Migrant Crossings: Role of the Military

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

First, there are a lot of questions coming from the Opposition about the incompleteness of a plan. I would just reflect that Labour is routinely and continually silent on what it would do to ensure that our borders are protected and illegal migration is stopped. As for the UK-French relationship, no one has pretended that the part of the plan that I am answering questions on today is, in and of itself, the answer to that challenge. Before it, there is a responsibility to have relationships with France and the EU within which that can be discussed; there is a requirement to attack the criminal networks that do the trafficking; and there is a requirement to deal with migration flows in the first place.

What “land on their own terms” means is that nobody gets to set foot on United Kingdom soil without having been intercepted and brought ashore by the Royal Navy or other agencies. They are then put into a system that I have every confidence will act as a deterrent to make the cross-channel route collapse thereafter.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I declare an interest as a serving naval reservist. I appreciate that the Minister is being bounced into this, but he must have a plan. Can he say when that plan will be available, and on what date command and control of the operation will swap from the Home Office to the Ministry of Defence?

Ajax Noise and Vibration Review

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin]

The right hon. Gentleman raises good questions, but I hope that I can reassure him in part. The conclusion does say that the vehicle is not fit for purpose. Of course it is not fit for purpose now, because anything that does not meet our requirements is not fit for purpose. We cannot put personnel at risk, so absolutely it is not a vehicle that we can take on now, and we are not prepared to. We will only take into service a vehicle that actually works for our purposes and meets our requirements.

There is work to be done, but the decision point on whether that can be achieved with this vehicle is not now. A huge amount of work is being done. The time to take those decisions is after the root cause analysis has been concluded. As I said, GD has its own theories and has done its own work, and it believes that it has design modifications that could well fit the bill, but I am not going to take a decision on that until we have examined them and it is more confident of their grounds.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

The Ajax programme wins the competition, from a very long list, to be the poster boy of defence procurement disasters. My admiration for my hon. Friend the Minister and the Secretary of State for Defence cannot disguise the fact that the report is truly shocking. It points towards an institution that does not bake in human factors in the design of our kit and appears to ignore health and safety, to the great detriment of the men and women of our armed forces, including my constituents. It is not good enough.

What is my hon. Friend doing to ensure that people are truly held to account for this? If we have to go to a plan B in the new year, what contingency does he have for mounting stand-off radar, for example, on Wildcat and Watchkeeper, for rolling out the capability on our Boxer and Jackal fleets, and for using unmanned aerial vehicles? Otherwise, thanks to this tin can on tracks, we are going to have a walloping great hole in our defence capability.

[Jeremy Quin]

There are two halves to my right hon. Friend’s question. Given his background, I would expect nothing less from him than to be truly shocked by what this report reveals, and so am I. I was horrified when I read the report for the first time, and I am still horrified now. There were clearly flaws deep in the heart of defence, and people were not thinking through the consequences of actions and their implications for some of our personnel. I think a lot of that was due to failures by one person to speak to another, a lack of communication horizontally, and a failure to elevate problems or for them to be heard properly as they went up the chain of command. But none of this is excusable, and it is outrageous that we have ended up in this situation. We are deeply shocked by what the report reveals.

As I say, there is an ongoing process, but the key thing is to understand what has gone wrong. My right hon. Friend has referred to this particular procurement among others. I am afraid to say that I suspect a similar tale could be told about many procurements of the past. The fact is that on this procurement, we commissioned and published a report and, as I said, it sent shockwaves through the organisations, with people asking themselves, “Have I been doing this right? Am I doing this appropriately?” That is the way to start to implement a change in culture.

I can confirm that we are absolutely in a position to meet our operational requirements. We will always have fall-back positions. My right hon. Friend mentioned Watchkeeper. As he will recognise, there are huge benefits in having ground-mounted reconnaissance, and Ajax can provide a useful tool. We are committed to making certain that it works, but if it would not, for any reason, there will be alternatives to be brought forward.

