Mr Mark Francois

Absolutely; industry is exasperated, from BAE Systems down to the smallest defence suppliers in the land. When we were in government, we published—with one year’s exception, I think—a detailed equipment plan every year so that industry could plan accordingly. That is what the DIP is meant to be, but still we do not have it. Labour Ministers tell us and their own Back Benchers again and again that they are increasing defence spending to the greatest extent since the end of the cold war. That is literally untrue. The Defence Secretary told the world in his resignation letter that Labour’s spending plans envisage going from 2.6% of GDP this year to 2.68% of GDP by 2030. That is a 0.08% increase over four years. How is that the largest increase in defence spending since the end of the cold war? Help me out, someone over there. It gets worse. Labour is also seeking £3.5 billion of in-year, self-inflicted, Treasury-driven cuts to the operational and readiness spending of our armed forces. That means fewer ships at sea, fewer planes in the air and fewer exercises on Salisbury plain—and the Russian and Chinese embassies must be laughing themselves silly. If Members will not take it from me, take it from the Chief of the Defence Staff—the professional head of the armed forces—who warned just a few days ago that if Labour continues on its financial path and does not fund the DIP properly, he will have no option but to cut back on readiness and training, which is exactly the activity that is meant to deter a potential aggressor in the first place. The blunt truth—as a Brit, I take no joy in saying it—is that this Government are the laughing stock of NATO. Indeed, in NATO’s own readiness index, the United Kingdom ranks 31st out of 32 NATO countries, with the only one below us Iceland by virtue of having no armed forces to ready. As the Government disintegrate before our eyes, we can only hope that their successors are both competent and courageous and actually believe in defending this country, which clearly this collapsing Administration do not. Another area that we want to press Ministers hard on is the fate of their benighted Northern Ireland Troubles Bill. The hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak, who famously described it as “not fit for purpose”, spoke powerfully in his resignation letter to the Prime Minister in defence of Northern Ireland veterans. He mentioned his battle in government, where he “set out the changes I believed were necessary, and the lines which I could not in good conscience go beyond. Those lines have not been accepted. I have run out of room to argue this case honourably from inside government. A serving minister cannot ask fellow veterans to trust a process he no longer trusts himself.” He went on: “We ask soldiers to fight for this country. In return, we owe them the kit to do the job and the loyalty to stand by them when it’s done. We are failing on both.” Nine former four-star officers have told the world that the troubles Bill represents a “direct threat to national security.” A group of former SAS commanders who were at the sharp end of the battle against republican terrorism told us: “Today every British soldier deployed must consider not only the enemy in front of them but the lawyer behind them… Make no mistake, our closest allies are watching uneasily, and our enemies will be rubbing their hands.” We absolutely cannot allow this situation to continue against those who defended the rule of law. Those who served in Operation Banner stood effectively as piggy-in-the-middle for decades between two warring communities. Over 700 of them were killed and thousands more suffered life-changing injuries. They and their comrades are now to be pursued through the courts via lawfare, actively aided and abetted by a Government who for months have promised multiple times to produce amendments to the Bill to protect veterans and, just as with the DIP, we have seen nothing of substance on which the House can rely, with no amendments and no letters of comfort for them, either. It is a matter of record that a number of those regiments who served in Northern Ireland on Op Banner came from the north-west of England, including from in and around the Manchester area. I think of the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment and its antecedent regiments, including the King’s Regiment, which traditionally recruited from Liverpool and Manchester—they did many tours of Northern Ireland. I therefore ask, in all seriousness, what is the attitude of the right hon. Member for Makerfield towards the benighted Northern Ireland Troubles Bill? If the new Prime Minister seeks some kind of reset for the Labour party, A good place to start would be to drop this dreadful piece of legislation, which threatens to put our soldiers in the dock solely to the advantage of those who sought to kill them. In lieu of that, he could agree to back the Northern Ireland Troubles (Criminal Investigations etc) Bill, the excellent new private Member’s Bill tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp), which will have its Second Reading on 4 September and which in essence seeks to curtail any further investigations, inquests or inquiries against our Op Banner veterans unless compelling new evidence as certified by a UK Supreme Court Justice is produced. Some of us on these Benches have literally spent years seeking to defend those who defended us; let us hope that the new Prime Minister will agree. There has been consensus on one point this afternoon—I heard it again and again—which is that the first duty of Government above all others is the defence of the realm, yet the Armed Forces Minister resigned, the Secretary of State for Defence resigned and now the Prime Minister has resigned. This Administration has failed. It is broken. It is going. It made many mistakes, but worst of all, it failed to defend this country. For that, it deserves to come to an end.