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Defence Procurement

No, emphatically not. My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich (Mr. Carswell) suggested in his slightly idiosyncratic and sometimes slightly bizarre contribution that the whole thing was a conspiracy by a number of defence companies. He probably thinks that I have sold my soul to them, but I represent Farnborough, where the headquarters of BAE Systems is based, and although Lady Thatcher used to say to me, ““I hope BAE is still paying you””, I have never received a penny piece from BAE in my life. My hon. Friend did himself something of a disservice in suggesting that those of us who believe passionately in a strong British defence industry are somehow in hock to those companies, for that was the general purport of what he said, although he had some positive points to make. It is important to BAE to have a strong home base, which has enabled it to become such an effective force in the United States. Without that home base here, it would not have been able to achieve what it has achieved in the United States. His suggestion that we should simply buy off the shelf was effectively refuted by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Wallace). We would very soon cease to be partners; we would become supplicants. We would get inferior kit at an increased price, and that must be borne in mind. I am bound to say on behalf of Sir Neil Thorne that the idea that the armed forces parliamentary scheme is supported by BAE, Rolls-Royce and one or two others to enable them to secure contracts is extremely unworthy of my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich, and he should think very carefully before making such an accusation in the House. I am delighted that the reception organised by my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Benyon) for the Royal Engineers went so well. In the same vein, having been instrumental in persuading Rushmoor borough council to put up some fantastic 20 ft banners in Aldershot a couple of weeks ago that said, ““Aldershot welcomes home the Grenadier Guards””, I should like to see what he has done in Newbury and to tell the House that Aldershot Town football club has tonight opened its doors to the Grenadier Guards and others who have recently returned from operations and invited them to the game against Ebbsfleet—a game that I am sure everyone will rush to watch on the television, as soon as the debate is over—and they are being welcomed in free. That should be done much more often across the country. I will return to the subject of the Defence Export Services Organisation, because my hon. Friend made some important points. My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre, like so many of my hon. Friends, brings real expertise to the House. He is not the product of some sort of party political research organisation and the hothouse of politics. As well, of course, as his distinguished record of service in the military, he has been on the front line, fighting for British interests commercially. He made an extremely important speech. I was pleased to be in Washington with him earlier in the summer, where on a cross-party basis with a number of Labour Members we tried to persuade the Americans that our not getting access to the technology for the joint strike fighter would be a potential show-stopper. We must be able to operate that aircraft autonomously. He was right to mention the defence treaty; I hope that the Under-Secretary will refer to that in his winding-up speech, and tell us when it will come before the House. Equipment is as important to soldiers, sailors and airmen as pay and accommodation. Why would they feel valued and why should they put their life on the line if those in charge of policy fail to give them proper and sufficient equipment to do the job? The Minister for the Armed Forces listed new projects that have recently been delivered or ordered, and we welcome them, not least the Supacat, which I mentioned, and the Mastiff, which I have seen in operation in theatre, and which is unquestionably a splendid piece of equipment, although it should have been in service much sooner. However, that is the least that should be expected of a Government who have decided to embark on two major military operations simultaneously, exceeding the planning assumptions set out in their strategic defence review of 1998. As the then Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Hoon), said in 2003,"““We have effectively been conducting continual concurrent operations, deploying further afield, to more places, more frequently and with a greater variety of missions than set out in the SDR planning assumptions.””" As my hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring said, we are talking about the Government's position, and their planning assumptions. They knowingly exceeded their planning assumptions by a substantial margin. The tempo of operations has meant that through-life cost calculations have been shot to pieces, as kit has been utilised at a far higher rate than expected. There is a shortage of helicopters and of other equipment—shortages to which hon. Friends have drawn attention. The RAF continues to operate old transport aircraft that the Government intend to replace by means of one of the most absurd procurement private finance initiatives yet invented. It is scandalous that the Royal Air Force is no nearer to getting its hands on the future strategic tanker aircraft than it was two and a half years ago, yet the first aircraft was due to be in service this year. The Australians, having straightforwardly purchased the same aeroplane, have theirs in operation today. So what has happened? A pattern has developed whereby senior military officers move almost seamlessly from Whitehall to the television studios or—still, thankfully—to the other place to denounce the policies of successive Labour Ministers. Distinguished and experienced officers—Field Marshal Inge, General Guthrie, Admiral Boyce, General Ramsbotham and now General Jackson—have all warned that the armed forces are being short-changed by Labour. Increasingly, such is their frustration that serving officers are forced to speak out. The Chief of the Defence Staff told the Defence Committee that there was"““not much left in the locker””." Brigadier Levey from Land Command said in May that ““the cupboard is bare””. When Sir Alan West, the Government's security Minister, was First Sea Lord, he said in response to Government plans to reduce the Royal Navy's surface fleet to 25:"““this country needs about 30 destroyers and frigates””." The Chief of the General Staff, Sir Richard Dannatt, said that vital equipment was being used"““at the edge of sustainability””." The Chief of the Air Staff has warned that the RAF is running ““very lean””, and now we read that