Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 12 Rhagfyr 1973.
The disciplinary legislation which we are nominally debating today represents a distinct move forward in co-operation among the Services and is a great memorial to Gerry Reynolds' work on this subject. When he started on this task it was thought to be a most difficult one, full of Service rivalries, but he persisted with it and we now take it for granted that there is much greater unification among the Services.
My theme today is that one of the areas in which there has not been sufficient movement in the Ministry of Defence is in the continuing co-operation among the Services in terms of economies. These are matters on which the Defence Subcommittee of the Expenditure Committee is trying to get more action. No doubt the hon. and gallant Member for Eye (Sir H. Harrison) will have the opportunity to elaborate this point a little later and to some extent perhaps I have anticipated his remarks. However, this theme has lost much of its momentum in the last two or three years.
One large area in which there could be some savings—I do not say that they would be dramatic, but they would be worth while—is in training matters. If the House looks at the expenditure on training as set out in the White Paper, hon. Members will see that £348 million is spent on training, which is not so very different from the figure for the whole of BAOR. In fact our expenditure on BAOR is much the same as our expenditure on training and the number of people involved in training is actually greater than the number of personnel in BAOR.
To the layman there seem a great many areas in training where anomalies exist. Only a few days ago the Defence Committee was discussing the Jarrett Report, and there are a number of small areas there where the Jarrett Committee has made recommendations about common training for some medical branches of the Services. I hope that the Under-Secretary can give some indication of the progress being made.
These are relatively small areas, but what is striking is that they appear to the layman to be matters to which attention should have been given years ago. Perhaps some of us on the Opposition benches are disappointed that we never came upon them and attended to them ourselves when we were in Government. It is because these small matters have remained unattended to that I draw attention to a number of larger ones where there could be substantial savings in the cost of military training.
I make no criticism of the quality of training in the Services. In many ways military training, especially in technical subjects, is superior to civil training. In putting forward my argument I do not suggest any diminution in standards. However it ought to be possible to do what is already being done and to have one Service take on training for the other two. In that way economies may follow with no effect on efficiency.
I take as an example training in catering or victualling. It is ridiculous that the three Services should have three sets of training. Food does not taste so very different whether it is eaten in a ship or on an RAF station, and catering operations in the field are not dissimilar. Whatever slight essential differences in techniques there may be could be taught, after the basic training, in a few days in the ship or at the field kitchen.
I take as another example the training of physical training instructors. The Services are excellent at it. But there is no reason why one Service should not do the training for all three. There are also a number of examples in engineering, in armaments and in gunnery.
If the Ministry of Defence applied its mind to this general problem and if Ministers brought pressure to bear on the Services, considerable results could be achieved. I suggest the appointment of an Under-Secretary and a senior officer from each of the Services—a major-general, an air vice-marshal and an admiral—devoted to this task. With the backing of Ministers, their task could be to comb the Services to see where one Service might train for the other two.
Far too much difficulty is made about co-operation. If we had a high-powered, detached committee backed by Ministers looking into these matters a great many results could flow from it. The Jarrett Committee has acted in this way in medical matters. It needs to be applied across the board.
Where agency services exist—for example, in education overseas where the Service with the most schools and the greatest number of personnel provides education for the other Services—this works very well, and it could work on a greater scale throughout the Ministry of Defence.
The same emphasis on co-operation is needed in NATO. Again Ministers should apply their minds much more vigorously to getting practical co-operation in armaments procurement, on exercises and even in rehearsing for crises. I know that Ministers are burdened with their day-to-day problems and do not have a great deal of time for new thinking about these matters. But in the Ministry of Defence and in NATO there should be much more ministerial direction towards getting cooperation at the nuts and bolts level. I know that a small team in the Ministry of Defence is working on common equipment standards and a common equipment vocabulary. Is it making reasonable progress? It is absurd that a squadron of the RAF should not be able to operate from many NATO airfields because the nuts and bolts do not fit. It is in a way an insult to the human race and to the democratic idea that this should be so.
I know that the matter is complicated, but I am sure that if there is enough application to the problem—and it is more a matter of application than anything else—solutions will be found.
When one moves from small but important matters like nuts and bolts, taps and pipes, and ammunition to the matters which WEU has been studying in a fairly detailed way for some years, there are a number of fundamental problems involving the economies of the countries concerned. I have in mind our efforts to get a common NATO battle tank. The moment is appropriate for putting pressure on NATO to make it a NATO effort. At the moment the Ministry of Defence is considering ideas on the shape of the main battle tank. But I am sure that many of us are not satisfied that in making this study enough effort is being put into getting co-operation from other European countries. The French, who are extremely awkward over NATO, can be persuaded to co-operate in joint arms production. Here is an area in which there is a reasonable chance of getting co-operation from the French.
So often the problem is not studied from all aspects. It is, for example, unreasonable to expect one country to make considerable sacrifices in terms of its factories and working people liable to be made redundant purely to get the most economic and militarily effective weapon. Social conditions have to be considered. The Common Market and the Council of Europe constantly refer to this kind of problem. One issue which should be put into the scheme of things in discussions about common procurement is a scheme of compensation for factory workers who lose their jobs because a common weapon is evolved and millions of pounds are saved to the total NATO budget. Some of it should go back to those who lose jobs.
A great deal of criticism has been made of the attitude of the Americans. In trying to get common procurement and common weapons in NATO, the Americans at the moment are showing the worst possible attitude. It is not very helpful towards NATO co-operation to bring pressure to bear on Europe to buy American equipment. I hope that the Foreign Office will at least reason with the Americans and underline some of the pitfalls that there are in forcing European countries purely for financial reasons to buy American equipment. In the United States in March of this year I was very disappointed when we had discussions about the evolution of a common NATO battle tank and it became clear that the Americans intended to go their own way.
At home, domestically, where we have much more control, we can make economies and even improve efficiency by a much greater attempt to get one Service doing certain training for the other Services. This must come from ministerial pressure. It will also strengthen the alliance if our weapons and equipment are much more in common. It would not eliminate the difficulties of diplomatic situations such as those which we have been discussing, but it would certainly make a much firmer basis for co-operation and stability if far more of our equipment was in common.