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19 Dec 2002 : Column 1074—continued

5 pm

Mr. Elfyn Llwyd (Meirionnydd Nant Conwy): It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Braintree (Mr. Hurst), who made a fine speech with which I heartily agreed. I am not sure about the roads that he mentioned at the beginning, but the rest of his speech certainly rang a bell with me.

I shall speak briefly about what will not be a happy Christmas for many of my constituents. On 7 July this year, The Sunday Times carried an article with the banner headline XBritain is to get a robot air force to fight terrorists as part of a multi-million-pound overhaul of its armed services". The article went on to refer to pilotless planes, which, it states,

Xwere the success story of the Afghanistan conflict and were credited with killing Mohammed Atef".

The article reports:

XAn American Predator, flown from McDill air force base in Florida, located a building where Atef was staying near Kabul and attacked it with an anti-tank missile."

It refers to the strategic defence review and continues, interestingly:

XBritish equipment in future will be bought to be more compatible with that of its allies. That is bound to cause consternation among opponents of Britain's increasingly close military ties to America."

For once, I am not critical of that aspect, and I shall explain why. The article went on to state:

XThe planes will be flown by a pilot sitting in a cockpit in a ground station in Britain or from a mobile command centre."

It refers to one location already shortlisted, Llanbedr in Gwynedd in my constituency,

Xfrom where the drones can be flown over Cardigan Bay during training."

Within a few weeks of the article appearing, the Ministry of Defence announced its intention to close that airfield. The announcement was met with shock and dismay. Several hundred constituents have worked there for many years and their loyalty was beyond doubt. It seems that the company was gearing up for that shock announcement at Christmas 2001, and that redundancy processes have not been followed. The unswervingly loyal work force have been kicked in the teeth by QinetiQ, a company in which the Government are a major shareholder. They have not been treated in the way that one would expect staff to be treated.

The decision to close the airfield at Llanbedr and with it the Jindivik target service seems to have been taken in the face of several contrary requirements. The current role of Jindivik is to provide the Air Force with an

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effective airborne target system at a reasonable cost. In order for the trials to be realistic, a full-scale representative target is required. That has been done successfully at Llanbedr for many years. Unfortunately, neither the UK nor the BVRAAM—beyond visual range air-to-air missile—partner nations have a full-scale target available. Jindivik was selected as the nearest representative target available.

That is no longer an option, because the company and the Government preferred Mirach, which will be selected for trials. The Mirach costs are based on each target completing 25 flights before loss. The longest-operating Jindivik has completed 204 flights, and the largest number of flights by a UK Jindivik is 265.

Given the above, it is difficult to follow the logic of closing Llanbedr airport as a cost-saving exercise. Each of the lost Mirachs cost #200,000, and on their trial runs in the Hebrides many failed. The most illogical aspect of the proposed closure of the Llanbedr target service is that when a UK project, or the Royal Air Force, requires a target, there will not be one available if Mirach does not come up to standard. If QinetiQ cannot provide that target, money will be spent on improving an overseas range to enable it to meet the requirements of the UK trial. Essentially, experts say that money would be spent in Sweden, France, South Africa or the United States to meet the UK's trial requirements rather than on improving range facilities in the UK, thus allowing UK plc to be a leader in ranges and target facilities.

The other concern about closure of the airport comes from the RAF. The airport is very important for emergency landings. Indeed, the RAF uses the base hundreds of time a year and, typically, 86 times a year for emergency movements.

On 24 September, a meeting was held with the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Dr. Moonie), together with members of his staff, the unions from Llanbedr airport and my Welsh Assembly colleague. The response that we received was not encouraging, but the Minister said that he would reply in detail on each point raised. To be fair, he did so within a reasonable time. We heard earlier today about some Departments' huge delay in responding, but on 12 October the Minister wrote to me with a detailed response to the many points that had been raised at that meeting. I wish now to analyse the points in his letter, as it is important to have those on the record.

Significantly, the Minister's letter did not mention either the combined aerial target service procedure—he referred to a period before the CATS contract was being discussed—or the cost of introducing Mirach. Although the Minister said that he undertook to reply to all the points that we had raised, he responded only on the Jindivik-specific points. Many other issues were raised relating to the airport at Llanbedr. In particular, we required a response on use of the airfield by RAF Hawk aircraft and on the potential to use the airfield for testing and development of future unmanned aircraft vehicles.

