William McGreanery

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

The hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) has called this debate to raise issues with my Department’s response to the HET on the tragic death of William McGreanery.

As the hon. Gentleman has just stated, the HET was set up as an independent team within the Police Service of Northern Ireland to help bring closure to all families who lost relations and friends during the troubles and to bring some measure of resolution to the past. My Department strongly supports the work of the HET and fully co-operates with its requests for information and liaison with witnesses. When HET reports have been made available to us, following permission from the family of the deceased, we have found them to be as detailed and comprehensive accounts as are now possible considering the passage of time.

I will not go over all the ground that the hon. Gentleman has just covered, but it is important to remember the facts, which are that Mr McGreanery died on 15 September 1971, 41 and a half years ago. The HET report states that there had been a number of shootings in Londonderry in the days and nights leading up to Mr McGreanery’s death. Barricades had been erected, nail bombs and petrol bombs had been thrown, and rioting had broken out.

During the afternoon before Mr McGreanery’s death, as the hon. Gentleman rightly stated, Sergeant Carroll was shot and killed in Londonderry by a terrorist sniper. He was actually shot and killed in Eastway gardens, just by the Bligh’s lane observation post, which he had just left. There is no doubt about that.

The HET report goes on to say that, some eight hours later, at midnight on 14/15 September, Mr McGreanery and others were walking around Londonderry and approached the same Army observation post. The group moved forward and a single shot was fired by a soldier. Mr McGreanery was wounded and later died in hospital. I do not think the facts are in contention.

The soldier who opened fire said that he thought Mr McGreanery was aiming a rifle at the observation post, and he made a split-second decision to open fire. I think we can all now accept that that was an error. That is what the HET report states, and I understand that the young soldier involved—he was young at the time—has stated that he thinks it was an error, too. He regrets the shooting, given what he has now discovered.

The pathologist who carried out the post-mortem said that Mr McGreanery’s wounds had been caused by the bullet passing through his raised forearm, through his chest and exiting his back:

“the forearm must have been flexed at the elbow and held up in front of the chest”.

No one knows why his arm was in that position. The HET does not believe he was pointing a rifle at the time. Forensic swabs show that he had not fired a weapon, and I think we accept that he did not have a weapon.

The local RUC commander at the time believed, as the hon. Gentleman said, that the soldier had acted unlawfully. A file was sent to the chief Crown prosecutor recommending that the soldier be tried for murder. That was passed to the Attorney-General for Northern Ireland, but he took a different view, believing that the soldier was acting in the course of his duty and that it was difficult to see how the element of malice, “express or implied,” necessary to constitute murder could be inferred from his actions. He thought that the soldier could have been negligent but that consideration would have to be given to whether the negligence was “reckless” and amounted to manslaughter. In the event, no action was taken against the soldier.

When the MOD received a request from the family of Mr McGreanery for an apology for his death, my Department asked for a copy of the HET report into his death so that the request could be properly considered. That is relevant to what the hon. Gentleman said. It is up to the family to give us the report; we do not get to see it. Similarly, when the Chief of the General Staff wrote to the family, that was private correspondence as far as we were concerned. It is up to the family to reveal it. However, I will come to that later.

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will agree that it is only right, if we are asked to apologise for the actions that led to somebody’s death, that we should be able to see the results. We do not see them until we get the HET report. When we received the report, we read it carefully and came to the conclusion that, in such circumstances, an apology was appropriate, because it was clear that the soldier involved was mistaken when he thought that Mr McGreanery posed such a serious threat that it was necessary to open fire. That is absolutely accepted.

Having carefully considered the circumstances of the death, the Chief of the General Staff—he is the head of the Army, which is not a lowly rank, as the hon. Gentleman implied—wrote to the family with an apology on 14 July 2011. In those cases in which the Ministry of Defence has apologised for a death—there have been five, not including apologies made by the Prime Minister in person for the Bloody Sunday killings—the practice has been either for the Chief of the General Staff or a Minister to write, and the apology is given by either, on behalf of the Government as a whole.

I understand that Mr McGreanery’s family has accepted the apology but wanted one on behalf of the Government, recorded in parliamentary records. On behalf of the Government, I am happy to repeat that apology. As for the request that it be made publicly, as I have explained, it is normally left to the family to decide whether they wish to publicise it. Some will wish to do so, but some will not. As a result of these proceedings, the apology given to Mr McGreanery’s family is now on the parliamentary record. As we know that that is the family’s wish, I am happy that it should be so.

I am also aware of press reports—the hon. Gentleman referred to them—about recently released historical documents that have been interpreted as suggesting that at the time of Mr McGreanery’s death, there was a deliberate policy of not prosecuting soldiers for deaths that occurred while they were on duty, and that there was some cosy relationship with the Attorney-General at the time to facilitate that. It is not and never was up to the MOD to decide whether soldiers should face criminal charges as a result of opening fire in the course of their duties.

