the 1930s. I am not in the business of saying that this Government are responsible; all Governments bear responsibility, as my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne said. We are seeing the rise of a threat very similar to what we saw in the 1930s, and our behaviour towards that threat is exactly the same as it was in the 1930s. My father wrote a book many years ago about his time. He was a highly decorated fighter pilot, with five gallantry medals; he commanded in the war and fought all the way through. He said that he could never forgive politicians for having placed the country in the parlous situation of being close to losing the war because they did not see the danger and did not want to be involved in spending more on defence. That was the point he made, and it has resonated with me forever. I happen to believe that we are seeing in front of us the growth of totalitarian states. China is at the centre, but North Korea, Iran and Russia are there, and others, like Myanmar, are developing. More totalitarian states are coming to fruition around the world, and they now outnumber democratic states in the United Nations. The axis has shifted. Over the last 15 or 20 years, not only have we not made ourselves ready—even today we are not—but we have simply failed to recognise that they have made themselves ready. One naval shipyard in China now builds more naval ships than the whole of the United States in one year. I am told that China now has 130 times the capacity of America to build naval vessels. It is no good looking at Europe, because we hardly build naval vessels any more either. The difference between now and what happened in 1937, 1938 and 1939 is that we then had major industry here—an industry that could build tanks and aircraft, had brilliant aircraft designers, and could build ships. We had probably the most powerful fleet in the world ready to go to war if we had to. We are not in that situation today.