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Modernising Logistics Provision

That shows that one should not give out a statement too far in advance. The hon. Gentleman should look at his own statements in the run-up to the last election—statements on which the Conservatives campaigned. Does he remember the James report? It contained £1.6 billion in addition to the £2.8 billion we have announced, taking £4.4 billion out of defence logistics support. It contained a sell-off of ABRO and DARA. It did not propose to test the market, but contained a simple commitment to sell it off, along with the Warship Support Agency and everything else to do with defence agencies. I can take some criticism—I am sure I will get it—but not from the Conservative party. In terms of DARA St. Athan, I set out why the business has contracted: because of platforms being taken out of service—that was going to happen anyway; they were just brought out of service earlier—and because increased periods between maintenance reduces the number of aircraft going downstream. It is also a result of the transfer of the Harrier and the Tornado to RAF main operating bases. That means that the totality of the workflow had ceased to exist, by and large. Of course, the work could have remained there, but it would have done so at cost greater than that which I set out in my statement. I indicated that the savings made as a result of the Harrier transfer were substantial and they will be replicated for the Tornado. If the view is that the RAF main operating bases cannot maintain those aircraft, it is a significant charge—effectively, the hon. Gentleman is saying that the technicians cannot maintain aircraft to the same standards and ability as those within DARA. The purpose of market testing is to find out if there is an expression of interest. If there is, we will have to see if it satisfies us in terms of cost and guaranteed support for the future, with the element of risk contained within that. There is no guarantee that market testing will necessarily lead to the sale of VC10 business, although I must say that I am under some pressure to do that. Whoever buys it could, effectively, grow the capacity of the engineering aerospace work that is carried out at St. Athan, because the large manufacture capability could bring in other work using the facilities built there. The hon. Gentleman talked about Fleetlands and the decision to take that to the market; again, it is proving to be effective. It is right that we test the market on helicopter support, using the same criteria for the fast-jet business and for the rest of the fixed-wing business. In one sense, that is not too dissimilar to what the hon. Gentleman was campaigning for before the election, although he was not going to market; he was going to sell to the first bidder. We will market-test to see if there is a bidder and then get value from that. Sealand is being retained within the MOD for a good reason—it does very important work at present. With the Typhoon coming along, we believe that it is important that capacity be retained at Sealand. We are looking into whether we can invest to give the work force a better future, either in the public sector or in an area where market testing may be necessary. As was said three years ago, the market has changed and ABRO is under intense competitive pressures. The way in which it is structured has made it inefficient, so we are rationalising. The depth support that the hon. Gentleman mentioned is going to Bovington, while other work will be distributed across other sites. As I said in my statement, there will be 185 additional posts. The aim is to get closer to the customer and closer to front-line need.What we are taking from ABRO is excess capacity, not capability. The situation had to be assessed properly before we acted, and we will still have a 40 per cent. surge capability to meet any of the demands to which the hon. Gentleman rightly alluded.