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Royal Navy

If I had to put a subtitle to this debate, it would be ““The Mystery of the Phantom Fleet””. We have been told repeatedly today, as we have been told previously by none other than the Prime Minister—so it must be true—that we are engaged in the largest shipbuilding operation for many a long year. I have been looking into the Government’s record on ordering ships, because that is what we should be concerned about. It is not so much the question of what ships are coming into service today and have done during the past few years, but those that we can expect to come into service in the future because they have been ordered in the course of the present time. If I asked hon. Members how many ships had been ordered by this Government in the past five years, how many would they say—half a dozen, a dozen? If they were a little sceptical, they might say only three or four. Well, I can enlighten the House: the answer is one—an offshore patrol vessel is the only to have been ordered by this Government in the past five years. Let us look back at the Government’s orders during the entirety of their time in office. During that period, they have ordered 16 warships, consisting of six Type 45 destroyers—originally there were supposed to have been 12, then eight and now six, and there are grave fears, as we have heard, for ships seven and eight—four landing ships, two survey ships and four offshore patrol vessels, including HMS Clyde, to which I have already alluded. Of those 16 vessels, 10 may be described as major units. However, nearly all were ordered some years back. The Government are talking about a great shipbuilding programme; could they mean the future carriers? All I can say to them is that I would like to help them out at this point. They should get on with it, place the order for the carriers and we will do our bit to carry forward their tonnage and certainly agree that the Government have that great shipbuilding programme under way. However, the Government show no sign of ordering the carriers. Let us compare that with the last eight years of the past Conservative Governments and what was ordered in the way of warships then. It does not quite compare to one offshore patrol vessel: two ballistic missile submarines, three nuclear powered attack submarines, nine frigates—including one, HMS Grafton, that this Government sold for a pittance when it was only nine years old—seven minehunters, two oilers and a survey ship. If I stopped at that point, one would think that a pretty good record by comparison, but I have not even mentioned the largest warship in the current Royal Navy, the helicopter carrier HMS Ocean and the two assault ships, HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, for whose coming into service the Government are happy to claim credit. However, the ships were, of course, ordered under the previous Conservative Government. Although 28 ships may indeed have come into service, we have to ask ourselves what future generations will say about the ships that will come into service as a result of the orders placed by this Government. There is, however, an even more serious matter than the cuts in warship numbers—to which I shall return if possible in the limited time available—that my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) mentioned in relation to the Prime Minister’s comments about the level of the defence budget. I have the table showing the percentage of gross domestic product represented by the defence budget since the Government came into office. When they came into office, it went from 2.9 to 2.6 per cent., to 2.8 per cent., to 2.7 per cent., 2.7 per cent. again, to 2.5 per cent., 2.5 per cent. again, to 2.6 per cent., to 2.5 per cent. and then 2.5 per cent. again. One might say that that was a nice, steady constant level, except for the fact that we have engaged in two major conflicts in the past few years. We now gather that the Prime Minister thinks that we should include the cost of those two major conflicts in our comparisons of defence spending. If the cost of those conflicts—