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6.20 pm
Mr. Eric Martlew (Carlisle): I will not follow the hon. Member for Davyhulme (Mr. Churchill) down that line. I will merely say, "Old Tories, old misrepresentations".
Mine will be a short speech which I believe will be greeted with enthusiasm by hon. Members on both sides of the House. I want to bring constituency problems to the attention of the House and especially the Minister of State for the Armed Forces.
During the autumn, I attended various ceremonies on the closure of RAF Carlisle. Some fine tributes have been paid to the base's work in the past 58 years and I wish to add mine tonight. I still argue that it was wrong to close the base, but the decision has been taken and the base will cease to be operational by the end of the year.
In the RAF debate in June, I brought two problems appertaining to the base to the Minister's attention, and I am glad to say that he was accommodating on both of them. One was the plan to store bonemeal from culled cows at the base, which was adding insult to injury. The other was that the Ministry of Defence had reneged on its decision to go into partnership to develop the base. Since then, however, through the Minister's good offices, there has been a policy change and we are getting along with the base's development.
There are still, however, two contentious issues. One is of a material kind and affects the base's future. The second is symbolic. It needs to be brought to the Minister's attention so that he can perhaps change his mind.
The first is on the former RAF base's development. We are fortunate that many companies are interested in purchasing or leasing sites on the base. We need to put the infrastructure in place. Everything was going reasonably well. We made a Konver bid and we scored high on the points system. We were told unofficially that
it was likely that we would receive £1.1 million to develop the infrastructure, as would the scheme in Chorley. That amount was not exactly what we needed, but it was satisfactory.
Since then, due to objections from authorities that were not considered, I understand that it is all back in the melting pot. I should be grateful if the Minister could use his good offices to reconsider the position. I know that the Department of Trade and Industry is the lead Department on the issue, but the Ministry of Defence clearly has an important part to play.
Mr. Soames:
I do not have that information here tonight, but in the light of what the hon. Gentleman has said, I will look into the matter tomorrow and have a reply for him on the Members' letter board within 48 hours.
Mr. Martlew:
I was hoping that the Minister would say that. I remember him being courteous to me on many occasions--or I think I remember.
The other problem is one in which the Minister has direct authority, and I hope that he will be as considerate on this one. It concerns the gate guardian at RAF Carlisle. As hon. Members will be aware, most RAF bases have a redundant military aircraft outside the base. RAF Carlisle had a McDonnell Douglas Phantom, which was appropriate because RAF Carlisle was a maintenance unit that kept all the American spares.
The local aviation museum, which is based at Carlisle airport nine miles away, made a request either to purchase the Phantom or to have it on permanent loan, and I wrote to the Minister asking whether that was possible. The answer was that, because it was an American aircraft and the American Government maintained the disposal rights of any redundant aircraft, it would not be possible without the Americans' permission.
I wrote to the American embassy in London, which assured me that it would probably consider the transfer favourably if the Government went through the correct channels and asked the embassy for the transfer. I wrote to the Minister, who said that the transfer was not possible, that it would cost too much money and that that was not the way forward. He regretted the decision and acknowledged that the base's 58 years of service to the nation was an outstanding achievement, but he still would not take that decision.
I cannot understand that attitude, because, nine miles away, there is RAF Spadeadam. Anyone who knows the history of the British ballistic missile or the British space probe will remember that the Blue Streak rocket was tested at Spadeadam. It is now a base for electronic warfare, but it is an RAF base. It could easily keep an eye on the Phantom--not that anyone is going to steal it--and there would not be any expense.
I understand that the gate guardian is to be transferred to RAF Sealand, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mr. Jones). I wish RAF Sealand all the best and I am sure that it is a good base, but I regret that our gate guardian is being sent there. First, it is an insensitive decision, because, five years ago, RAF Carlisle lost more than 100 avionic jobs to RAF Sealand. Secondly, like all other bases, RAF Sealand already has a gate guardian--I believe that it is a Hunter fighter--so it does not need an extra one. The expense of
taking the plane, which will have to go by road, from RAF Carlisle to RAF Sealand will be far more than keeping an eye on it at the Solway aviation museum.
Mr. Julian Brazier (Canterbury):
I echo the closing part of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence's speech yesterday, in which he rightly said that there is a serious danger that Bosnia could teach us the wrong lessons. He said that, as recently as 1991, we found ourselves facing, wholly expectedly, a high-intensity war in which we had remarkably light casualties, but which involved an enemy with large quantities of highly capable equipment.
I was talking that morning to a gentleman--whose name I shall not mention because he has no opportunity to reply, but who is a well respected commentator on diplomatic and military affairs--who told me that the Government had got it all wrong and that the solution to squaring the circle on military budgets was to stop "refighting the cold war", to stop buying highly expensive equipment such as the European fighter aircraft, which he was convinced we would never use, and instead to focus more heavily on the sort of equipment that would be most useful for Bosnia and other peacekeeping operations. He mentioned the shortage of suitably adaptable light armoured vehicles.
