UK Defence Spending

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Thursday 24th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the Chair of the Defence Committee with the knowledgeable insight that he brings to these debates.

Defence expenditure brings with it an opportunity to extend fairness into every corner of the country. There is nothing quite like the ability to invest in manufacturers and contractors in all parts of the United Kingdom, and the Ministry of Defence should take this role and opportunity very seriously. However, it does not take it as seriously as it should. Scotland and the south-west of England have almost the same population, yet MOD statistics released in January this year show that, when compared with the south-west of England, Scotland receives only approximately one third of the MOD expenditure—one third of the spend per person and one third of the direct MOD jobs per 100,000. Actually, it is worse than that. When we add the MOD spending in Wales and Northern Ireland to Scotland’s, we still arrive at a figure that is below that of the south-west of England. I do not understand how the Government can justify a single region of England, with half the population, benefiting from receiving more MOD expenditure than three quarters of this so-called Union.

Defence expenditure can be a complex issue, and that is set out very clearly by the Public Accounts Committee, which deemed that the 2019 to 2029 equipment plan is too expensive by between an estimated £3 billion and £13 billion. Plans for efficiency remain rose-tinted and optimistic. For example, £4.7 billion of savings are assumed without the remotest indication of how they will be delivered. Of 32 of the top priority programmes,a third are at serious risk of not being delivered on time, with capabilities reaching full operational standards two years late. It is not too hard to see where the money is going: the money is going on waste, and, on that, I will touch on the Type 45.

The oldest Type 45 in service has been in service since only 2011. The order was cut from 12 to six, with the price rocketing, like a sea-skimming missile, beyond the £1 billion per ship mark. There were more than 5,000 operational defects in five years, with a bill of more than £50 million to rectify them. They were brought into service too early, with untested propulsion systems and now have to be retrofitted with different engines at a very early stage in their lifecycle, costing £160 million that could have been invested elsewhere. It is just as well that the Type 45 is an exceptional fighting warship, given its propensity to find itself stuck. The MOD has a habit of hiding behind the complexity of that extremely advanced warship, but inconveniently for the MOD it is not the highly advanced air defence, anti-ship or anti-submarine systems that are falling over; it is the ship’s basic ability to move. Royal Navy sailors deserve far better than that.

On fleet solid support, the entirety of the order should be fulfilled in domestic yards in the UK. Does the MOD believe that by offshoring large elements of the manufacturing supply chain stimulus it is somehow teaching English and Scottish yards a lesson? If so, what is that lesson? I think it might be not to trust the MOD with future workstreams. The notion that a £1.6 billion order for defence equipment could be manufactured in foreign yards to the benefit of their apprentices, supply chain and steel industry shows a Department apparently all over the place in its procurement priorities. It demonstrates that the Government, as currently set up, are blind in many cases to the value of a potential tender, and fixated rather on the price.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Is it not worse than that? Everyone agrees that the Type 26 frigate will be a fantastic addition to the Royal Navy, but HMS Glasgow is taking 10 years to procure, and that is because, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar) suggested, of what the Government do on all such contracts: they push it to the right to fit the in-year budgets, which leads to costs. That short-termism also means that other projects cannot be funded.

[Dave Doogan]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman, if for no other reason than raising the Type 26, which will allow me to highlight that, despite the MOD, we at last have a tremendous ship with very significant exportability, as we have seen with our allies in Australia and Canada. All credit to BAE Systems for the outcome of what has been a less than ideal procurement process, as tends to be the way. Type 31, the steel for which will be cut shortly at Rosyth, is another tremendously exportable frigate for the Royal Navy, and will demonstrate the first-class nature of manufacturing in Scotland and elsewhere in the United Kingdom, to the benefit of people working here.

I move to the air. While final assembly of foreign-made ship blocks in the UK is patent nonsense, final assembly and component manufacture of aircraft makes much more sense. To that end, I move to the new medium lift helicopter programme to replace Puma, and so on. The competition between Leonardo with its AW149 and Airbus with its H175 means that they will not be British-designed aircraft, but they will require manufacturing in the UK. Can the Minister assure the House that the contract award need not necessarily follow traditional rotary-wing procurement routes, but will instead place a very stringent pre-qualification on maximising UK content, workforce and suppliers, together with a cast-iron commitment on apprenticeships—the type of value added over and above the asset delivery that the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) set out so clearly? To do so would allow the MOD to best deploy defence expenditure resources for the benefit of communities, as well as air service personnel and operators. That scoring of societal benefit in tenders is vital going forward. It maximises return on investments and minimises waste.

I do not have time to go into the Challenger 3 upgrade, which is not an optimistic proposition, or the royal yacht that is not a royal yacht but might be a flagship but is not a real flagship. We are still trying to figure out what exactly it will be. I will move on instead to the broader consequences of waste.

