Oral evidence: Evidence from the new Defence Secretary, HC 179

Oral evidence, 23 October 2019.

Witnesses

Rt Hon Ben Wallace MP, Air Marshal Richard Knighton, Angus Lapsley, and Lieutenant General Richard Nugee CVO CBE.

Chair

Good afternoon, and welcome to this special session of the Defence Committee, at which it is our genuine pleasure to welcome the new Secretary of State, the right hon. Ben Wallace MP, to his post. It is the first time he has appeared before this Committee in that capacity. Because of that, I am going to invite him to make a few opening remarks. Before doing so, I would like to invite the other three members of the panel to introduce themselves for the record and say a few words about what they do. Richard, Welcome back from last week.

Air Marshal Knighton

Yes, it was only last week. I am Air Marshal Richard Knighton, the deputy chief of defence staff for military capability.

Chair

Thank you. Angus, I believe it is your first visit.

Angus Lapsley

Indeed. I am Angus Lapsley, director general for strategy and international. The core of my job is Euro-Atlantic relationships.

Chair

Thank you. And, another Richard—there must be something about senior officers called Richard who keep coming back to this Committee.

Lieutenant General Nugee

It’s a rarity. I am Lieutenant General Richard Nugee, Chief of Defence People.

Chair

Welcome, and thank you for coming back. Secretary of State, if you would like to start off proceedings, we will then go straight into questions, with Madeleine beginning.

Mr Wallace

Chair, thank you for asking me to appear before you. I started in July at this post. It is a privilege to be Secretary of State for Defence for the United Kingdom. It is a big Department with amazing people. I have already noticed how busy the Armed Forces are, how much many of the problems that you and I probably remember from way back in 2005 have not gone away, and how the usual requirement to ensure that we balance our long-term needs with sometimes short-term pressures is as acute as ever. I am happy to answer your questions.

Chair

We will do our best to pull on the same end of the financial rope, in the hope of meeting some of those needs a little more generously in future.

Mrs Moon

Can I just put on the record, before I start my question, that, as president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, I have received phone calls and updates from the head of the Turkish delegation to keep me abreast of events in Turkey? Secretary of State, did the US consult us before its decision to withdraw from the area of Syria near the Turkish border?

Mr Wallace

On the specific decision, no, they did not do so in advance.

Mrs Moon

What was our response to not being consulted?

Mr Wallace

It was clearly after a discussion between the President of the United States and President Erdoğan of Turkey that the decision to go in that manner was made, with the subsequent actions of the Turkish Armed Forces. We do, however, speak regularly at both the tactical and strategic level, so, very quickly, I spoke to my counterparts, both in Turkey and in the United States. Over that time, the Prime Minister obviously spoke to the President of Turkey on a number of occasions, and we have communicated to ensure that, whatever withdrawal has happened, we are aware of it and of its impacts for security, and that, where there are concerns brought to light about Turkish behaviour, we can highlight those to the Turkish Government as well. We do talk, but on that specific decision, right there and then, we were not given a prior warning. It was a decision made by the United States, as the other decision was made by the Turkish Government.

Mrs Moon

Given the number of NATO members who were involved in the region, albeit there was no NATO mission there, would you normally have expected it to have been an article 4 opportunity to hold a discussion before making such a decision?

Mr Wallace

I would not necessarily say that would be the case. This was a decision made by the leader of the United States and by the leader of Turkey after the discussions. I don’t know what went on in those discussions, and I don’t know what prompted one or the other to do what they did. I think it was in response to events that much of this has unfolded, and they took the decision to do what they did. I don’t think I would view it as an article 4 matter on this case, but I would certainly say that they made their decision and then we worked out how we could adapt to it.

Mrs Moon

What have been the implications for British personnel in the region?

Mr Wallace

In Iraq, our personnel are active in helping to advise and to ensure that Iraq is secure, which has of course meant that we are much more alert to what could be the consequences and what will happen as a result of Turkish incursion into northern Syria. What does that mean for the foreign fighter prisoners? What does that mean for terrorist activity around al-Qaeda-linked organisations? Alongside the French, Germans and other allies, we are of course concerned about overall stability in that region, so it has meant that we have been very thirsty for information from all the people involved—the Turkish, the United States and the SDF, the Kurdish fighters—to understand what is happening on the ground. Then we will do what we have to do to ensure that we maintain our interest in trying to deal with the threat of Daesh, which has been the main strategic reason for our investing in that region. With the withdrawal of United States forces, we will have to adapt so that we can continue to take the fight to Daesh if we need to.

Mrs Moon

The UK is reviewing arms export licences where further licences might be used in Syria. How will you decide on what basis something might be used in Syria? What is the process you will use?

Mr Wallace

We usually search a whole range of sources about the destination of any arms export—it is mainly DIT that will do that, but we in the MoD will do that as well—to find out exactly what units or what purposes it might be destined for, or what type of equipment it is. Those will definitely colour our view of each case. We will do it on a case-by-case basis, but obviously, if it was going to a unit that was active in Syria, it would be very clear where that was going. If it was for a police force in Istanbul, it would be a very different question. We do it on a case-by-case basis, and the sources that we draw on are varied and wide.

Mrs Moon

Given that Turkish military forces are engaged on a number of NATO missions, how will you ensure that any limits on our exports do not have implications for their capability to continue on NATO missions?

Mr Wallace

By close working with the Turkish—the Chief of the Defence Staff talking with his counterpart in Turkey, and indeed me talking with my counterpart in the Defence Ministry. The solution to all of this is going to be a close working effort with NATO allies, European allies, to make sure that we resolve the current situation that we are in to return stability to that part of the region. I will be seeing—hopefully tomorrow—my Turkish counterpart and my United States counterpart at the NATO summit. Most weeks, I have spoken to a number of my counterparts. I was due to speak to my German counterpart this morning, but that has been slightly delayed. That is the key way we are going to address this.

Mrs Moon

Do you have any particular concerns about the nature of the agreement between Turkey and the Russian Federation? In particular, how do you see the clause that rates the importance of the Adana agreement? Do you see that as an agreement that can be sustained?

Mr Wallace

I think it is hours old. We will have to see how that translates into delivery. A few months ago, there was an agreement around Idlib between Turkey, Russia and the Syrian regime, and that did not deliver what they had come up with and decided was a good idea. I think it is hours old. We shall monitor it closely. Of course, we will be alert to the fact that Russia is alongside a NATO ally, but let’s see what is behind it and what the intention is, and let’s make sure that whatever is delivered has due regard for human rights obligations and the international rule of law to make sure that peace is restored as soon as possible and the concerns of both the SDF and the Turks are addressed.

Mrs Moon

Finally, can we have an assurance that the Ministry of Defence is working closely with the Foreign Office in seeking to see how we can protect the children and women in the camps, and the prisoners, who we would not wish to see released, and perhaps bring back some of those prisoners, children and women who are British citizens?

Mr Wallace

I dealt with that as Security Minister for three years. When it comes to the prisoners, it is a highly complex and challenging problem, which is challenging to not only the United Kingdom but the whole of the G7—we had a discussion about it last year. It is a big problem. When it comes to orphaned and unaccompanied minors, it is of course true that we would not want to see these individuals suffering as a result of the consequences of the behaviour of their parents or whoever dragged them there. We are working with the Foreign Office to see what we can do to help with those children. Some of those children have been identified in places that, for Crown servants—for military personnel or, indeed, civil servants—it would be very difficult to go into. They are not aid workers; they are not journalists. These are people who come with a badge saying, “I am the British Government.” At the moment, in some of those places, it is, of course, very fluid. We have Russians on the ground. We have Syrian regime on the ground. We have al-Qaeda-linked individuals on the ground. Those things are all a challenge and a danger, but we will try our best to see what we can do for some of these children to get them back here, if that is what is requested or, indeed, share with our allies what we can do with those children.

Mrs Moon

There are 12,000 unaccompanied children in camps in this region. It would be interesting to see how far Britain has been able to identify how many of those 12,000 are actually British subjects, but I will leave it there.

Martin Docherty-Hughes

I am grateful to see the Secretary of State here. In the last half an hour, the President of the United States has tweeted: “Big success on the Turkey/Syria Border. Safe Zone created! Ceasefire has held and combat missions have ended. Kurds are safe and have worked very nicely with us. Captured ISIS prisoners secured. I will be making a statement at 11:00 A.M. from the White House. Thank you!” Were you aware that any of that was going to take place, and do you believe for a minute that the Kurds are safe from Turkish incursion in north Syria?

Mr Wallace

Well, I am not aware of his latest tweet. I do not spend my whole life watching his tweets, or anybody else’s tweets.

Martin Docherty-Hughes

He is the President of the United States.

Mr Wallace

I am focused on what I can do to defend the United Kingdom and make sure that we work with our allies. What I would say is that I am totally aware that the United States had met with the Turkish. They did that recently—Mike Pence and everyone else—in a visit. They have sorted the concept of a pause in the military activity, to enable different units to move. That was made public and is a clear issue. That has slightly been superseded by the Russian agreement in Sochi that we’ve seen. What I say about all of this is that it is a very fast-moving scenario. Right from the very word go, this thing has changed rapidly, and we will see how this pans out. We are interested in stability returning and peace. We want to see everybody’s human rights protected, whether they are SDF, Turkish or anybody else in that region, and to make sure that those rights are upheld. Although it is not connected to this incursion, Idlib is under horrendous attack and siege for the people trapped in there. We want to see those rights upheld, which is the best way for us to seek a long-term solution. We will see. I hope that the tweet from the President of the United States is proved by events on the ground in days, and that that becomes weeks, months and years. We need to see how it runs its course. We will stand by to do what we can with the children and the displaced, and will hold countries such as Turkey to their international obligations towards refugees and, indeed, human rights.

Phil Wilson

Back in July, President Trump said he was going to exclude Turkey from the F-35 programme because the Turks were going to buy the Russian S400 air defence system. Now we find out—we don’t know if this is true—about reports that he is prepared to resume sales of the F-35 if Turkey shows restraint in Syria. Do you think that is going too far, as far as the F-35s are concerned? Have you got an opinion on that?

Mr Wallace

On your last thing, I wouldn’t speculate. You have just raised that as reports. The technical challenge that concerned many partners on the F-35, including the United Kingdom, about the sale of the S400, is still extant. The S400 weapon system does not mix well with the F-35 and its NATO ambitions. If there are technical mitigations or ways to deal with it, that is, of course, something else. I am not going to comment on the last point, because I do not know how true that is.

