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Defence Procurement

Yes. In fact, I was about to say something about the defence industrial strategy. The original strategy provided the vision that, for the first time ever, the Ministry of Defence would set out what the United Kingdom defence industry was going to do, what it was not going to do, where it should be developing its investments and what it should be planning for the future. The budget was to be clear, which is why the Chief Secretary to the Treasury was signed up to the strategy. Then Lord Drayson left and the premiership changed—although not in that order—and seemed to break down. In November last year, we were told that ““Defence Industrial Strategy 2””, which we had expected to be published before the end of last year, had to be delayed for a few months until the 2008 planning round. It seemed sensible—and industry seemed generally to support it—for the planning round to inform precisely where the defence industrial strategy was going. Unfortunately, the planning round itself seemed to run into the sand. I was delighted to hear today, for the first time, that it has actually finished, although I am not entirely sure what has come out of it. It seems that we are now looking forward to some sort of review that will go into the 2009 planning round. We are told that it will be published some time in the next few months, but we were told that about ““Defence Industrial Strategy 2”” last year. Where is the industry in all of this? It seems to have had the dialogue it had with Lord Drayson under the defence industrial strategy completely cut off. There seems to have been virtually no dialogue, so how can the industry decide where it is to invest and where things are going? There seems to be a sense that the industry does not know what is happening because no one else does either. It is worrying that a sense of paralysis is coming from the MOD, and it is caused, frankly, by a budget that is so tight, given the level of operations we are facing, that things are beginning to break. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth) spoke about the defence Export Services Organisation. When I was the Minister for Defence Procurement, making all these mistakes that have been referred to from the other side of the House, I found that DESO was an absolutely outstanding organisation. It did really good work for this country and provided a link between the uniformed personnel, the industry and the MOD that was really valuable overseas. If the transfer of DESO to the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform breaks that beneficial link, it will be a tragedy. I believe it probably will, frankly. I was delighted that my hon. Friend said that a future Conservative Government would reverse that policy. After all this muddle over the planning rounds, we have had a succession of different announcements. They do not seem to have been informed by any particular strategy on procurement, but we have had a welcome announcement on the future strategic tanker aircraft. The manufacturers seemed a bit surprised that we were buying that capability in the way we were, implying to the Defence Committee that it was probably a rather expensive and time-consuming way of achieving something that the Australians seemed to have achieved in a far shorter time scale. Nevertheless, the FSTA is a welcome renewal of a capability that we definitely need. I am delighted that we are closer to having some clarity on the carriers. Industry in this country will be pretty pleased that it has been announced that a contract will be signed. I understand that the contract for the carriers will be signed once the new ship company has had all the shareholder consultation that is necessary. I hope we have some clarity by the end of July. The trouble with the carrier decision is that it initially came out of the strategic defence review at the end of the 1990s, which was based on a surface fleet that was going to be much larger than our current surface fleet. It will now take such a high proportion of the defence budget that many people—Sir Michael Quinlan wrote an article in the Financial Times in February—will wonder whether this capability should be provided in a different way. These are questions that need to be considered and answered. The point about the Type 45s being reduced to six is a worrying one. It does not look as though Britain, as a maritime power, will have the footprint—if that is an appropriate thing to talk of in maritime terms—around the world with the number of ships we need. There is a definite quality in quantity. The hon. Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey) said that perhaps the Government had made the right decision, and that we need more ships but they may not need to be Type 45s. However, it seems to me that the decisions we are taking reduce the number of ships that we have, and therefore the influence and reach of the Royal Navy, in a way that is potentially devastating to the influence of this country. I would like to know how many joint strike fighters—the things to go on the aircraft carriers—we are going to get. The initial announcement was that we were going to get up to 150 joint strike fighters. All in this House know what ““up to”” means; it means ““fewer than””. Thus we will get fewer than 150 joint strike fighters, and I understand that each aircraft carrier will be able to take 36 of them. The Ministry of Defence has just told the Defence Committee that there was never any intention to deploy two aircraft carriers with a full complement of joint strike fighters at the same time, and I do not know what consequences that statement will have. Nevertheless, this will be a very capable aircraft. When I originally saw the proposals for the aircraft, I was very enthusiastic about it, partly because it would give us access to new technology, particularly on stealth matters, and partly because each aircraft was going to cost only $33 million. The price seems to have gone up a bit since then, and there seems to have been a bit of difficulty with the international traffic in arms regulations—ITAR—as to whether we get access to the new technology.