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8.29 pm
Mr. Robert Key (Salisbury): All that I can say to the conclusion of the hon. Member for Dunfermline, West (Ms Squire) is: heaven forfend that that should ever happen.
One of the intriguing aspects of taking part in a defence debate is that however many of one's lines may have been taken in the preceding four hours or so there is always a lot left to say. I do not intend to speak for four hours, hon. Members will be relieved to hear, but there are some things that need to be said which have not yet been said.
One can hardly represent a constituency such as Salisbury, which has more than 11,000 Ministry of Defence jobs, without drawing attention to some of the issues that confront its Member of Parliament and which I believe the House may wish to consider. I refer first to the new shape and role of Land Command, which has been successfully up and running now for the best part of this year. Its relationship with the rest of the military structure has been a huge success.
Salisbury plain training area is being increasingly used, and it has been managed with great sensitivity by the defence land agent and by the commanding officer of the Salisbury plain training area. Great sensitivity and ecological care have gone into its management.
The Royal Artillery at Larkhill has also played a notable role in the conservation of the Salisbury plain area. Boscombe Down has undergone huge changes to its function and role--as well as to its title, which seems to change every year or so. Still, we know it as Boscombe Down and I expect that the House will wish to know it as such too. It has undergone many changes of personnel and function, and those aspects remain under consideration.
It is always a source of mystification and annoyance to local people that Porton Down should be referred to as such when there are two discrete organisations there--the centre for applied microbiology and research, and the protection and life services division of the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency. All these add up to a significant defence science base of crucial importance to the welfare of our forces and to their success--linked, of course, to the defence nuclear, biological and chemical centre at Winterbourne.
Even the Royal Navy manages to get in on the act in my constituency, with the arms depot at West Dean. It would also be quite wrong to pass over the Tilshead cadet training centre, and the Old Sarum establishment, the headquarters of--among many other organisations--the Army Families Federation.
The hon. Member for Dunfermline, West mentioned MOD police, who are important in the Salisbury plain area, the military police and the MOD guard force. Following legislation on home service engagement, we also have the Military Provost guard service. Finally, if it is true that an army marches on its stomach, we have the NAAFI at Amesbury, which faces a challenging future under exciting new management.
Bosnia has already been mentioned many times, and I should like to concentrate on one or two of its family aspects. I was immensely proud to be a member of the OSCE observer team at the recent elections. One incident in particular encapsulated my pride in the IFOR troops, especially the British contingent thereof. It took place in a little village called Kljaci, not far from Travnik and just up the road from Vitez. When the polls closed at 7 o'clock in the evening and things were getting a little tense--no one was quite sure how the ballot boxes were going to get down to the town hall--there came the familiar rumble of a Warrior in the village square, heralding the arrival of the 1st Battalion Royal Green Jackets, who had visited the village five times in the course of the day, taking it in turns to have cups of coffee with the villagers and obtaining their complete confidence in the IFOR presence. They rendered the whole election process believable, free and fair to that village. I pay them my compliments; the incident sums up the important role of the Royal Green Jackets and other IFOR troops in Bosnia.
The Army Families Federation represents all who support the front line but who are at home coping with the problems faced by their spouses in theatre. I am delighted that the federation is so active in a practical and supporting role.
Only last Friday the wife of a soldier serving in Bosnia came to see me in my surgery with an appalling mess to sort out while her husband was serving overseas. It was a
bureaucratic problem of the sort with which we are all familiar from our surgeries. In addition to doing my bit to help, I was able to tell her to get in touch with the AFF, which has someone who can deal with her problems and give her the support that she needs so much.
The federation has brought several continuing problems to my attention. For instance, the telephone links between Germany and Bosnia are still not as good as they should be. That matters a great deal. Moreover, British families still feel that they are losing out financially while other nations' soldiers are making money out of being in theatre in Bosnia. I know that the MOD has a tenable explanation for that, but it still rankles with Army families.
Overstretch continues to present problems for families too. Some men come back from Canada or Northern Ireland and have to leave again almost immediately for a year, and there is no guarantee of stability when they return. I do not know how much more of this the families are going to have to take. Sometimes the family dimension is overlooked when the problem of overstretch is under consideration.
The Army Families Federation has also asked me to mention quarantine for pets, an issue about which I feel strongly. I have pursued it with the MOD and with Ministers in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. The problem particularly affects Army families. Business men and diplomats can afford to put their pets in quarantine, and they have considerable freedom to decide whether to accept a posting overseas. Not so Army families, a number of whom have been to see me about this. They have bought dogs in Germany, or taken their dogs there, in the expectation of a two-year term--only to be relocated back to the United Kingdom within a matter of months. One family was then sent straight back to Germany. Meanwhile their pets languish, and children and parents alike miss them.
I strongly support moves towards inoculation, microchipping and passports for pets. We should perhaps start with a trial with the rabies-free island of Cyprus.
I turn next to procurement issues arising out of the Select Committee's response to the White Paper of earlier this year. Will the Minister of State for Defence Procurement let us know whether he has come to a conclusion about the future of the royal yacht Britannia? That is not of burning military significance but it is of great significance to many people in this country, to the Department of Trade and Industry, to our businesses and to the diplomatic services, whose members make use of the facility. The Select Committee had a great deal to say on the subject. I certainly hope that the successor to Britannia will be built in a British yard, will be run by the Royal Navy and will fly the White Ensign, fulfilling an important diplomatic and ceremonial role.