Phil Wilson

That would be my view, as well. I think there is a bit of incompatibility with the F-35 and the defence missile system from Russia. I just thought that, maybe, it was just a bit too much of a trade-off: “You go a bit easy in Syria, and we’ll allow you to buy these planes.” That’s when we know there is a problem with the air defence system that they are going to buy from Russia. I wanted to know your view, but, obviously, if you haven’t read the reports—

Mr Wallace

All I would say is that Russia is doing a pretty good job of selling itself around the region with equipment that is not necessarily in anybody’s interest.

Chair

I think we need to press this a bit more. I fully understand that you are not up to speed with what President Trump’s latest tweeting eruption might contain, but, of course, you will be fully knowledgeable about the threat that the S400 system poses to the F-35. If a country, in an increasingly close political relationship with Russia, were to have both the F-35 and the missile system that is designed to destroy planes like the F-35, that would be highly compromising. Presumably, you would be greatly concerned if there were any question of the decision to cancel Turkey’s participation in the F-35 for some political, extraneous reason.

Mr Wallace

The technical challenge for me will be the thing that defines our concern. It is technically incompatible to have those two in theatre in the same way. I would be concerned if that turned out to be true.

Chair

It would be highly compromising of the safety of the F-35 for all countries that owned it, including us, wouldn’t it?

Mr Wallace

That would be right; I wouldn’t disagree. We shouldn’t forget that Congress had a role in a large part of that. I am not sure that Congress would allow that, either.

Chair

Can we assume, then, that you would be lobbying for America not to have such a reversal of policy, which would have such dangerous implications for the future Royal Air Force?

Mr Wallace

All F-35 customers have security obligations that go with the plane, no matter who is the purchaser of it. Quite significant levels of security are required. One of our trump cards is that we have the F-35. I would lobby against anything that weakens that potent power of the F-35 in its deployment. If it was felt by our experts that selling an F-35 alongside a country that had an S-400 would diminish our potency, I would absolutely—

Chair

I will go back to Phil shortly, but just to wrap this bit up, you have some experts with you. Would any of you feel capable of commenting on this issue?

Air Marshal Knighton

There are two things that I would reinforce. First, Congress decided to suspend the sale. That is still the extant position. Turkey has two F-35s, which are both in the US; they haven’t been released to Turkey. They have four in build. Congress will have to be engaged in the discussions around whether they should release it. We have seen no evidence to suggest that Congress will change its opinion based on the evidence of the security risk, as we understand it.

Chair

How alarmed should we be—anybody, including you, Richard—if they were to change that decision?

Air Marshal Knighton

I would not want to go into detail, but the fact that Congress has suspended the sale of F-35 to Turkey gives you a good indication that partner nations in F-35 should be concerned.

Chair

Thank you. I think that is as far as we can take it.

Phil Wilson

Secretary of State, you have said, “Turkey needs to do what it sometimes has to do to defend itself”, but the Foreign Secretary says, “I have serious concerns about the unilateral military action that Turkey has taken.” How do your comments fit with what the Foreign Secretary said?

Mr Wallace

Our concern is with how they have chosen to deal with the threat against them that they see emanating from Syria. I also said that I don’t agree with what they have done. I don’t support what they have done. From where I sat in my previous post, the stability that their forces on the border had achieved—the decrease in PKK activity in Turkey—said to me that the security disposition they were in was dealing with the concerns that they had. I agree with the Foreign Secretary about what we have said, I just said it in a way to imply, “I don’t think I would have done it that way.” But both the Foreign Secretary and I uphold any country’s right to act in self-defence. That is everybody’s right. If they felt they were under threat or attack, any country would seek to take some form of action. How they do that often becomes debatable.

Phil Wilson

What do you think Turkey’s actions will do to the integrity of NATO, considering—we have just been discussing the F-35—they are prepared to buy Russian military equipment, which could potentially see off F-35 jets, and they have just taken this action in Syria? What are Turkey’s actions at the moment doing for the integrity of the alliance?

Mr Wallace

I will say something and then ask Angus to come in. Turkey is an incredibly important member for NATO. We need Turkey in NATO. We must not lose sight of the fact that Russia would very much like Turkey to be out of NATO, or NATO to be divided and full of friction. As I have said to my Turkish counterpart, they should question the motivation of their new friend Russia in coming along and offering great prizes. They should be aware that that country has an ulterior motive, in my view. Therefore, they should think about their relationship with Russia and how it plays with our membership of NATO together. Tomorrow and the next day in the NATO Defence Ministers’ summit, we will do everything we can to make sure that, if Turkey has had fears that it feels have not been addressed, we discuss those and meet them, but also to make sure that Turkey understands what values are compatible with membership of NATO and how we can uphold those together, and that it understands that we are stronger together than going off with Mr Putin.

Angus Lapsley

All I would add is that, apart from its geographically strategic position, Turkey is also an active contributor to a lot of what NATO does. It’s on the ground in the Balkans, in Afghanistan etc. It’s an active NATO ally as well as a strategically important one. The second point I would make is that the alliance has had many political disagreements over the years: Suez; the Gulf war; the Balkans. In one way or another, all those conflicts led to some quite profound disagreements within the alliance. However, the alliance’s strength is that ultimately these are arguments among friends and arguments among allies, who will stand alongside each other. And the fact that we can go to Brussels tomorrow and have this discussion face to face with Turkish colleagues and others is part of the strength of the alliance.

Phil Wilson

How common is it for NATO alliance members to buy equipment from Russia?

Mr Wallace

If my memory serves me right, some of the newer NATO members inherited lots of Russian equipment at the end of the cold war—

Phil Wilson

That is not quite the same.

Mr Wallace

I don’t know; I don’t keep an eye on the—

Chair

Is it unprecedented?

Mr Wallace

I don’t think it is. I mean, I don’t know, but—

Angus Lapsley

Greece, for example, has bought Russian military equipment.

Phil Wilson

What sort of equipment?

Angus Lapsley

My recollection is that Greece bought S-300 air defence missiles about 10 years ago; it was quite controversial at the time.

Martin Docherty-Hughes

Possibly Hungary?

Angus Lapsley

Possibly Hungary as well, yes. So it’s not unprecedented, but it always provokes a bit of debate.

Phil Wilson

Just one other thing—the NATO summit that is coming up in a few weeks’ time. Do you think there will be a showdown and that Turkey is going to dominate the summit? Do you think that it will knock you off line about where you actually want to take the alliance?

Mr Wallace

It is 3 and 4 December. If the combination of the Turkish-US discussions, and the suspension of activities combined with the Turkish-Russian deal hold, and if the SDF are—happy is the wrong word—not being oppressed or suffering in a combat environment and there is an agreement, I don’t think it will dominate. It will, of course, be there to discuss, but I think there are other equally important issues that NATO members will want to understand about ongoing commitments to funding and readiness, but also the US thinking about China will be something that we will all be interested in. New contested space—space itself as one of those contested spaces. And cyber. They all need to be addressed by the NATO members collectively in coming to some of the decisions about where we go in the future. I don’t think Turkey will dominate. It will certainly be there, but hopefully the tensions will have been de-escalated by then.

Phil Wilson

We have seen reports about Turkey using phosphorus bombs over the last few days in their activities in Syria. Is there evidence for that, or is it just an allegation?

Mr Wallace

In open sources, I saw it reported in the media, and indeed I think bodies such as aid agencies and the UN will collect evidence— if there is any such evidence—of the use of white phosphorus. Then, if that evidence is presented to the OPCW or indeed the UN, I think those organisations will consider what the next steps are. It is very, very clear from my own training as a solider that, under the Geneva convention, white phosphorus is only to be used for a marker, smoke, etc. It is not to be used as a weapon.

Mrs Moon

I actually asked a question of the head of the Turkish delegation in relation to white phosphorus. He went to the Defence Minister and he came back to me and said that he had been informed that Turkey has no weapons that include white phosphorus and that Turkey never used that or other chemical weapons. I make that as a statement for information for the Committee and for the Minister, but that is certainly what I have had back.

Chair

Do you have any information about that?

Mr Wallace

I do not have any information about Turkey’s weapon stocks and whether or not that is included. I will absolutely be putting the media allegations to my Turkish counterpart when we have a discussion. It will be all about, as I have said in my previous discussions, understanding what Turkey wants and what it is doing. Also, I have imparted our view about the observance of human rights and making sure that we maintain the international order and Geneva conventions. I will continue to do that.

Chair

On some of the wider implications, do you accept that our experience of intervention on the ground in the middle east has been that nothing unites the warring factions as much as westerners intervening on the ground, and that therefore the use of indigenous forces to fight organisations like ISIL/Daesh is essential?

Mr Wallace

It is always essential that any country that wants to take part in an intervention or military campaign maintains the support of the local population. Very often in some countries that local population is symbolised by local security forces or militias, depending on what type of state you are in. I think that is very important, because the knowledge and understanding of the very people you are trying to deal with is key. Also, without consent you do not get very far.

Chair

It is often counterproductive, and that is why when David Cameron was trying to persuade us to intervene in Syria he felt it necessary to keep arguing that there were 70,000 moderate forces on the ground in support of which we could mount an air campaign. In the event, hardly anybody on the ground was found to be suitable for us to support, except for the Syrian Democratic Forces, who were our sole significant allies—Kurdish led, but with some other non-Kurdish groups among them. How does it look other than an act of complete treachery for us to remain silent in the face of the abandonment of the only people we felt were sufficiently, to use an inappropriate term, kosher in that country that the RAF could support them as intensively as we did? Isn’t it actually a total betrayal of the people who were the only people we felt we were able to ally ourselves with in order to try to defeat ISIL/Daesh in Syria?

Mr Wallace

What we have to recognise is that, when the Russians came online with the Assad regime and produced an air defence umbrella of the scale that they did, our ability unilaterally as the United Kingdom to take on threats to air superiority was entirely diminished. If, Mr Chairman, you are saying that because the RAF can no longer operate overhead of many parts of Syria to defend the SDF we have abandoned them—

Chair

No, I am not saying that at all. I am talking about the fact that the only way we felt able to intervene in the end was in support of that particular group, and now the United States President has effectively betrayed and abandoned that particular group. I am not suggesting that the RAF should be intervening now in its defence, which is what I think you understood me to be saying. I am saying that we should at least be rather louder in our condemnation of what the United States President has done, because otherwise how are we ever going to get indigenous local forces to supply boots on the ground in areas that we feel it would be counterproductive to intervene on the ground directly ourselves?

