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7.18 pm
Mr. Jonathan Sayeed (Mid-Bedfordshire): It is a pleasure to speak after the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd), who gave a thoughtful speech. I did not agree with all his points, but those about procurement--especially lower-level procurement--were well made, and I hope that Ministers will take account of them.
We have heard Back-Bench speeches from the hon. Member for St. Albans (Mr. Pollard)--who, unfortunately, is not in his place--and the hon. Member for South Derbyshire. I represent Mid-Bedfordshire. We would all probably say that we are as far from the sea as it is possible to get, but I am delighted by the way in which the hon. Member for South Derbyshire and the hon. Member for St. Albans were treated when they went on Royal Navy schemes.
I sometimes regret the fact that representatives of Navy News do not attend our debates on the Royal Navy. As one who has been an avid reader of that publication since I myself was in the Navy, I think that it would be good for the Navy if it reported what Back Benchers thought. It would be a fillip. Friends of mine who are still in the service sometimes feel that Parliament does not understand or care what they do, and most serving officers and men do not know that we have an annual debate on the subject. I think that it is the job of those on Navy News, if they bother to read the report of our debate, to reflect the warm words of Members of Parliament in the editorial columns.
Not since Patrick Duffy, the Labour Minister responsible for the Navy between 1976 and 1979, and Keith Speed, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in a
Conservative Government between 1979 and 1981, have we had a defence Minister who has served in the Navy. I suppose that, with so few ex-regulars in Parliament, it is not particularly surprising that not one of today's Ministers has served in the armed forces, but I find it regrettable. I do not blame the Ministers, for it is not their fault. It is a fact of political life nowadays.
The problem is not, of course, insuperable. The Government seem to have a Chancellor of the Exchequer who cannot count, a Secretary of State for Trade and Industry who has never run anything and a Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food who does not know his mangels from his wurzels, and it is true that, after a bit of time, someone who is new to a Department may turn out to be a good Minister. Nevertheless, if defence Ministers have not served in the armed forces, service chiefs and civil servants will sometimes get their way when they should not. Such people are not infallible.
The Royal Navy went to the Falklands with no early-warning aircraft, in type 21 frigates with aluminium superstructures. We saw the abolition of a reserve fleet, which I consider to have been a mistake, and changes by the last Government to the Royal Naval Reserve, which I think were profoundly mistaken; and, as the hon. Member for South Derbyshire pointed out, we have seen the Navy gold-plating much of the equipment that it has bought, when almost the same type of equipment has been available on the civilian market.
Service chiefs and civil servants do not always make the right decisions. Sometimes it is better for Ministers who understand the services to introduce a bit of common sense into decisions, because some of those decisions protect people's turf. It must be admitted that, on one or two occasions, the fact that Ministers have not understood the subject has proved quite valuable. It was, after all, a Labour Government who decided to scrap all the carriers. The Admiralty, rather cleverly, did a bit of spin doctoring, called the carriers through-deck cruisers and managed to get small aircraft carriers--and it is on the subject of carriers that I wish to begin my speech.
Mr. Hancock:
The hon. Gentleman has already had 10 minutes.
Mr. Sayeed:
I have been warming up. I have a long way to go yet.
The strategic defence review presaged the building of carriers weighing between 30,000 and 40,000 tonnes, carrying some 50 aircraft of a variable mix, and moving from an anti-submarine warfare role to a joint operations warfare role. I have no argument with that: it strikes me as absolutely right. Whether two carriers are enough is well worth debating, but I think it more important to consider whether we will get even one.
Paragraph 234 of the Defence Committee's eighth report states:
Paragraph 235 states:
Paragraph 235 of the report continues:
As I have said, I do not believe that two carriers are enough. We should bear in mind refits, docking and essential defects, self-maintenance periods and time on passage--let alone any active service damage, or the shaft problems that we experienced with an Invincible class carrier. Such problems often mean that, even if there are two carriers, only one is ready to go to sea at any given time.
Even more critical are the promised two carriers. They are not due until so far into the future that no funds have been set aside even for the preparatory work. As the strategic defence review bore not the fingerprints but the hoof marks of the Treasury, I will remain unconvinced that the promise will be kept until the First Lord of the Treasury--the Prime Minister--gives the House a categorical assurance that the money will, come what may, be made available to build the two carriers, and to do so on time. I believe that, if times get hard, we will be lucky if even one of them is built.
We know from the SDR that there was a trade-off between the two carriers and the landing platform docks--if they are ever built. The previous Government kept promising the LPDs but never built them, so I do not blame this Government alone--the Tory Government was also at fault. HMS Fearless had a bows-up attitude, as it could not always empty the water out of the stern. I hope that the LPDs will be built, as they will be essential, and I am pleased that HMS Ocean is so advanced in its trials that it can be used operationally.