Army Restructuring: Future Soldier

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

I would have stayed in the Army if it had looked like this, but I was in an Army that I think was hollowed out. The equipment did not quite work and the greatest adventure anyone had was probably going to Northern Ireland every two years—that was about as far as it went. Hong Kong had closed and there was a lack of sense of purpose and a lack of a clearly identified adversary that we were setting ourselves against. That is really important.

This Army will be more exciting, more rewarding and more enabling for young people to grow their skills. It will be more fluid with the integration of the reserves, which will allow reserves and regulars to be much more able to move from one to the other, depending on their personal circumstances. There is the investment in the different models for family accommodation and single living accommodation, and a determination to be out and about around the world. The one thing that soldiers do not want is to be stuck in a barracks in the UK doing not very much. They want to be out. I was in Oman only the other week seeing soldiers exercising with the Omanis, and they could not stop talking about how exciting and fun it was. I was in Poland last week watching the United Kingdom forces doing a live-firing exercise in Poland alongside Polish, United States and Croatian forces. That is what I want our Army to do.

When we are thinking about soldiers’ careers, we have to have a system that is much more enabling to them to move up and down the different functions of, for example, the infantry. By ensuring that we have these infantry divisions, young officers and young soldiers can, if there is not enough space in their own battalion to be a sergeant or a colour sergeant, move to promotions in such a function in a similar battalion in a similar division. A young officer who does not want to do armoured warfare, but wants to be with a security force assistance battalion abroad, they have such opportunities to move up and down. I think that will be exciting and flexible, and it will be an Army that will retain people because it will give them an exciting career and make sure that their families are properly looked after.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I declare my interest as an active reservist and a proud father of two serving officers. For 20 years, I have been fighting what has at times seemed like a rearguard action to keep Army officer selection in Westbury in my constituency. The location will be familiar to the Secretary of State and his two colleagues on the Government Front Bench who went through the process. Will he today commit to a future for the Army officer selection board at Leighton House in my constituency, and how will we invest in that site to ensure that the future officers implied by his description of the challenges going forward have the skills, attributes and characteristics equal to the tasks of the future, as they have been in the past?

[Mr Wallace]

My right hon. Friend has been a more than doughty campaigner on the regular commissions board. Let me put it this way: for many of us on these Benches, the Army would not be the Army without the RCB in Westbury. It is part of the rite of passage. I did not want to see it leave Westbury, and my right hon. Friend persuaded me against any move. He has done a brilliant job, and I am delighted that it is going to remain there. My hon. Friend the Minister for Defence Procurement would be delighted to meet him about the investment opportunities, but who could miss the logistics command task about how to cross a fictional river and work out whether we could do it with three or four people?

Ajax Armoured Vehicle Procurement

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin]

I know the hon. Gentleman is a keen supporter of General Dynamics and employment in his constituency in south Wales, and he will appreciate what I was saying earlier—I meant it genuinely, as I always do when I say things in this House—about how we are working with General Dynamics to find a solution to this. Of course I cannot give a 100% guarantee, but I do believe that we can work together. I sincerely hope we find a solution, and I know that nothing would please him, this House and me more than to have that resolved, have it sorted and then go on to export Ajax globally. I want to raise our eyes and get the right results, rather than focus on worst-case scenarios that I sincerely hope will not be the case.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

May I commend the Minister for the forensic way in which he has tried to get to the bottom of a mess that is not of his making?

The Royal Dragoon Guards based at Battlesbury barracks in my constituency operate, or are meant to operate, the Ajax fighting vehicle, and many of them will be very concerned at the hand-arm vibration syndrome and noise-induced hearing loss that some of them may be victims of. It is a betrayal of the military covenant. He knows very well that there are senior members of the Ministry of Defence, serving and retired, who knew full well the risk of this vehicle at an early stage. Will he ensure that the institutional cloak of invisibility that the MOD traditionally operates does not apply in their case, since if they are allowed to get away with it, as it were, we will not get to grips with the cultural issues that have dogged defence procurement for years?

