Sarah Bool

This debate comes at a very apt time. It is Armed Forces Week, when we show our support for our armed forces community, whether serving personnel and their families, veterans or cadets. I look forward to going to Brackley’s Armed Forces Day celebration this Saturday. I put on record my thanks to all the Royal British Legion branches that do so much across our constituencies, with a particular call-out to Tony McCawley, who organises veterans breakfasts in the Brackley branch on the first Saturday morning of the month: thank you for indulging me once a month. Defence of the realm is the ultimate insurance policy: we invest now to protect our serving personnel and our people. If we fail to prepare, we prepare to fail. What the former Secretary of State says—that the Treasury is “unwilling” to commit the resources we need to defend the nation—is concerning. Given that the Prime Minister was unable to do that, what will the new Prime Minister—whoever that ends up being—do to move the dial and change that? That question lingers with us all, because it is really important. Assuming that we do see the DIP published before the NATO summit, I hope that it will be honoured. It may be media speculation, but there are questions about whether the DIP should even be delayed by the forthcoming Prime Minister and whether they would want to meet the spending requirements. That is something we are all very concerned about. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes) has just said, many businesses are being affected by the DIP not being published. One of my businesses, EKA, has been told that there will be no new orders until the DIP is published. That is really kiboshing businesses, no matter what the Government say. We talk about “corrosive complacency”, but we are now in enforced limbo and it could go on for months. We do not have the time for that. Let me turn to the readiness part of this debate. One element of that is the preparedness of the NHS for any armed conflict. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) talked about us being in a situation that is more akin to the 1930s, and spoke about some of the risks. When we were fighting in the second world war, we did not have an NHS—it was formed afterwards. If we were to go into full-scale outright war now, there will be huge questions, because the NHS has never had to deal with that. The Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir Richard Knighton, has warned that the NHS is not ready for the casualties of full-scale war. We have approximately 14,000 medical regulars and reservists who work in the NHS. If we were to go into full-scale war, they would need to be deployed and we would therefore be faced with a gap. The Government acknowledged in the SDR that there needs to be greater integration between defence and health to try to fix that, but the reality is that the Government still have no concrete plan for how the NHS would cope. As I said, we will have a gap in capability. If we see major returns of casualties, how will the NHS cope? When we had a recent incident, with only about eight soldiers returned, it overwhelmed the capacity of a particular hospital. That would have an impact on waiting lists and could potentially lead to the rationing of services, so what would it mean for civilians in the long term? Those are all points we have to be prepared for. I call on the Government to turn their attention to them. Although the SDR acknowledges the issue, nothing has come from that, and we must be prepared. I ask the Government, in their own famous phrase, to work at pace. Please, work at pace and make sure we are ready for conflict.