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Defence Procurement

I start by paying tribute to the armed forces who, as we speak in today's debate, are serving on Britain's behalf across the world. No one has any idea of the level of operations that they are engaged in today; it is probably a level that has not been seen since the second world war. That has a tremendous impact on the lives of the individual soldiers and their families, on their equipment, and, indeed, on the collective psyche of the armed forces. We should not underestimate that what they are doing now—whether it all finishes next year in Iraq or whether it finishes in Afghanistan in 10 years—will live with us for decades to come. It will live with us in their families, and in the equipment that we will have to replace. It will also live with the taxpayer and the electorate; as my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Robert Key) rightly pointed out, they will have to recognise and contribute to this effort, through the ballot box perhaps, as part of the responsibility that they hold towards our armed forces. It is absolutely right that we should have this debate today. Defence procurement is always an ongoing subject, and we should not push it aside and make it an add-on to the Ministry of Defence. If we get it wrong, it can shape our military doctrine for the future—rightly or wrongly—and leave many of our troops with the wrong equipment in the wrong place. Defence procurement is a misunderstood subject. It often gets a bad press, involving the use of terms such as ““overspend”” and ““late delivery””. However, the story of the small defence contracts and procurement processes going on every day—whether through urgent operational requirements or planned projects—that are delivered on time and on budget, and greatly welcomed by our armed forces, often goes untold. Yes, the large projects get a bad press. However, I was the overseas director of QinetiQ before coming into the House, and a soldier before that, and in my experience, delays in defence procurement are often the fault of the politicians of the day interfering because they feel that something needs to change, or of a strategic defence review of the threat to our forces resulting in the doctrine changing direction. Those factors inevitably have a cost impact. We should remember that they often arise for the right reasons, but they do cost money. The other thing is that we need to lance a few of the boils that we hear about in connection with defence procurement. One is obviously the great ““off the shelf”” argument that my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich (Mr. Carswell) referred to. According to that argument, it is easy to nip down to Battersea heliport and procure a few helicopters for our armed forces. However, procuring a helicopter from wherever we can get it is of course not the whole story. In fact, it is probably only about 10 per cent. of the story. First, we have to see whether the helicopter can actually take the weapons systems that we want to put on it to protect it. Then we have to ensure that the helicopter has the guidance systems suitable for the interoperability needs of our armed forces. There is no point putting on to a helicopter a compass or a radar system that is fit for the armed forces of the US, the Australians or the Germans. There is an interesting anecdote here. The US exported a number of F-22s to be stationed and used in Japan. The problem was that the GPS system did not recognise the international dateline, so half way through flying across the Pacific to get to Japan, the planes had to turn back and have the whole system reprogrammed. We have to ensure that our equipment fits our needs and our doctrines. We have to recognise that helicopters bought off the shelf might not fit the configuration of our platoons, which might carry more or less equipment than the host nation from which we buy the helicopters. The deployment of our soldiers into more hostile areas may mean that our helicopters need more protection. That takes time. In the case of the Apache, for example, it is totally misleading to say that if we were to buy from the US, all would be well. Let us remember that we buy from other countries and we wait in line. Why should the US say, ““Oh, don't worry, UK, you can jump the queue with the Apaches””? Just tell the US marine corps, a much larger customer, that it can wait for its 500 helicopters! We would probably be told to come back in two or three years.