In the last century, after we had defeated Napoleon, there was a strong feeling that the armed forces had a variety of roles, including exploring the world and policing our incipient empire, but that fighting a high-intensity war of the era would not again be necessary. Frankly, we had a pretty rough time of it in the Crimea, but that was relatively small compared with the shock that we got in 1914 when we had an army that was designed only as a back-up for a colonial police operation. It was an army of brave, disciplined people, but with none of the modern equipment of its enemy. It is not an exaggeration to say that if the Admiralty and the Navy estimates had been treated in the way in which the War Office and the Army estimates had been treated by the House for a generation, we would have been in serious danger of losing the first world war, perhaps fairly early on.
The truth is that armed forces do not exist to deal with the here and now: that is not their principal purpose. However important the situation in Bosnia, however anxious we may be to contribute to the crisis in Rwanda, however urgent the various demands on our military manpower in peacetime, the prime purpose of the armed forces is to deal with the crisis that arises only once in a generation--it may not arise for 50 or 60 years--when there is a threat to the continued existence of the nation.
There is a nasty whiff of history about the events taking place in the ex-Soviet states. Twice in the past 200 years the largest power in Europe has imploded economically
and politically, its armed forces have felt humiliated and the price of bread on the streets has risen. One was post-revolutionary France; the other was Weimar Germany. [Interruption.] I shall gladly give way to my hon. Friend the Minister of State for the Armed Forces, as he obviously wants to say something--no, he does not.
I support my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's comment that the prime requirement is to maintain a capability to participate in and deter a high-intensity war. When we look at what has happened in the ex-Soviet states and at the situation in Russia, whose leader is on his sickbed, we should worry about the potential for things to go badly wrong. On a visit to Russia last year, I met the leader of the communist party in that region, who came to power there a few weeks after my visit. I am afraid that our visit to provide political advice to his democratic opponents was a complete failure. He was a most impressive guy. The last words he said to me as I left that meeting were, "Mr. Brazier, you must not imagine that you, in the west, can disassociate yourself from what is unfolding in this country. Just remember the panic you had in the west because one nuclear power complex in Ukraine went critical 10 years ago. Think of the scope for things to go wrong in a country with 40,000 nuclear weapons." Neither post-revolutionary France nor Weimar Germany had nuclear weapons.
The serious problems that could threaten our vital national interests are not just the other side of what used to be the iron curtain. There is a dangerous stand-off between Israel and the Palestinian people, which could destabilise that end of the Mediterranean. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein--a man who is sitting almost on top of the bulk of the world's oil supplies--is once again throwing his weight about. Iran is developing a nuclear programme. Indeed, the Iranians largely financed the successful North Korean nuclear programme.
We do not know when the next threat of a high-intensity war will come. We do not know whether it will be in six months, six years or 16 years--but I would put money on its not being 60 years away. The Secretary of State is right to say that the maintenance of a high-intensity war fighting capability must remain the core of our defence programme and must never turn into a collection of peacetime commitments, even though some of them, including Northern Ireland, are vital to our national security. Two issues stem from that. First, when deciding how much we can take on--in particular, the decision, which is very close now, on our future role in Bosnia--we must ask not only whether we can play such a role within an affordable resource base, but how far it will compromise, through overstretch, our ability to maintain that core war fighting capability.
Secondly, my right hon. Friend's comment emphasises the divide across the Chamber. We have heard from the Labour Front Bench that one of the first things a Labour Government would do on coming to office would be to hold a defence review. None of the Labour Front Bench speeches included a clear statement about the criteria for that review. The Labour party is not keen on spending more money on defence. I shall not refer to party conferences again, but it is certainly not proposing any more money. Moreover, there is a terrific appetite on the Labour Back Benches for more and more peacekeeping operations. I suspect that the core requirement for a high-intensity capability with world class armed forces whose prime role is to defend the vital interests of this
country within our principal alliance would be progressively eroded and undermined if the Labour party was ever to take power.
In the closing minutes of my speech, I should like to focus on personnel issues. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Minister of State for the Armed Forces is replying to today's debate. The Government have undoubtedly given us the tools, particularly in the past few months. They have given the armed forces a series of extremely important orders. The three Air Force orders made in the summer came on top of earlier orders for the Apache, the medium-lift helicopters, the Hercules, the three new frigates and the amphibious ships announced in July, but we still have serious concerns about personnel matters.
I welcome the fact that recruitment is beginning to pick up a little, but overstretch has become a serious problem. The Navy's commitments have increased by one third in the past 10 years, while the number of warships has fallen by one third. The result is that our ship crews are working twice as hard. One hears again and again of examples of overstretch in the Army. I recently heard of a soldier who has spent three consecutive Christmases away from his family. If that soldier does not get back from Bosnia in November, this will be his fourth Christmas away. People understand the need to make such sacrifices. None the less, numbers are becoming extremely tight.
I would like to make four points about personnel, and I am sure that, as ever, my hon. Friend the Minister will listen to them. First, one element of the Bett report is causing enormous disquiet in the forces--it has been mentioned to me by several people at different levels. It concerns the prospect of job reviews across the three services.
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