Mr Wallace

I think, Mr Chairman, that all of us will have seen the consequences of the actions by the United States and others in Turkey, and what that means potentially for our future working relationships. We have said to Turkey that we think what they did was wrong. We have been quite clear that the SDF supported and helped us in our fight against Daesh, and have quite a lot of regard to try to ensure that their ability, rights and people are protected with this incursion. I am not going to sit and condemn the United States. They have fought alongside the SDF to help secure us in Europe, taking on Daesh. American personnel have risked their lives.

Chair

And their military leaders are shocked by this move by the President, aren’t they?

Mr Wallace

I am not going to speculate on the relationship between the United States President and the military leadership of the United States.

Chair

It’s fairly public.

Mr Wallace

It is a matter for the United States what it has chosen to do and how to do it. And the relationship between its military and politicians is a matter for the United States. I think we are in a position where, hopefully now, we have seen the Vice-President reach out to President Erdoğan and go to Turkey. The United States has realised that it is very important that Turkey is engaged in a better way, to ensure that we try to resolve this issue.

Chair

I do not think anyone on the Committee would disagree with you and Angus when you said that Turkey is a very important member of the NATO alliance and always has been. How Islamised does the Turkish political system have to become; how many thousands of civilians and hundreds of journalists does Turkey have to lock up; how closely involved does Turkey have to become with Islamist groups that may well soon be attacking our Syrian Kurdish allies; and, as Phil said, how involved does Turkey have to become with the purchase of lethal military systems from our adversarial Russian “friends”, before Turkey disqualifies itself from remaining part of an alliance that is meant to protect a rather different sort of society from that which Erdoğan is building in Turkey?

Mr Wallace

We also have to remind people sometimes that the coup against President Erdoğan was a proper coup. It ended up with fighter jets bombing parliament and military personnel attacking their own people they had worked alongside. It was not a niche thing; it was a proper Gülenist plot, and I think people have forgotten that.

Chair

I’m not sure that Gülen has acknowledged that it was a Gülenist plot. It was a plot, certainly.

Mr Wallace

Okay, there was a genuine plot. There have been numerous attacks by the PKK terrorist group—a group that is also proscribed in the United Kingdom—in Turkey, against tourists, Turkish citizens and military personnel. Turkey does have a threat that it has chosen to deal with. How far any member of NATO is able to go before the rest of the NATO members get together and ask themselves about it, is always reviewed among the member states. We will ask ourselves about all our colleagues and allies, whether they are NATO or other deployments we do round the world. At the moment, in our view, Turkey is a very important member of NATO, an important ally. We feel the best way to work with Turkey is not to abandon her as a nation or to push her away from us. It is to work as closely as we can with her as a nation. When I was Security Minister, I visited a number of times and I know many other Ministers did. It is to recognise that they have genuine security concerns and not play them down, which sometimes people have done, and to show them the best way for them to maintain their pre-eminent position as a key strategic power in the region. That is the best way to deal with Turkey. Pushing Turkey away will not help either the people of Turkey or the people of the region, or indeed help our security.

Chair

One more from Martin, and then we will move on to the strait of Hormuz. Angus, could you hold your comment and reply when Martin has finished? That would be nice.

Martin Docherty-Hughes

Following up on the Chair’s question, history often repeats itself, and it seems to many—not just those on the Opposition Benches; you may have heard the Chair speak from the Government Benches as well—that this is yet again another historic sacrifice of the Kurdish nation. We might not want to abandon Turkey, but how can we look the Kurdish nation in the face and say we are not abandoning them?

Mr Wallace

You use the words “Kurdish nation”. Kurds in northern Iraq—

Martin Docherty-Hughes

A nation can be many things, Secretary of State.

Mr Wallace

I know. We work very closely with the Kurds in northern Iraq. We help support the security in Iraq, and we will continue to do so as long as Iraq wants us to.

Martin Docherty-Hughes

But you recognise the cross-party concern about how this has been approached by the United States.

Mr Wallace

I absolutely recognise both the cross-party and international concern about how both Turkey and the United States have deployed and dealt with this issue. I do not downgrade it at all; I think it is why we are all working together—the Germans, the French, us, and the United States—to try to resolve this in a way that does not split Turkey away from NATO, does not push them away, but also recognises the sacrifices that the SDF have made to help us be secure in Europe by tackling Daesh and, indeed, standing up to that most brutal regime of Assad.

Chair

The last word on this topic from Angus, please.

Angus Lapsley

I was merely going to think back to the history a little bit. For much of Turkey’s history in NATO, it was not a democracy at all; it was a military dictatorship for quite a lot of that time. Although Turkish democracy today is very different from our own, in many ways it is still very much alive and kicking, and the elections in Istanbul—the largest city in Europe—prove that. There is something playing out in Turkish politics that is extremely strategically important to Europe, and reinforces the argument for staying engaged with Turkey and trying to help it along a path.

Chair

Madeleine, you have the next topic.

Mrs Moon

We thought that we would move on to the strait of Hormuz, just to give you a rest—something totally non-controversial. What lessons do you feel you have learned from the recent events in the strait of Hormuz? In particular, do you feel that the cross-Government maritime security mechanisms have worked efficiently and effectively?

Mr Wallace

First of all, my predecessor and I were transiting at that time. I look forward to your report on it, because I think there will be lessons on what to do—I definitely look forward to reading that and understanding it. There is a lesson about Iran. I chaired the all-party parliamentary group on Iran for eight years, so I know Iran pretty well. It seems that the international community had forgotten that Iran’s doctrine towards the strait has never changed since the 1980s. It has been one of their methods of lashing out ever since the Iran-Iraq war, if not before, and in my view we should all have been better prepared for the consequences of the breakdown of the JCPOA relationship and the maximum pressure campaign. However, I would not take away from the fact that on a number of occasions we saw off the threat when it materialised, and we continue to do so. The Stena was not the first ship to be targeted by the IRGC; the British Heritage, I think, was the first one. HMS Montrose did an amazing job seeing off the attempted interdiction of that ship. I think the lesson there is that when we want to uphold international law, we should do it together. The freedom of navigation is an incredibly important principle, whether you are in the Pacific or in the strait of Hormuz, and internationally we must all stand together to protect that. That is why I am delighted—maybe this is part of the lessons learned—that the Australians are coming to assist us in the strait at the end of the year and in the new year. Part of that is because I know that in their part of the world freedom of navigation is also sometimes threatened, and that at some stage it will be our duty to come and help them stand by that principle. The most important lesson is that many important rules-based norms that we all hold so dear are being challenged by a number of countries and that we should all stand together and be quick to respond when they are under threat.

Mrs Moon

But it is also a consequence of another unilateral decision by the President of the United States.

Mr Wallace

The IRGC were not justified in doing what they did because a country pulled out of an international treaty. I don’t think that is how you remedy it. It happened because the IRGC chose to act illegally in waters and, effectively, hijack a ship. They chose to use that doctrine, which that they have had for many years. But it is something to be wary of, because how Iran responds when it is put under pressure is often not within international norms and the rule of law; it is with military strikes on Saudi oil facilities and so on. We shouldn’t forget that before the Stena was taken, the Iranians had clearly targeted a Norwegian tanker—I am not sure what the poor old Norwegians had ever done to upset the Iranians—and a UAE tanker by actually putting mines on them. If you remember, they actually blew up a tanker. That was before the United Kingdom tanker. I don’t think Norway was even a signatory of the JCPOA. There are a number of questions about why the IRGC has done these things. I wouldn’t say that it is because of Mr Trump in any way at all. The United States took a view that the JCPOA was not something they agree with. We disagree with that, because we think the JCPOA is the best way forward. It was a long time coming and I think it was a good treaty, and we need to try to keep it together.

Mrs Moon

But having been the long-term chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Iran, you will know that Iran is never a passive receiver of things that it is unhappy with, and there are always consequences. One of the things we have to look at is how we are going to respond as a country. In particular, given our high level of involvement with both military and civilian shipping in the region, what are we doing to improve co-ordination and communication between military and civilian shipping in the region?

Mr Wallace

First, we have joined the International Maritime Security Construct, and that means there is an in-place co-ordination ISR capability in the region. One of the reasons we joined it is that it is going to maximise what we and our other allies have out there in protecting the strait. The more intelligence you have and the more surveillance you have, the better you can be in the right place at the right time, so I think that will help with that. The lessons learned will obviously come from your Committee, but they will include better liaison between Departments in that space and, I think, better liaison between the private sector—between the shipping sector and the insurance sector—on what to do and when to comply. Not all ships want to comply with some of our advice. We can say, “I really don’t think you should do that” as much as we like, but not all ships have complied, and that of course exposes them to risk. That is why it is important that insurers are involved in those discussions as well.

Mrs Moon

Indeed. I am very aware that we have representatives here from the Army and the RAF but there is no one from the Navy. I wonder whether, between you, you can comment on the length of the commitment we are going to have to make and how long the threat will continue, and on the implications for the UK’s Armed Forces and their deployment in the region. You will be aware that this Committee has long-held concerns about the low level of military capability in the Royal Navy at the moment, and we have expressed concerns that perhaps we need to increase the number of frigates and destroyers that we hold.

Chair

We are coming on to that.

Mrs Moon

How long do you think the threat will continue, and what will be the implications for Armed Forces deployments?

Mr Wallace

I can cover the threat, if military colleagues would like to cover what that means for the deployments. I think the impact of the maximum pressure campaign and our ability to resolve the JCPOA issues will dictate how long the threat will last. As I said earlier, that has of course always been the doctrine in that strait—an incredibly important part of the world. Therefore, the best thing that we can do to defend against overstretch for our forces is to make sure that we internationalise this as soon as possible, in the same way we did on anti-piracy and anti-terrorism patrols in a similar part of the world. If you remember, that involved a huge number of nations dealing with that on quite a regular basis. The threat has come down a bit, we notice. There is less of a threat at the moment, but that has not been formally declared. Our view is that neither Saudi nor Iran—nor the United States—want a conflict. I think all those players recognise that they need to de-escalate. I think at the moment the trajectory of threat would be downwards, and we must do everything we can to make sure that continues.