The Minister said:

XQinetiQ's proposals followed an extensive review of the facilities it currently operates on behalf of the Ministry of Defence. The review confirmed that the MOD owns a large number of diverse sites and capabilities, and that a substantial surplus exists within the T&E"—

19 Dec 2002 : Column 1076

test and evaluation—

Xenvironment as a whole. This highlights the fact that provision of T&E is not currently being conducted in a cost effective manner and that significant transformation is required to provide better value for money for the MOD and hence for the taxpayer."

That shows that value for money is key to the MOD's thinking. Alas, the interim use of Mirach pre CATS will not provide that.

The Minister then said:

XIn terms of aerial target provision, no single system can provide all the capability needed for all weapon systems. Jindivik has met our requirements well, but it does have limitations. Mirach"—

the new one—

Xhas limitations too."

He goes on to sing the praises of Mirach, which is, unfortunately, misleading. He says:

XMirach can for example fly multi targets and in formation and is designed to be a fully mobile system."

Jindivik also has a proven capability to fly multi-target and in formation.

The Minister then referred to the relative sizes of the Mirach and the Jindivik, and said that

Xthe requirement for a full-scale representative target is not so robust as stated. The choice of target for any T&E activity is inevitably based on an assessment of many factors and the choice of Jindivik as the nearest representative target for ASRAAM and BVRAAM in itself involved necessary compromise. QinetiQ has evaluated the performance of Mirach against the RAF's usage of Jindivik and in terms of flying performance and signature characteristics, the build standard of Mirach will provide an adequate replacement for Jindivik. Any target system has a series of limitations—no single system can provide all the capability needed to assess each and every weapon system."

The experts' response to that argument is that the visual signature of Jindivik is substantially larger than that of Mirach. Jindivik is 7.1 m long with a wingspan of 6.3 m, while Mirach is 4.1 m long and has a wingspan of 2.3 m. The difference is likely to result in a substantial increase in the number of aborted missile firings, due to the fighter being unable to acquire the target. The wasted fighter target sorties come at a cost that will ultimately have to be borne by the MOD.

The Minister went on to say:

XQinetiQ has confirmed that Mirach is the replacement target for Jindivik."

However, on 13 September, an announcement was made under the heading XInvitations to Negotiate" to three bidders for the new system—Team Firecats, Insight Global Target Systems and a team led by QinetiQ, in which the Government have a stake. They were bidding for the CATS contract. It seemed that no one would know which target would be the long-term replacement for Jindivik until the winner was chosen. Mirach has a guaranteed life of only a few months beyond the proposed demise of Jindivik. The point that I am making is that the Government were actively pursuing the Mirach system with their preferred bidder while inviting two other companies to submit bids for replacement. I think that that procedure is rather skewed. I question whether it is morally right and I do not know whether it was legally right either.

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The Minister went on to state:

XThe suggestion that no hardware costs remain is incorrect . . . There are also other costs associated with the retention of Jindivik which have to be included",

and so on. Keeping Jindivik in operation for the short period between its proposed retirement date and the start of the CATS contract should not incur any extra cost. In contrast, procuring and introducing Mirach to run from the middle of 2004 until the introduction of CATS and then scrapping it if it does not form part of the CATS solution will be extremely costly. That will certainly not be a cost-saving approach for the Government.

The Minister also states:

XOur understanding of the capabilities and limitations of Mirach will develop as we gain operational experience".

He thereby says that it will not be perfect when it goes into operation—a rather strange thing for a Minister to say. He goes on to state:

Xthe system and QinetiQ's processes will be modified where necessary",

which is again questionable in terms of the way forward. That statement implies that many months, if not years, will be needed to identify, design and produce modifications to the airframe, system and procedures. Unless the CATS contest has been prejudged, Mirach has a guaranteed life of only a few months.

In referring to Jindivik and Mirach, the Minister said:

XBoth systems have the capability to recover towed targets by a number of means. Depending on exactly which towed target is used, Mirach targets are either ditched into the sea after use (as with Jindivik), recovered with the aircraft if undamaged (as with Jindivik), or parachuted into the sea for recovery".

The Jindivik solution of bringing the target back with the aircraft is superior. The targets do not have to be searched for by a helicopter or with boats before they can be recovered. The recovery of Jindivik is unaffected by sea state. In those circumstances, Jindiviks would not be lost where Mirachs would be.

As I said, until the CATS competition has been decided, the long-term replacement for Jindivik is not known, or should not be known. I am extremely unhappy about the way in which the base has been treated. The work force have been through a long period of indecision, the privatisation of the company, and limited contracts three or four times in the past 25 years or so. Their loyalty and specialisms are beyond question and they deserve better.

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