It is, however, important that those contemplating such decisions are provided with information relevant to the incident under consideration. The fact that the Attorney-General of the day was prepared to consider representations from the Army about murder cases is surely entirely reasonable. I am not a lawyer, I am glad to say, but it seems entirely sensible that he would want to see as much information as he could to enable him to consider properly the public interest surrounding those cases, just as we have the well-established Shawcross exercise, in which ministerial views are sought on the public interest before a decision is made on prosecution in appropriate cases.

Although I know that the hon. Gentleman feels that this was some sort of cosy stitch-up—I think I have got that right—it is different from some agreement or policy that the military had a veto on prosecutions of soldiers, which would have been illegal and for which there is no evidence.

[Mark Durkan]

I did not use those particular words, although I can see why they would spring to the Minister’s mind and the minds of many people. He referred to the Shawcross exercise, in which Ministers speak to the Attorney-General. This was an officer of the MOD. The minute of the meeting is supplemented by a diary entry, which goes into more detail about the exchange between the Attorney-General and the MOD representative and appears to establish a working presumption at the time that any killing by a soldier acting in the course of duty would not result in a murder charge. That happened in the crucial weeks before Bloody Sunday.

[Mr Robathan]

I am not in a position either to negate or agree with the hon. Gentleman. If I may say so, there is a difference between those who act in good faith in the course of duty and those who might have acted in bad faith. I think that we can agree about that. The question is malice. As far as I am aware, there is certainly no policy that nobody should be prosecuted. As the hon. Gentleman will know, I spent many years in the Army, and I know of many cases in which people were prosecuted, including cases in Northern Ireland in which people who had behaved maliciously were rightly prosecuted for murder. I agree with that, and I think that the MOD of the time would have agreed with it as well.

Some may believe that we should hold a fresh investigation into the circumstances surrounding Mr McGreanery’s death. Whether that happens is a matter for the Police Service of Northern Ireland, which would need to consider whether there was any new evidence in the case. If that were to happen, my Department would co-operate with such investigations. Just as importantly, we would stand by our obligation to support fully the soldier who, in this case, found himself having to account for actions that took place in the course of his duties some 40 years ago.

[Mark Durkan]

To take the Minister back to the point about how such cases are handled in future—there will be more—he referred to the fact that the Historical Enquiries Team does not share the reports with the MOD; it is up to the family to do so. If the family share a report and receive an apology, and if they ask for that apology to be in the parliamentary record, will the MOD make it future policy to do so by way of a written ministerial statement?

[Mr Robathan]

I do not say that there will necessarily be a written ministerial statement. If the family wishes it to be published, we will happily facilitate that, as it is the right thing to do.

This was a tragedy. It was highly regrettable. Even 41 and a half years later, I can see that. A young soldier —I suspect very frightened—behaved in error, but we do not think with malice, and it was certainly not thought so at the time. It was highly regrettable, and I repeat the apology on behalf of the Government.

Reservists

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2013 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

Dr McCrea, I fear that we are very constrained by our time, but I also congratulate my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) on securing this debate. I think that we first met when we served in “Military Operations 2” in the Ministry of Defence in 1984, when his hair was less grey.

I know that this debate is very important to many Members of the House, and that it is especially important to members of our reserve and armed forces. I am grateful for all the contributions that have been made. I will address some of the questions that have been put later, if I have the time; otherwise, I will be very happy to answer hon. Members’ questions by letter.

Our reasons for changing the structure of the Army, which include a much greater reliance on a fully integrated reserve, are well known. They are both an imaginative and pragmatic response to the dire financial situation that this Government faced on entering office in 2010, as well as a determination to do the right thing by establishing a credible, relevant and useable Army Reserve fit for the demands of the 21st century while maintaining a larger proportion of regular forces than our closest allies. I can assure you, Dr McCrea, that none of us came into government to reduce the size of the armed forces, including the Regular Army. However, to quote the last Labour Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne), “There is no money”.

The principle of greater integration of the reserve was established in the report by the independent commission to review the UK’s reserve forces, which was led by the vice-chief of the defence staff. My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) also took part in that process, and we are grateful to him for that. We are committed to expanding the volunteer Army Reserve to a trained strength of 30,000, and to integrating those reserves fully into the structure of the Army as a whole. As has been mentioned already by hon. Members, that requires a change in the attitude of society and of the Army towards the reserves.

Achieving that has already involved hard choices on the Regular Army side, to make sure that the Army plays its part in ensuring that the MOD continues to live within its means, while maintaining an Army that is capable of operating across the full spectrum of operational capability and one that also offers fulfilment and challenge for its reserve members.

