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Mr. Foulkes : The Minister of State for Defence Procurement is in retreat--earlier, at least we were given "allocate", although we did not get "guarantee". Now all that we are receiving is hope. Let us have a guarantee.

Mr. Aitken : The hon. Gentleman must not play silly semantic games. I am coming to the bizarre proposition about guarantees and allocations. I shall now relate my remarks to the hon. Gentleman's speech, as he opened the debate. We heard sound, fury and synthetic indignation signifying nothing. Leaving to one side--in the immortal phrase of the Leader of the Opposition--the fact that the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) was one of the principal signatories of the 1987 early -day motion urging the Government to cancel Trident in the light of the changing international climate, leaving aside the fact that only three days ago he moved an amendment in the defence debate in the House to negotiate away our Trident submarines as part of disarmament negotiations, and leaving aside the fact that only two days ago he was calling for a ten-year allocated programme for Rosyth, the hon. Gentleman has given no credit to the fact that the Government have given it a 12-year allocated programme.

I shall now turn to the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Fife, North-East (Mr. Campbell) who speaks for one part of the Liberal party--the part that was not campaigning in the west country at the county council elections. He said, with an old-fashioned Gladstonian air, as if God had put an ace up his sleeve, that what Lord

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Younger had said was a crucial factor in the debate. I thought that the hon. and learned Gentleman was well answered by two salvoes from the Conservative Benches.

One salvo came from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland, who had spoken to Lord Younger earlier in the day and had received the clear impression that he was well satisfied by the fact that a 12-year allocated programme has gone to Rosyth. The second salvo came from my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr (Mr. Gallie) who made it clear that times had changed since then. That is true--times have changed with the ending of the cold war, the collapse of the Berlin wall and the dissolving of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw pact. Naturally, we now require fewer nuclear submarines.

Mr. Menzies Campbell : The Minister knows that Lord Younger wrote his letter to The Times less than a fortnight ago. Is the Minister saying that Lord Younger's position, as represented by the Secretary of State for Scotland, entirely contradicts what he wrote in The Times ?

Mr. Aitken : We shall see what Lord Younger has to say. I am confident that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland was correct.

I shall now turn to the great semantic argument on "contractual", "allocated" and "guaranteed"--the conjuring trick that the Opposition have tried to perpetrate tonight. I shall steer them through the semantic fog. I shall first explain the contractual relationship that we expect to establish with DML in Devonport. We intend to place a contract at Devonport for the construction of the upgraded nuclear facilities. The word "contract" applies to that construction programme, not to individual refits in that instance.

We shall handle refits in the allocated programme at both dockyards by inviting a single tender for each refit against a Ministry of Defence specification. On the basis of that tender, we shall negotiate a fixed and fair price. That applies both to the surface ship refits at Rosyth and the nuclear refits at Devonport. The allocated programme means that no other yard is invited to tender. It is wrong for the Opposition to cast doubt on the genuineness of our proposal to allocate work to Rosyth. As my right hon. Friend said, we have many years' experience of running allocated programmes and an "allocation" means just that--work is allocated in advance to a dockyard and is not available to be done elsewhere.

Mr. O'Neill : Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Aitken : No, I shall not.

Of course we have to ensure that the system is not abused and that we do not give the dockyard a blank cheque. That is what the hon. Gentleman is arguing for, but we have some concern for value for the taxpayers' money.

Dr. Reid : We are not talking about the price ; we are talking about the numbers. The reality is that the core group has been cut over the past decade. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that? It is an entirely different matter from the price.

Mr. Aitken : The hon. Gentleman cannot have been listening to my right hon. Friend's statement. He said that 18 major war vessels and 49 minor war vessels will be in the programme.

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In the past, Rosyth has always been satisfied with its allocated programme. We believe that it will be even more satisfied with its larger allocated programme over the next 12 years.

I now turn to some of the other speeches. I owe it to the House to pick up the speech of the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond), the leader of the Scottish National party. I have never heard a more hypocritical performance. He was arguing for the refit facility to go to Rosyth, but what does the Scottish National party manifesto say? It says :

"The SNP is committed to a non-nuclear Scotland. An independent Scotland will immediately withdraw from the United Kingdom's Trident Programme and will order nuclear weapons and installations off our soil.".

Mr. Welsh : Has the Minister secretly joined CND? He has near enough created a nuclear-free Fife by this decision. He is taking more nuclear weapons from Scotland than Labour ever did. He has taken the money down to England and left Scotland with the unemployment.