[Jeremy Quin]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his courtesy and generosity to me personally. Can I reassure him and this House that I will stop at nothing in making certain that we do get to the bottom of this and get to the lessons that need to be learned? He has my absolute assurance and commitment on that. I refer him to my oral statement, in which I said:

“Following the report’s conclusion, we will consider what further investigations are required to see if poor decision making, failures in leadership or systemic organisational issues contributed to the current situation”.

I have said that in writing and orally, and I mean it. That does not mean that we have come to any conclusions, but it does mean that everything needs to be on the table. We need to ensure, if mistakes have happened, that we learn from them, execute on them and make sure they are never repeated.

Ajax Programme

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin]

My understanding is that those turrets have been built by Lockheed Martin and are being constructed in Ampthill in Bedfordshire. That is my understanding, but I will double-check. If it is any different, I will write to the hon. Gentleman and leave a copy of my letter in the Library of the House of Commons. It is my understanding that that is happening at Ampthill.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con) [V]]

Does the Minister agree that the Ajax situation undermines global Britain’s forward presence objectives as envisaged in the integrated review, such as the ability of the Royal Dragoon Guards based in Warminster to project reconnaissance combat teams, which they were being re-roled for? If it turns out that the vibration issue—[Inaudible.]

[Mr Speaker]

The sound is as defective as the programme. Minister, do you want to try to answer that?

UN Mission in Mali: Armed Forces Deployment

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

No, I am not sure that I do. I think it highlights the success of being a part of a successful UN mission that is resourced in terms of its ability to make political progress, and that it is adequately resourced to make military progress. I am confident that the military part of MINUSMA is well resourced, and the UK will play an important part within it. As I said in response to a number of hon. Members’ questions about the political mission, we just need the politics in Mali to stabilise so that the UN political mission can gain traction too.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

It is absolutely right that the UK should play its part in this, but MINUSMA is the most costly of the UN’s peacekeeping missions, it is the most dangerous, and it is arguably one of the least successful. Furthermore, Mali can hardly be said to be a country of primary interest to the United Kingdom. Can the Minister assure me that our involvement will be largely technical and logistical in nature, that it will be modest, rather like our engagement with Operation Barkhane, and that we will not be subject to mission creep?

[James Heappey]

I can reassure my right hon. Friend that there will be no mission creep. This is a UN mission and our role is confined to that. I cannot, however, tell him that it is limited to logistical and technical involvement. This specialist reconnaissance force has been committed to MINUSMA precisely to provide an ability to understand where the threat is and to deliver a population-centric peacekeeping mission. This is time-limited and necessary. I accept that there is no obvious UK interest in Mali itself, but there is a great deal to be said for being there: first, because the humanitarian situation requires it; and, secondly, because the Sahel is a huge space on Europe’s southern flank in which violence is flourishing, and it is in the interests neither of countries in Europe nor of countries in coastal west Africa, where the UK has more obvious interests, that we do not work against the violence in the Sahel, but see it exported to places where the UK has more obvious interests.

Virtual participation in proceedings concluded (Order, 4 June).

Points of Order

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I allowed the Chairman of the Defence Committee his moment, but he knows and we all know that it is not a point of order. He has made his point to the Secretary of State and I am sure that there will be other opportunities to explore the matter further.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am very grateful for your indulgence, as I speak as one of the reservists in question. I just want to point out that it is deeply demoralising for members of the armed forces if they are not told about this in advance but learn about it from the pages of The Daily Telegraph, excellent though The Daily Telegraph is. Can I seek your advice on whether you feel that that is appropriate?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

No, the right hon. Gentleman cannot seek my advice, because it is not my business to decide whether it is appropriate. However, given his position in this House I have allowed him to make his point, and I believe that it has been heard and paid attention to by the Secretary of State and the Minister.