Mrs Moon

I hope that you were crossing your fingers and touching the wood when you said all of that.

Chair

Can I just raise a housekeeping point? You know, Secretary of State, that we are doing a stand-alone inquiry into the events that led to the tanker’s seizure, even though it was absolutely predictable—in fact, it was very much predicted that Iran would do something of that sort. Now that the Stena Impero has been released, am I right in taking it that there will be no objection to getting the co-operation of appropriate officials in coming before us, and possibly Ministers also? We want to have a joint session involving Ministers from your Department and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and possibly others as well. I assume that there could now no longer be any operational objection to that.

Mr Wallace

No, I am very happy to do that. I know that you have had a briefing from one of my generals on exactly that. There is no problem at all with doing that.

Chair

We were very impressed with the calibre of the briefing, but private briefings, of course, while helpful to us individually, do not take our inquiries a lot further forward. We have to do these things in public.

Mr Francois

Following on from that, your predecessor gave some very detailed evidence to this Committee along the lines that the Chairman has just been alluding to. To summarise, she was very concerned about the situation and had tried to raise flags, as it were, across Whitehall on a number of occasions. In fact, she asked the previous Prime Minister five times to convene Cobra so that this could be discussed on a cross-Government basis. On at least four of those occasions—and I think, from memory, on the fifth—the Prime Minister turned the request down. Isn’t it extraordinary that a Defence Secretary should ask for a meeting of Cobra because there is a threat to British shipping, and a Prime Minister at least four times should ignore that?

Mr Wallace

I think there is more than one way to skin a cat in anything you do as a Minister, and you will know that. Whether you need full Cobras or whether you can convene inter-ministerial Government meetings, or whether you know how to alert the system, all of that is part of the skill of being a Minister, and how you can do that. I have done 25 Cobras, I think, in my time. Cobras are very important for the whole of Government to be aware of a situation and for the tasking of specific issues, but when Cobras are too premature, often you effectively sit around not ready to do anything, because it is being held at a tactical level or, indeed, it is a fast-moving event. But I think that in this case one of the lessons is that when there is a threat to shipping somewhere such as the strait of Hormuz—a complex mixture of foreign policy, international partners and a live threat—of course those are the types of occasions when either a Cobra or an inter-ministerial meeting can and should be convened. What often happens, however, is that you have a Cobra O—a Cobra officials meeting—which can convene quite quickly and often happen before you get ministerial Cobra meetings, because actually the officials will deal with some of the detail that Ministers are not required to deal with. I am unaware whether there was even a Cobra O on that—I don’t know, because I was not in post at the time.

Mr Francois

Maybe that is something we could pursue. I do not want to hammer the nail too much, but the Committee was very struck, when we took evidence from Penny—she did pretty much everything she could; she is quite an experienced politician—

Mr Wallace

I think that is a matter for the former Prime Minister. I was not in the chair at the time. That is a personal relationship and a decision between a Prime Minister, her national security adviser and, obviously, the Secretary of State. Any Secretary of State who has a serious security concern should always be listened to if they are in that space, because they are only representing what they are hearing on the ground.

Mr Francois

I think that is exactly what she trying to do, in fairness to Penny. Right, let’s move on to carriers. As I understand it, the Queen Elizabeth carrier battle group will go through a work-up trial off the west Hebrides range sometime in early 2021. That is really the final stage she goes through before she is declared fully operational. When she has been through that, and assuming that they have passed their exam, as it were, which being the Royal Navy one would rather hope that they will, will we have enough escorts to escort the QE on operations without having basically to denude the fleet of everything else?

Mr Wallace

The size and the scale of the escort depends on the deployments and the task that the carrier is involved in. If it is a NATO tasking in the north Atlantic, for example, you would expect an international contribution to those types of taskings, in the same way as we sometimes escort the French carrier or American carriers to make up that. It is definitely our intention, though, that the carrier strike group will be able to be a wholly UK sovereign deployable group. Now, it is probably not necessary to do that every single time we do it, depending on the tasking, but we want to do that and test doing it. Once we have done that, depending on the deployment, of course, we will cut our cloth as required.

Mr Francois

Am I right to say that the core will always be royal naval, but in certain circumstances there may be add-ons from other allies?

Mr Wallace

Yes. We do that already. We provide anti-aircraft cover. Our Type 45s will help—I think we had a Type 45 with the Charles de Gaulle at one stage doing exactly that.

Mr Francois

The Type 45s will be the principal air defence assets. Could the Type 31 undertake escort duties for the carrier?

Mr Wallace

Yes—the whole point of the Type 31 is its versatility.

Mr Francois

I ask because some people had talked about a Snatch Land Rover frigate. Having had a look at what the Type 31 is capable of, in fairness, she seems to be a far more capable ship than that.

Air Marshal Knighton

The escorts that go with the carrier will depend on the circumstances. The work-up for carrier strike group 21 will be with British ships, because we need to demonstrate and prove that we can do that, but we are already engaged with international partners to understand how we will integrate an Arleigh Burke destroyer from the US or a Dutch destroyer into that package. Type 31 could be used as an escort, depending on the circumstances. For example, the Type 31 probably has—or will have—better capability against fast inshore attack craft and close-in threats. It will depend on the circumstances and what the threat is.

Mr Francois

Lastly on this section, if HMS Queen Elizabeth deploys to the Asia-Pacific region on one of her first actual operations post the work-up period, what is her mission likely to be and would it be your intention to deploy her in the South China sea?

Mr Wallace

I think that is for a discussion closer to the time—

Mr Francois

You’d call a Cobra, Secretary of State—

Mr Wallace

That is the last thing we want; I think some of my colleagues would have a view on that. It is for closer to the time, and we obviously have to be cautious of the security implications of making decisions far out. We will always reserve the right to change those decisions depending on what is happening anywhere in the world. Once you have a carrier strike group up and ready to go, we do not know what our adversaries might be thinking, exercising or seeking to do. Given the fast-moving threats we have these days, who knows where we could be in 2021.

Chair

We have no time to go into this now, but the fact that we were so stretched to provide frigate or destroyer cover in the Gulf, plus the upcoming standing demands for escort vessels for both carrier strike and amphibious capability forces, suggests to us that when they say “at least five Type 31es”, the “at least” needs to be seen as a floor and not a ceiling. I hope that you see it that way too.

Mr Wallace

Mr Chairman, as long as I do this job my attitude will be two things: on something like that, as long as our ambitions are what they are, it will be “at least”, because I take the view that we must cut our cloth to match our ambitions—

Chair

But with respect, when the idea of the mobile sea base was conceived in the SDR of 1998, it was believed that we needed 32 frigates and destroyers, and we are now down to 19. That was when Russia had not re-emerged as a potential adversary, so you can see why we are as concerned about the numbers as we are.

Mr Wallace

Yes, I do understand that. The thing we should reflect on in the straits incident is that at one stage, even for a short period, we had four ships quite quickly in that region—two Type 23s, Kent and Montrose, Defender and Duncan. We are down to two at the moment, with Montrose tied up alongside, because we have started to forward-base our ships, which I think is a really good thing—as a soldier, I was rather surprised that we hadn’t done it years and years before. The concept of changing the crew but keeping the ship out there seems to be pretty logical.

Chair

We have been doing it on nuclear deterrent submarines for a very long time.

Mr Wallace

What was interesting was that we managed to get assets there quickly. I had had a phone call with one of the commanders, saying, “I’m terribly sorry, I know you were thinking of going somewhere else but you will be going up and down the straits for a bit.” We managed to deploy there, but of course you are right about the number of our surface ships, which is why our ambition is 19. I know it is not 30, but I think the key is not just the total number but the total number available; to me, that is as important. There are lots of navies around the world with ships tied up alongside that in theory might have more on paper than us, but they never go anywhere because they do not have the crew and the ship is not ready to move. That is as important as the total number, because the total surface fleet is 57—not frigates and destroyers, but including Mounts Bay, which we saw in the Caribbean.

Chair

When we have our separate follow-up on what happened in the Gulf, we will be able to go into that in more detail, but thank you for what you have said today.

Gavin Robinson

I will not attribute it to you, Secretary of State, but when the Chair referred to the SDR in the last century I heard a “Crikey”. I am not attributing it to you, but I heard it from your desk.

Mr Wallace

I think I was just leaving the Army then.

Gavin Robinson

This touches on what you said about cutting your cloth to fit aspirations. The concern of this Committee, and of many of those involved in military matters, is the belief that we have cut our aspirations to fit the piece of cloth we are given. So congratulations to you on your appointment—not as Secretary of State but as shipping tsar—but do you believe that we have enough? Do you believe that the floor you have described is sufficient? Do you believe that, should we require a greater number of frigates and destroyers for ancillary aspects of the fleet, our shipping capacity in this country is capable of building more than the orders already there or profiled, for Type 31e and Type 26?

Mr Wallace

First, on the fleet as it is, if I had more of our current fleet working, I would have much more freedom to deploy to meet some of our ambitions and tasks. There are two parts to this. I have made it very clear to the First Sea Lord that one of my priorities is to get what we have working. The Type 45 is, I think, three, and at this stage we had envisaged six.

Air Marshal Knighton

Six are in service but three are available.

Mr Wallace

Three are available. That is quite important for our own credibility in defence. When we go to the Treasury to ask for more money, the Treasury will turn around to say, “Well, we have given you all this money, and look, they are not working.” That makes for a harder case when we go for more ships of a new type.

Gavin Robinson

You don’t have three Type 45s.

Mr Wallace

We have six Type 45s, but we have three available.

Gavin Robinson

Yes, you have three available. Give us, if you can, a sense of the entirety of the fleet that is inoperable at present.

Mr Wallace

We have 76 in the surface fleet, of which 57 are available.

Gavin Robinson

Do you know the breakdown of those available?

Mr Wallace

Not every single one. We have three Type 45s of the six available. Of the Type 23s, we have nine of the 13 available, I think. We should write to you with the detail, otherwise I will go through my rather limited—

Gavin Robinson

It was an unfair question, so please write to us.

Mr Wallace

I will send all the details I can on that, but an important point is that real availability—so that where there is a problem, we can do something about it—

Chair

Would it be too much to ask that you routinely, once every six months, send us that table?

Mr Wallace

I am happy to do that.

