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8.38 pm
Mr. Nick Raynsford (Greenwich): I hope that myhon. Friend the Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen) will forgive me if I do not follow his line of argument. I propose--as I think every hon. Member is already aware--to focus my remarks primarily on the future of the site occupied by the Royal Naval college in Greenwich.
I very strongly endorse the comments of myhon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport(Mr. Jamieson) on the scandal of empty residential property owned by the Ministry of Defence, much of which is found in areas such as Plymouth. I have visited his constituency and seen many former Ministry of Defence properties left empty, and learnt of the important positive approach now being adopted by Plymouth city council, in conjunction with several housing associations, to bring those properties back into use for people in housing need.
It is a cause of considerable sadness to me that the Ministry, in breach of the Conservative manifesto commitment to use surplus houses for such purposes, now proposes to privatise the married quarters estate in a way that will not only deny those homes to people in need, but will probably lead to a substantially increased revenue cost to the Ministry itself, for the leases on the properties it still requires for its own purposes.
I now return to the main focus of my speech, the Royal Naval college. In previous debates on the Royal Navy, and more recently on Second Reading of the Armed Forces Bill, I have spoken about the site's history, its magnificent architectural heritage and the high quality of training undertaken by the Royal Naval college and the joint service defence college, which are both located on the site at Greenwich.
I have often paid tribute to the work undertaken by the commander and staff of the college, who have maintained a consistent standard of excellence in the training that they offer. I do not feel that I need elaborate on any of that tonight; I believe that it is fully appreciated by allhon. Members with an interest in the Navy.
However, the future of the site is shrouded in uncertainty, as a result of the decision taken a little less than a year ago to choose Camberley as the site for the new tri-service college and the consequent decision to cease the activities of the Royal Naval college and the joint service defence college at Greenwich in 1997.
Many times, both in the House and elsewhere, I have raised serious doubts about the merits of that decision, and about the way in which it was taken. The consultation exercise preceding the decision was a most unsatisfactory affair, involving the presentation of information in a way not helpful to anyone trying to make an informed assessment of the merits of the respective sites under consideration. It also contained several financial assumptions that were questionable, to say the least. I took up many of those at the time with the Minister of State for the Armed Forces.
The whole tenor of the consultation, the document and the financial forecasts were all clearly designed to convey the impression that Camberley was a cheaper, easier and more cost-effective solution than Greenwich. Those assumptions were always suspect, and what little information has seeped into the public arena in recent months tends to confirm that.
According to the Daily Express of 22 January, there are now real fears that Camberley will not be ready in time to accommodate the colleges being displaced from Greenwich. A senior defence source was quoted as saying that Navy and RAF officers would become "refugees", and would have to find a home from home at a university somewhere. That in itself is an alarming enough prospect, not least for all the officers expecting to take training courses in 1997-98. But it is not the only cause for concern--and that was not the first press report suggesting that the Government were in trouble over their Camberley plans.
On 16 October last year, The Independent reported defence sources as saying:
That article also said that there were serious cost overruns, amounting perhaps to tens of millions of pounds. A senior defence source was again quoted as saying:
The Minister of State for Defence Procurement, who is not now in his place, answered the debate on the defence estimates on 17 October, but he did not answer the questions that I had asked him about whether there was substance in those reports. In a subsequent written answer,
the Minister of State for the Armed Forces--I am pleased to see that he, at least, is here--assured me that there was no question of the budget for capital costs being exceeded, but he was more equivocal about the revenue costs budget.
I must now ask the Minister those questions again, and I hope that he will give us a full response tonight. Will he tell the House whether the costs, both capital and revenue, of Camberley are turning out in line with the estimates in the consultation paper about the siting of the tri-service college? If not, how much additional expenditure, both capital and revenue, is now anticipated?
Secondly, will the Minister tell us whether the timetable for accommodating all three service colleges at Camberley by 1997 will be met? Can he guarantee that all the staff and all the naval officers due to participate in staff college training in 1997-98 will be accommodated at the Camberley site as promised? If the answer to any of those questions is no, that must raise serious doubts about the basis of the decision to site the tri-service college at Camberley rather than at Greenwich.