Another issue arose from the Committee considering the Armed Forces Bill on which I had the honour to serve. We learned from our visit to Greenwich--quite apart from the issues surrounding the future of the royal naval college and the buildings--that there is also the issue of the nuclear reactor affectionately known as Jason. Has its future yet been decided? Perhaps it has been put in quarantine.
A surprising problem faced by the military in the aftermath of the Gulf war and Bosnia derives from the fact that, for many years to come, in any fast-moving battle the
armoured infantry's effectiveness will be restricted by what is only a small element of the infantry's vehicles. It is clear from all the arms exercises that the FV 432, which is a mortar platform, is very slow. The whole Army has to go as slow as the slowest vehicle, which is the mortar platform. So either it goes without the mortar or everybody slows down. That seems crazy when we have staring us in the face a well-proven vehicle called Warrior. We need not invent it again but could simply put the mortars on the Warrior. We would then see a significant upgrading of our armoured infantry's capability. I hope that Ministers will consider the operational case for the Warrior, not least because it is made by GKN Defence, which is a significant part of the British and the west's procurement industry.
Will the Minister address some defence procurement problems? The first is the private finance initiative. May I put it in the context of Yeoman, the £2.5 billion project to replace Britain's military radio communications capability. The contract has cost tens of millions of pounds for the two companies concerned, Racal and Siemens, and decision time is only a couple of years away. A PFI initiative looks extremely attractive. It will be an immensely complex process and will involve converting 25,000 land platforms, including tanks and helicopters, to give them access to major data highways. The entire Army must be retrained. If we are to turn it into a PFI, we need some clues about how the Ministry of Defence is thinking about the Bowman project. Much could be gained from a PFI, but blind man's buff is inappropriate for a sophisticated procurement project like Bowman. The two Racal facilities in my constituency would like a clue about what the Ministry of Defence wants.
On export licences, British exports are undoubtedly being inhibited, particularly with regard to straightforward destinations for straightforward products. For example, Pains Wessex in my constituency took nine weeks to get a licence to export naval decoy rounds to Australia. It has a joint development contract with Saab of Sweden and has been doing the work for some three years, but the latest round of export licences took seven months to achieve. In the process, the Swedes felt discriminated against and could not imagine why they were causing so much trouble. There have been similar problems with Japan.
A fast track administrative system should be available for straightforward destinations and products. The DTI has been looking at the matter for a long time. It receives about 50,000 applications a year for defence export licences and rejects only a handful after a long period. Subject to the usual inspection and audit, and to severe penalties, there could be a self-licensing system for some exports. A grading system could be introduced in which grade A would involve the sale of non-offensive products to non-offensive countries, such as smoke grenades to Norway, Denmark or Canada; grade B would involve offensive products to non-offensive countries, such as high explosives to NATO countries; and grade C would embrace the sale of offensive products to special countries, which would require special treatment. In none of those cases would licences be granted to prohibited countries such as Iraq or Iran.
The other day on a wet Sunday morning I visited Salisbury plain. I congratulate the Government on their Youth in the Community initiative, and I thank the Home
Office and the Ministry of Defence for giving an important opportunity to young people in Wiltshire. I drove to Tilshead on Salisbury plain at the invitation of the Western Wessex reserve forces and cadets to attend part of a "challenger weekend". The chief constable of Wiltshire had kindly offered the services of his community officers to provide a link with those working among youths in our community who had strayed from the straight and narrow and received a police caution. The young people needed to be identified and their parents convinced of the value of such a project.
That was the first time that the Wiltshire Army Cadet Force had ever conducted such an event, but I am sure that it will not be the last. Twenty-four hours earlier, some 70 aggressive and spiky individualists had arrived on Salisbury plain. They were used to violence from other young people and adults. They had virtually no concept of self-discipline and certainly no concept of group discipline. The cadet force instructors, together with youth and social workers, had spent 24 hours taking them from one Army establishment to another, with initiative tests and assault courses. They had been out on the plain during the night map reading--or not--in the dark, and observing regular Army exercises through image intensifiers. After a few hours' sleep, they had woken to be piled in the back of armoured personnel carriers and given some real action on the training area. When I arrived on Sunday morning I found the beginnings of a coherent group of motivated young people who, although clearly exhausted, were bubbling over with enthusiasm for what one described to me as the most exciting weekend of his life. They had been shown and had to learn what group dependency and discipline mean, and had learnt about self-esteem and respect for others. When they had arrived on the Saturday, they had refused to do what they were told by adults and had to be cajoled into taking basic safety measures. By Sunday morning, they were talking happily with their Member of Parliament and standing in a straight line while the lord lieutenant chatted to them quietly about the value of discipline. I congratulate warmly the Wiltshire Army Cadet Force on the success of its first "challenger weekend" and I hope that the Government will extend and expand their successful Youth in the Community initiative.
To hon. Members for whom defence is a critical issue, last year's defence budget came as a disappointment in the sense that it was less than we expected. A number of my hon. Friends have drawn attention to that and the Select Committee report spells it out. It was clear then, as it is now, that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence, with his inside knowledge of the Treasury, had fought successfully to claw back hundreds of millions of pounds and I congratulate him on that. I also congratulate him on tonight's speech and on last week's party conference speech. He has put down important markers about Britain's defence stance for the future in relation to NATO and Europe.
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