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Defence in the United Kingdom

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Mr. Moore) in this afternoon’s important debate on defence in the UK. I shall address my remarks to issues surrounding Shropshire and the civilians who work for the Ministry of Defence there. I shall then raise a couple of points about policy to which I hope that the Minister will listen. Before that, I pay tribute to those who run the armed forces parliamentary scheme, especially Sir Neil. I have been on the scheme over the past 12 months or so with the Royal Marines. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and was joined by my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) and the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood). We had some interesting times, especially in northern Norway when we slept out in a tent in temperatures between minus 32° and 34° C. We got a rounded view of how the Royal Marines operate. The scheme should continue to receive the support of Parliament and hon. Members. Increasingly—and thankfully—Members of Parliament do not in large part have the opportunity to serve their country in the field of conflict. Although that is a good thing, it is important for people to go out and get a taste of military life, and the armed forces parliamentary scheme enables them to do that. Before I speak generally about civilian posts in the Ministry of Defence in Shropshire, it is important that I pay tribute to members of our armed forces throughout the globe who are serving us in these difficult times. They do a tremendous job. The Royal Marines are deployed out there, as are other parts of our armed forces. We should pay tribute to them wholeheartedly this afternoon for the work that they do on our behalf. I am worried about several of the changes that the Government are proposing to the civilian structures that service and serve the Ministry of Defence. I want to raise three particular concerns. The first relates to the Donnington site, which is in the constituency of the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard), who is in the Chamber today. The site is large and significant; it is affectionately known locally as the depot and has provided a large number of jobs over many years for people across Telford, the Wrekin and the wider Shropshire area. We received some difficult news earlier this year when the Government announced that they were planning to review and indeed lay off members of staff in the Army Base Repair Organisation at Donnington. They also announced a further phase of reviews. Last week, the Minister of State announced a further 628 job losses at the ABRO site up to 2010. I, other Members and the local community were devastated at that news. The future for Donnington is not all dark, however. The future defence supply chain initiative has been rescued for Donnington. We shall still have a Ministry of Defence presence at the site and there may be some scope for jobs growth in the FDSCI structure. Of course, that is at the expense of the closure of the base at Stafford and I hope that some posts may move from there to the Donnington site. However, the news about ABRO is devastating for local communities and I am pleased that the Minister has agreed to meet us to talk about the issues.