Mr. Aitken : If that was supposed to be a clarification of the Scottish National party policy, the hon. Gentleman is welcome to it. One or two serious points were made in the debate. The hon. Member for Dumbarton (Mr. McFall) asked about the operational reasons for keeping refitting at Rosyth because of its proximity to the Clyde submarine base. Of course we considered this, but the operational considerations had to be balanced by the fact that some £64 million of taxpayers' money could be saved by the Devonport decision, and that was the reason which tipped the balance.

My hon. Friend the Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls) savaged the Liberal party in his admirable speech and made it clear that time and again the Liberals have said one thing in one part of the country and something else in another.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Mr. Bruce) gave the Government considerable credit for striving to help Rosyth. The Government have made great strides in trying to soften the blow of not winning the Trident refitting contract--a 12-year refitting programme keeping redundancies down to 450.

Mr. Connarty : I am willing to rescue the Minister who is obviously sinking fast. Will he consider the question that was asked through me by the convener of the naval yard staff union? What guarantees are given for the 1,400 jobs and the supply of equipment for some of the refits, even if they go to Devonport? They now come from Rosyth to Babcock Thorn.

Mr. Aitken : No Minister can give guarantees from the Dispatch Box. We are making our best estimates on the redundancy figures. What we believe, based on the business plans of the companies themselves, is that we have made a credible estimate and all over the country people who had been predicting many thousands of redundancies have been proved quite wrong by the potential redundancies that are likely to be suffered.

The hon. Member for Falkirk, East (Mr. Connarty) also asked about the Rosyth naval base. I can tell him that there is no connection between jobs in the royal dockyard and in the naval base at Rosyth.

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In conclusion, it was inevitable that the Government's decision on where to locate the refitting of Britain's nuclear submarines would be difficult and tough and inevitably would be unpopular in whichever region did not get the Trident contract. The communities in Rosyth and Devonport had a great deal at stake and the dockyard management companies fought their corners hard in many representations to Ministers and in a great many Adjournment debates in recent months. The Government's view was that our duty was clear. It was to rise above the local and regional lobbies, and to make a decision that was strategically right in the interests of the defence of the realm, operationally right for the Royal Navy, economically right in the interests of the taxpayer--I remind the House that about £64 million has been saved by the decision--and, above all, right in the national interest. We believe that we have got the decision right, and we commend it to the House.

Question put, That this House do now adjourn :--

The House divided : Ayes 209, Noes 281.

Division No. 307] [10 pm

AYES

Adams, Mrs Irene

Ainger, Nick

Ainsworth, Robert (Cov'try NE)

Allen, Graham

Anderson, Donald (Swansea E)

Anderson, Ms Janet (Ros'dale)

Armstrong, Hilary

Austin-Walker, John

Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

Barnes, Harry

Barron, Kevin

Battle, John

Bayley, Hugh

Beckett, Rt Hon Margaret

Bell, Stuart

Benn, Rt Hon Tony

Bennett, Andrew F.

Benton, Joe

Bermingham, Gerald

Berry, Dr. Roger

Betts, Clive

Blair, Tony

Boateng, Paul

Boyce, Jimmy

Bray, Dr Jeremy

Brown, Gordon (Dunfermline E)

Brown, N. (N'c'tle upon Tyne E)

Burden, Richard

Caborn, Richard

Callaghan, Jim

Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge)

Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

Campbell-Savours, D. N.

Canavan, Dennis

Cann, Jamie

Clapham, Michael

Clarke, Eric (Midlothian)

Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

Clwyd, Mrs Ann

Coffey, Ann

Cohen, Harry

Connarty, Michael

Cook, Robin (Livingston)

Corbett, Robin

Corston, Ms Jean

Cousins, Jim

Cryer, Bob

Cunningham, Jim (Covy SE)

Darling, Alistair

Davidson, Ian

Davies, Bryan (Oldham C'tral)

Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

Davis, Terry (B'ham, H'dge H'l)

Denham, John

Dewar, Donald

Dixon, Don

Donohoe, Brian H.

Dowd, Jim

Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth

Eagle, Ms Angela

Enright, Derek

Etherington, Bill

Fatchett, Derek

Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

Flynn, Paul

Foster, Rt Hon Derek

Foulkes, George

Fyfe, Maria

Galbraith, Sam

Galloway, George

Gapes, Mike

Gerrard, Neil

Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

Godman, Dr Norman A.

Golding, Mrs Llin

Gordon, Mildred

Gould, Bryan

Graham, Thomas

Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

Grocott, Bruce

Gunnell, John

Hardy, Peter

Harman, Ms Harriet

Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

Heppell, John

Hill, Keith (Streatham)

Hinchliffe, David

Hoey, Kate

Hogg, Norman (Cumbernauld)

Home Robertson, John

Hood, Jimmy

Hoon, Geoffrey

Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

Howells, Dr. Kim (Pontypridd)

Hoyle, Doug

Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N)

Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

Hutton, John

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