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Queen's Speech

My Lords, in my two years in your Lordships’ House I have seldom heard a debate so unanimously led by the spirit of peace, accord and humanity, with concerns expressed with such unanimity. It therefore strikes a discordant note to rise at this hour and talk about weapons of war and warfare itself, but the last two words of the title of this debate are ““and defence””. I shall speak briefly on the subject and raise with the Minister two issues. The first concerns the active front-line helicopter fleet available to our fighting forces at the present time. At the moment there are 512 such helicopters actively engaged, although that figure includes a number that are currently under maintenance, on long-term conversion or being upgraded. Those 512 helicopters comprise 159 that are entirely in the two categories of Lynx. The remaining 11 categories average 32 per model and must represent the most horrendous burden in terms of maintaining for so many fragmentary groups an adequate provision of spares and skilled maintenance. I cannot imagine a worse average number to have to cope with in terms of maintenance needs. I hope that the Minister will look carefully at this issue. Will she indicate how many of the 512 machines are actively available for service at any one time? What could be done to centralise spares on a smaller range? That would make a large economy, which might ultimately help to finance the increase of the fleet altogether. In case any noble Lord should think that I must have a mole in order to get such accurate data, I should hasten to say that I have something much better than that—I have Hansard. The data were set out in Commons Hansard on 4 July at col. 478. Unless Hansard got the information from a mole, these data are absolutely good quality and beyond challenge. My second concern relates to the defence technical academy at St Athan, the former RAF base that is being converted by a company called Metrix into the principal education centre for our defence forces. The work is being done at a cost of £16 billion. That is quite a large sum of money. It could fund the rescue of a bank or two and certainly cover the Olympics on the current estimate—we must hope that it would still prove sufficient. However, the figure is quite staggering in the context of the present MoD procurement budget, as this project will take up roughly half of it. My question is really one about value for money because at the moment we are facing huge procurement demands. We have just heard the good news about the intended delivery in six or seven years’ time of the two carriers, which will be very welcome. However, when they come into operation, they will be in desperate and urgent need of adequate seaborne defences to protect them, particularly if, as we understand, they are going to be insertion carriers for amphibious warfare, which are in many ways the most difficult to defend. Instead of the traditional defence concerns and preoccupations of an ordinary carrier, when you look at the sky for dive-bombers and at the sea for submarines, you also have to look for land-based attacks. There is a triple direction of attack to defend against. In one respect we are most fortunate, because the Royal Navy has just taken delivery of what may be the greatest ship in terms of technical capability that has ever come into its possession. It has been presented with the second ship in the category of Type 45 destroyers, which is seemingly a vessel beyond the wildest dreams of any admiral who ever set to sea. The first of the range had a few problems, but these have been ironed out in the second. I hope that we will see the rest of the order of six, once it has been fulfilled, all conforming to the second of the class. That information comes from publications such as Jane’s and other technical magazines that report on the subject and I have no reason to doubt it. The carriers will cost over £1 billion each. On 21 July, the Minister for the Armed Forces announced that he is now taking a close look at the St Athan £16 billion budget with the contracting party to see if it can be cut. I suggest that it requires only a 12 per cent cut in the budget to finance an additional two Type 45 destroyers, which would take us to the target of eight vessels. As my noble friend Lord Astor of Hever has said before in this House, that is the minimum number required to provide adequate cover for the two carriers facing their triple defence concerns when they are seaborne in a dozen years’ time. These two concerns are fundamental to the future security of this invaluable and hugely influential addition to our fleet. The noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead, in his days as Chief of the Naval Staff, gave an interview to the Daily Telegraph—I imagine that he does not do so too often these days—and said that the Navy needed 30 frigates and destroyers. When he said that, there were 35; today there are only 25 and in a year’s time there will be only 22. So we will have ultimately a net figure of about 27, which is not enough. I would like to know what the noble Lord, Lord West, would say wearing his present hat about the security implications that this carries. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, referred to an Iranian shipborne nuclear bomb bearing down on our shores. I hope that we will have eight Type 45s available for defence when that hour comes, because we might then have a chance of stopping it. These are serious concerns that go beyond other immediate budgetary concerns and procurement requirements; they are two paramount points with which the Minister should be concerned.