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Defence Procurement

I am certainly aware that the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier in the current French fleet operates on a completely different principle from the plans that we have for our own future aircraft carriers. That said, progress towards the building of our aircraft carriers seems so painfully slow that it may still be worth getting involved in some further dialogue about that. I take the hon. Gentleman's point. While I talk about the concept of sharing assets and ensuring that what we develop and what our allies develop are mutually compatible, there will also need to be technical considerations. I recall attending a dinner two or three years ago at which Mr. Nick Witney, who was then chief executive of the European Defence Agency, reported that at that particular moment 14 different EU member states were designing new tanks. With the best will in the world, that is absolutely ludicrous. If the Americans hope, as I am sure they do, that in the long term Europe will shoulder a bit more of the burden and stand on its own two feet, there is no hope whatever of our doing so while idiocies of that sort are taking place. That is why we have to recognise in the longer term that the capabilities that we build up need to be co-ordinated as much as possible with those of our allies—the Americans, the Europeans and other allied countries around the world. General Sir Richard Dannatt said in a speech at the Royal United Services Institute last week:"““All elements of Defence of the future must remain relevant…we must have capabilities that are highly likely to be needed and used in the foreseeable future. We need relevant capabilities so that we can both intervene and contribute to stabilisation…We must be relevant to our Allies and bring the kind of capabilities that they need””." I could not agree with him more. That is exactly the point I am trying to make. There has been debate, and quite rightly, about vehicles in Afghanistan. I, too, have visited Afghanistan recently and talked to those on the front line about the issue. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg) and I heard, at first hand, from some of those who go out on patrols, who told us how unhappy they are about going out in their current vehicles. I entirely endorse the intervention made by the hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer). He put his finger on that point exactly, and said that, as a matter of urgency, we needed to get more reinforced vehicles in place. He specifically mentioned weapons-mounted-installation kit—WMIKs—and I should like to take up that point. The men were begging us to make it our key message when we got home: they rate WMIKs, they want more of them and they want them as fast as they can get them. I applaud the Government's decision to procure Mastiffs. The Secretary of State deserves great personal credit for that, and if the rumours that he is not going to hold his post for much longer are true, it will be one of his lasting legacies. I also welcome what the Minister for the Armed Forces said at the Dispatch Box about Ridgback. It has been said that we need different vehicles for different purposes, and that there is no single solution, which is absolutely right. Equally, we delude ourselves if we suggest that we can send people out on patrol in any one thing that is capable of withstanding all the hazards that they face. We continue to refer to things as improvised explosive devices, but the truth is that they are rather less improvised than they used to be. They are becoming more industrial in scale. WMIKs are essential because they are at the more mobile, versatile and nimble end of the spectrum. I believe that I am correct in saying—I stand to be corrected if not—that the adaptation of WMIKs is being handled by a small company in Devon, the principal market of which is a marine one. It ill behoves me, of all people in this Chamber, to undermine the work of a small company in Devon, but—and perhaps this is an unfair observation—I cannot help contrasting what appears to be a lack of urgency on the part of the Government with previous policy. At the time of the Falklands war, the country's defence industries were told as a matter of absolute priority that they had to do whatever was necessary, and that the Government would pick the bill up and sort it out later. While what Ministers say at the Dispatch Box is perfectly rational, we need to ramp up the scale of such procurement work to an altogether different level. I dearly hope that the company in Devon is capable of doing what needs to be done, but if not, someone else needs to be brought in.