Many hon. Members have spoken with passion and some experience about a lot of issues, including whether we can get this Army reserve of 30,000 at the pace that we require. To be clear, a target of a trained reserve of 30,000 is well within historic norms. In 1997, the Territorial Army was over 50,000 strong; it was reduced to around 40,000 by 2000; by 2009, it was down to just 26,000; and we now reckon that we have about 19,000 trained reserves. That shows that the current initiative to increase its trained strength from the current level of around 19,000 to 30,000 is perfectly achievable. Indeed, to look at it in parochial terms, this increase would require rather fewer than 20 individuals per parliamentary constituency to join up and to train in the Territorial Army.

By the way, we should not overlook the contribution that the reservists have already made to operations. In the last 10 years, almost 30,000 members of the TA have been deployed in operations overseas. Of those, some 3,500 members were compulsorily mobilised to take part in Telic 1 in Iraq, and during operations in the past 10 years more than 70 members of the TA have received operational honours, while 21 have sadly been killed on operations either in Afghanistan or Iraq.

The Government are investing heavily in future reserves and taking other actions to create the conditions required to achieve our target of an integrated Army. Extra financial investment is indeed worth £1.8 billion over 10 years, as has been mentioned, of which the Army Reserve will get the largest part. Other investment includes, for instance, overseas reserve training exercises at company level, which are very much welcomed. It also includes more equipment arriving to provide more modern support for the reserves, including modern vehicles, the latest weapons, and phones and radios, which is exactly what reservists want.

[Ian Austin]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Robathan]

I am sorry, but I do not have time to give way.

We have planned that, over time, reservists will have access to exactly the same equipment for training that is currently used by regulars. There will be opportunities for deployment, as we have mentioned already, but there will also be opportunities for shorter periods of deployed service commitment for those in some specialist roles, and reserves will also routinely fill roles that historically were the preserve of the regulars.

Officers and soldiers will also have command appointments, which have not always been available, and my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury has been bending my ear about that for many, many years—since way before 2010. We need the Government and society to get behind this process. The skills and experience gained by reservists will be of considerable value to civilian employers, as has been mentioned, making the proposition all the more attractive.

We need to get behind the new reserves. NEAB, which is the National Employer Advisory Board, and SaBRE, which is Support for Britain’s Reservists and Employers, although I do not know where the “a” in SaBRE came from, are working on these issues, and we need to continue that work. Soon we will publish the White Paper that will set out a number of measures to encourage that process, and the collaboration with employers is absolutely vital. I take the point that it is not an easy answer, but we are determined to get this process right.

Of course, collaboration needs to be tailored to fit different types and sizes of employers. I was in Keighley last week, visiting Snugpak, which had a SaBRE commendation signed by the Secretary of State for Defence. Snugpak is a medium-sized enterprise rather than a small one, which incidentally produces some very decent kit if anyone wants insulation for their camping trips. While I was there, I spoke to a reservist who was indeed supported by his employer. However, we need to take this process further.

Although it is still in its early stages, we are confident that we can get a more streamlined recruiting process, in conjunction with Capita. I know that Capita has been slightly criticised in one or two scurrilous magazines such as Private Eye, but we believe that we are getting there and Capita should deliver an acceleration in enlistments during the next few years. If my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham, who was somewhat sceptical about that, wishes to review the recruiting process, we would be very happy to facilitate that. Key changes that we are introducing include: a national recruiting centre administering all applications to a common process; a more imaginative approach to marketing; and a fully resourced assessment process for the reserves.

[Mr Baron]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Robathan]

I am sorry but I really do not have time to give way.

We remain confident that our proposition, in addition to being the right thing to do, will deliver value to the taxpayer. The independent commissioner for reserves concluded that reserves are significantly cheaper to maintain than regulars, and that they are no more expensive than regulars even when we take into account the costs on operations. In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), who just tried to intervene, I will say that part-timers are inevitably cheaper than full-timers.

As I have said, we need a change in the mindset regarding reserves, and a change in the attitude towards them. I absolutely believe that this policy is the right thing to do. It is not that we are keen to reduce the regular Army, but it is ridiculous to have a trained reserve of 19,000 for a country of our size; that is a ridiculously small number. We can do better than that—using reserves has huge social benefits—and we shall do better than that. Rather than admire the problems that we faced on inheriting an overblown defence budget in 2010, this Government have taken the necessary decisions to deliver a credible future Army which is fit for the challenges of the 21st century.

Just before I sit down, may I also say that my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) and I served in another English regiment, and not just in the Fusiliers? On St George’s day, we used to have a service, quite a good lunch as I recall and then the rest of the day off.

[Dr William McCrea (in the Chair)]

Order. I thank hon. Members for their contributions in what has been a very valuable debate, and I also thank you for the manner in which you have treated each other.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Monday 15th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

11. What recent discussions he has had with representatives of the renewables industry regarding onshore wind turbine planning applications; and if he will make a statement.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

Perhaps it is a matter of keeping the best for last, or there is nothing in my portfolio, or it may be an attempt to keep me away from the Dispatch Box—the House will decide.

