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I have a problem with the whole concept of “capability rather than platforms” that the Government advance. Their argument that they were able to reduce numbers because they did not previously understand the capability of what was coming is untenable, because the capability of the new generation destroyers, submarines and surveillance aircraft were perfectly well known to the MOD when the original totals were agreed in the SDR
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in 1998—before the Kosovo campaign, before 9/11, before the invasion of Afghanistan and before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

In the case of the Type 45 destroyers, not only may the total be as low as half a dozen, but the repeated requests of the Royal Navy for them to be fitted with Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles have been flatly refused by the Government.

Mr. Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con): My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. Does he agree that there is an additional argument if increased capability is used as an excuse for reducing numbers? What about the other side? Presumably, any potential enemy’s capability is increasing in the same way.

Dr. Fox: Indeed, although I caution my hon. Friend against applying logic too closely to MOD policy, as he might find it lacking.

The dubious rationale for the policy advanced by the Government is that what matters is capability, not platform numbers. That argument was elevated to the status of a doctrine by the then Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Hoon), in a lecture at the Royal United Services Institute on 26 June 2003. He concluded that “advances in technology” and

meant that

Perhaps we cannot disregard increases in capability, but to say that measuring the number of units or platforms in the possession of our armed forces will no longer be significant strikes me as completely irresponsible.

In response to that statement, the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Alan West, told the magazine Warships International Fleet Review, in an “emperor’s new clothes” moment, that

That was a specific rebuttal of the then Secretary of State’s argument that the number of units or platforms would no longer be significant in measuring the capability of the armed forces. Admiral Sir Alan West also pointed out that

a reference to the calculated risk taken in phasing out the FA2 Sea Harrier six years before the joint combat aircraft was expected to come into service with the first of the new carriers in 2012.

Mr. Tom Watson (West Bromwich, East) (Lab): As a very short-lived former member of the Admiralty Board, I came to today’s debate to voice some sympathy with the sentiments expressed to the House. I understand the list of criticisms that the hon. Gentleman has made, but we will put those right only with extra investment. Is he bringing new money to the Navy today, or is he going to give us his usual list of uncosted whinges?

Dr. Fox: There will probably come a point in the not-too-distant future when I will be on the Government Benches answering the questions and taking responsibility
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for policy. In the meantime, it is this Minister and this Government who need to answer for one basic fact. They set out the defence planning assumptions that came from the SDR, and they are responsible for the overstretch. Either they need to reduce those assumptions or they must increase the resources to match them. What they cannot do is to continue with those assumptions in the light of the current force strength. Doing so produces continual overstretch, the results of which we see daily. As is customary for the Opposition—and as Labour did when in opposition—we will produce our own review of what we believe to be this country’s foreign policy imperatives, and from that we will conduct a full review when we take office, as the Government did in 1998. In the meantime, it is up to the Government to defend their stewardship of our armed forces, which I am afraid has been lacking up to now.

Mr. Doug Henderson (Newcastle upon Tyne, North) (Lab) rose—

Sarah McCarthy-Fry rose—

Dr. Fox: I shall give way again in a moment; I am aware of your strictures about time, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

On the decision to dispose of three Type 42 destroyers and three Type 23 frigates, the First Sea Lord said:

Referring to the Type 45s, he added:

His conclusion was chilling:

a risk for which the Government are answerable.

Mr. Henderson: I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. There might be an argument as to whether the required number of ships is the number that he says is necessary, or the number that the Government are introducing. Setting that aside, if his figures are correct—and in the light of the question from my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Watson)—where would the money come from? If he is not prepared to say, that is very unfair. Would it come from another part of the defence budget, and if so, which part? If not, from which other public expenditure budget would it come?

Dr. Fox: These are not my figures but those that the Government produced as a result of the SDR. This is the number of ships that the Government said that they required in the armed forces to carry out their policy, as a result of their own defence review. My question is: what has changed? According to the defence planning assumptions arising from the SDR analysis, the Government required a certain number of ships. They did not change those assumptions, and I
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imagine that that they are not changing now. Why, therefore, has the number of ships required to carry out those assumptions gone down? It is not me who has said that we are taking “risk on risk”; rather, it was the former First Sea Lord. I am simply putting it to the Government that those carrying out the policy described by the Government in the SDR believe that they are not being given the tools to do the job that they need to do.

When we take office, we will look at the defence planning assumptions and we might conclude that a different foreign policy would require a different shape of defence, and if so, we will set it out. However, discussing that is not the purpose of today’s debate; its purpose is to hold the Government to account for their stewardship of the Royal Navy, which, in the words of those in it, seems to be failing very badly.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry rose—

Mr. Watson rose—

Dr. Fox: I will continue, if I may.

When the First Sea Lord talked about the Government taking risks, what did he mean? We live in a hugely interdependent global trade environment in which none of us will be immune to potential damage inflicted on partner economies. Much of this trade is maritime trade. Seaborne terrorism could cripple global trade, and we already know, for example, of al-Qaeda’s plans to blow up ships as they sail through maritime “choke points” such as Suez, Panama and the straits of Malacca. Admiral West continued to spell out his concerns both up to and after his retirement. At the beginning of 2006, he drew an unfavourable comparison between the 65 destroyers and frigates available at the time of the Falklands war and the 25 available now. He said:

The following month, the Public Accounts Committee found that about a third of the armed forces were not ready to go to war, with the situation facing the Navy being of particular concern. The report followed a study by the National Audit Office in 2005, which found that 60 per cent. of the fleet was in a good state of readiness, with 24 ships placed on reduced support status and a sixfold increase in the practice of cannibalisation, whereby some ships are stripped of vital components, such as sonar equipment and missile systems, to keep others in operation.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry rose—

Dr. Fox: I give way to the hon. Lady in the hope, perhaps vain, that we will hear a better point this time.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is extremely knowledgeable about naval matters, but he persists in quoting the previous First Sea Lord and has twice mentioned the term “overstretch”. I was at a briefing last Monday with the current First Sea Lord when one of the hon. Gentleman’s Conservative colleagues
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asked the same question as him, saying that the Navy was overstretched. The First Sea Lord emphatically denied that, saying, “Stretched, certainly—given current commitments that is inevitable—but overstretched, certainly not.”

