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9.20 amThe Minister of State for the Armed Forces (Mr. Archie Hamilton) : I advise my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, West (Sir J. Spicer) that of course I shall draw the attention of my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade to his demands for assisted area status.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Mr. Bruce) produced the figure of 2,280. My figure for civilian job losses in the area is about 1,400. My hon. Friend is adding in all the service jobs on top of that figure. Clearly, that will have an impact on the economy in Portland--there is no doubt about that whatsoever--but it is unfair to suggest that that will add to the unemployment totals in his area, as most of those jobs will be moved away. However, I must take his point about the effect of the service jobs on the local economy in terms of spending power. Also, there are my hon. Friend's points about contractors in the area who would be affected as well, and they do not show up in our figures.
I cannot give my hon. Friend figures relating to the overall financial impact on the area about which he is talking, but I shall certainly see whether we can work up a figure for him. Of course, the figures are somewhat speculative, but we will see whether we can do something.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset because he has worked tirelessly to represent the interests of his constituents who may be affected by the extensive restructuring of defence facilities in his constituency. The end of the cold war, which the whole House and, indeed, the whole country welcome, means that we can reduce the share of our national resources devoted to defence.
My hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, West made a point about the peace dividend not being altogether welcome in his part of the world. I am afraid that the peace dividend means that the Government have resources to spend on other things, but, at the same time, it inevitably means that we start cutting defence facilities. That affects to a deleterious degree the south, south-west and south-east of England, because, by an accident of history, that is where most of our defence facilities are located. The Royal Navy is reducing in size, but we intend to ensure that it is equipped and manned to meet the tasks that it will face.
Reductions in the front line must be matched by savings in support provision if we are to achieve value for money from what is still a great deal of taxpayers' money. If we fail to achieve that, we will face the prospect of further reductions in the front line to pay for the cost of maintaining excess support facilities. That is not an acceptable alternative. I acknowledge that the period of transition will be painful for a number of communities, including Portland, whose economies have relied heavily on defence-related expenditure. We must face hard decisions if we are to achieve value for money, but those decisions must be based on a wide range of factors, not just the savings offered. That is why we announce proposals as the basis for consultation before final decisions are taken. My hon. Friend is right to probe our proposals in depth. My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State is committed to ensuring that the process of consultation is as open as possible, subject only to issues of security or commercial confidentiality. That
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may sometimes be uncomfortable for Ministers and their officials, but if there are flaws in the proposal they must be identified. The proposal to close Portland naval base and transfer operational sea training to Devonport in 1996, announced on 12 November, is at present the subject of such consultation. We have opened a dialogue with my hon. Friend--he will acknowledge that I have had a number of meetings with him--the trade unions and the local authorities. Many detailed questions have been raised already and no doubt there will be more. We shall do our best to answer them fully and promptly. The purpose of operational sea training is to bring ships to a high state of operational readiness, ready to cope with any eventuality. The crew must learn to operate together as a team, making the best use of all the ship's sensors, systems and weapons. Ships need to work up in that way whenever they come back into service after a refit, with new equipment and new crew members.In addition to the training of ships returning to service after refit, there is also the role fulfilled by flag officer sea training in providing continuation training for ships in commission. That is used to ensure that ships and their crews are maintaining adequate standards of readiness. The transfer of operational sea training to Devonport would provide useful opportunities for the ships based there to work with ships under training, thus enhancing the opportunities for this important continuation training.
By the end of the training, ships' crews will be trained to meet, as individual units or as members of a task group, the full range of submarine, surface and air threats. A team of instructors moves between ships, monitoring standards to ensure that the crews of every Royal Navy warship and Royal Fleet Auxiliary support vessel are fit for their task. The value of such training has been amply demonstrated in the Falklands campaign and in the Gulf.
Operational sea training at Portland began in 1958, when the flag officer sea training was moved there for five years, although no money was then available for capital expenditure. In 1961, the dockyard closed and the Portland harbour area was designated as a naval base. In 1963, at the end of the initial five-year period, it was decided that operational sea training should continue to be based at Portland, where it has remained since.
As my hon. Friend said, no warships are base-ported at Portland on a long- term basis--they remain at the naval base only when undergoing training. The naval base provides only the infrastructure and personnel needed to provide day-to-day support and minor repairs and maintenance. It does not offer the range of facilities available at Devonport, Faslane, Portsmouth or Rosyth.
It is true, as I have said on many occasions to my hon. Friend, that Portland provides an extremely good centre for operational sea training. However, we are convinced that the move to Devonport will result in significant savings and certain gains in sea training. Any lack of facilities that we may suffer at Devonport would not be enough to make any difference to the savings that we reckon on making.
No doubt those supporting the Portland case will continue to draw attention to the perceived disadvantages of transferring operational sea training to Devonport. Whatever new information may emerge during the period of consultation will be considered before a firm decision is taken. We will take on board the points that my hon. Friend has raised this morning.
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I am pleased to confirm to my hon. Friend the message given to him by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister that, following my hon. Friend's representations, we have agreed to extend the consultation period until the end of January. That decision recognises the fact that the consultation period that we have envisaged covered the Christmas period. One must accept that, over Christmas, things quieten down and there is a fortnight of lost time. Our decision to extend the consultation from the middle of January to the end of it takes that factor into account.My hon. Friend mentioned the undertaking given to him by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister that the consultants' report would be jointly funded by the Ministry. We expect contributions to be made by local councils, the Crown Estate, which owns much of the real estate, and the Ministry of Defence. We thought that the solution might be to use the working party that is considering the future of the area to draw up the terms of
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reference for a consultancy firm. I do not like to anticipate a bad decision for Portland, but, in the circumstances, it might be sensible to work out the terms of reference of the report now so that if the decision went against Portland we could get the consultants working quickly thereafter on the future of the area.I congratulate my hon. Friend on obtaining this debate and bringing this important matter before the House. I am aware of its enormous importance. It gives me absolutely no pleasure to have to take these very hard decisions. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, West said, although we look forward to spending the peace dividend on other areas of public expenditure, it means that we have to take these hard decisions. Areas that have relied on defence expenditure in the past, such as Portland, suffer from the cuts and closures that we envisaged in the proposals that were put to my hon. Friend in the middle of last month.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes to Ten o'clock.
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