Gavin Robinson

This touches on the question of assets. You have about 20 inoperable vessels or ships. The question I was asking is this: do we have sufficient shipbuilding facilities in this country for our current workload, which is the Type 26 and the Type 31, as well as the restoration, refit and repair of those 20 vessels?

Mr Wallace

We have the yards, but I am not sure that we have the skills base. One of our challenges, both as a Government and for defence contractors, is to invest in the skills base enough so that we can keep on track with any of our orders. I went to Barrow-in-Furness to see the skills base there, built by BAE Systems, to increase the number of people available to build our submarines. I recommend that every member of the Committee goes on a visit if they want to see that. That is how the aerospace industry is fixing its skills shortage. That is why I lobbied the Prime Minister strongly at the spending review, saying that we must put more money back into FE. We can have as many yards as we like, but if we do not have the skills base, we see defence contractors juggling and trying to double-hat, but ultimately you will ask me questions about why these ships are taking longer to build.

Gavin Robinson

We have visited, two years ago. Potentially, the overarching lesson from Barrow-in-Furness was: don’t cut programmes, don’t end programmes, don’t leave industry high and dry, and then expect them to turn the tap back on. Yet again, we need to invest in the skills, so I am pleased you say that. When will we see the outcomes of Sir John Parker’s review of the national shipbuilding strategy?

Mr Wallace

The response will be very shortly.

Gavin Robinson

Which translates as?

Mr Wallace

Soon.

Gavin Robinson

After the next election?

Mr Wallace

I don’t know when the next election is—you can tell me when the next election is. No, there is no jiggery-pokery about holding it back or anything. It will get it out soon. As shipbuilding tsar, and because we want to increase shipbuilding in this country, one of the challenges for our yards is that they cannot be based purely on naval contracts. We have to ask ourselves why Hamburg, some Scandinavian yards and others are managing to win more civilian contracts than we are in shipping or refurbishment. We have to ask ourselves about productivity in our yards. When some of these yards finish, they have had 20 years of Navy contracts. I would hope that, if you have a 20-year or 15-year income, when that finishes, as a yard you don’t say, “Oh, well unless I get another Navy one, I’m going nowhere.” I would hope that you have thought about a future where you might not have the next contract from the Navy. We also need to recognise that across shipbuilding we have some real success in less traditional areas, such as mini super yachts. I think Princess Yachts in Plymouth employs more than 3,500 people. It has an order book of £700 million. We should embrace the whole of shipbuilding, not just traditional Navy yards, and we should think about how we can do that. I know that from my time in Northern Ireland as the deputy Minister. I think both you and I would be a little frustrated about how we were positioning Harland and Wolff for the future. I am very pleased that it has got a buyer.

Gavin Robinson

Thank you for your work on that. I was today in London on board HMS Belfast, which was having new masts rededicated that were installed 10 years. HMS Belfast was built at Harland and Wolff. The masts were built in St Petersburg. Your predecessor’s predecessor’s predecessor, within the past two years, visited Belfast to announce that they were building a new HMS Belfast in Glasgow. That shows the dearth in which this country and successive Governments have left the shipbuilding industry. We do look forward to Sir John Parker’s review. You have talked about 20. We don’t want to see a list growing of inoperable vessels but, should one be lost or destroyed in an accident or operations, how quickly could we build another?

Mr Wallace

I think there will be lots of factors at play there. Let’s say at Govan, where you are doing the Type 26, if you want a similar type of ship, you would have to ask the manufacturers about the exact shift patterns and all that stuff. It also depends on what type you are replacing. If you want to pause something elsewhere to insert into the pipeline. It just depends on the ships you have got. Remember, the real complexity of the modern warship is actually the systems and the systems integration, and the sensors that go on it. I remember going to see the Type 45s being launched up in Govan. I remember the first one. Once the boxes have been made and the components put together, the long graft—the long hard work—is the integration, the testing, the sea trials and the deployment. That is the big challenge at speed, I think, rather than the metal box bit.

Chair

I am going to bring Martin in briefly, before Gavin moves on to his next topic. We deliberately spent a lot of time on the first two topics, Syria and the strait of Hormuz, because we felt that they needed it. We are all going to need to speed up a bit now if we are going to get through the rest.

Martin Docherty-Hughes

Passing from Belfast to the Clyde is very interesting, as you will know, Secretary of State. Because when I was growing up there were nearly 30 shipyards on the Clyde, not just the paltry amount they have now. I am not blaming you for that, of course. Going back slightly, you said that you are not interested in the total number but how many of the fleet were available. I think the escort strength is about 19, but technically two of them are for training, so it is only 17.

Mr Wallace

I can write to the Committee with the total detailed breakdown of what is available. It is not that I am not interested, but as important is the readiness. Having lots of numbers that aren’t actually able to put to sea—

Martin Docherty-Hughes

But you can’t get two of those ships fully manned; you are turning them into training ships because you have manpower issues. The only reason they are not available is because you have manpower issues.

Mr Wallace

I think the Navy’s manpower is 29,000 out of a target of 30,006, so it is not in an overly stressed position compared with the Army on its recruitment.

Martin Docherty-Hughes

We’ll get to that later.

Mr Wallace

I’m going to love this job. Some of this is about the ability of the ships to do their job and whether they have been—

Martin Docherty-Hughes

But there are two here that are training ships because you don’t have enough staff for them.

Air Marshal Knighton

Which particular ships are you talking about?

Martin Docherty-Hughes

Well, you have 19 escort ships, so—

Air Marshal Knighton

There are several ships that are in maintenance.

Martin Docherty-Hughes

Are any of them being used as training ships at the moment?

Air Marshal Knighton

It depends on what you mean by training. Ships work up: they come out of maintenance and you then have to train the crew and work up the crew. I am afraid I am not quite sure what you are referring to. The approach we take with trickle posting of ship’s company means that the readiness and availability of a ship is based around its maintenance cycle and the work-up of that ship when it comes out of the maintenance cycle. Clearly, there is some training required to do that.

Martin Docherty-Hughes

Okay. Briefly, before the Chair moves on, Secretary of State, you mentioned a lot of what is going on in Scandinavia. Of course, our allies in Scandinavia usually have far longer funding programmes than, say, SDSR programmes and so on. A nation such as Norway—a medium-sized nation of 5 million—has a far more experienced and worthy shipbuilding strategy than we could even consider.

Mr Wallace

As shipbuilding tsar, that is what I had hoped to ask for.

Martin Docherty-Hughes

You are looking to emulate Norway?

Mr Wallace

We need to emulate, yes. What I think is interesting about both Norway and Germany is that their wages are not any cheaper. I suspect that in Norway—

Martin Docherty-Hughes

You want to pay people a good wage for a good job.

Mr Wallace

But we also need to look at productivity. If you make the crude assumption that Norway’s wages are probably going to be higher than wages in the United Kingdom, you have to ask yourself how it is competitive on the world stage in delivering ships. Maybe that is about productivity, so we have to look at that across our shipbuilding and ask whether our practices in our yards are productive.

Martin Docherty-Hughes

That is interesting, given that historically we were told on the Clyde about our inability to be productive because we had too many good working conditions compared with Scandinavian nations, when the reality was the other side. They have tons of shipyards and we have three on the Clyde.

Mr Wallace

I am very happy to learn from Norway and Germany and find out what it is they do.

Chair

Very good. We must move on. Gavin, will you combine some of the dimensions of the questions into multifaceted offerings?

Gavin Robinson

Secretary of State, you mentioned your request for additional funds. I would like you to focus on how you are going to take forward the three priority areas for the Modernising Defence programme. How urgently do you require a decision on the multi-annual framework that is envisaged to assist with the equipment plan?

Mr Wallace

On the first thing, the key to the Modernising Defence programme, like the SDSR 15, is funding. The SDSR 15 was not properly funded, in my view. It was an ambition that did not have the funding attached. That is why I battled quite hard, and the Prime Minister agreed to give us extra funding—I think it is about a 2.6% increase in real terms, which is above the 0.5%—as a strong step towards trying to fix that funding. That will enable us to start delivering properly on transforming defence issues: armoured vehicles, for example; the Type 31 ships, which we have obviously confirmed with an order; and, indeed, areas around continuation of the F-35 and other parts of the programme. Richard probably could talk more about the equipment programme and what that money will unlock. The important thing—it is important that the Treasury hears this—is that new money is often a lot about continually needing to invest. It is not about suddenly doing a whole load of new things we have not done before; it is about keeping the maintenance going, improving the maintenance speeds of our ships, refurbishment, and infrastructure for our soldiers and sailors. In some areas, it is about just standing still.

Chair

Well, quite a lot of it was to do with pensions, wasn’t it? Although, admittedly, if it hadn’t been extra money, that money would have had to come from somewhere else.

Gavin Robinson

And more particularly on the multi-annual financial framework to deal with the MDP?

Air Marshal Knighton

I think your question is principally about a long-term commitment from a Budget, because the spending round settlement covered only a year. We will wait and see what the Budget says, but at the moment the Treasury hasn’t baselined the increase in funding that we received for next year in subsequent years. The permanent secretary, the DG for finance and I spoke to the Committee last week, and what we really want is a long-term commitment on the Budget that would come alongside the spending review to enable us to put in place firmer plans for our equipment programme. We hope that we will have that long-term settlement next year. That would be important for us.

Gavin Robinson

Thank you. Secretary of State, will there be an SDSR next year?

Mr Wallace

I hope that there is a multi-year settlement. It is always good sense, in my view, especially in the Ministry of Defence, that when you have a multi-year settlement, you should accompany it with a strategic look, and an SDSR is that thing. I would like one and I hope we have one, but that is a discussion that I am having at the moment with No. 10.

Gavin Robinson

Do you think that, without one, you would be able to achieve the aspirations of Joint Force 2025?

Mr Wallace

I think the plus side of SDSR 15, and indeed the previous one, is that some of the things that we grappled with are already settled. What we want our Armed Forces in the 21st century to look like and some of the challenges that we are going to deal with haven’t significantly changed. Some of the investments that we will be seeking to make in our equipment programme, for example, would still be required. In that sense, it wouldn’t be a catastrophe if we didn’t have one—we wouldn’t all go blind—but it is important to reflect the constant new contested space that we face. What is the new battlefield of the 21st century, and how are we going to meet that?

