DEFENCE ESTIMATES, 1975–76 (VOTE ON ACCOUNT) (Hansard, 19 December 1974)

§ Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles (Winchester)

I am grateful for the opportunity to ventilate for a few minutes one aspect of defence which was squeezed out of our debate on Monday. I understand that it has been agreed between the usual channels that my yodelling should not be allowed to bring down an avalanche. I do not want to precipitate a long debate on defence, to the detriment of right hon. and hon. Members who are straining to get into Europe, straining to keep out of Europe, or in an agony of indecision as to what to do about Europe.

To keep strictly in order, my thesis is that the amounts now sought in the Vote on Account, in House of Commons Paper No. 42, are insufficient. I say that because I believe that defence is already cut to the bone and that spending should not be cut further but should be increased at least to keep pace with inflation.

I think back to many debates on the matter. I remember a remark made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hexham (Mr. Rippon), who said that the whole thing could be summed up as follows: "either we are defended or we are not."

The Secretary of States says that NATO is the linchpin of the Government's defence policy. We should all be agreed on that. But it is a fundamental error by the Government to take NATO to mean the plains of Central Europe.

NATO is not just the plains of Central Europe. It has two extremely vulnerable flanks, one on the north, where vast Russian forces are mustered, and one in the Mediterranean, where the alliance is in considerable disorder and where it is 1895 astonishing to see that the Government, according to their papers so far published, intend to thin out in Malta and to thin out in Cyprus, of all places, just when the Middle East must be the No. 1 powder keg in the world.

Even more fundamental than the flanks of NATO are our overseas trade routes. The Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary says that Britain must trade with the world. We must. Yet his Government wish to reduce the frigates, destroyers and the afloat support of the Royal Navy and to poison the wells in Simonstown.

If ever there were an indictment of the Labour Party's east of Suez policy, it is the dreadful situation over Middle East oil. Nothing that the Soviet could have done militarily against us, with its rockets, missiles, guns and submarines, could have done us more harm than has been done by the oil embargo and the fantastic recent increase in oil prices.

Our withdrawal from the Gulf in 1967— 68 served notice to the Arab world and the Communist world that we in Britain lacked the political will-power to exert any political influence in overseas areas such as that. The irony is that the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey), who brought about that withdrawal, is now, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, the man who must face the consequences. How different the situation might have been for Britain if we had not made that catastrophic withdrawal. I put the point to the House because it makes an overwhelming case for no further withdrawals east of Suez.