Defence Review
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The 2001 British General Election produced only one surprise - the instant resignation of the Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition. Subsequently the Conservative Party elected a new Leader, who was not the former Defence Secretary Michael Portillo.

William Hague and I represent two of the most military communities in the country- Catterick and Salisbury. William is very familiar with the small-print of Army life - for those in uniform and those following the flag. It was therefore a disappointment to me that the policy wonks at Conservative Central Office went along with Labour and wrote defence out of the election script. We paid the price.

Meanwhile, the show must go on. The electors of Salisbury were generous and increased my majority. I thanked them in the traditional way - by singing from the balcony of The White Hart the marching song of the Wiltshire Regiment. I resumed my frontbench duties appropriately by starting again at the beginning. I was invited to be Inspecting Officer and take the Salute at the Army Training Regiment in Winchester. What an amazing outfit! In at the front gate (and I saw some arrive…) drift boys and girls of indeterminate demeanour and doubtful fitness. Twelve weeks later almost all of them, amidst parental cheers and tears, march out again as soldiers of the Queen. Their achievement is a huge compliment to the CO and Instructors.

A week later I was with the Royal Artillery at Larkhill - to open their Par 3 golf range which is all part of their Regimental programme to improve quality of life for the military community - and local civilians as well. It may have been one small step in the battle for retention in the forces - but the project received no public funding and was a giant leap in relations with local people. This sort of sporting bridge-building could be adopted by almost every garrison in the country.

I reported earlier in the year on my attendance at the Munich Security Conference and the clear determination of the US Administration to press ahead with Ballistic Missile Defence. Since then the President, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld have made swift and sure-footed progress with many European nations - and with Russia. So I was delighted to be invited to Washington at the end of June for a defence briefing on BMD, NATO enlargement and European Defence developments.

What General Kadish, Head of the BMD Programme, likes most about his job is that from his office in the Naval Annexe he looks down on the huge Pentagon complex from the hill above. He is certainly commanding the heights of US defence policy. The State Department is upbeat, too. So keen is the Bush Administration to win friends that we four British MPs were also invited to a White House briefing in the Old Administrative Office, given by the President's Adviser on European Affairs.

Similarly the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee, Senators and Congressmen of both Parties and the new Democratic Leader of the Senate are very largely of one mind on BMD - that the American people would not forgive any President who failed to deliver the defence of their homeland by all means possible. In fact, polls have shown that a majority of Americans think BMD is already in place!

So the British Government has two tasks. First, it must come off the fence, support BMD and get the best possible deal to include the UK in the project. Secondly, having failed to address the security of our homeland in the much-thumbed pages of their Strategic Defence Review, they must stop kidding themselves that all we need is one annual home Office-led civil defence exercise to address a major current threat to our national security.

Back in the Commons, scores of Labour backbenchers signed a motion condemning the US BMD project and fellow-travelling protesters invaded RAF Menwith Hill, the US listening post in Yorkshire. I note in passing that, having wasted three months this year debating military security including the Ministry of Defence Police, because the Government withdrew the controversial clauses from the Armed Forces Bill in their pre-election panic, demonstrators had no difficulty sauntering into that high-security military base and phoning the world's media to say so.

That can have nothing to do, of course, with the cash-strapped Land Command having another go at one of my favourite hobbyhorses - STANOC. This is tiny unit with a huge mission. A couple of well-aimed Parliamentary Questions revealed first that it has been halved again and transferred from The Royal Artillery to the Infantry. Secondly, in the past year the Surveillance, Targeting, Night Observation and Counterintelligence unit has advised many of the front-line military, numbers of police forces, agencies and private companies and favoured overseas clients, on the sort of issues you don't want to know about. Pity they weren't at Menwith Hill…

My final Defence visit before a family holiday was to the Chemical and Biological Science Site of the Defence Scientific and Technology Laboratories (CBD to you and me) at Porton Down. We were there to 'celebrate' their new status following the break-up and part-privatisation of DERA. We were told they will now be 'closer to the MOD'. Every cloud has a silver lining. I wish them well. The scientific, industrial and military staff are part of our Wiltshire community. They are simply the best in the world at the work they do - and we salute them.

ROBERT KEY MP
August 2001