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Defence in the UK

I thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to speak in this afternoon's debate. I pay tribute to the magnificence of our armed forces and their daily heroism, which we witness across the world. They are engaged on a number of fronts that nobody predicted or imagined. The House is aware of the tremendous job that they do in every part of the world where they represent the defence of this country. I shall concentrate on what might appear a narrow area of UK defence policy, but, as many will know, I have thought for some time that it is probably one of the most important areas, although it is often neglected and not fully discussed in the House: armed forces training. We can only have the best armed forces in the world—I happen to think that we have—if we provide them with the best possible training in the world. Since the end of the cold war, UK defence policy has gone through major changes, to which the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) referred. Through a series of defence reviews, we have reconfigured our force structures and armed forces to meet the new challenges resulting from the great unpredictability in the world. We need the ability to respond, which we have had in the past eight years, to unexpected challenges, to be flexible, to have much greater reach, and to be much more effective all round in different scenarios. The predictable scenarios of the cold war no longer exist, so we have, by and large, reconfigured our forces. Although there is some debate over that, it is generally agreed that it was necessary. We have reconfigured our kit to meet some of the new challenges. The aircraft carriers are on-stream to give us power projection worldwide. The one area that we have not reconfigured, however, is arguably the most important: the training of our enlisted men, ratings and NCOs. The training of the officer corps in the British forces in leadership and management has been successfully modernised and transformed, as the Select Committee on Defence saw on its visit to the defence academy at Shrivenham. The big challenge is modernising and transforming the rest of the services, particularly the skills and technical training of our armed forces. Eight years after the Government published a report stating that our training regime had to be modernised, we are nearing the end of delivering that for our armed forces. The defence training rationalisation programme is well advanced. The Minister made a statement recently in which he said that progress on that vital and radical project is on track and progressing well. Two weeks ago, a minute before the House extended the contingent liability to £40 million for the biggest Government PFI undertaken in any Department, to allow advanced design work and preparation for the scheme to continue. The project will completely transform and modernise our delivery of training. It will compress all our training in engineering, mechanical engineering, aeronautical engineering, electro-engineering, computer science and information technology, into one site in my constituency, at St. Athan. It will be the largest technical college by far in the United Kingdom, and one of the largest technical colleges and centres for technical excellence in the world. It will offer British armed forces, especially new, young recruits, the best technical training in the world. Nothing will compare with it anywhere else. All that training will be recognised in the civilian community, because qualifications will be civilian as well as military. I learned a skill in the armed forces in the 1960s, but it was no good to me when I finished, and I had to retrain. Many of our servicemen and women still have to do that today, despite the fact that 90 per cent. of them get civilian occupations within 28 days of leaving the forces, which is a tribute to their calibre and quality. However, the new training regime, at the defence technical college at St. Athan, will ensure that all our military personnel will leave with civilian qualifications. That is good for recruitment, because it will make a career in the armed forces much more attractive. It is also good for society, because the engineers who will be turned out over the next 30 years—the duration of the PFI—will serve the community at large. They will be provided with the most modern training environment in the world, using modern, computer-based equipment, virtual training techniques, and student-based and task-oriented training, not the traditional chalk and talk, which has served us well for many years but is out of date for the 21st century and the challenges that we face. The most important challenge is working in a much more integrated fashion, through jointery involving the three armed forces, and working much more closely with allies. We need a training regime that reflects the challenges that we face daily.