Gavin Robinson

Good question. If you are going to address that, Sir, my only supplementary question is this: how are you going to safeguard the defence budget from being raided for new national security threats that are emerging in what the Chairman likes to call the grey spaces, rather than the hybrid piece? We have had a rearguard action in the last year or two, and we are trying to separate out defence from the national security capability review, and look at whether it is cost-neutral. How are you going to safeguard the defence budget for being misappropriated or appropriated for other non-conventional means?

Angus Lapsley

That is partly a political question. Quite often, defence can make a really important contribution in that space. Our defence assets are often hugely used and appreciated by the rest of Government in that space. The point that I was going to make was that the Modernising Defence programme, which you referred to, Mr Robinson, has three strands to it. There are lots of things happening across all three strands at the moment. “Mobilise” is about getting more out of the force that we have. The Secretary of State has referred to getting ship availability up. We are, for example, making investments in the NATO readiness initiative, which is important to our NATO commitments anyway. It is also about getting more out of the force. The carrier strike force coming on stream in 2021 is a big part of that. On “modernise”, there are things happening in defence on space, cyber, next-generation technologies, etc. That is a big focus of what we are doing at the moment. On “transform”, Richard may want to say something about the people transformations going on at the moment, and it covers IT as well. Those three priorities are driving a huge amount of what is happening across defence at the moment.

Gavin Robinson

Secretary of State, do you want to address that political question?

Mr Wallace

The best way to see off people looking at your budget is to show that you are actually the best place to lead on those threats. On security, the National Cyber Force is—or will be when we have solidified it and worked out exactly how we are going to use it and deploy it, and what it is going to be—a GCHQ/MoD concept. That is cyber, so some of that is grey space and some of it is traditional. I suppose I bring this from my security job, so I do know where some people are coming from on that. The MoD is there to provide services across Government for defending the nation. We are sometimes there to help people in other Departments deliver their job. We are open for business. We are key to other people’s jobs—I see it as them burden-sharing our challenges. Counter-terrorism, for example, is a joint task of the whole Government; it is not just the Home Office and the MoD—the MoD dealing with the military response abroad, and the intelligence services and police dealing with it at home. Counter-terrorism engages counter-extremism—DFID-funded schemes abroad—ensuring that countries are not corrupted. The National Crime Agency work on corruption abroad. National security is a long tail, and the best way is to have the MoD as an enabler. That is how you demonstrate to people that, instead of their trying to take your money to do this, you do it with them.

Chair

But the underlying problem that gives rise to this question is something we discussed last week—Richard Knighton will be familiar with it. It is the fact that, in 2018, there was an understandable attempt in the national capability review to look at defence, intelligence and security, and at some of these cross-governmental dimensions, all in the round and as part of the so-called fusion doctrine, which makes perfect intellectual sense. At the same time, however, there appeared to be a lumping together of the budgets of all these services. It was then announced that the result of the mini-review had to be fiscally neutral, which meant that if more money was put into intelligence and cyber-security work, more cuts would have to be visited on the already severely hollowed out Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. That is why we are concerned that justifiable wishes to address the new-style threats that have been added in the 21st century must not be used as an excuse to further reduce the capability and size of the three conventional services. We therefore hope that you will be on your guard, as, in fairness to him, Gavin Williamson was on his guard, not to allow an operation or exercise of that sort to result in terrific cuts to the conventional Armed Forces, which nearly cost us 1,000 Royal Marines and our amphibious assault ship capability, which I am sure you will acknowledge is world-leading.

Mr Wallace

Two things, Chairman. First, at the end of that process, Gavin got £800 million extra.

Chair

Indeed. It was a necessary fight for him to win, although it may have cost him—

Mr Wallace

But I also agree with you that, intellectually, it is the right thing. I would hope that Government recognises that we, as a Department, are at a stage where there is no fat to redistribute. We are hollowed, as you said, and we are trying to fix that. The need for this intellectual argument—I support the concept—is because the threats have grown, not necessarily shifted. We are under assault on more fronts, and in more dimensions, than we have been for a very long time. The solution to that is better working together and following the trail all the way through from hybrid; it is not robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Chair

It is also a solution that leads us very neatly on to Phil and the question that he is now going to ask, which I believe is on the size of the defence budget.

Phil Wilson

What percentage of GDP should we be spending on defence?

Mr Wallace

We spend 2.14%, which is the new figure as a result of the settlement. You’re not going to like my answer, but it depends on our ambition. The job of the Defence Secretary is to say to the Prime Minister, “Look, if you want the ambition for this, you have to fund it. If you want a smaller ambition, or a different ambition”—

Phil Wilson

But if your ambition is a global Britain, do you not need to have security for that ?

Mr Wallace

At 2.1%, we are the second-biggest spender in NATO and the biggest spender in Europe, with the coming online of a carrier strike capability, some really impressive capabilities in the areas of F-35s and ISR, and incredibly professional men and women. We always say how much we value our men and women, but it is more than that. It is the like-for-like. In terms of putting a trained British soldier next to a trained—I am not going to say which—other soldier, the quality that you have is important.

Chair

I do not think anyone argues about the quality. What we argue about is the funding and the quantity. The fact is that, traditionally, we always spent a significantly higher proportion of GDP than our European allies. We spent 4.5% to 5% of GDP in the 1980s, the last time we faced an adversarial Russia coupled with a major terrorist threat, and we continued to spend 3% of GDP—that is calculated on the old basis, by which we are now spending only 1.8%, rather than 2.1%—right up to the mid-1990s, half a dozen years after the end of the cold war. The thing that troubles us, although we do not blame you for doing it, is that every time we get a Defence Secretary before us, they play this straight bat and try to sing the praises, quite rightly, of our excellent Armed Forces, and when they cease to be Defence Secretary, they say things like, “Well, we really need to be spending 2.5% by the end of this Parliament,” as Michael Fallon did. We, as a Committee, with four parties represented on it, feel that a medium-term aim of 3% of GDP is reasonable in the circumstances of threat in which we find ourselves today.

Mr Wallace

Mr Chairman, with the funding settlement I got this year, and if it continues next year and the year after, we will be able to maintain our position as one of the pre-eminent military powers in the world. Will it give me every single thing I would like to do? No, but if I were sitting here in the days when I was serving, did we have everything when we were spending that much money on our defence? I distinctly remember deploying in a Warrior, with an amazing piece of equipment but a 1960s gun on the front—the Rarden cannon. No Armed Forces gets everything that it wants. We have a pretty strong core budget. The key thing is going to be saying to the Government as a whole that, “We can do more, if you fund us to do more.” What should not happen is that I say, “Yes, yes,” and not ask for the funding to go along with it. That is how we end up with a hollowed-out, overstretched and overspent Armed Forces, which will ultimately mean that we are less potent. I am a soldier. Would I like more money on defence? Of course I would like more money on defence—I am not going to pretend otherwise—but if I were sitting here as a surgeon, and you were the Health Committee, and you said, “Would you like money for the NHS?”, you would get the same answer.

Chair

But the difference would be that, in the 1980s, we were spending roughly similar amounts on health and defence, and now we spend four times on health what we spend on defence. There has been a comparative decline in the defence budget.

Mr Wallace

The plus side is that we are now starting to lift our defence budget. The one thing about the ’90s and the ’80s—the lesson—was that the hollowing out still happened despite the money. The sort of short term versus long term—I think we have both always wanted to try to get the Treasury to think better in the long term—drove those decisions in exactly the same way in the ’80s and the ’90s.

Chair

This Committee is trying to give more power to your elbow in that respect. Please take it in that spirit.

Phil Wilson

I have one or two other points. On the spending review—I think you got an additional £2.2 billion—what proportion of it will go on defence expenditure under the NATO criteria?

Mr Wallace

All of it.

Phil Wilson

Okay. We were told that there was insufficient information on the figures to prove that.

Mr Wallace

It will all go under the NATO criteria. Approximately £700 million will be on the pension liability. In my last Department, it ended up that we were told we had to find it. The rest would be predominantly on the equipment and the investment budget.

Phil Wilson

So of the £2.2 billion, £700 million is going to go on pensions. Is that right? So it is not all going on the criteria.

Mr Wallace

The pensions are in the criteria.

Phil Wilson

A couple of other points on the defence transformation fund. Is that actually going to continue? Have you got the additional £340 million, and is it going to achieve its commitments?

Air Marshal Knighton

We are right in the middle of our budget cycle, and we are working through how we continue it on into next year—that is our intention, but you will understand that we have to examine this each time we come to a new financial year. That is what we are working through at the moment.

Phil Wilson

Some of the projects that you were looking at included support for the future commando force, a swarm squadron of network-enabled drones and pioneering robotic fighting logistic vehicles. It sounds all very exciting, but the National Audit Office has said that the proposals are modest. You’ve got Defense News saying that it is bland, and other people saying it is a bit of an anti-climax. Is it exciting, or is it an anti-climax?

Air Marshal Knighton

I think it is very exciting.

Phil Wilson

I thought you would say that. So why would they say that? If it is exciting, why do they think it is bland, it is an anti-climax and it is modest?

Air Marshal Knighton

I have no idea.

Phil Wilson

This is the National Audit Office saying this.

Air Marshal Knighton

I think you said the National Audit Office described it as modest, and I would agree with that. In a defence budget of nearly £40 billion a year, a smallish budget of £100 million or so in each year is modest against that scale. But if we are to modernise, show the agility that we need to adopt and exploit new technologies, and change the way we operate to deal with the threat that we face, we need to invest in these sorts of things and learn from them. That was the intention of setting it up. That, sitting alongside the innovation fund and the work that we are doing to try to reform our acquisition system, is all about trying to speed things up and enable us to exploit new technology—automation, artificial intelligence and digital. All these kinds of technologies will form part of the future equipment capability and the capability that the Armed Forces have. This is the front end of that.

Angus Lapsley

Obviously, the £100 million in that budget is not the only money in MoD that is being spent on transforming towards a different force for the future. It is embedded in budgets—

Phil Wilson

I thought it was going to be £500 million. Are you still looking for £340 million?

Angus Lapsley

My point is that the transformation fund, which is a particular thing, is only one part of a much broader picture of change in the Department.

Martin Docherty-Hughes

There is a shortfall of between £7 billion and £15 billion in the equipment supply, 84% of which will arise by 2021-22. How will you plug the funding gap? What will you have to cancel or delay? Importantly, what assessment have you made of future currency fluctuations with regard to dollar-dominated projects, such as the F-35 and P-8 programmes?