Dr. Fox: The hon. Lady will be delighted when I come to what the current First Sea Lord said before pressure for a correction was applied by the Ministry of Defence.

It was only to be expected that, having devastated the size of the fleet, the Government would turn their attention to the infrastructure that supports it. Consequently, a review of the three existing naval bases—Devonport, Portsmouth and Faslane—has begun, generating widespread fear that either Devonport or Portsmouth will be closed. The strategic folly of forcing the Royal Navy to depend on a single south-coast naval base is too obvious to require elucidation, yet some naval staff officers are contemplating it if the alternative is to lose even more warships from the front line.

In a debate in Westminster Hall on 5 December, a junior Defence Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg), who is in the Chamber today, said:

It was pointed out to the Minister that the situation was simply a result of the Government’s decision to cut the size of the fleet but, despite promising to return to that point later in his speech, he did not do so. Perhaps the Minister of State will deal with it when he speaks in a moment.

Worse was to follow when, only three days later, a tabloid newspaper reported that under a plan to help to pay for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, a further six destroyers and frigates

compared with the 55 destroyers and frigates in the Japanese navy. Far from denying that that was under consideration, an MOD source was quoted as saying:

Those of us who have served in ministerial office can understand the well-hidden code in that sentence.

It thus appears that the Royal Navy is threatened not just with a choice between losing more warships and closing a major base but, quite possibly, with the loss of both. How much longer can or will the process be allowed to continue on the back of the promise—yet to be carried out—of a firm order for the two aircraft carriers? How secure is the carrier project itself?

Mr. Gary Streeter (South-West Devon) (Con): My hon. Friend and I were elected to this place in 1992. Can he remember a time since then when the world was more dangerous and uncertain than it is today? Is not it
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utter folly to continue to salami-slice our Navy? Now there is the ludicrous proposal that we might go down to having one base on the southern coast, either at Portsmouth or at Plymouth, so will he give me a firm assurance that we will strongly oppose the continuing salami-slicing of our Navy and that we will not accept a reduction to only one naval base on the southern coast?

Dr. Fox: There are times when the Government of the day decide that it is appropriate to reduce the size of the defence budget or to reduce the size of the armed forces. Indeed, after “Options for Change”, we ourselves decided that, with the end of the cold war, it was reasonable to see a reduction in the size of our armed forces. However, against a backdrop of increasing international tension and of increasing deployment of our forces, it is not reasonable to cut the size of the forces themselves. I cannot recall a time when we asked our forces to do more while we were cutting their size. That is what is unprecedented.

On the issue of the carriers, the former First Sea Lord, having ring-fenced £3.5 billion for their construction, said:

I share that view.

Angela Watkinson (Upminster) (Con): Does my hon. Friend agree that the policy of freezing promotion for lieutenants in the Royal Navy will have an adverse effect on recruitment because new recruits at Dartmouth will not be able to see a clear career path? Furthermore, officers who have already served as lieutenants for a considerable time and who would normally expect to be promoted will now find that their career has hit the buffers so they may even consider retiring from the Navy. The policy will therefore affect retention as well. What does my hon. Friend think about that?

Dr. Fox: Many of us have received representations on this issue from those serving in the Royal Navy. There are of course inevitable consequences for manpower if we keep reducing the number of ships in the surface fleet. The Minister of State is vigorously shaking his head, so it is clearly an issue that he wants to address in his speech. I hope that my hon. Friend will get a suitable answer from him on the future plan for career paths in the Royal Navy.

There is a growing view that we are in danger of sacrificing long-term investment in properly balanced armed forces, behaving instead like “tin-pot countries” that exhaust their defence budgets on running rather than developing services. Abandoning major equipment programmes because of short-term campaign pressures ignores the fact that the United Kingdom could be facing even greater threats in the future than we are facing today. When one considers the catalogue of cuts inflicted on the Royal Navy—first, five major warships, then a sixth, then eight more and now the threat of yet another half dozen, with the incentive of the two giant carriers used to buy compliance at every stage—one sees that the feeling of betrayal at the top of the service
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is palpable. If, after all this pain and humiliation, one or both of the carriers fails to be ordered, that feeling of betrayal will rightly become absolute. Today we require specific answers from the Minister. When will we see the new carriers in operation? How many destroyers will we have? Will they have the ground-attack Tomahawk capability that the Navy wants? How many more ships will be mothballed? How many frigates will we have left?

The United Kingdom has embarked under this Government on high-intensity military operations with its defence budget languishing at a lower percentage of GDP than at any time since the disastrous era between the two world wars. Typically, the Prime Minister claimed that the figure had remained constant since 1997, at about 2.5 per cent. of GDP, when he added:

In reality, the infrastructure and front line of the Royal Navy are being sacrificed to finance the waging of current campaigns—an act of folly for which future generations will pay.

The current First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Jonathon Band, said recently:

He would not be alone.

5.28 pm

The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Mr. Adam Ingram): I beg to move, To leave out from “House” to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:


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