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Dr. Reid: Was it Shrivenham?

Mr. Spellar: Contrary to what my hon. Friend may believe, it was not Shrivenham. He is anticipating my next point.

The Minister's response continued:

"no significant arguments have emerged, nor have any new suggestions been made which have caused us to alter our original proposals. The costings continue to demonstrate that Camberley is the most cost effective option.


I can therefore confirm that we shall establish the Joint Service Command and Staff college at Camberley, and that we plan to open it and close the colleges at Bracknell and Greenwich in late 1997."--[Official Report, 30 March 1995; Vol. 257, c. 744.]

We now come to February 1996. In reply to a question from a Conservative Back Bencher--one therefore presumes that the Government wanted to give this information--the Minister said:

"We intend to dispose of the Bracknell site by the end of 1999.


The work so far has shown that Camberley is the most cost-effective and appropriate Ministry of Defence site for the college."--[Official Report, 6 February 1996; Vol. 271, c. 169.]

By 12 February, however, there was a slight warning rattle for Camberley. In response to a written question from my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark), the Minister said:

"the conclusion that Camberley is the most cost-effective and appropriate of the sites examined remains robust."

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The word "robust" may enter the political annals as a warning sign, alongside the word "unassailable" when applied to Chancellors--or, since Tuesday, is it now "infallible"? A similar word I found in the defence estimates was the word "challenging" in the context of a completion date of Project Horizon--as in, "We always thought that the date 2002 was challenging." That word is another warning sign to which colleagues should be alert.

The Minister's same answer of 12 February continued:

"We have examined Queen Elizabeth Park barracks at Guildford and the royal military academy Sandhurst as possible options for an interim site for the JSCSC as well as split site options, but work to date indicates that RAF Bracknell is likely to be the most appropriate and cost-effective temporary site."--[Official Report, 12 February 1996; Vol. 271, c. 443.]

That answer was also rather instructive on how much it is all costing. I shall not bore hon. Members with the minor details, but the answer states that detailed work to develop JSCSC proposals at Camberley is costing £328,000. There is no mention of Shrivenham.

On 2 May 1996, the Minister said in reply to a written question that work remained on schedule for the new Joint Service Command and Staff college

"to open at Bracknell in September 1997 and immediate next steps include formal planning consultation with the local authority."--[Official Report, 2 May 1996; Vol. 276, c. 579.]

It refers later to disposal plans.

Then, out of the blue, came an answer to the hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Wilkinson) to the effect that the college will be at Shrivenham. If that is the case, why have we had all the arguments about Greenwich, Camberley and Bracknell and the suggestions, made by hon. Members who know the situation better than I, about a joint site at Bracknell and Camberley? How much have we spent on this whole fiasco?

It has been a saga of incompetence, although one would never have known it from the Minister's introduction to the debate. However, it is clear from the texts that I have read out that no one had a clue. It was clear when my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich (Mr. Raynsford) was detailing various problems; it was clear during the debates on the Armed Forces Act 1996; and it is even clearer now. Perhaps the Minister who is to reply to the debate can give a better explanation for this sorry string of events.

We have mentioned some of the ploys that are surfacing in the hectic lead-in to the general election. Indeed, the Minister referred to the leak about a massive expansion of the cadet force. I hope that he can give a clearer account of the Government's intentions, but the way the issue has been dealt with is rather unfortunate. The general view in the House is that the cadet force performs a valuable role for the services and for society as a whole. Indeed, I thought that the Minister of State for the Armed Forces spoke movingly about that, but wild-eyed £1 billion schemes tend to detract from proposals for sensible expansion. I must say that some of the claimed merits of the cadet force that were trumpeted in the press seem slightly over-exaggerated to those of us who were in the CCF. It was good fun and good experience--

Mr. Bill Walker: I trust that the hon. Gentleman understands that the CCF is a tiny part of the cadet

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organisation. The Air Training Corps, for example, has squadrons throughout the community which could be expanded without any of the difficulties that he and others may foresee.

Mr. Spellar: As I rightly indicated, we support a reasonable, sensible and steady expansion, but not the attempt to have a cadet force in every school. As I am sure the hon. Gentleman will realise from his experience, the forces would not be able to handle such an expansion effectively, and nor would they wish to do so. We should not overdo the merits of the cadet forces, but we should recognise the contributions that the cadet forces can make, in their various manifestations, to forces intake and to society.

We should also recognise that the cadet force is not the only way in which young people, especially young men, can gain experience and make the transition into the adult world. Another route is the tradition of apprenticeships which has taken a battering from Government policies, especially in the MOD where so much work has been outsourced. No attempt has been made to maintain the level of apprenticeships or to guarantee the skills of the work force of the future. The result is a country with a shortage of skilled workers and an army of disaffected youth, but they will have their say soon.

Mr. Mans: The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the RAF's apprentice scheme was designed to produce apprentices who would become senior, high-quality non-commissioned officers later in their careers. The RAF is not cutting technical training. It is providing technical training for 17 and 18-year-olds and it is also providing leadership training as their careers develop. With that information, will the hon. Gentleman modify slightly his latter comments about trained personnel in the Air Force?

Mr. Spellar: The hon. Gentleman is missing the point. I was talking about the outsourcing of work to other companies which did not have a requirement to maintain apprenticeships. In an apprenticeship, young people learn a skill that enables them to be useful, productive and earning members of society. In some cases, they also have an effective role model--for the first time--in the skilled person with whom they are working. They have to work as part of a team and develop the social skills and discipline that may have been lacking. Apprenticeships provide a framework for young people to mature and move into adulthood, and that should not be disregarded. The cadet force plays a useful role, but it is not the only way to ensure that our young people get the chance to become useful members of society.

The young people who have been disadvantaged and dispossessed by the Government will shortly have a chance to have their say, and I can say with assurance that this is the last RAF debate before the election. The new Government look forward to working with the RAF, the defence manufacturers and the work force to build on past achievements and to develop a working partnership for an even more successful future.

5.43 pm

Mr. Michael Colvin (Romsey and Waterside): While the hon. Member for Warley, West (Mr. Spellar) has been a defence spokesman, he has learned that attack is the best

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form of defence. After the battering he got at the end of the speech by my hon. Friend the Minister of State for the Armed Forces, he was right to come out with his head down. The hon. Gentleman suggested that there might be a sinister reason for having our debate on the Royal Air Force today. I believe that we shall have our debate on the Army soon and I hope that we shall have the opportunity to debate all three services before the general election. The Defence Select Committee is undertaking three inquiries--on defence budget funding, on heavy lift and on defence medical services--all of which merit a debate in the Chamber.

The hon. Member for Warley, West raised the issue of the tri-service staff college. The Liaison Committee is currently reviewing the powers and the role of our Select Committees and we have found that sometimes it is difficult--now that many departmental duties are conducted by agencies or, as in the case of the tri-service staff college, under the private finance initiative--to obtain the figures that would enable us to assess whether a decision is cost-effective. Sometimes the figures are described as commercially confidential and we cannot have them.

The role of Select Committees and their relationship with the Public Accounts Committee is also important. The Select Committees would become defunct if money issues were considered only by the Public Accounts Committee. That is not what was intended, but the Public Accounts Committee has existed for so long that it has adopted that role. The House would benefit if some of its duties were passed to the specific departmental Select Committees, because that would give us more power to scrutinise, for example, the cost-effectiveness of the tri-service staff college.

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