Furthermore, if there is any question of the timetable being delayed, surely the right course must be to reconsider the decision to close the Greenwich site in 1997. Rather than consigning officers to temporary accommodation in some as yet unidentified university elsewhere, would it not make sense to keep the Royal Naval college and the joint service defence college operating at Greenwich for at least one more year?
If there were a pressing and appropriate alternative use for the Greenwich site in the autumn of 1997, there might be a case for saying that it must be closed, even if it cannot be guaranteed that there will be accommodation at Camberley for the people who will not now be able to attend courses at Greenwich. However, all we hear about what is happening to the Greenwich site suggests that that is not the case.
Despite substantial expenditure on a marketing operation by a well-known firm of estate agents, the Government have managed to secure the interest of only a handful of potential users in taking over one of the world's finest complexes of historic buildings. That must raise questions about the competence both of the Ministers responsible for the marketing exercise and of the estate agents who were selling the site--Messrs. Knight, Frank, who apparently lost Mr. Rutley along the way.
Mr. Raynsford:
If it was Rutley's fault, will the Minister tell us? Was it Rutley who made a mess of the operation, and is that why his name no longer features in the firm's name?
If reports in last week's edition of The Sunday Telegraph are to be believed, only three bids appeared worthy of short-listing, and two of those were from overseas. The Sunday Telegraph suggests that those consisted of one from a far eastern consortium that wants to turn Greenwich into a language school, offering learning breaks for overseas business men, and another from an American university.
It is hardly surprising that that prospect has alarmed hon. Members on both sides of the House, as well as people throughout the country. The hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) made a powerful
speech on the subject, in which he spoke eloquently of the alarm and concern that he and many others feel at the prospect of that magnificent site, one of the country's finest historical and architectural gems, being made over to some foreign organisation with no roots in this country, no association with the Royal Navy, and probably only a limited interest in the wonders of Greenwich, other than as a prestigious site for an operation that could perfectly well take place elsewhere.
In response to a question from the hon. Member for South Staffordshire, the Minister said that there was no question of that. I took his assurance to mean that there is no question of an overseas bidder having the use of the buildings. I want to press the Minister on that matter.
If that assurance was as I and the hon. Member for Staffordshire, South understood it to be, and if what is written in The Sunday Telegraph is correct, the far eastern consortium which wants to use the site for a language school and the American university should be told emphatically now that their bids are no longer being considered.
If the Minister can assure us that all overseas bids are now ruled out, it is only fair that those bidders be made aware of that immediately. If the bids are not ruled out, the assurance that the Minister has given us tonight is highly suspect. It must certainly raise questions whether we are being told one thing while the Government are contemplating doing another. I hope that we get a clear and unequivocal assurance from the Minister tonight that the bids have been ruled out, and that only an appropriate source involving a British-based organisation with a concern for the naval and historical heritage of Greenwich will be entertained.
To help rescue the Government from the self-inflicted crisis that this botched marketing exercise has produced, Ministers sensibly agreed before Christmas to appoint a committee of experts to consider the various expressions of interest in the site and to advise the Secretary of State on its future use and management. Given the unpromising way in which the operation has been conducted up to this point--an operation that would not have brought credit on the Royal Navy or any other service had it been a military operation--I have the greatest sympathy for Lord Sainsbury, Lord Farringdon, Dame Jennifer Jenkins and Jocelyn Stevens, who have been given the task of bailing the Government out.
Having said that, I am very relieved that it is those individuals, rather than the Secretary of State--whose judgment in this matter has been shown to be flawed--who are now wrestling with the problem. I wish them well, and I am sure that they will have a proper regard for the national interest. I am sure also that they will take proper account of the strength of public opinion on the matter. If they are to do the job properly, they must be freed from the constraints of an unreasonably tight timetable. They must also not be subject to the limitations of the number of bidders that have been identified to date.
"There are grave doubts whether the 1997 deadline for forming the Tri-Service College can now be met".
"There is a lot of teeth sucking going on about the scale of the costs involved in the refurbishment of Camberley".
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