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Defence in the United Kingdom

My hon. Friend is right. We may be taking a step too far with some of the proposals for privatisation and the business structures relating to the supply chain, maintenance structures and services that the Donnington work force perform so well. We shall be debating those issues with the Minister over the coming months. There is an opportunity for us to discuss the outline business case that has been drawn up. My understanding from the trade unions, whose representatives have seen the outline case document, is that it does not discuss in detail the advantages of retaining jobs and services at Donnington. We shall certainly want to focus on that issue when we talk to the Minister in the coming weeks. One of the best apprenticeship schemes is run from the ABRO site at Donnington. It is a shame that we may lose an extremely good scheme that not only serves the MOD but provides skills for people who go into the private sector. Those are high-value, high-quality jobs and we need to try to work together to defend them. It would also help if the Minister could say something, perhaps in his winding-up speech, about possible Government support for the proposed rail freight terminal in the north Telford area, which straddles my constituency and that of the hon. Member for The Wrekin. It would be particularly positive if the Government could help us to ensure that that terminal is built in Telford, using a mix of MOD land and land owned by the public. That could bring several hundred jobs into the local economy. I hope that Ministers will look closely at the options and the proposals made by the local authority to develop a rail freight terminal on that site, which, I repeat, is fondly known as the depot. The second sort of work that goes on in the wider Telford and The Wrekin area is that of the Equipment Support Procurement and Provision Agency, which is located in my constituency at Stafford Park. Constituents of the hon. Member for The Wrekin also work at that facility and we are both extremely concerned about its future and ongoing activities. ESPPA was formed in 1995 from the technical equipment division at Donnington, the procurement branch at Andover and the vehicle spares division at Chilwell. More than 400 employees work at Sapphire House, where ESPPA is located. Proposals are being considered to collocate that facility at Abbey Wood in Bristol. That is extremely alarming to local employees and local trade unions. I have met the trade unions who represent members at that facility, and they are finding it difficult to determine exactly what the Government’s proposals are. There is great concern that Ministers are getting to a point where they almost have a fait accompli and that the facilities offered at Sapphire House will almost automatically move to Abbey Wood. I should like to raise that incredibly important issue again with the Minister at our meeting on 29 November. It is important that the jobs at ESPPA stay in Telford for a number of reasons. I do not think that the 400-plus people will redeploy to Bristol. They will probably have to find jobs in the wider economy. I do not want that to happen; I want those jobs to stay in Telford. The MOD will find it incredibility difficult to recruit staff in Bristol, certainly skilled staff. These are skilled jobs. Those people procure products for the armed forces. It will be difficult to replace them when most of them will not want to move from the Telford area. Of course, it is also more expensive to live in Bristol and I am sure that many people will not want to move because the costs of living are greater there. Salaries will be greater for the MOD in the Bristol area. One of Telford’s great advantages is that it represents excellent value for money in terms of costs to the MOD. Such a move would run counter to the principles of the Lyons review. That is also the case for ABRO. We should ensure that defence has a footprint right across the UK, including the midlands and the north. Moving jobs to the south of England is symptomatic of our not having a footprint right across the UK. That is somewhat alarming. I want to raise issues that relate to ABRO as well as ESPPA with the Minister on 29 November, and I hope that we will be joined by trade union colleagues. The third issue that I want to talk about is the defence training review at Cosford, which is in the constituency of the hon. Member for The Wrekin. We obviously share the fact that many of our constituents are employed there. I do not want to say too much about Cosford—the hon. Gentleman will probably have quite a lot to say about it—but it is important to note that there are 1,038 military jobs at Cosford and 942 civilian and contractor posts, as far as I am aware, and it is a jobs engine for our local economy. The defence training review is being examined at the moment. My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (John Smith) will also be interested in the outcome of that review. Cosford presents the opportunity to provide an excellent location for defence training in the UK. The site could expand by up to 300 per cent. in a number of scenarios. That would give us a real opportunity to provide new jobs, which are so important in the Shropshire economy, and which will service not just Telford and Wrekin residents, but the black country and the wider west midlands area. I hope that the Minister will look carefully at the proposals relating to Cosford and the defence training review. It is an incredibly important site for us. In some ways, we are an RAF county, with the RAF presence at Shawbury and Cosford, and the RAF has a long tradition of being in Shropshire. I hope that we will continue to have that presence in the county and see it expanded over time. This is a big contract. I understand that two competitors, with two separate sites, have emerged to be examined by Government, and I understand that that decision may be some time away, but it is important that the Minister should once again engage more generally with regard to the importance of defence training jobs within the wider Shropshire economy. I close by looking at two broader policy issues that have already been raised in the debate. The first relates to our independent nuclear deterrent and the second to community ownership of the armed forces. Clearly, we will have to make some decision in the coming months and years about whether we retain an independent nuclear deterrent. The manifesto on which I stood understandably commits us to retention of that independent deterrent, but I hope that we will have a wide-ranging debate about how appropriate that is, in the sense that the world has changed somewhat. Certainly, a replacement for Trident would be extremely expensive. I put it clearly on the record that I would support the Government and vote for the replacement of the independent nuclear deterrent. I am not suggesting that we abandon it, but I am not sure that we need to go for an extremely expensive deterrent option. We must look at a raft of options. We may have to consider nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, which may be deployed from different platforms. We need a wide-ranging debate on that and to think about the money that we are spending. Certainly the concern of members of the armed forces is that, if we are to deploy troops effectively in a modern environment and meet the challenges that now face us as a country, we need to invest significantly in flexible response conventional forces.