Regarding the question, Ministry of Defence officials and my colleague the Minister with responsibility for defence personnel, welfare and veterans met the chief executive of RenewableUK in November to discuss matters relating to both offshore and onshore wind turbine applications. MOD officials also attend the aviation management board made up of key wind energy stakeholders, chaired by the Department of Energy and Climate Change. My Department routinely engages with developers and consenting authorities in its consideration of onshore wind turbine planning applications.

[Dr Whitehead]

I am sure the Minister is aware that despite the installation over the past few years of a number of radar systems that can distinguish between turbines and planes, the number of MOD objections to turbine applications doubled between the first part of 2012 and the last part of 2012 as a percentage of applications. Can the Minister assure me that his Department continues to honour the memorandum of understanding between the wind energy industry and the MOD in 2008?

[Mr Robathan]

The hon. Gentleman and I share a deep commitment to renewable energy, including wind energy onshore, going back to the days of the parliamentary renewable and sustainable energy group, when I was the vice-chairman and he was the chairman. There are two reasons, as I understand it, for the increase in the number of objections. The first is that there has been a plethora of applications for wind turbines onshore, and many of those are pretty close to airfields and other radar installations. The second is that, because of the plethora of applications, we are no longer able to provide the pre-application advice as we did before—there are so many of them.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

RAF Staxton Wold in my constituency is within an 8-mile radius of a raft of onshore planning applications. Surely the MOD must have a view as to possible interference with and collision between radar and these obstructions.

[Mr Robathan]

I am not aware of the individual circumstances surrounding those applications. However, I do not think we are particularly concerned about collision with turbines—I hope I am not being unduly optimistic about that. Each application is judged on its merits, and the MOD will object only if it believes that a wind turbine will interfere with the radar or flying activities.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

13. What assessment he has made of China’s planned expansion of its aircraft carrier capacity.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

China’s aircraft carrier capability remains at an early stage of development and the building of new indigenous vessels will take it some time. The Government closely watch developments in the Asia-Pacific region as they may affect our interests and our allies.

[Neil Carmichael]

What discussions has the Minister had with our allies in that region and elsewhere about the possible implications for the stability of the Asia-Pacific region?

[Mr Robathan]

We have regular discussions with allies across the region, including major talks such as AUKMIN, where the Foreign and Defence Secretaries visited their counterparts in Australia in January and where a variety of strategic issues were discussed. I went to New Zealand and Tonga at the end of last year to promote defence co-operation. I passed on my thanks for their troop contributions to Afghanistan and presented some medals to the Tongans who defend Camp Bastion.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

I agree with the Defence Committee that it is for the people of Afghanistan, not people abroad, to determine their future. We certainly intend to continue to support the Afghan people. We intend to support the Afghan national army officer academy post-2014 and in other ways. I also understand that the Government will be supporting Afghanistan through the Department for International Development.

[Ann McKechin (Glasgow North) (Lab)]

T3. Given that the security situation in Syria is deteriorating by the day and that there is growing concern about the possible use of chemical weapons, will the Minister update the House on what discussions he has had with EU partners and NATO allies about the risk of escalation of the conflict—in particular, the risks of arming the opposition groups in Syria?

--- Later in debate ---

[Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)]

T8. In drawing up plans for the return of military equipment from Afghanistan, what account has the Ministry of Defence taken of the equipment that the Afghan army will need to carry out its challenging duties in the future?

[Mr Robathan]

We have yet to decide on any gifting to the Afghan army, but obviously the Afghan army is our ally. We are proceeding on withdrawing equipment from Afghanistan as we withdraw numbers of personnel from the country, but we have yet to decide on anything about gifting.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

Next year HMS Illustrious will be taken out of service. The Minister will know just how fond memories are of the work that was done at Rosyth dockyard. Will he meet me to discuss how we can best commemorate her withdrawal?

Defence Estate Rationalisation

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2013 Written Statements

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

The strategic defence and security review (SDSR), announced in October 2010, marked the start of the process of transforming defence and identified the need for rationalisation of the defence estate. This included the sale of surplus land and buildings and the delivery of associated running cost reductions. The Army basing plan announcement by the Secretary of State on 5 March 2013, enabling the return from Germany and implementation of Army 2020, indicated that there would be a further announcement concerning other changes elsewhere in the Ministry of Defence (MOD) estate across the UK.

Today I am providing an update to the House on the results of work to implement the SDSR’s commitments on rationalisation and on unit relocations on the wider defence estate. Service and civilian personnel at the affected locations will be briefed; we will also engage with the trade unions where appropriate. This work will now be taken forward into detailed planning.

