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Defence Policy

I think that I heard the word ““knackered””. We need to deal with the situation as best we can. My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, North (Sarah McCarthy-Fry) talked movingly about her recent visit to Iraq and stood up for the Navy in Portsmouth. I am sure that all serving personnel in Portsmouth will have been gratified by her words. Members of the Navy can turn their hand to anything. They are not only deployed on current operations but deal with hurricane relief and do important counter-narcotics work in the Caribbean, which I am told is a particularly attractive posting. My hon. Friend also stood up for her mechanics. A key challenge of my defence brief is to make sure that our serving personnel, who have great skills and are trained to do remarkable things, almost day in, day out, can transfer those skills to civilian life. Sometimes, however, we cannot commoditise those skills into the certificates needed for particular jobs. She raised a good point about the mechanics and I invite her to talk to me about it to see if we can apply some clarity to the situation. Our service personnel are extremely employable. I was amazed to read that 95 per cent. of them find jobs within six months of leaving the services. Our challenge is to make sure that the remaining 5 per cent. have as much support as possible. The hon. Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey) put a large number of questions, so I hope he will allow me to canter through just some of them. He talked about harmony and pinch points. Over the last year, the number of regular armed forces deployed on operations has fallen to about 18 per cent., but there are pinch points and we are trying to deal with them. We are trying to target recruitment in particular areas, and we are looking at financial retention and re-engagement incentives, flexibility in the rank employed for some posts and how we mobilise reservists, as well as some contractualisation. The right hon. Member for North-East Hampshire made a characteristically wise and assured contribution. He raised many wise points. I look forward to his report on strategic nuclear defence next Friday. If it has already gone to the printers, I wonder whether there will be any addendums. I was delighted that he is delighted with the Chancellor’s commitment reported in the press today. I shall be joining the Chancellor at a veterans event this evening and I will make forcefully the right hon. Gentleman’s point about the need for adequate resources to cover the demands. I am sure that, given the Chancellor’s recent pronouncements, he will want to listen to the Chairman of the Defence Committee with great interest. The right hon. Gentleman asked about the Vector vehicle. It is not planned to be available until next March, but it is planned to be deployed with 12 Mechanised Brigade. The hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) fired off 30 or 40 points that the MOD should be considering over the next few years. It was a powerful contribution. He raised some serious questions that the UK will have to address in future years. In particular, there were his ideas for a department of military planning, the question of whether we are best served by three intelligence services and, perhaps most controversially in the Department, the question of whether we need three services. He commented that someone had suggested that we should abolish the RAF. There are no plans to do that—