Mr Wallace

I will start with the first bit. The black hole that has been identified—the £7 billion that the NAO had identified, if I’m not mistaken—is obviously before the settlement that we had this year. My view is that, if I can get the Treasury to recognise that the money it has given us this year is to be put into the core rather than extra, we will be on track to close that hole over the period of the equipment programme by quite a considerable way.

Martin Docherty-Hughes

What if you are not? I am just playing devil’s advocate.

Mr Wallace

I saw it at QinetiQ: technologies are brilliant. But we should always—whether in budget or under budget—think about the programmes we are committed to and whether they are doing the job we want. If we overspend, we will do what people have always had to do: we consider either delaying or cancelling a programme. That is what every Government has done and will continue to do. At the same time, I think, in order that we do not end up with a Hobson’s choice at the end of one of these programmes, it is important to monitor existing programmes constantly, and to test and challenge new ones brought before me. Recently, for one such—I will not tell you which one it was, I am afraid—the test I gave to the military personnel before me over a number of meetings was, “I don’t want you coming back in five years’ time to tell me that, actually, what we really now need is a bit of extra stuff on the side, which will cost you this. I want to know that you have thought through this 10-year programme—what will it really look like, will we need it, and will we match the threat?” That is a really important function. I look through the equipment list all the time to see whether it is delivering what it is supposed to do, and we must not be afraid to cancel something if it is not or to take it out of service.

Mr Francois

What have you cancelled?

Mr Wallace

There is a long list, and we haven’t actually got there yet. We are going through the list as a result of the settlement. We will look at whether we need to take things out of service early. Some things might not be working as well as they were, or coming to the end of their life, so why don’t we take them out of service a year early? With another programme I looked at, I asked whether it needed to be fitted to every single ship—it was a naval programme—or whether we could fit it on just a few ships. All of those are the types of decision that we need to make, if we are to meet the cost pressures. I will of course inform the Committee when we make some decisions on whether we will cancel anything.

Mr Francois

The accusation, Secretary of State, is that even when programmes go horribly wrong—like the Warrior capability upgrade, which is a disaster—you never cancel them, you just fudge everything.

Mr Wallace

Don’t worry—I will. To be fair to the whole armoured vehicle—

Martin Docherty-Hughes

Are you saying that you are cancelling the Warrior project?

Mr Wallace

No, I am not saying anything like that. My point, to be fair to the armoured programme, is that that has suffered from hollowing out for 15 years. I remember it when I first came into this House in 2005-06. If you look at the armoured personnel carrier, it has been through TRACER, FRES and Trials of Truth, although Trials of Truth never happened. It has been through that. FRES was an 18-tonne requirement, and then it went up to a 32-tonne requirement. It had to be air-mobile, and then it didn’t have to be air-mobile. All of that meant that, when it came to cost pressures on an annual budget, we would say, “Oh well, we’ll just push the armoured fleet a bit further back.”

Martin Docherty-Hughes

May I just push you on to the rest of the question, Secretary of State—on assessments and future currency fluctuations, especially with the dollar-dominated programmes such as the F-35 and the P-8?

Mr Wallace

We make representations to the Treasury on currency impact, because we are by far and away, in the whole of Government, the Department most affected by it—it can be into the hundreds of millions of pounds in cost. So when there is a pressure like that, our first step will be to go to the Treasury, where we will try to negotiate about that. Sometimes we are successful, and on other occasions we are not. We seek a whole of Government approach to some of that, because it is often not in our control—it’s a fluctuation—

Martin Docherty-Hughes

Finally, is there any truth in the report in The Ferret online about the delayed delivery of the submarine Audacious from 2019 to 2020, with a possible subsequent impact on the introduction of the class itself, meaning that the ageing Trafalgar class will be retained for longer? If so, what is the impact on the funding gap?

Mr Wallace

I saw that in the media today. There is a delay to one of the Astutes. We have fixed one of the problems that has surfaced in the Astute currently being built—so, that Astute—but, overall, the Astute programme, of which a number of boats are already out there, will continue to be delivered. I am not sure about the overall knocking-on impact—

Chair

May we check one point? I understand that the delay is a very long one, from August ’19 to January ’21—that is 17 months, or something of that sort. We gather from what Stephen Lovegrove wrote to the Public Accounts Committee that the fault is having to be repaired; it is one that has not occurred in the first three boats that are out there?

Air Marshal Knighton

I understand that that is the case.

Chair

Is there any reason to believe that this fault was going to occur in the last three boats, or is it something unique to boat No. 4 out of seven?

Mr Wallace

My understanding is it is something we do not think will be repeated in the other boats. It is a unique issue that we address by bringing forward a replacement from a later boat.

Chair

So it was something that crept into boat 4 for the first time in the cycle.

Mr Wallace

That is my understanding of that particular problem.

Martin Docherty-Hughes

To go back to the main point, will that have an impact on the Trafalgar class, which will have to be retained for longer, and on the budget?

Mr Wallace

Yes. Any delay in any programme that forces us to extend older platforms costs us money.

Martin Docherty-Hughes

Which technically means you might have to go into the money you were talking about earlier that you have received to cover that period.

Mr Wallace

I am not sure how much it actually costs to extend, say, a Trafalgar class for six months.

Air Marshal Knighton

It is relatively modest, because we would be running another submarine anyway if Audacious had come in on time. It is the additional maintenance associated with the Trafalgar class.

Mr Francois

Richard, the entire class is years late. It has been a disaster. They are years late, all of them—not just boat 4.

Air Marshal Knighton

The question was specifically around extending the Trafalgar class to deal with Audacious. You are absolutely right that the Astute class has been delayed over a number of—

Mr Francois

And it has cost us a fortune to run on the Trafalgars. Some of them are 30 years old. They are nearly exhausted. They are knackered, basically, in common parlance. Something went horribly wrong at Barrow and has continued to go horribly wrong for years.

Chair

What went wrong, surely, was that there was a huge gap between one generation being built at Barrow and the start of the Astute class.

Air Marshal Knighton

This issue is very well documented. That is one of a number of factors.

Chair

It shows what happens when one’s Armed Forces get to such a low quantitative level. Despite their high quality, you are not able to keep up a steady drumbeat of orders. That is why we are so anxious about our shipbuilding and boatbuilding policy.

Martin Docherty-Hughes

Can I just finish? While I may not agree with the rest of the Committee on the nuclear deterrent, I am grateful to the Secretary of State for his honesty. It is about time we had a Secretary of State as honest as the one we have in front of us.

Mr Wallace

All I will say is that the definition of hollowing out has gone on in front of the Committee. If you hollow out and do not spend money on your skill base, and you do not invest in the boring infrastructure that does not get the headlines, you pay for it in the long run, because you extend platforms, and pay too much money to do that, and do not get what you need. On a number of these programmes, we are all at fault. There is blame to be placed on the political class, the military class and construction. They call it optimism bias—that is the newish phrase—but it is absolutely the case that one of the challenges in our naval industry is skills and, when something goes wrong, what it means when you do not have a huge pool of anything to shift round.

Chair

You said in Defence questions that the fleet solid support ship contract is now well under way, but this is why the Committee has been so concerned about not unnecessarily placing orders abroad that could be used to keep our infrastructure for shipbuilding in being. I know you cannot comment on that particular one.

Mr Wallace

I represent a seat in Lancashire, where a large number of aerospace workers work on the Typhoon and the F-35. That gives me the ability to see our aerospace strategies around skills and the Government’s determination to already think ahead. The Tempest is all about how we ensure we maintain skills and ensure that the production line is finished. There is a new programme and new task there. I compare that with shipbuilding—certainly the submarine programme—and I see a big difference that we need to rectify. That is really important.

Chair

Mark Francois has been waiting incredibly patiently. We are now going to unleash him on two topics that are very close to his heart—and to all of ours.

Mr Francois

Secretary of State, because of the time, I think we will make this a bit of a quick-fire round, if that is okay. I don’t think the Chairman will object.

Mr Wallace

Do I have to press a buzzer?

Mr Francois

Yes, sir. Your starter for 10—no. To finish on Barrow very quickly, on this Committee, we are normally quite careful about what we say in open session, but if you check back, because of the constant delays at Barrow for years—partly for the reason the Chairman has given, in fairness to them—there have been occasions when people have come to visit us and we have not been able to give them a proper reception, and that is unacceptable. Something has been wrong at Barrow for years. BAE are always going to fix it, and they never quite do. Your analogy with aerospace was well made. I think all we can do is encourage you to get stuck in and really sort that out. Can I leave it at that?

Mr Wallace

I live about an hour away from Barrow, so I have already been.

Mr Francois

Right. Quickly, your ADEN cannon may have been 1960s technology, but at least it worked. Right, Northern Ireland veterans. Why was no legislation on protecting Northern Ireland veterans against historical allegations—vexatious allegations—in the Queen’s Speech, as we had been led to expect?

Mr Wallace

First of all, it doesn’t mean that the Government is not planning to do something on it. I think the last Queen’s Speech announced 20-odd Bills, and 47 were produced in that Session. The obligations of the parties in Northern Ireland—the Stormont House agreement—make this an incredibly complex challenge that we need to get right. I have already had two meetings with the Attorney General on it, and I have met with the Northern Ireland Secretary. We need to make sure we craft it properly, so that people are protected from that type of vexation and fishing expedition and all the other stuff, but we also recognise that no one is above the law, and that if wrongdoing has been done, we have to address that. It is incredibly complex, but the Government are determined to try to resolve this. They have said they are going to do that; we are working on it as we speak. One of the reasons we are urging and trying to get Northern Ireland back on track with devolution is that that is going to be a key plank in getting some of these things resolved.

Mr Francois

To put it bluntly—let’s cut to the chase—the accusation is that officials in the NIO, who like to take pictures of Her Majesty the Queen off the wall from time to time, are quite prepared, and always have been, to sell Corporal Tommy Atkins down the river if they think they can get Sinn Féin back into the Executive. It stinks, doesn’t it? Now, there was going to be a Bill, which your predecessor had prepared, to provide protection for veterans of Telic and Herrick, which I am sure we would all welcome—the best should not be the enemy of the good—but can you assure us that that Bill has been beefed up, so that it will cover Northern Ireland veterans as well, and we will not just get a Bill for Iraq and Afghanistan vets, important though that is?

