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Defence Procurement

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Linda Gilroy). I hope that she will regard it as a significant compliment when I say that the way in which she represents her constituents' case reminds me very much of our late colleague Rachel Squire, who represented another port. I see that her successor, the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East is here—[Interruption.] I am sorry, I meant the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Willie Rennie); he is testament to the electoral benefits that can come about when the Prime Minister assists one's opponent in an electoral campaign. That, I think, was at the time when the hon. Gentleman's party was formally leaderless. The debate is extremely timely for me; the battlegroup of my old regiment, the Light Dragoons, has just returned from Afghanistan. I will briefly speak about it, and my remarks on procurement will focus first on the equipment that it currently uses, and then on the equipment that it is supposed to have at some time in the future, which will be drawn from FRES—the future rapid effect system programme. I served in the Army for nearly 12 years, and it is humbling for me to talk to colleagues who remained in the Army. I served between 1979 and 1990. The wounds that I got were nearly always the result of being on the wrong end of a cricket ball; it was a rather different age from the one that my former colleagues are now living through in the Army. Indeed, I had to become a special adviser, and then a politician, to find people firing in my general direction. It is humbling to talk to my former colleagues, given what they have just gone through in six months. I want to place on record my tribute to Lieutenant-Colonel Angus Watson, who has just brought the Light Dragoons battlegroup back. One of its squadrons, B Squadron, has just over 24 hours left in theatre on operations before it comes back. So far, the Light Dragoons have managed to get through without sustaining a fatality. That in itself is a great achievement. As I have family in the United States army who are serving in Baghdad and in Afghanistan, I know about the thoughts and prayers of everyone who is waiting for their loved ones to come home, and about the anxiety that families go through when their loved ones are deployed on operations. Tragically, Colonel Watson's battle group had six fatalities among members of the other sub-units that were part of his battle group. That is part of the pattern of operations, and it shows the intensity of the operations that we are now dealing with in Afghanistan. We should reflect on the quite remarkable achievements of our young men and women on operations; in the case of the Light Dragoons, we are talking about young men. The Playstation generation is doing our country proud. They are 18, 19 and 20-year-old young men, and the calm, unassuming and humane way in which they have conducted themselves while on operations in Afghanistan is a great tribute to them—a tribute that belies their age, and the expectations that even their parents had when their sons went into training with the Army. It is a remarkable achievement. In six months, B Squadron of the Light Dragoons has had 40 contacts with the enemy, and they range from 30 minutes to seven hours in contact with the enemy, including a full replenishment of ammunition in contact. One or two of my hon. Friends who have served in the Army, including my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames), will have some idea of what that means. What we have expected of them is remarkable. I am delighted that Breckland district council decided, before the request came from the chief of general staff, to invite the Light Dragoons to parade in a month's time. That small gesture from a local authority means a great deal to the regiments coming home; it shows that their contribution has been recognised. We should not confuse our admiration for the magnificent way in which our young soldiers are carrying out their duties with a consideration of the wider merits of their task. It remains our duty constantly to assess whether the task that they are doing collectively on behalf of the United Kingdom serves British interests, and wider western liberal democratic national interests. That is a matter that we must constantly keep under review, and we should never confuse the fact that our soldiers are performing magnificently with the fact that what they are being asked to do might not be wholly helpful to our wider objectives. Let me turn my attention to how the CVRT—combat vehicle reconnaissance (tracked)—has done on operations. I recall that when I joined the Army 27 years ago, the vehicles were six or seven years old. They were deployed in the primary role of the British Army of the Rhine, which was there to face our principal threat: invasion of Germany by the Soviet Union and the Warsaw pact countries. In a subsidiary role in Cyprus, where I was posted for six months, we had the delight of travelling around in Ferret scout cars and Saladin armoured cars, and those vehicles were laughably old. There were way older than anyone who was invited to crew them. They were products of the 1950s, but in a sense that did not matter, because that was a subsidiary role for the British Army; the principal question was where the new equipment ought to be. Today the CVRT is 34 years old, and it is deployed on our principal operational requirements in Afghanistan. It has undergone a number of updates. In 1990s, when we acquired the Challenger 2 tank, we were in a ludicrous position. The reconnaissance at the front could not keep up with the armour that was supposed to follow it up, so there was a mid-life update of the CVRT, which resulted in a new diesel engine, suspension and power traverse. I am pleased to say that the urgent operational requirements that became apparent in the Balkans following the tragic loss of Lieutenant Richard Madden—his vehicle hit a mine in Bosnia—have resulted in mine blast protection that has saved the lives of at least two vehicle commanders whose vehicles hit mines in the past six months in Afghanistan. We cannot escape the fact that that the CVRT is 34 years old. It is the love and care of the soldiers who man it that sustain it and keep it in the field.