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Defence Procurement

I noted my hon. Friend’s intervention on the Minister. The House will have noted the Minister’s extremely cagey response to the important point that was made about whether six Type 45s will be sufficient to protect two carrier groups simultaneously, bearing it in mind that at any one time ships will be in refit, maintenance or whatever. I posed that question to the Minister last year, but I did not receive an answer to it, so perhaps his hon. Friend, the other Minister present, will address it when he winds up. The nation needs to know. We are talking about very expensive aircraft carriers, being built at a cost of around £4 billion in total. They will be very vulnerable assets and will need as much protection as they can be given if they are to do their job. The Type 45 is critical to that defence capability, so I hope that the Minister will be able to deal with that point. Let me turn to other projects. The A400M will be at least four years late. It would be helpful if the Minister said where negotiations on that are and whether the company will pay damages to the Government, or whether it will be in a position to offer an interim solution and, at its own expense, provide the Royal Air Force with aircraft that can give it what it needs immediately. Let me turn to helicopters. Despite the National Audit Office’s warning in 2004 about the""considerable deficit in the availability of helicopter lift,"" the Government cut £1.4 billion from the helicopter programme—a decision that has considerably hampered UK operations in Helmand province in Afghanistan. Even now, future Lynx numbers have been cut from 80 originally to 70, which are now just 62 plus some old Lynxes that will be re-engined. Also, the Minister did not mention the essential maritime support programme MARS—the military afloat reach and sustainability programme—which has been delayed indefinitely. However, besides the policy issues, the Government stand guilty of utter incompetence in the way that they have mismanaged a number of key projects. The Public Accounts Committee reported that the modification of the eight mark 3 Chinook helicopters was so incompetently managed that""the Department failed to consult with Boeing, the manufacturer of the helicopters, with regard to the potential costs or timeframes, and the estimated cost of the project subsequently grew by 70 per cent."" The Committee concluded that the delays arising from the Government’s crass incompetence have""potentially put the lives of British service personnel at greater risk."" That is a big charge for an all-party Committee of this House to level at the Government.