Lightning II Aircraft Basing at RAF Marham

Our first two Lightning II aircraft (joint strike fighter) are currently participating in the US test programme and will remain in the US. We expect to receive front-line aircraft from 2015 onwards with an initial operating capability from land in 2018, followed by first of class flights from HMS Queen Elizabeth later that year.

I can now inform the House of the outcome of the further basing review recently undertaken in respect of the Lightning II aircraft.

Following the SDSR, a number of changes have occurred on the defence estate that justified a further review of the basing options for Lightning II. This review has concluded that RAF Marham is the most appropriate station for the main operating base. Given that RAF Lossiemouth will now host three squadrons of Typhoon and given the altered draw-down profile and out of service date for Tornado (in line with the SDSR decision to concentrate our fast jet fleet on Typhoon and Lightning II ), RAF Marham will have sufficient capacity for the basing of Lightning II, which will be operated jointly by the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. Further work will now be carried out to determine the precise investment requirements as the base transitions to support Lightning II.

Draw down at RAF Leuchars

No. 1 (Fighter) Squadron and No 6 Squadron currently based at RAF Leuchars which provide the Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) (Interceptor) North role will relocate to RAF Lossiemouth beginning summer 2014, with Typhoon flying operations ceasing at RAF Leuchars during autumn 2014, following a progressive transfer of the base from the RAF to the Army. The relocation of the Typhoons from RAF Leuchars will affect 347 service personnel who will transfer from RAF Leuchars to RAF Lossiemouth, it will also affect 148 civilian staff.

No. 6 RAF Force Protection (FP) Wing Headquarters and No 58 Squadron RAF Regiment, both based at RAF Leuchars, will be disestablished, with the personnel in No. 6 RAF FP Wing Headquarters and No 58 Squadron RAF Regiment being reassigned during spring 2014. The future of the squadron number plate is yet to be determined. This will affect 183 military posts. Those personnel will be reassigned to other RAF force protection tasks across the UK.

Relocation of flying units resulting in the closure of the airfield at RAF Wyton

Due to the significant running costs associated with maintenance of an operational airfield at RAF Wyton, it has been decided to relocate the flying units based there. No. 57(R) Squadron, who undertake elementary flying training (EFT), will relocate from RAF Wyton to RAF Cranwell by the summer of 2013. The relocation of Cambridge and London University Air Squadrons (UAS) and No. 5 Air Experience Flight (AEF) to RAF Wittering is planned by mid-2014, once preparatory work has been completed. We are working closely with the Homes and Communities Agency on the possibility of them acquiring part of the Wyton airfield since it has potential for new housing growth as identified in Huntingdon district council’s emerging local plan.

The opportunity has been taken to rationalise other light aircraft flying tasks in the region to achieve greater coherency and more efficient use of manpower and assets, delivering better value for money for the taxpayer. This will result in East Midlands Universities Air Squadron and No. 115(R) Squadron relocating from RAF Cranwell to RAF Wittering.

There are 18 service personnel who will be redeployed as a result of this change and two MOD civilians will be affected.

The closure of RAF Church Fenton

Reductions in the flying training pipeline, directed by the SDSR, mean that RAF Church Fenton is no longer required to host training operations and will close by the end of 2013. The units based at Church Fenton, including the Yorkshire University Air Squadron (incorporating No. 9 Air Experience Flight), will relocate; work is ongoing to determine the optimum location for the University Air Squadron.

There are five service personnel who will be redeployed as a result of this change and three MOD civilians will be affected.

Relocation of Military Scottish Air Traffic Control from Prestwick

The Military Scottish Air Traffic Control Centre (ScATCC(Mil)) currently operates from the NATS Air Traffic Control Centre at Prestwick in Ayrshire. ScATCC(Mil) controls military and some civilian air traffic within its area of responsibility, which roughly extends north from Newcastle. Technological advances mean that the system can be rationalised and it will be possible to cover the military control task for the entire country from the London Air Traffic Control Centre (LATCC(Mil)) at Swanwick. There will be no detrimental impact on air traffic control.

The phased relocation of the RAF presence from Prestwick will be completed by the end of 2013, and will be managed in consultation with NATS En-route Ltd, who will provide the necessary technical and equipment changes under the Future Military Area Radar Services contract. Around 30 service personnel will be redeployed as a result of this change, which will also impact up to six civilian personnel.

Disposal of the former airfield and technical site at Kirton in Lindsey

Following the vacation of RAF Kirton in Lindsey by No. 1 Air Control Centre (1ACC), the site has been used to house personnel employed at RAF Scampton. While this use will continue, alternative defence uses have not been identified for the former airfield and technical facilities, so a decision has now been taken to dispose of these parts of the site.

