Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
400-419)
MR QUENTIN
DAVIES MP, GENERAL
SIR KEVIN
O'DONOGHUE AND
VICE ADMIRAL
PAUL LAMBERT
15 DECEMBER 2009
Q400 Chairman: I have.
Mr Davies:— simply because
although we have been deliberating on this for some time and,
of course, I have been playing a full part in that (although I
have not played a part in that just in the last few days), and
the Prime Minister wanted, in the light of his visit to Afghanistan,
to come to final decisions on this matter. The Secretary of State
himself came back from Afghanistan on Friday. I did not see him
on Friday because I was in Spain at the A400M ministerial meeting,
so final decisions have only recently been taken. I have to say
that we have made these announcements as rapidly as we have been
able to. It is perfectly true that it is unfortunate from the
point of view of your Committee's meeting, which is why I asked
yesterday that you should be given a confidential briefing which
I understood you had been given. I hope that took place. I am
very happy to come back subsequently when you and the Committee
have been able to digest these announcements to talk in further
detail about them. I am not, of course, personally responsible
for the timing of these matters, but I assure you there was no
conspiracy to try to make sure they came out as late as possible
for this session of the Committee, absolutely not. I am very sorry
about it. It is one of those unfortunate coincidences.
Chairman: We have an awful lot of those.
Q401 Mr Jenkin: What is in the Statement?
Mr Davies: I think we had better
get this helicopter statement here and then I will read it to
you.
Q402 Mr Jenkin: Rather than read
it to us, Minister, can you summarise what is in it?
Mr Davies: I would rather have
the statement in front of me if you do not mind.
Q403 Mr Jenkin: Presumably you know
what is in it.
Mr Davies: I know the substance
of it, yes, but—
Q404 Mr Jenkin: Could you just tell
us the substance of it, please?
Mr Davies: It is very good news,
Mr Jenkin; it is extremely good news. It is something—
Q405 Mr Jenkin: That is a subjective
assessment of it. Can we just have what is in it?
Mr Davies: It is something that
I have been working towards for at least six months and which
we discussed when I last came before the Committee, which is a
major investment in new lift helicopters and Chinooks. We are
planning to buy 24 new Chinooks and two of them will be to replace
the Chinooks which have been damaged and destroyed in theatre
and the remaining 22 will be additions to the fleet. That is an
enormously important enhancement of our Chinook fleet, which will
be now 70 when those deliveries are completed, and there will
be a corresponding increase in the availability of Chinooks for
Afghanistan. Indeed, we shall be bringing forward more Chinooks
into Afghanistan—of course, I cannot give you the exact
numbers here because we never reveal the numbers of equipment
in theatre—in the course of next year, so we will not be
waiting for delivery of the new Chinooks. We will be able to deliver
more Chinooks as the Mk3s become available, and they are currently
becoming available. That will be followed by new deliveries of
Chinooks from Boeing over the coming years, starting in 2012,
so I think it is unambiguously good news and it is exactly the
kind of announcement I had hoped to be able to make.
Q406 Chairman: What about Wildcat?
Mr Davies: Wildcat is doing well.
It has had its first flight.
Q407 Chairman: No, not how well is
it doing. Does the helicopter announcement include purchases of
more Wildcats?
Mr Davies: Chairman, we are already
committed to buying 62 Wildcat. There is no change in that at
all. The Wildcat is on target, on schedule and doing well. As
I said, it has already had its first flight fairly recently.
Q408 Mr Havard: I want to go back
to the Chairman's first question which is about the sequencing
of events. We were told, and it is in this NAO report here, about
the Strategy for Acquisition Reform in the new year. "New
year" is a fairly elastic term; I have asked this question
before and I was told it was going to be early in the new year.
How does this Statement that is being made today relate to the
Strategy for Acquisition Reform that is going to be announced
in the new year? The Concept phase of Trident was due to be announced
about last September. I was then told it was going to be December.
It is already December the something-or-other, so where does that
fit with the sequence of events? I was then told that this stuff
about DIS and DIS2 was coming and that some of these things might
be coupled together with a Green Paper which might be in February,
etc. The question I am asking is, can somebody somewhere, along
with all of that list, pick up the questions we have asked in
the past about the various changes to performance management systems
that are supposed to deliver these changes as they come, and what
the sequence of events is for the implementation of these various
different programmes and activities, because frankly I have now
lost the plot? Unless I am listening to the BBC at half past six
in the morning I do not know what is going on and that seems now
to be a constant strategy, and, frankly, it is unacceptable.
Mr Davies: Mr Havard, all I can
say is that there has been absolutely no attempt to be anything
less than totally straightforward—
Q409 Mr Havard: I am not suggesting
it was a deliberate activity; forget all of that. Maybe it is
a cock-up, but, whatever it is, it does nothing to illuminate
the argument as far as we are concerned so that we can do proper
scrutiny of your activity, which is what we should be doing on
behalf of the British people.
Mr Davies: I am not concealing
any statements from you and I have no plans to make any statements
myself. No doubt I will be making them but I have not got any
current plans to make any statements about the equipment procurement
activities for which I am responsible. I should say that I am
responsible, as you know, as Defence Equipment and Support Minister,
which could be translated as procurement and logistics, for those
two things for the current equipment procurement programme, and,
of course, for the DE&S, and of course the management of the
programme and the DE&S we continue to make changes and improvements
in. I can talk about that if you like. Lord Drayson has been asked
to look forward at potential new models for acquisition reform.