We know that the frigate and destroyer fleet will be cut by 10 per cent. I believe that the previous Government cut the number of surface warships, particularly frigates and destroyers, by far too much. Anyone who knows how to protect a carrier, which is such a valuable asset,
realises that various kinds of ship have to be stationed around it at different distances. Allowing for refits, docking and essential defects, self-maintenance periods and so on, it will be difficult to protect two carriers that are at sea at the same time but operating in different areas. That will be possible only if nearly all the frigate and destroyer force is used and the distance between the carrier and the shore or conflict area is sufficiently great to be in itself a protection. However, carrier forces have to be fairly close in to be effective, which makes them vulnerable. Protection from other major warships nearby and air attack is critical.
I accept that money is tight. Money is always tight, even when one is not at war. When conflict looms, one realises that one does not have sufficient defence capabilities. There are ways round that. It was a considerable mistake to have scrapped any formal reserve fleet. I am not talking about the old reserve fleet of the 1970s, when ships were mothballed and were out of date when they came to be used. There is a procurement case for building hulls that can use modular-designed defence systems or command-and-control and propulsion equipment. That would enable up-to-date systems that can be slotted into hulls to be maintained on shore. As problems or conflicts arise, the number of hulls available could swiftly be increased dramatically.
The Navy also has to have the personnel. One problem is that people in the service have to spend a long time at sea. Those periods are far shorter than they were when I was at sea, but families are now more demanding; they are less accepting of the constraints of service life.
There is no doubt that having Wrens at sea has put pressure on families, as I warned on 5 February 1990 before the Minister even announced his decision. In some activities on warships, such as manning complex electronic equipment, Wrens do a superb job and are often better than male ratings. However, most of them are not built like Laura Davies the golfer and so--as anyone in the service will confirm--have difficulties in lifting heavy equipment, sea boats and so on around ships.
There are pressures on numbers. The Minister is absolutely right to encourage people from ethnic minorities to join the service. The service gives a superb education, a great self-belief and a good understanding of how to deal with the foibles of others in constricted circumstances. It is a superb way of life. The more British people who understand that the armed services are theirs and want to join them the better, so I applaud the Minister on the work that he is doing. His invitation to Colin Powell to address a conference was an excellent idea and I trust that it will bear fruit. However, it is critical that the selection and promotion of those who are black or brown is carried out on exactly the same basis as it is for white ratings and officers. There must be no favouritism, but there must be no discrimination.
In the debate on the SDR on 20 October, I made some points about the Royal Naval Reserve. I believe that the previous Government made a profound mistake in using the reserve to man the gaps in Her Majesty's warships. Until recently, the Royal Naval Reserve had a mine counter-measures role. As I said in that debate, laying mines is one of the cheapest forms of warfare. It is also one of the most damaging to any maritime nation and I find it extraordinary that the SDR has downgraded
that risk, as nearly every maritime waypoint--certainly every port on which we rely and certainly the Arabian gulf, from where we get our oil--is easily mined.
The Soviet Union sold tens of thousands of cheap ground and buoyed mines to a large number of countries with which we are rarely in agreement. Those mines can be deployed easily and nefariously from ships and aircraft. A merchant ship or a fishing vessel that seems perfectly innocent can put down enough mines to block Felixstowe, London, Southampton, Rotterdam or Hamburg.
Reserves would have needed retraining to engage in mine hunting, but I wish that the previous Government, instead of using them as a stop-gap to fill empty berths, had retrained them and used them in the specialist role that they have carried out with considerable distinction for decades. The Government have the opportunity to reverse a mistake.
"These new carriers should"--
"should" is in italics--
"be fully operational not later than 2018."
It now appears to be 2022. The paragraph goes on to state, in bold type, that
"a capability gap will exist until the new carriers are operational. We recommend that the MOD examine how the capabilities and capacities of the existing carriers could be upgraded before the new carriers are delivered and produce costings of the various options."
12 Nov 1998 : Column 541
That is critical. We know that this is an unsafe world; we know that we will need carriers. We have no right to send young men and women to sea without ensuring that their equipment works, and works well.
"The First Sea Lord also admitted that where two carriers had been operated 'back to back' in the Adriatic he was worried about 'our operational capability for contingency tasks which arise at short notice.'"
That was the last First Sea Lord, Sir Jock Slater, being extraordinarily polite--as one would expect him to be. What he actually meant was that two carriers were not enough. Two small carriers are certainly not enough. What we know is that one of the Invincible class carriers has been--I think this euphemism was used--"on very long readiness" for a very long time. The two effective carriers that we have are not enough; we need three carriers capable of putting to sea. That makes the decision on how many carriers will be built in the future absolutely critical.
"The implications of the decision to procure two rather than three carriers will be that our capability for contingency tasks may be significantly reduced . . . The ability of the proposed two carrier fleet to be able always to supply both carriers for simultaneous operations has not been adequately demonstrated."
Yet, in paragraph 236, the Committee states:
"We were repeatedly told that the UK's possession of two carriers was central to the SDR's expeditionary strategy, and were assured that the decision to procure such carriers would not be reversed."
I hope that promise is kept.
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