Rationalisation of Shornchffe Garrison

There is an enduring requirement for facilities at Shorncliffe Garrison. However much of the infrastructure is old, in poor condition and expensive to heat, light and maintain. MOD is therefore commencing redevelopment and rationalisation of the garrison to deliver a long-term, sustainable estate.

Shepway district council’s local development framework core strategy has identified Shorncliffe Garrison for a development of up to 1,200 homes to help regenerate the western end of Folkestone; the site will also contribute to the Government’s Plan for Growth housing strategy. Surplus land will be released in phases over the next decade.

Rationalisation of the Defence presence at MOD St Athan

In announcing the outcome of the Army basing review on 5 March 2013, the Secretary of State confirmed that 14 Signal Regiment would relocate to St Athan. This is likely to result in consolidation of the defence presence on the site into a military enclave centred on Churchill Lines (St Athan West Camp).

Discussions have been ongoing with the Welsh Government, which leases large areas of the St Athan site, to establish how defence plans can also complement economic development by enabling its aim to develop an aerospace business park within the St Athan enterprise zone. MOD has no current requirement beyond 2017 for the St Athan “Superhangar”, which will progressively be made available for commercial occupation. The intent remains to relocate No. 4 School of Technical Training from East Camp at St. Athan to Lyneham, Wiltshire in the medium term as part of the defence technical training change programme.

We also intend to move personnel of the RAF’s No. 71 Investigation and Repair Squadron from St Athan to collocate with other components of No. 42 (Expeditionary Support) Wing at RAF Wittering. The relocation of the squadron will affect 47 service personnel who will transfer to RAF Wittering. It will also affect 27 civilian staff.

The Future of MOD Ashchurch

The MOD Ashchurch site is currently the central MOD hub for vehicle operations. However, the Ashchurch depot facilities are coming to the end of their lifespan and parts of the site are no longer used. The facilities would need extensive renewal to continue effective operation, while the vehicle numbers that the site supports are reducing as a result of the SDSR. The MOD is reviewing a number of vehicle basing options and has identified opportunities for greater efficiency from relocating facilities, rather than investing in the infrastructure at the site. Consequently, MOD will be withdrawing from the site entirely unless retention of a small number of specific buildings proves better value for money.

This site has the potential capacity for up to 2,100 new homes. A public consultation has been conducted so that wider views and opinions can be taken into account in any future development.

Rationalisation of the MOD Bicester site

On 3 October 2011, the MOD made an application to Cherwell district council for outline planning permission to allow the release of the Graven Hill site at Bicester to accommodate a mixed use development, including 1,900 dwellings, and with the potential to deliver over 2,000 jobs and a new MOD logistics facility on part of the site.

Chemical Weapons Convention

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2013 Written Statements

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

The UK’s chemical protection programme is designed to protect against the use of chemical weapons. The programme is permitted by the chemical weapons convention, with which the United Kingdom is fully compliant. Under the terms of the convention, we are required to provide information annually to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). In accordance with the Government’s commitment to openness, I am placing in the House of Commons Library a copy of the summary that has been provided to the organisation outlining the UK’s chemical protection programme in 2012.

Reserves Call-Out Order

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2013 Written Statements

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

A new call-out order has been made under section 56(l)(a) of the Reserve Forces Act 1996 to enable reservists to be called out into service as part of the UK’s contribution to operations in support of UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 2085, the EU training mission and specific French requests for support in Mali.

We anticipate the call-out of a small number of reservists with very specialised skills. At the moment this will affect three reservists being mobilised to deploy to Mali and three reservists being mobilised for service within the United Kingdom. The mobilisation will allow them to have the protection provided by the Reserve Forces Act 1996.

The call-out order is effective until 10 March 2014.

Scottish Referendum (Trident)

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Weir]

I have just said that, in my opinion, the UK should get rid of Trident. However, once we have our independence and the missiles are removed from Scotland, if the UK wants to retain them, that is a matter for the remainder of the UK. Scotland will not have them. We will have nothing to do with them.

Interestingly, as the report suggests, there seem to be alternatives. Francis Tusa of Defence Analysis has been quoted as saying that the problems have been exaggerated. It appears that the UK Government do not want to site the missiles on the south coast of England for fear that the missiles would be too near centres of population, but it does not seem to worry them that Faslane is close to the main centres of the population of Scotland.

It seems curious that there is objection to the use of Kings Bay in Georgia, because it might give the impression that Trident is not a totally independent system. I think most people think that already. Given that the report says that a stockpile of weapons is stored there and that the UK already contributes £12 million per annum towards the site, it seems that there is already considerable involvement there. Francis Tusa also makes the point that previously there were shared storage facilities with the Americans at Iserlohn in Germany, but such considerations are for the remaining parts of the UK, not the Scottish Government, who wish to see the missiles removed from Scotland.

