Royal Navy: Operational Capability

Lord Boyce Excerpts

Wednesday 20th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the noble Lord has immense experience in this area and I acknowledge that immediately. He is of course quite right about the need for a steady drumbeat of shipbuilding. That was one of the themes in the national shipbuilding strategy that we published recently. I do not think we should underplay the cutting-edge capability of the Type 23 frigates, of which we already have 13. However, as the noble Lord will know, defence uses a variety of assets and means to monitor potentially hostile maritime activity in the UK area of interest and beyond. For example, the Royal Navy routinely escorts non-NATO vessels transiting through the UK area of interest. However, I can tell him that this whole area is a central consideration in the national security capability review, which is currently under way.

[Lord Boyce (CB)]

My Lords, the training budgets of all three services have been heavily reduced by savings measures, imperilling operational capability across our Armed Forces. Anti-submarine warfare is an art form as much as it is a science, and sufficient training is absolutely critical. Will the Minister say whether anti-submarine warfare training has been affected by the cuts I have just mentioned and by the lack of manpower that is keeping some of our ASW specialist ships alongside?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, my understanding is that the quality of our training in anti-submarine warfare has not suffered, but the noble and gallant Lord is right to draw attention to shortages of skills in key technical areas such as nuclear and other types of engineering. The Royal Navy has this agenda very much in hand but it is a challenge—the Royal Navy is competing with industry for those skills. However, the picture is steadily improving.