He will be bringing forward his ideas in due time, I do not know
when. I believe he is coming before you, Chairman, so there will
be a lot of opportunity to talk to him about that, but that very
much is a matter which I think it would be better to refer to
him because he will be able to tell you how close he is to coming
to conclusions on that matter.
Q410 Mr Havard: Can someone give
me the matrix of activities and the timelines of resourcing with
all of these various developments and a little bit more information
about which one comes before what?
Mr Davies: I think I have just
explained to you, Mr Havard—
Q411 Mr Havard: No, you did not.
I knew all of that. What I do not know is what is happening when,
in due time, some time, somewhere. It is not good enough.
Mr Davies: The implication is
that I have in my mind a schedule which I am concealing from you.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Q412 Mr Havard: You ought to have
a schedule even if you have not got one, and I would like to know
what it is and whether you have written it.
Mr Davies: All I can tell you
is that the Secretary of State is making a statement this afternoon
in the House and that is the only statement which I am aware of
which is currently planned to be made. No doubt there will be
further statements in the new year but I have no date for them.
Q413 Chairman: But, Minister, you
must know roughly when the Defence Industrial Strategy is expected
to be announced. Say January or February?
Mr Davies: I think it probably
is in January or February; it is in the early new year. That is
what we have stated and I am sure that is true, but I am not in
charge of that aspect of matters so I cannot be more precise,
Chairman. I cannot wade in on somebody else's territory and announce
publicly when they will be reporting.
Chairman: I see; okay.
Q414 Mr Jenkins: Perhaps I could
ask you on the announcement of the new-raising helicopter numbers.
Are they being built in this country or are they being built abroad?
How does that fit in with our Defence Industry Strategy to maintain
the skills base in this country and are they being supplied by
the same manufacturer who supplied us in the recent past with
a load of helicopters which could not fly and we had to pay again
to put them right? Is it the same company?
Mr Davies: Mr Jenkins, first of
all, I understand why you are asking the question. Where we can
we obviously like to support employment in this country and we
like to support the British defence industry—
Q415 Mr Jenkins: The answer is no.
Mr Davies:— and we do many
things in order to achieve those two purposes, but when it comes
to the crunch what we have to do is buy the best equipment that
money can buy for our Armed Services. We have to do everything
we possibly can to make sure we contribute to the success of current
operations and above all contribute to the saving of lives of
our personnel. Those are the overriding considerations and we
are buying Chinook because Chinook is simply an incomparable aircraft.
It is much bigger than any other aircraft that we might think
of. In fact, apart from Russian ones, which, for obvious reasons,
we would not want to purchase, it is the biggest in the world.
I am quite convinced that is the right vehicle for us. I have
had endless conversations with people, including in the front
line in Afghanistan, right across the Services, not just limited
to the Army or the RAF, and there is universal consensus that
what we need is Chinooks. We are therefore buying Chinooks. They
will be manufactured in the United States but they will be supported
here. There will be a lot of work in Vector Aerospace in Gosport
where the existing Chinooks are being supported. You have made
reference there to the sad case—and it was a sad case and
a very regrettable case—of the Chinook Mk3s which resulted
from a contract signed by the last Conservative administration
and it took us many years to sort ourselves out there, but the
Mk3s are now coming into service. They are going to be exactly
similarly equipped as the other Chinooks we have in theatre so
we will have a uniform fleet, which is obviously important for
training and logistics purposes. As a result of the introduction
into service of those eight Mk3s we are going to be able in the
course of the coming months to release more Chinooks from Afghanistan
ahead of the deliveries from Boeing of the new helicopters to
which I have just referred.
Q416 Mr Jenkins: As it is the same
supplier you are going to be very careful when you go through
the order small print because there is nothing worse than getting
a car delivered and finding that it has got no wheels—"Oh,
you wanted a car with wheels?". You do not deal with those
people unless you are very careful. Can we have an assurance that
you will be extra careful with this company and this contract
in future?
Mr Davies: Mr Jenkins, we certainly
are and I can assure you that some very competent people are working
on this. We are very conscious of the lessons from the past in
this as in other fields. We do not forget these lessons, but I
would like to ask General Sir Kevin if I might, since you ask
for that kind of assurance, to say a bit more about the arrangements
we have for negotiating the purchase of this helicopter and the
arrangements we have for supporting it and making sure it delivers
the capability that we expect of it.
General Sir Kevin O'Donoghue:
And I think we need to remember that, setting aside the Mk3s,
which we have discussed before and were a bad procurement and
I accept that, the other Chinooks we have are outstanding aircraft
and they are doing sterling work out in theatre. Of course we
will make sure that the contract for the new ones is as you would
wish.
Q417 Mr Jenkin: May I just place
on record my entry in the Register of Members' Interests about
a defence manufacturer that sponsored a charitable event? Can
I ask very briefly about Merlin? Was there a competitive tender
for this order because they could be built by Boeing in the United
States or they could be built by Finmeccanica?
Mr Davies: We have to procure
them in the cheapest and most effective fashion, Mr Jenkin. We
are not interested in cutting any corners.
Q418 Mr Jenkin: So was there a competitive
tender?
Mr Davies: We are not going to
cut any corners but equally we are going to make sure we get the
best possible deal.
Q419 Mr Jenkin: Was there a competitive
tender?
General Sir Kevin O'Donoghue:
We have not gone to tender yet.
Mr Davies: We have had some additional
discussions with the supplier, with Boeing, but we have not concluded
a full production contract yet and you would not expect us to.
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