Defence: Carrier Strike Capability

Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord for his welcome. This was a very difficult decision but it was right for the Royal Navy and for the country. In taking this decision, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State made no criticism of his predecessor’s decision. Things have dramatically changed over the cats and traps, and obviously with the B-variant. I will take the noble Lord’s other point, on bringing the same scrutiny to other aspects of the SDSR, back to the department.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, I do not think that anyone is going to be deceived by the attempts by the Secretary of State to make party political points or to make people see this as anything other than a discreditable shambles. It is very unfortunate. The Government would have done better to have come forward with a slightly more humble line and to have confessed that they had made a mistake.

Can we hear how many aircraft the Government are now proposing to procure? We still have not heard that. Does the noble Lord accept and acknowledge that, because the B version carries a lot of its weight in the form of its own lift fan, its range is much less—400 miles against 700 miles for the CV version? Its payload is similarly reduced, and therefore more aircraft will be required to give a similar military effect. Are the Government planning to purchase more aircraft to procure the same military effect? Will the Minister also recognise that if we simply restrict ourselves to purchasing the F-35B, we will have no deep-strike bombing capability at all once the Tornados have been withdrawn? Do the Government have any plans at all to replace that lacuna in our capability, which will emerge by the end of the decade?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, again I resent this criticism. I feel that it is the noble Lord who should be a little humble, particularly when the party opposite’s last single year in office saw a staggering £3.3 billion increase in the total cost of the 15 largest defence equipment projects. The noble Lord asked me how many Joint Strike Fighter B-variants we are going to buy. In the first instance we intend to buy enough Joint Strike Fighter aircraft to build up our initial carrier strike capability. We do not intend to make final decisions on JSF numbers until our next strategic defence review, in 2015 at the earliest.

I will just re-emphasise what the Statement said. We are getting our first and second aircraft this year. We are getting the first production aircraft in 2016. The first aircraft trials at sea, when we will have three aircraft, will be in 2018. The initial operational capability will be in 2020, when we will have eight useable aircraft. This is three years earlier than would be possible with the C-variant.