Kosovo

HC Deb 21 June 1999 vol 333 cc743-5

1. Dr. Vincent Cable (Twickenham)

From which budgets the United Kingdom costs of the Kosovo war will be paid. [86530]

The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr. George Robertson)

Within the defence budget the costs of operations lie where they fall. Additional costs arising as a direct consequence of the United Kingdom's military contribution to the international response to the Kosovo crisis are, however, being separately identified and will form the basis of a claim on the Government's contingency reserve. It has been agreed that the reserve will cover the net additional costs of those operations when my Department is unable to accommodate them without detriment to other commitments.

Dr. Cable

I thank the Secretary of State for his reply and suggest that the armed forces, which are conducting themselves with their traditional professionalism, now face a more familiar and formidable adversary than the Serb army—the British Treasury. In that context, I express appreciation for his reply, which was reassuring. Will he reiterate that the costs of that necessary and important military adventure will not be met at the expense of other armed forces activity?

Mr. Robertson

The battalions of the Treasury are on the side of our forces in Kosovo, though they, like everybody else, remain professional and vigilant.

Ms Dari Taylor (Stockton, South)

Given the scale of the atrocities that are being uncovered by KFOR, would it not be more appropriate for my right hon. Friend to say what would have been the cost of not acting in Kosovo?

Mr. Robertson

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is no doubt at all that the cost of doing nothing, or of standing back and wringing our hands at the beginning of the campaign, would have been immeasurably greater. There will be costs and the international community will have to pay substantially for the restructuring and the rehabilitation of Kosovo, and for helping the countries of south-eastern Europe in general, but they will be nothing compared with what the costs of standing back and letting ethnic cleansing succeed would have been.

Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby)

I am glad to hear that the contingency reserve will be raided for the Kosovo costs, and I congratulate our armed forces on doing an excellent job, but the Secretary of State will know that they are stretched to breaking point. I know that he is concerned about that, but is he able to guarantee that there will be no slippage in equipment programmes, or in any other programmes in his budget, to make up the costs of the Kosovo conflict?

Mr. Robertson

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's congratulations, because I remember the letter he wrote to The Times on 13 May, but, as he is gracious enough to congratulate me on what the forces have done, I will not be so mean-minded as to remind him of what he wrote. I am conscious of the old adage, "Always forgive your enemies, never forget their names." I can tell him that, of course, considerable strains are being experienced by the forces at present and they are having to put up with considerable privations, as are the families of service people. That issue is high on our agenda and there will be no slippage in any of the equipment programmes. In the past two weeks, I have announced two major procurement decisions, giving our troops the best possible equipment for the future.

Mr. Harry Barnes (North-East Derbyshire)

Although those contributions may be dealt with in terms of covering the current activity in Kosovo and the developments that are taking place, might it not be worth while for the international community to consider an area in which billions and billions of pounds could be involved if there were other such actions or attempts to resolve certain situations?

The Tobin tax, which is a tax on international currency speculation, could be popular. Will my right hon. Friend have a word with the Department for International Development and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer? We might be able to take a lead on that, as we have on trying to tackle international debt.

Mr. Robertson

That question goes slightly beyond my remit. My hon. Friend should perhaps float the idea of taxing currency speculation with my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Mr. Menzies Campbell (North-East Fife)

The whole House is grateful to the Secretary of State for the insight that he gave us a moment ago into the internal workings of the Labour party or, separately perhaps, the Government. Can he reconcile the apparently conflicting reports about the effectiveness of NATO's bombing campaign? Does the number of tanks and armoured vehicles apparently retreating unscathed to Serbia undermine NATO's claims of success or emphasise that not only the air campaign, but the credible threat of invasion by ground forces capable of high-intensity warfare, persuaded Milosevic to capitulate?

Mr. Robertson

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is probably the only Liberal Member of Parliament who has declared himself out of the race for leader, so I will not take any lessons from him on intra-party fratricide. He raises an interesting point about the amount of heavy armour that the Serbs clearly had in Kosovo during the past year. We may have underestimated the sheer number of tanks and armoured personnel carriers that they had—largely hidden—during the whole of the campaign. However, it was the relentless bombardment from the air that kept all those tanks hidden. So long as that bombardment went on, those tanks were not out destroying villages as systematically at the end of the campaign as they were at the beginning.

Mr. bin Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green)

May I pick up on the last question and ask the Secretary of State whether he agrees that, when we read the reports in today's papers about the sheer scale of the armour, vehicles, and troops that are coming out of Kosovo, questions remain as to exactly how those were kept so securely away from NATO targeting and NATO aircraft? Can we not learn from some of the problems that the Secretary of State has just described? If we are not to make similar mistakes in the future, do we not need a public inquiry—as we have asked for—so that the public can be absolutely certain that if we have to engage in such an operation in the future, we shall know its real limitations?

Mr. Robertson

I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his new position, which I am sure he will find extremely rewarding. I know that, on his first occasion at the Opposition Dispatch Box this afternoon, he would have wanted to congratulate British troops on their achievements so far. Yesterday, the last Serb troops looked at Kosovo through their rear-view mirrors. Yesterday, the air campaign was called off and during the night the Kosovo Liberation Army signed up to a military technical agreement showing how it will demilitarise and disarm. Today, we can justifiably say that we have had a substantial success in Kosovo, and that it is down to those who put their lives on the line throughout the campaign.

On learning how much armoury the Serbs had inside Kosovo, we shall clearly want to look at the evidence available to the troops now that they are in there. Despite the number of tanks, armoured personnel carriers, artillery and troops that the Serbs had in that area, they still lost. The ethnic cleansing has stopped and the Serbs are out of Kosovo.