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Mr. Robert Key (Salisbury): Does the hon. Gentleman recall that the Armed Forces Minister's predecessor, the present Minister of Transport, the right hon. Member for
Hamilton, North and Bellshill (Dr. Reid), addressed that issue by giving a commitment that the Government would talk to the airlines to see whether they could agree a package? We would be grateful to hear the outcome of those discussions.
Mr. Hancock: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, as I remember that comment well. Perhaps the Minister will update tonight the progress that has been made in that area. However, as many pilots leave the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force to work abroad, I am not sure whether a discussion with British-based airlines will help. It was also suggested that people could be rounded up at jobcentres and recruited into the Royal Navy--which is only one step away from press-ganging.
A recent answer to my written question revealed that the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm is 12 pilots short. That does not sound like many, but we should remember that only 24 pilots complete their training in a good year. Many pilots are leaving the service: 10 times as many pilots asked to leave this year as in 1993. Some 27 pilots applied to leave the service last year--which is three more than qualify in any one year. How will we fill that gap? There is a job to be done, and we must find a way of turning the tide.
We must also turn the tide of departures from the Marines. Well-trained officers--captains of 28 and30--are leaving the service, as are well-qualified NCOs. I made that point in the general SDR debate. Those service men face promotion logjams, and must make very difficult choices. The situation is the same for Royal Navy personnel: when they progress above junior rank, they encounter a logjam that is difficult to shift. That is despite the fact that ships are going to sea with 5 per cent. and 7 per cent. crew deficiencies--or "gapping", as the Minister calls it.
It is not enough to say that we understand the problems--that will not boost morale in the Royal Navy. We will boost morale only if we come up with solutions that unlock those opportunities, and show young officers that they will have a future in the Royal Navy or the Royal Marines until they are 42 or 50. Many service men are taking serious decisions to leave literally months after completing very expensive, drawn-out training programmes. Undermanning is a serious problem in the Royal Navy.
If HMS Invincible were at sea today, it would not be right for it to be short of 50 or 60 crew members. Ships such as Invincible are the mainstay of our defence capability. A ship that must offer offensive or defensive support to our service personnel on land cannot go to sea with that sort of deficiency in its crew numbers. We must get to grips with that issue.
People leave the Navy not simply for career reasons. We did not need to invite Colin Powell to this country to tell us about personnel problems in our defence forces. If Channel 4 researchers can find ex-service men who say that they left the armed forces because of racial intolerance, why on earth cannot military intelligence find those people? We need to discuss with them what drove them out.
I do not want to hear Ministers claiming that there is no such thing as racial intolerance in the armed forces, when service personnel at different levels are leaving
because of it. Television companies locate those people, interview them and parade them on television, yet the Ministry of Defence is incapable of finding them. For goodness' sake, do not try to tell me that we need Colin Powell to instruct us in dealing with racial intolerance or personnel problems. We ought to be able to address those issues ourselves.
David Allen, then the youngest sailor in the Royal Navy, left the service because of bullying over a long period. They are not my words; any hon. Member can read them in the Library briefing. Perhaps Ministers should meet Mr. Allen and ask him to recount his experiences. They might ask him why he was driven out when he could, and should, have had a long career in the Royal Navy. His is not an isolated case. We need clear proposals for tackling those issues.
I have often said that we need a coherent policy on issues that affect men and women who serve or have served in the Royal Navy, or who have worked for it as civilians. I have mentioned the nuclear test veterans, the Gulf war syndrome people and the asbestos sufferers. In the most recent answers to my questions, I was told that another 106 compensation claims have been made for civilians and service men who were exposed to radiation while serving on or maintaining nuclear submarines.
Those people did not get radiation sickness or radiation-related illnesses by sitting in their front room; they got them while they were serving the country. Why does the Ministry of Defence drag out cases and force those individuals to endure long-winded litigation, causing them much suffering and distress? Suffering from a radiation-related illness is bad enough; can hon. Members imagine what it is like to contemplate two, three or five years of litigation against a Government who must know that there is no defensible position?
Mr. Spellar:
Is not the hon. Gentleman aware that we are a member of the nuclear industries compensation scheme precisely to avoid some of the problems that he describes?