Waste in defence spending comes with a political cost that I am not much concerned with; I am far more concerned by the operational and opportunity costs of haphazard defence expenditure. The effects of that may be seen in the poverty of our defence housing. Earlier this week, the National Audit Office said that many barracks were in very poor condition. Issues with heating and hot water were the most common complaints. The NAO also highlighted a £1.5 billion backlog in repairs to military accommodation, with only 49% of people residing in that accommodation saying that they were satisfied, which is a decrease from 58% in 2015. So a really bad situation is getting even worse. The NAO found that nearly 80,000 people were occupying single living accommodation blocks either full-time or part-time, and 2,400 of those were in housing so bad that they were not even being charged rent.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) tabled amendment 41 to the Armed Forces Bill, which was dealt with just yesterday, to demand that defence housing standards are at least as good as, if not better than, the relevant local housing standard, wherever the accommodation is in the UK. That will not be going forward, much to my disappointment. I do not see why our armed forces personnel should be living in accommodation that is worse than anywhere else in the surrounding community. It should not be an either/or, but if this Government could get a grip on defence procurement spending, they might find the capital required to invest in the dreadful accommodation that many of our service personnel are currently enduring. Whether it is defence expenditure or anything else, spending is about choices, and I am very clear that we are not currently making the right choices in the UK.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I have to inform the House of a correction to the result of the deferred Division held yesterday on the motion on the conference, November and Christmas Adjournments. The number of Members voting Aye was 568, not 567. The number of Members voting No remains three. There is no change to the outcome of the Division.

Ajax Programme

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin]

There is always room to do better—I totally acknowledge that, and I thank the Chairman of the Select Committee for his comments. It may not be 3%, but a £24 billion increase is certainly good news for defence and something that was necessary. I can assure him that we are focusing on spending that well and in the interests of our armed forces.

The Ajax is going to be a real game changer on the battlefield. It is larger—it is some 40 tonnes—and Scimitar was a different capability, but my right hon. Friend would be the first to say that things have moved on. There is the range of sensors and the four dimensions that Ajax can produce, allowing it to stand off from the enemy. It is a significant sea change. It has that extra lethality compared with what went before and the extra protection that our troops deserve. This is a vehicle that has an incredibly useful role to play on the battlefield and as part of our operational advantage. The emphasis on our suppliers is to get it right.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

There is in the UK no shortage of MOD procurement debacles to draw on, such as the £4 billion Nimrod MRA4 scrapped before service or the Mk 3 Chinooks—half a billion pounds of aircraft that could not fly low or in bad weather—but this multibillion-pound Ajax failure sets a new low. The UK Government have presided over a procurement project that would see soldiers arriving late for operations in vehicles only capable of a pedestrian 20 mph, with a human endurance range of no further than 30 miles, and then unable to fight duty due to sensory impairment and pain caused by these £3.5 billion boneshakers. Can the Minister confirm that the sight system manufactured by Thales in Scotland is working perfectly and is unconnected with this broader failure? Where was the intelligent client at the heart of this project, and where was the learning from previous procurement fiascos? Is the Minister accepting personal responsibility for this debacle, and if so, how does he plan to atone?

[Jeremy Quin]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his wide range of questions. I think he ought to be slightly careful in damning all defence procurement. He mentions Nimrod, but I am sure he is very proud to see Poseidon arrive in Lossie, and indeed the E-7 in due course. I hope he is proud of the work being done on the Type 26 and Type 31 on Rosyth and the Clyde, and the huge amount of work that is going through Scottish industry at the moment, including Boxer. Again, Thales is employed on that, and I am sure will do a good job. I have had no complaints, he will be pleased to hear, about the sighting systems that are made, as he rightly says, by Thales—in Glasgow, I believe, but certainly in Scotland. We are going through the demonstration phase, and as an intelligent client, the MOD is required to check everything we are receiving. I reiterate that we will not take something into service and accept IOC until we are ready to do so, and we are holding our suppliers to account.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Monday 21st September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

The Home Secretary and I announced at the weekend that the criteria for interpreters to relocate to the UK will be expanded to include those who resigned on or after 1 May 2006 with 18 months or more service on the frontline in Helmand, so that more may come with their families to build a new life in the UK. In addition, the Home Secretary and I committed to look even further at those criteria, and to look at where people suffer intimidation, to see whether those thresholds are in the right place as the peace deal progresses in Afghanistan. Standing by these people is an honourable thing to do. They helped to keep our men and women safe, and this is long overdue.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

If he will make an assessment of the potential merits of establishing an independent body to oversee the operations of the UK’s Special Forces.

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (SNP)]

If he will make an assessment of the potential merits of establishing an independent body to oversee the operations of the UK’s Special Forces.

[The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Ben Wallace)]

It has been the longstanding position of successive Governments not to comment on the operations activity of the UK special forces, as to do so would put personnel and operations at risk. All military operations are overseen and scrutinised by Ministers, who are accountable to this Parliament.

[Dave Doogan]

Special forces deserve the very best technological support. Swedish technology company Saab announced in July that it intends to establish a centre in the UK for forward combat air systems. The optimal location for that facility is in east-central Scotland, where Saab can benefit not only from clustering with leading industrial partners, such as Leonardo, Babcock and Raytheon, but from our world-class universities and more widely with BAE and Thales in Glasgow. What steps will the Secretary of State take to work with Saab to help it establish in Scotland?

[Mr Wallace]

An interesting angle for special forces. I am not sure we are going to put a special forces base in Angus. We absolutely want the best technology. We recognise that international partners can also bring that technology, and when we work together in partnership, recognising that British prosperity is as important as anything else, we can get a good result for our forces, who get the best kit. It is also good for our economy, so that we get the good jobs and skills that we desperately need around the UK and ensure that the science base is strong and able to compete post Brexit.