they are to lose two squadrons of Tornado strike aircraft. Those warnings are being ignored by the Prime Minister, who has for 10 years starved the armed forces of the resources that they need to do the job that he has asked them to undertake. He says that the armed forces have been given what they need by way of urgent operational requirements, but those eventually have to be absorbed into the shrinking defence budget. There was a great fanfare yesterday for the extra 140 Mastiff armoured vehicles, but no extra money, as the Minister for the Armed Forces made clear in his opening speech. Indeed, we know from a memo leaked to The Sunday Telegraph that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has directed that"““no further money from the CSR would be allocated to Defence and to maintain force levels the Dept must find the savings/cuts.""For the RN, the poor CSR deal and the commitment to 2 carriers is such that a proposal for the immediate decommissioning of 5 ships…from April next year has been considered.""This would reduce the RN's capabilities to just one small scale operation and that is it.””" The Under-Secretary has a duty to tell the House today whether that memo is accurate. In the meantime, in a desperate attempt to show savings, the MOD tried subterfuge, only to be exposed by the Defence Committee chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot), which revealed that alleged savings of £781 million turned out to be £333 million, with the remaining £448 million transferred to other budgets. That chaotic situation is set against a background where everyone knows that we face an increasingly uncertain world, with Russia engaged in sabre rattling, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde warned, and turning off the energy supplies of those who challenge it. In the meantime, China has invested heavily in building its military capability and rogue states have threatened to acquire lethal long-range weapons. As the Minister of State himself said, who knows what will happen in 10 years' time? This is an uncertain world and defence is the nation's insurance policy, but the Prime Minister is not paying the premium. Such is the hand-to-mouth policy that the excellent defence industrial strategy launched by the able and respected Minister for Defence Equipment and Support, Lord Drayson, has run into the MOD sand, and we now have a twin-track procurement policy of cash-unlimited UORs running alongside protracted, unfunded, long-term programmes which may or may not be relevant when they come to fruition. The whole procurement process has failed to adjust to the new world order. As the head of Thales, Mr. Denis Ranque, said to me when I met him in Paris on Thursday, we need to devise a new procurement strategy that reconciles the need for agility in meeting rapidly changing threats with the need for a longer-term programme into which the short-term requirements can fit. The real problem is that the stewardship of one of the UK's greatest assets—Her Majesty's armed forces—is in the hands of a man who has no understanding of, let alone empathy for, the armed forces. Why else would he have made the Defence Secretary's job and the Minister of State's job part-time? Why else would he have scrapped the Defence Export Services Organisation, which has helped Britain's defence industry to achieve annual export sales of £5 billion? [Interruption.] The Minister for the Armed Forces is not part-time—I was referring to Lord Drayson: he, too, is a Minister of State, and he is a part-timer. The decision to scrap DESO was made personally by the Prime Minister without any consultation with his Ministers, let alone with industry. It was smuggled out as a written statement two days before the summer recess, thereby denying Parliament the chance to hold Ministers to account, contrary to all those soothing assurances that he gave on taking over from Mr. Blair. That early move graphically confirms the truth of Lord Turnbull's view that the Prime Minister exhibits ““sheer Stalinist ruthlessness”” and holds his colleagues in"““more or less complete contempt””." What an absurdity to announce a consultation after the organisation has been axed—execution first, followed by the trial. I know that Ministers are embarrassed, because they were never consulted. The Minister for the Armed Forces, of course, was not around at the time of that dirty work, but the Under-Secretary was. It was shameful, and it was met with almost universal anger and dismay, not least from Ministers who were consumed with embarrassment at that example of Stalinist ruthlessness, which could only have been undertaken by someone keen to placate those who campaign against defence exports or, indeed, agents of the campaign against the arms trade. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury told us, the chief executive of BAE Systems, the world's fourth largest defence contractor, wrote to the Prime Minister on 26 July. Mike Turner rightly praised DESO for providing a world-class capability in Government support for defence that was the envy of our principal competitors, who cannot believe their luck. My hon. Friend also quoted Helen Liddell, a stalwart of the Labour Benches for many years, who said in a letter to Digby Jones:"““I have a great respect for our Trade and Investment teams but I have to be honest, the skill sets used for general UKTI work do not match at all that needed for defence sales.””" She told Digby Jones that Australia is setting up its ““own version of DESO””, which is an indictment of the Government. The fact that the Ministry of Defence will retain Saudi business within the Department indicates that that decision is absolutely rotten. Now Ministers are trying desperately to cobble together a formula to replace DESO. We await the outcome of that completely needless exercise, and if it fails to provide what we regard as an effective substitute, we shall have no hesitation in undertaking to restore DESO to the MOD after the next election and the return of a Conservative Government. There is a widespread view that the current tempo of military operations is unsustainable on the present budget, to which today's announcement makes little practical difference. As my hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring said at the outset of the debate, procurement is a welfare issue. The Government have failed to give our men and women the equipment that they need, demonstrating that they have failed to honour their part of the military covenant. We regret that the Prime Minister's timidity in failing to call a general election will deprive us of the opportunity to take steps immediately to restore the broken covenant, but we shall use the forthcoming months to champion the cause of our brave men and women in uniform, who deserve much better than they are being given by the Government.