Budget Resolutions
May I say that it is a genuine pleasure to follow the excellent maiden speech of the hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Sagal Abdi-Wali)? As a West Ham fan, I understand that it is the optimism that kills you; she is a Spurs fan, so after last season, I think I will leave that there. I congratulate her: it is not easy to follow in the footsteps of a Prime Minister and to fight against the leader of another national party. As she pointed out, the racial attacks on her in the lead-up to that election were absolutely disgraceful. I am sure that the vast majority of people in this House stand in solidarity with her. I wish her a successful career in this House; I am sure that she will be a great asset to it. Today’s debate is about growth in every postcode, but I will focus on the genuine threat of war to this country. The Budget does not deal with the defence issues that must be addressed. We could carry on saying that we have a plan to have a plan, and kicking things down the road, but that would be to hide from the reality of what is going on in the world. Just today we saw a cyber-attack <span id="637" class="column-number" data-column-number="637"></span>that destroyed hundreds of millions of pounds-worth of frozen and refrigerated stock across at least six European countries. We know that such cyber-attacks are taking place every day, yet we are still delaying the real investment that needs to take place. I was recently in Australia with the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. In Australia, inflation is 4%, cost of living is the No. 1 priority and 55% say immigration is too high, yet the Australians have decided to invest in defence. In the 1980s, they felt that their geography gave them the security, and now they have recognised that it does not. They are in the process of doubling their navy, with three air defence destroyers, six frigate submarine hunters, 11 general purpose frigates, six large missile barges and eight launching vessels to protect army capability. Of course, with AUKUS, they also have a built-in 50% contingency. Germany is going to have 15 extra frigates by 2035, Finland is going to have four new corvettes by 2035, and Norway is going to have five new frigates, six new submarines and 28 standard vessels by 2035, yet we say that we are aiming to get to 3.5% by 2035. I have said this before, and I will say it again: targeting a percentage of GDP is false and wrong. The target was only brought in to satisfy the Americans in 2014. Plenty of us have a lot of complaints about President Trump, but at least he got European countries spending. As far back as Eisenhower, the Americans were saying that Europe needed to spend more on defence. George Bush made such a speech in 2007, and Barack Obama made one in 2014 when the target came in. What really matters is article 3. Everybody talks about article 5 and defence. If article 5 is triggered, nations have a choice as to what they contribute to collective defence. Everybody thinks that America will pile in with its troops, tanks, planes and warships, but it could simply say, “We will provide the intelligence,” and that would satisfy article 5. Article 3 states that a country must be able to defend its borders for three weeks. NATO is a reinforcement. We simply cannot carry on saying, “We are going to do a defence investment review in a year’s time”—not actually investing in a year’s time, but doing a review! I welcome today’s news that double shifts might be done at the dockyards to produce more frigates, but that should be happening now. In the time I have remaining, let me say this. I said before in this House that when we cut spending from 5% of GDP—that level was just a consequence of what we needed to spend—the 3% went into health and welfare, and that it would be a brave politician who stood up and said that we should cut those things, especially welfare, to invest in defence. Well, that is exactly what the Leader of the Opposition is now saying. The time has more than passed. The threat of war in this country is on the horizon. We do not want it to happen, so we bury our heads in the sand and say that we can delay the spending. That cannot carry on. The threat is imminent.