Mr. Hancock:
I understand that entirely, but I should be grateful if, by the end of the debate, the Minister would explain why 106 compensation cases--some of which have been in existence for a considerable time--are outstanding? I know that he cares passionately about such issues; it is obvious, given his previous existence. He well knows what it is like to be on the other side, fighting for one's rights and for compensation for something that is not one's fault, and encountering barriers erected by big business or Government. We need to ensure that the MOD treats service personnel--male or female--and civilians properly.
We must also tackle overstretch. I vividly remember--as must the hon. Member for Portsmouth, North, who is sitting behind the Minister--the daily articles that appeared in my local paper about the protracted time that crews on Invincible were away from home last year, and the effect on the morale of crew and their families.
I welcome the idea of setting up a welfare association for the families of both the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines. I hope that the decision to base that organisation in Plymouth does not prevent it from having outposts in places such as Portsmouth. The overwhelming majority of service personnel in the United Kingdom--at least those
in married quarters--reside in Greater Portsmouth. I am inclined to think that the decision to locate the organisation in Plymouth should be reconsidered, bearing in mind where most of those families and service personnel who live ashore are based.
I hope that the Minister will give us an idea of what he and the Ministry of Defence will do to ensure that overstretch, undermanning and associated morale problems ease in the next two years. I want to ensure that we sign up to a manageable number of commitments, as we have a reduced number of ships with which to fulfil them. The one thing we know for certain is that we have fewer ships available. We also know that Foreign Office Ministers have given us other initiatives, which must be carried out. I should like assurances that overstretch will not be increased--that undermanning of ships' companies will quickly become a thing of the past.
I shall now discuss the two new carriers. Like other hon. Members, I welcomed the suggestion that the Royal Navy would be a significant gainer--if that is the right word--from the SDR, in that it could put two new big ships in the water, which would give us a significant advantage in any seaborne activity. However, we need to ask what package those ships will need.
I am sure that the Ministry of Defence agonised long and hard over the decision to opt for carriers. Even those who have read scant information about carriers know that they are difficult vehicles to protect. The Americans have an in-built protection system. On a ship of 100,000 tonnes with nearly 100 planes on board, the only role of at least 30 per cent. of those planes is to protect the carrier. However, the capability to protect a carrier of half that size from within or from on board is greatly reduced.
I want to ensure that we put two new aircraft carriers in the water, and that the Royal Navy has both the procurement capability and the ships and crews to protect those carriers properly. We want to ensure that those ships can go in harm's way. Certainly, HMS Ocean was not built to go in harm's way. It is a significant omission from the SDR that we have no answer to the question of how will the Government plan to protect those ships when they are in the water.
Other ships should not be sucked out of their commitments to protect carriers. The West Indies guard ship is a classic example, which may easily go. Arguably, it is no longer needed, but a few months ago I was the second speaker at an Oxford Research Group conference at which the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the hon. Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Lloyd), told us that he wanted the Royal Navy, and specifically that ship, to be used extensively to support anti-drug missions in the Caribbean and central America. It therefore cannot go, if we believe that the Foreign Office are leading on many defence-related issues. The ability of the Royal Navy to mount humanitarian missions throughout the world must be maintained and sustained; but will that be possible when it must also defend two very big carriers?
It is logical to discuss the option of retaining and converting the three existing carriers. I do not support that idea for a minute, but I believe that at least one carrier should be converted and retained, because it makes no sense for all three to be tied up simultaneously in Portsmouth dockyard--as I saw at first hand this year--with not one ready for sea. If we had needed to deliver,
in a short time, a fully crewed ship that was ready to go, we could not have done so. We heard earlier of the problems relating to two of the existing carriers.
We must consider all the options, but surely no one seriously suggests that the Government's commitment to the two carriers is less steadfast than it was when the Secretary of State made the announcement--or rather, when it was leaked. I hope that the Minister knocks any such suggestion firmly on the head tonight. I hope that, loud and clear, he will robustly defend the position. The Royal Navy deserves that much. It deserves to be told the truth, as do hon. Members.
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