Much of the debate has been about the impact on jobs if the Trident system left Faslane, but nowhere in the report is there a mention of the jobs implication; the report is about what the UK might do with Trident when Scotland is independent and ensures that we do not have weapons of mass destruction on our soil. However, the Scottish National party understands the concerns of those who work at the base.

Scottish Ministers have made it clear that they are fully committed to the future of Her Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde in an independent Scotland, operating as a conventional naval base without nuclear weapons. We are the only party in Scotland to have made that commitment.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

I have in my hand what I think was intended to be a secret submission from Mr John Swinney, the Finance Minister of Scotland. It is about the SNP’s commitment, should separatism work. He said:

“I have made clear to the Defence Workstream”—

they are the people studying this—

“that a much lower budget must be assumed.”

How is he going to afford to keep open the naval base if he is going to have a much lower budget?

[Mr Weir]

I find that incredible, from the Minister who is presiding over the slashing of the UK defence budget. He has just, under the basing review, betrayed the previous promises made to Scotland.

We have said that the defence budget of an independent Scotland will be £2.5 billion. We have made that commitment; that is what we will do. That is an appropriate defence budget for a country the size of Scotland and for the facilities that we will need in an independent Scotland.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Nick Harvey]

I was making the point before the Division that Faslane is ideally suited to its purpose. Back in the 1950s, alternative sites were investigated, including Falmouth, which has one of the largest harbours in the world, and Milford Haven, but we cannot turn back the clock and consider how Falmouth and Milford Haven were 50 years ago. The fact is that a great deal of development has happened in both since, and some of it is completely incompatible with a nuclear facility.

If another site were chosen, the cost would not be simply the massive cost of making a nuclear installation. My colleague the hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff) also gave evidence to the Committee, pointing out that making a site meet the standards for nuclear safety and hardening it in defence terms would multiply costs far above the requirements of normal construction. On top of all that would be compensation, restoration and all sorts of other attendant costs from nearby facilities and developments.

That was what led me to tell the Committee that the costs would be gargantuan. I think that they are basically unquantifiable—in all honesty, I have no idea what they would be—but if we are going to spend about £25 billion on the capital costs of renewing Trident, I would not be in the least surprised to see the same sum spent all over again if anybody were seriously to undertake the fraught project of relocation to another site. In a practical sense, it is all quite unnecessary, and it would take an enormous length of time. I do not see anything incredible about the estimates of 20 years.

If it does come about, and if the United Kingdom elects a Government in 2015 who wish to go ahead with the nuclear deterrent for a further generation, it would be one of the biggest items—if not the single biggest—on the table in the negotiation that would have to take place between London and Edinburgh in the aftermath of a referendum vote for independence. The Scottish Government would likely take the view, “This will all have to be paid for by the United Kingdom Government.” I would not expect them to write cheques for it. However, if the residual UK Government found themselves facing a massive bill of many billions of pounds for relocating the nuclear deterrent, they would have that many billions fewer in their back pocket for discussing the rest of the things on the table.

That brings us to the critical point that we have not heard from the proposers of Scottish independence what the defence policy of an independent Scotland would be. The United Kingdom, even denuded of 8.5% of its population and taxpayers, would continue to have global interests, which its armed forces are there to defend. It would continue to have a broad spectrum of capability with which to defend those interests, and it would continue to have the critical mass necessary to sustain a variety of equipment fleets, but the defence force of an independent Scotland would have neither those global interests nor that global reach.

Most critically, Scotland would not have the sheer mass with which it could possibly hope to sustain fleets of warships or fighter jets. We have heard that Faslane would continue to host submarines. What on earth would an independent Scottish force want with submarines? The purpose of submarines is to protect the nuclear deterrent, the aircraft carriers and warships. If Scotland is not going to have any of those things, why the dickens would it need any submarines at all?

The truth of the matter is that an independent Scotland would need defence forces. It would be about homeland security. If Scotland was forward-leaning in its global interests, it would perhaps be willing, like the Republic of Ireland, to volunteer troops to international peacekeeping operations. However, that is very different from taking the existing United Kingdom armed forces and slicing 8.5% from them.

[Mr Robathan]

Does my hon. Friend therefore agree with John Swinney’s assumption in this not very secret document that the defence budget of an independent Scotland would have to be a great deal reduced in proportion to what it is now as a percentage of the UK defence budget?

[Sir Nick Harvey]

I am certain that the defence budget would be much smaller, given the other aspirations articulated for an independent Scotland, but I am absolutely clear that a force proportionate to the size of the population and the economy would not have fast jets; what on earth would it do with them? That will leave questions in a lot of mouths. It would not have warships. It would not have submarines. It would need offshore patrol vessels, some sort of aerial offshore patrol and helicopters, but it would not need the spectrum of things that the United Kingdom armed forces have. It would be a different beast altogether.

