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Defence Procurement

I add my tribute to those that have been paid so warmly today to the fallen. It is a sad day today for British defence procurement, because the Minister has announced—sotto voce, if I may say so—the reduction in the number of T45s from the 1998 assumption of 12 to six. That is to be regretted. My hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) wants to increase defence spending. I certainly hope that there will be no more reductions in our capability. My plea to the Minister, if he is tempted to make any further cuts, is not to do it on a tribal basis. In the past, the temptation has been to divvy up any cuts on an Army, Navy and Air Force basis, and that will not do. That approach underpinned ““Delivering Security in a Changing World”” only a few years ago, but it does not serve the British defence capability overall. That was probably what the hon. Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey) meant when he talked about salami-slicing. The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Linda Gilroy) expressed her understandable concerns about the T45 programme. She also asked about these old workhorses, the T42s. I remember them well, and they are now old ladies. I would be interested to hear whether the Minister thinks that, in the light of his announcement today, their service should be extended. The hon. Lady also rightly asked for reassurances about the Astute programme. While we are on the subject of the senior service, I should say how much I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) about the need for some progress on the decision on the technology transfer that will underpin our decision on the future of the JSF. If we are not going to get the JSF, we need to think very carefully about what we are going to do with our carriers. It is always a pleasure to listen to the right hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George). He spent some time saying that he hoped the debate would not be partisan, and indeed up to that point it mostly had not been. He made an important point, and the debate has been fairly on the level today. We heard an excellent speech from the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (John Smith). He was absolutely right—the procurement of training is every bit as important as the procurement of bits of kit and hardware. I shall come on to that in a moment. My hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) underlined the same point. The hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) made a linked point by saying that we cannot simply, in his words, turn skills on and off like a tap in relation to the defence industry. Of course, he is absolutely right. The hon. Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Crausby) gave a robust defence of the defence sector. He talked about Lancashire, and I suspect that Ghandi would be smiling down at this debate because, of course, he made a rather similar observation in relation to homespun all those years ago. The hon. Gentleman's point was supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning). The defence industrial strategy recognises that the defence industry is a business like no other. There is a delicate balance to be struck between protectionism, which we have learned is in nobody's long-term interests but which characterises the defence industries of our competitors, and the free market instincts towards which most of us, on this side of the House at least, would naturally incline. France, Germany and the US protect their defence industries using a bewildering array of direct and indirect offsets and old-style state ownership. It is against that backdrop that we have to consider the way that successive Governments have dealt with the purchase of equipment for the British armed forces and the support that we offer our defence industry. Underpinning the DIS is the doctrine of appropriate sovereignty. Many would say that that means very limited sovereignty or none at all. The question is the extent to which we can or should endeavour to control the means to manufacture and service our own kit and to ensure that we control imported items of a sensitive nature. As equipment becomes more complex, that becomes increasingly difficult, but from SA80 A2 conversions to anything reliant on GPS we are hopelessly dependent on other countries. Even if bits of our kit were wholly organic, we could not possibly mount an effective fighting force on land, sea or air if, for whatever reason, defence manufacturers outwith the immediate control of the UK decided to stop playing with us or became obstructive. We should be realistic about the price tag that we put on the notion of appropriate sovereignty beyond highly specialised requirements relating to the independent nuclear deterrent, cryptology and the perverse desire of some to deny technology transfer. Of course, I have in mind the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde. Finally, but most importantly, we must not compromise on quality. Our troops are the best, but too often they have gamely put up with kit that frankly leaves a great deal to be desired. A number of right hon. and hon. Members have talked about the urgent operational requirement, notably my right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex. It is generally accepted that the UOR has been a success. We do not know how much exactly—or even approximately—has been spent on it since there is something of a disparity between what has been announced by the Minister and his Department's outturn. Nevertheless, we know that it does not cover a raft of things that are consumed by war fighting and thus fall on a peacetime defence budget. That has been referred to in this debate. The UOR process anticipates operations of short duration. We are five years into Telic, and as we recalibrate our expectations for the length of our engagements in Afghanistan we need to think about what constitutes ““urgent”” and how it will be funded. If the military thought that the UOR was Father Christmas, they were mistaken. What the Treasury gives with one hand, it takes with the other. Equipment provided quickly for war that would have been procured electively in any case is subject to both clawback and, of course, accelerated senility. However, we should give credit where it is due, and the UOR has meant that off-shelf equipment has been purchased, removing the risk of project delays and overspends and allowing truly smart procurement with limited scope for the MOD to mess up in acquiring kit, a capacity that the right hon. Member for Walsall, South referred to in a non-partisan sort of way. Helicopters are bound to come into such a debate. The big story is the cut in the budget of £1.4 billion in 2004, which I am sure the Minister will accept, with the benefit of hindsight, was a mistake. If one talks to anybody in transit in a tracked or wheeled vehicle in Iraq and Afghanistan, they will say that they would rather be airborne. My hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) pointed that out. Helicopters have to be the means to get from A to B in hostile terrain, and following the announcement on Monday of a reconfiguration of British forces in Afghanistan and better force protection, I hope that we can look forward to optimising our air assets. May we have an update on where we are with regard to making the extra Merlins that we bought from the Danes fit for purpose? Will they have an operational traffic alert and collision avoidance system? Finally, I note that the Government called the debate ““Defence Procurement””, the implication being that they wanted to talk about tanks, ships, and aircraft, but let us be clear about the most important piece of kit in the Minister's, or any future Minister's, armoury. It can never be reduced to an acronym; it will never be the CVS, FRES or JSF. It has been the same since King Alfred repelled the Danes at Ethandune and Bloody Point. It is our sailors, soldiers and—it pains me to say this, because sadly Alfred did not have the benefit of them in the 9th century—airmen. We must procure more of them, particularly for the infantry and pinch-point trades. We must reduce wastage of them, and we must ensure that their through-life capabilities are our first consideration.