Mr Wallace

I think the solutions are slightly different. On Iraq and Afghanistan, the Government has just finished—I think last week or the week before—the consultation. We will publish a clear response. How that comes before this House will be different from how we uphold our obligations in the Stormont House agreement and, indeed, how we deal with the legacy of the past, not least because there will be two departmental leads. I will be leading on that one, but the NIO and the AG predominantly will be leading on the Northern Ireland issues about the legacies of the past, and there are different legal issues around the ECHR and the application of it. I do not think Northern Ireland will be included in that Bill, if there is a Bill.

Mr Francois

I agree, by the way, with what my SNP colleague said, at the risk of worrying him.

Chair

We always agree on this Committee.

Mr Francois

You have given very clear and straightforward answers to questions, which is to your credit, but for the avoidance of doubt, are we to understand from what you said that we are looking at two different Bills now, and that one is an MoD lead and one is an NIO lead?

Mr Wallace

I was in the Northern Ireland Office as a junior Minister. I know it inside out—all the challenges, and all the cases that happened. We have not settled on a place, a single Bill or two Bills, but I think it is highly likely that they will be two separate pieces of legislation. One will deal with British soldiers abroad, vexatious, the statute of limitations and so on as they apply to Afghanistan and Iraq and other areas. The other one will be about Northern Ireland, not least because the Northern Ireland one will probably require a consent motion. As Stormont is not sitting at the moment—as it is neither sitting nor direct rule—it would be hard to formulate a solution without it.

Mr Francois

I am mindful of my Northern Ireland colleagues’ sensitivity around such matters, so I will try to choose my words carefully. Look, 100 MPs wrote to the previous Prime Minister a year ago. Some of the members of this Committee helped to formulate the letter. They were predominantly Conservatives, but some others added their name.

Ruth Smeeth

Thank you.

Mr Francois

It was also signed by 50 peers, including four previous Chiefs of the Defence Staff and a former CGS—you had letters going off the page, basically—so there is massive political support in Parliament to do something about this. I think we know where your heart lies. We also know where the Prime Minister’s heart lies, because when he wanted everybody to vote for him during the leadership contest, he signed a whacking great pledge in the middle of The Sun newspaper. As far as we are concerned, he is on the record—this is all done. All he needs to do is tell the Northern Ireland Secretary where to get off. The Prime Minister has given his word in writing in a national newspaper. Surely that is it, isn’t it?

Mr Wallace

The Prime Minister—

Mr Francois

I’m even told that a Cabinet Minister reminded him of it.

Mr Wallace

I will not comment on Cabinet discussions. What I would say is that it is not the case that there is any blockage in the system. I am working with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and the Attorney General is working with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. We are all working to try to get a resolution to this. No one is blocking it. What we are trying to do is to produce a solution that absolutely matches the challenges. It is important to inform the Committee that the challenges around the legacy in Northern Ireland are not just in criminal trials; they are in inquests as well. Many soldiers are getting questionnaires about appearing at inquests into what would be called in Northern Ireland state killings, or whatever. That is not a trial for a crime, but usually an article 2 inquest. That involves them being contacted as well. Quite rightly, some of those veterans have felt that they are being summoned in front of a court, because it is a court. I have already taken steps to remind the Coroners Service for Northern Ireland that it has certain obligations to those people whom it is contacting. My constituents received some of those things without any clear highlighting of their rights. They were just sent a questionnaire.

Mr Francois

I have one last question on this subject, then we will move on to something less controversial. You will recall that our predecessor Committee looked into this in 2016. We looked into it afresh about a year ago. We came up with the solution of a qualified statute of limitations, not an amnesty. The idea was that unless there was “compelling new evidence”—I think was the phrase in the report—people could not be re-investigated. We feel particularly strongly on this, because so many of the IRA on-the-runs have been given so-called letters of comfort by Blair, so they are scot-free. Do not tell me that they are not legally valid, because no one who has one has ever been successfully prosecuted, and the one time we tried, the trial collapsed. Of course they are legally valid. Our guys have no such protection. I encourage you and your colleagues to have another look at the Select Committee report, because we did put quite a bit of effort into it.

Mr Wallace

First of all, I have read the report. I am sorry that you have not had a response, mainly because I have corrected the response. I didn’t think the response that we—we have not sent it to you yet.

Chair

We will look forward to a particularly good one, then.

Mr Wallace

I wanted to address the questions you raised, rather than give you the usual.

Chair

The usual what?

Mr Wallace

There were some good ideas in it, and I will see if we can do some of those. I say one thing, for people watching this: the MoD is determined to support all those people who are currently being asked to appear in inquests and in criminal cases, and to give them the best support we can to make sure that their rights are protected and they are given the support that they deserve. That is the least we can do. The next bit is how we can protect them from vexatious claims and—as we have already seen in Northern Ireland, and even here in the UK—claims of new evidence that, when tested, turn out to be utter rubbish. I have seen a few of those already—not in inquests, but we saw them in some of the other things. What is “new evidence” is quite important, I think.

Mr Francois

It is a simple principle: we have to defend them, sir, because they defended us.

Gavin Robinson

I accept your personal sincerity on these issues, Secretary of State, but I find it horrifying that some of the answers you have given today have been given—I am not saying that I am horrified by you. It has been suggested that Stormont House solves this issue, but I think you know it does not. As for the second suggestion, even if you leave aside the political machinations of this week and the consent principles associated with the withdrawal agreement, the idea that we as a country with a reserved defence force would seek the consent of representatives of the IRA on these issues is appalling. We have a national commitment to service personnel. We have a national duty to stand up for them when they are receiving vexatious approaches from criminal investigations, when they have already been exonerated. I am pleased that you are reconsidering the response that you, or the Department, intended to send. Please believe me when I say this Committee has engaged privately with the Department and wants to be helpful on these issues. When you say you have met with the Attorney General on two occasions, can I assume that that is the Attorney General for England and Wales—the Attorney General who does not have any remit in Northern Ireland? Have you engaged with the Attorney General for Northern Ireland? To my knowledge, he has written to the Northern Ireland Office—I would love to know whether you are aware of this—and suggested how, in line with the report we published, legislative provision could be brought forward that offers the protection necessary without any of the associated consequences that others have raised.

Mr Wallace

Two things about consent, Gavin. You will know, because you are a lawyer, that criminal justice is a devolved matter.

Gavin Robinson

Defence is not.

Mr Wallace

Yes, but criminal justice is.

Gavin Robinson

So is agriculture and trade. They are both central to the withdrawal agreement.

Mr Wallace

It is, okay? As much as I find it difficult, as you no doubt do, that Members of the Stormont Assembly come from people who supported, or were part of, the organisation that tried to kill me and my soldiers on my tours, that is the result of the Good Friday agreement, and where we got to. Criminal justice is devolved to Northern Ireland, and whatever we think about dealing with our Armed Forces and what happened in Northern Ireland, we cannot ignore devolution in Northern Ireland. We cannot just pretend that that does not exist. We have to deal with the parties of Northern Ireland in order to resolve this issue. This is not saying, “Give them a veto”, but ultimately, the PSNI is answerable to the Northern Ireland Policing Board.

Gavin Robinson

Yes, but we know that the provisions that you have outlined do provide a veto, Secretary of State. We do not even have the Armed Forces covenant operating in Northern Ireland because of the sectarian approach by some of those representatives.

Mr Wallace

I know, and when I was the junior Minister I did stuff to address that. I can explain to the Committee later what we did to address that, but we found issues there. I cannot change the conditions in which we have reached a peaceful settlement in Northern Ireland. What I can say is that there are policy solutions that we need to explore that would protect our Armed Forces from vexatious claims and inquests, which are often got up either at the expense of trying to rewrite history or, indeed, because there are a few barristers who make quite a lot of money out of doing that. However, we must also make sure that we do that in a way that complies with our obligations under international and domestic law. That is the fundamental reality of what we have to deal with. I am confident, because I know hundreds of people who have served in Northern Ireland, that 99.99% of the soldiers and police officers who served in Northern Ireland did so in accordance with the law and the very highest standards. They have nothing to fear and we must do our best to protect them, but as you know—this Committee has twice written reports—there is no simple solution. As you know, the Advocate General for Northern Ireland is also the Attorney General of England and Wales—

Gavin Robinson

No criminal matters.

Mr Wallace

No criminal matters. Nevertheless, he does have a locus in Northern Ireland. He, I think, has already spoken to the Attorney General for Northern Ireland and the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, because the judiciary will be involved in this as well.

Mr Francois

There was no mention of a Sinn Féin-IRA veto in the Prime Minister’s article in The Sun. I know that, because I kept it.

Mr Wallace

We are not talking about a veto—

Mr Francois

You are.

Mr Wallace

I am not talking about a veto. If you want to implement anything in Northern Ireland that touches on devolved matters, you have to have a discussion with the Northern Ireland parties. You can’t avoid that.

Chair

You can have a discussion, but if you think we are ever going to get to a situation where Sinn Féin and the republican movement are going to agree to any sort of limitation on the constant reinvestigation of our service personnel, no matter how vexatiously or unreasonably, with no matter how little prospect of a successful prosecution, then, frankly—with the greatest respect—you are not living in the real world.

Mr Wallace

I am not saying that we are going to give that to those people. I never said that. Having served in the Scottish Parliament, I recognise that the devolution settlement in the United Kingdom means that there is a thing that started life as a Sewell motion, and there are elements of that. There is a judiciary in Northern Ireland, which is independent from the other judiciary. It is, of course, a part of the process that there will be consultation and discussion with all parties in Northern Ireland. And I don’t need a lecture, Mr Chairman, about the IRA and who I was dealing with across the table most times when I was a Northern Ireland Office Minister.

Chair

I am not suggesting that you do need a lecture; I am suggesting that there are no easy solutions—exactly as you say—but we think, having conducted two very detailed inquiries, that we have come up with a very workable solution. That workable solution is a qualified statute of limitations, which means that there is a presumption of non-prosecution after 10 years, unless compelling new evidence comes forward. We believe that there has been an indication by the Government that that is a good basis on which to proceed. But if you are going to import into that the idea that the republican movement, whom you know from your brave active service but we all know from our political dealings with them, are going to agree to any reasonable solution of that sort, then you are not living in a real political environment. They are never going to agree to that. So the question is: what are we going to do about it?