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Defence Procurement

It is, of course, incumbent on the Ministry to make decisions more swiftly than it is at the moment, but those decisions must be informed. I shall come to explain how I see that happening, so the hon. Gentleman will get my answer in a few moments. Let me continue with EP08. So disastrous has the Government's handling of defence procurement become that the three services are effectively at each other's throats. Each one explained to whomever would listen that the key project for their service was vital, while the projects for the other services were either not priorities or irrelevant to current operations. The overall impression is that the Government have lost interest, know that they face defeat at the next election and are anxious to postpone as many decisions as possible for the incoming Conservative Administration to pick up, having bankrupted the country to boot. We need to know when the carrier contract will be signed and we need more than the Prime Minister's assertion yesterday that"““it is totally untrue that we are trying to merge the English, British and French navies””—[Official Report, 18 June 2008; Vol. 477, c. 942.]—" whatever that curious SNP-type description of the Royal Navy was supposed to mean. What the French are saying is that their officials are in negotiation not about merging the two navies, but about somehow sharing aircraft carriers. That is what the Minister needs to explain. Are French and British officials in negotiation and, if so, on what? If the Minister does not want to answer that now, I hope that the Under-Secretary will specifically answer it in his concluding speech. The Minister has told us the pretty desperate news—albeit something that we had expected all along—that the Type 7 and 8 ships of the Type 45 class are to be cancelled. I think that the House will want absolutely cast-iron assurances today—[Interruption.] The Minister for the Armed Forces says ““They were never ordered””, but they were all part of the strategic defence review and, still more important, they were a key component in the whole carrier force. Unlike the current class of pocket carriers, if I may call them that, which have heretofore had the protection afforded by the Sea Harrier, those carriers have no on-board protection against air attack. That is what the Type 45 is designed to provide. What the House and the Royal Navy will want today is an assurance from the Secretary of State that there is sufficient protection in six ships to look after two aircraft carriers at any one time. Without that assurance, I am bound to say that the entire project encapsulated in the strategic defence review will be put at risk. As far as FRES is concerned, the Minister said that General Dynamics had been appointed as the provisional preferred bidder, but as far as I am aware, the line seems to have gone dead since. The Minister set out the roles that the vehicle is expected to perform, but what we need to know is when we will get delivery. General Jackson said about five years ago that he needed this by 2009 and the Minister will be aware from today's debate, as well as from discussion in the press, that this is a critical programme for the Army.