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Queen's Speech

My Lords, I first apologise to your Lordships’ House, particularly to my noble friend Lady Taylor and even to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, for not being present for their speeches. It is a sin upon me, and I trust I will never repeat it in your Lordships’ House. Secondly, I found two encouraging things in today’s debate. One was a reference to the new President-elect of the United States. His national security team is of the highest quality, and we can all take great encouragement from that. The other encouraging thing I heard today fell from the lips of the noble Lord, Lord Wright, but I shall not tell you what it was now; I shall save that right until the end and tantalise the noble Lord a little. I am afraid that I am on my feet for one purpose and one purpose only: to discuss a procurement situation in the Ministry of Defence relevant to its strategic airlift capability. As your Lordships will know, the Royal Air Force currently has, basically, two types of lift aircraft. We currently have four C17s, and hope to be getting six. We have the C130 in two configurations: the C130K and the C130J, the old Hercules. For reasons that have never been clear to me, the C130K came before the C130J, but that is how Lockheed decided its business. We have a problem with both C130s. When the C130J first came into service, my boss then, my noble friend Lord Robertson, had great difficulties. He had to summon the head of Lockheed and give him a right dressing down before certain problems were sorted. They were sorted, and the C130J is now an extremely good piece of kit. The C130K is very old, and we are currently suffering seriously in Afghanistan because we have lost four of them there. Because of the additional burden placed upon them, the wear and tear on the surviving ones is now becoming very serious indeed. The Ministry of Defence has identified our shortage of airlift capability if Afghanistan—I am glad to see the Minister nodding in agreement—as one of the most serious problems facing the Royal Air Force in that area. The solution until now, of course, has been that we do not have to wait long before we are granted the use of an aeroplane called the A400M. I have spoken briefly about the A400M in your Lordships’ house before. It is a pernicious waste of money. I will not weary your Lordships with a detailed description of quite how delayed it is. I know we have delays in the introductions of all sorts of new aeroplanes or equipment; that is quite understandable. However, we have just had an announcement from EADS—the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company—that it can give no date at all for when the A400M will be delivered—or even when it will first fly. This is down to the inability of the engine consortium—in which I am afraid Rolls-Royce takes a lead, but also involves Snecma and MTU—to deliver engines that can carry the relatively puny load required of them. There is now considerable tension between Airbus and the engine consortium as to where the blame lies. However, the fact is that although the engine consortium claims to have delivered four engines on time, those responsible for building the plane have made it absolutely clear that not one of these engines is up to operating requirements. Nobody knows when the first one will be. There is not only the problem of marrying these huge new engines, the biggest turboprops ever to have been built, to the wings of the A400M, but considerable problems with the FADEC system, controlling how the engines operate, are yet to be solved at an unspecified time. Noble Lords who have attended sessions of the defence group upstairs may think that this is purely a personal obsession of mine, but I assure your Lordships that it is not. I am well aware of other British Ministers for defence procurement who have wanted to cancel the A400M. Of course, my noble friend cannot possibly say that at the moment because she is committed to it. However, I well recall that when I was at the MoD and I tried to get this wretched plane stopped—I left the MoD for the last time nine years ago in 1999—officials said to me, ““Don’t worry, Minister, you won’t have to cancel it. You won’t have to bear the obloquy of cancelling it. The Germans are going to cancel it for you because the German defence budget is so tight that they can’t possibly continue with all the defence procurement programmes they have at the moment. Don’t worry, you won’t have to take any of the obloquy””. We were already very unpopular because we had found out, unsurprisingly, that our programme for a NATO frigate was a disaster. On land, the FADEC system was another disaster and we did not want to get ourselves labelled as the bad boys who were always cancelling everything. I have a solution. I was delighted to see in the Financial Times of 16 November that a Monsieur Gallois, the head of EADS, said that, "““it would not make sense to abandon the troubled $20bn A400M project, Europe’s largest military contract, to contain costs. ‘If we stopped we would have to reimburse very significant sums to our clients’ he said””." I found that an extremely encouraging piece of news because here is a solution: we go to Monsieur Gallois and say, ““Don’t worry. We won’t impose any penalty payments on you for failure to deliver if you won’t impose any penalty payments on us for stopping the order””. It seems to me that the solution is self-evident and absolutely cost-free. I do not say that as a joke; I hope very much that I will get a serious ministerial reply to that point. I should tell your Lordships why I am so enamoured of the C17, having had an opportunity to fly in one some time ago down in South Carolina. First, it will carry, at 77,000 kilograms, more than twice the projected load of the A400M. Secondly, it will carry it farther. Thirdly, it will carry it faster. Fourthly, it has a marvellous short-field capability. Fifthly, it is extremely manoeuvrable on the ground. Sixthly, it is very good at handling dirt runways. Seventhly, it has an ability to be converted into a medevac aircraft in a matter of minutes. It is an extraordinary sight to see the crew converting a transport aircraft, in part or in whole, to a medevac aircraft. This can be done with an aircrew of only three. I am delighted that we already have six C17s. I was also delighted to read that the Ministry of Defence is considering getting some more. In my view it has the flexibility to be used for tactical airlift requirements of the sort that we need in Afghanistan. I promised your Lordships a final treat. When we have foreign affairs debates I always regret that the noble Lord, Lord Renwick of Clifton, is not present. But, then, today I was delighted to hear the noble Lord, Lord Wright of Richmond, describe the United States as our closest ally. I cannot tell your Lordships what pleasure that gave me. I do not know how many other of his former colleagues at the Foreign Office could deliver themselves of those sentiments, but I can see that some of them look as though they would be sucking on lemons if they had to do so. I would be delighted if the Minister could bring himself to say that, but I understand how difficult he might find it.