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Royal Navy

No, I am afraid that I will not. The hon. Lady has intervened a great deal, and kept my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) out of the debate. I have no hesitation in saying no to her. When we engage in war fighting, the Government must find the extra money in the Treasury reserve. If they are not prepared to do so, they should not undertake to engage in conflicts. The future of the armed forces is being mortgaged to pay for current campaigns. That is unacceptable and irresponsible. Let me return to the question of what the strategic defence review said would be done, and what was actually done. The SDR laid down the number of warships required, which was cut from 35 originally not to 32 but to 25, as we have heard. May we have a categorical assurance from the Under-Secretary when he winds up that there is no proposal to mothball another six warships of the frigate and destroyer class, and to reduce the number of frigates and destroyers from 25 to only 19? The Minister of State referred with a considerable degree of pride to a letter that he had written to me about the readiness of ships and how they can be kept at different stages of readiness. He was happy to say that he regarded that as a model that people should rush to the Library to consult. I found only one point of real interest in that letter: he said that there were currently six major vessels in the Royal Navy of destroyer or frigate level or above that were at a state of low or very low readiness—a state in which they could reasonably be described as mothballed. Of those six ships, four were in refit, and one was HMS Invincible, which we know has been placed into mothballs. Which is the sixth ship? A frigate, a destroyer or an even more important ship is in a state of low or very low readiness, and we want to know its name today. Clearly, it is not being refitted, so I presume that it is being mothballed. In the extremely limited time left to me, I shall refer briefly to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Peter Viggers), and the hon. Members for Portsmouth, North (Sarah McCarthy-Fry) and for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock), all of whom are desperately concerned about the future of Portsmouth naval base. I say to them, as I do to the Government, that changes made for short-term reasons, whether to face current threats or budgetary restraints, must always be made in as flexible and reversible a way as possible. It is therefore absolute folly for the Government, because they have felt constrained to cut the number of ships way below the total that they said was necessary to fulfil the duties of the fleet, now to turn round and close one of our three naval bases. Just as the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson) was right to defend keeping the nuclear deterrent because of the uncertainties of the future in respect of nuclear threats, it must be right to keep the basic infrastructure of three naval ports, however much we scale them down, to face the uncertain, unknowable threats of the future, which might require us not to be dependent on a single naval base in the south of England. Much more could be said, but I only have time to make one final point, which relates to the admirals. I do not envy either the current First Sea Lord or the previous one. The Government may try to convince themselves that there is a rumour mill and that stories are got up by the press, but those of us who know the Royal Navy know that the admirals are desperately worried about what is being done to their service. They are even more worried about the failure to order the carriers, which were the ramp used to make them accept the other cuts. That cannot go on; we need answers from the Government.