The fact of the matter is that Faslane, in its entirety, taking the nuclear deterrent, the non-nuclear submarines and the entire supply and support chain, is Scotland’s largest single employment site. As far as I can see, there would be virtually nothing there if we took the site away from Faslane. There would be a small requirement for a navy, but that would be a strange place to put it, as we heard earlier. The constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid) would therefore be looking at ruination. Work such as that on the future of Barrow and elsewhere would need to be done.

No one should be in any doubt that this issue is a massive part of the independence debate. The consequences for Scotland need to be assessed and analysed carefully, and the headache presented to a UK Government who wished to continue the nuclear deterrent would be immense. Finally, we should not assume that Scottish independence is to be equated with the SNP ruling for ever in Edinburgh. It might well be that an election would return a Scottish Government of a completely different political hue, and some of the issues would then start looking very different.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

It is a joy to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell, especially since we had such happy days together in the Whips Office in opposition.

We have had a good debate. I find myself in an unusual situation. Normally, I face serried ranks of Labour MPs who throw metaphorical bricks at me. Often, I have serried ranks behind me throwing similar metaphorical bricks, but today, we have been remarkably consensual, pace the two hon. Gentlemen from the SNP. I have found it an interesting, if rather one-sided, debate.

I will make my personal views known. I am an Englishman. My father was born in Wales, and therefore, I have Welsh ancestry. I am a Conservative MP, self-evidently, and some commentators, from time to time, suggest that the Conservatives should wish to see Scotland leave the United Kingdom, because that would be to the Conservatives’ benefit electorally. May I say that I and the Government disagree entirely with that? I think that all the peoples—including the Scots—in the United Kingdom would be very much poorer to see the end of the United Kingdom. I, and the Government, would very much regret a victory for the siren voices of small-minded separatism in the referendum next year.

The first duty of Government is defence of the realm, to ensure the security of the nation, its people and its interests. The Government are unwaveringly committed to that duty. Consequently, like all post-war Governments—Labour, Conservative and now the coalition—we regard a nuclear deterrent as an essential contribution to our security. The strategic defence and security review of 2010 makes it clear that the nuclear deterrent provides the ultimate guarantee of our national security against the most extreme risks from nuclear-armed adversaries.

The recent test by North Korea of a nuclear device, in defiance of the international community and the good examples that many in the international community show, as well as the continuing uncertainties over Iran’s nuclear programme, underline the fact that we continue to live in a dangerous world, in which we have little ability to predict what threats we may face in future. As long as the threat of nuclear proliferation continues, the Government simply will not gamble with the security of future generations of British people.

This Government, in line with our predecessors, are firmly committed to multilateral disarmament. Personally, I wish to see total nuclear disarmament, but it has to be multilateral, not unilateral. When I was in the Army—as I was for many years—I considered the prospect of a nuclear conflict so horrific that it would have meant that there was no point in fighting on any more.

[Pete Wishart]

The Minister says that he is interested in multilateral disarmament, but why are the UK Government perhaps the only Government in the world who are investing in unilateral nuclear rearmament, with Trident renewal?

[Mr Robathan]

The hon. Gentleman, if I might say so, reveals a certain ignorance, as the point is that weaponry has to be kept up to date. It is rather like saying, “Could we not use a one-rupee jezail when fighting in Afghanistan?” I am afraid that those were the days of Kipling, and while the Afghans may have been very accurate, we prefer to use modern weaponry.

The UK has an excellent record in fulfilling its disarmament obligations—as the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle) said, in relation to the previous Government—under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, as demonstrated by the latest round of stockpile reductions that we announced in the strategic defence and security review. We probably have the smallest nuclear force of the recognised nuclear weapon states and, uniquely, the UK relies on a single platform, a single weapon system and single warhead design for the delivery of its nuclear deterrent.

However, we continue to work to create a safer and more stable world in which the UK and others can relinquish their nuclear weapons, but we are not there yet. Therefore, nuclear arsenals remain, as does the danger of further proliferation, especially in regions of instability and tension, so we believe that a nuclear deterrent is likely to remain an important element of our national security. Given the uncertainties of the international environment, it would be folly to pursue a policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament. As President Obama said in Prague in 2009, the threat of nuclear war has gone down, but the threat of nuclear attack has gone up.

The UK’s nuclear weapon capability is designed to deter and thereby prevent blackmail and acts of aggression against our vital interests that cannot be countered by other means. It also supports collective security, through NATO, for the Euro-Atlantic area. The UK Government have thus committed to maintain the strategic nuclear deterrent and to continue with the programme to renew it as debated and approved by a significant majority in Parliament in March 2007.

The Government’s policy is that the Vanguard class submarines will be replaced at the end of their lives, in the late 2020s and early 2030s, by a successor submarine, again carrying the Trident missile, subject to main gate investment approval due in 2016. The Government are committed to continuous at-sea deterrence. In times of tensions or crisis, such a posture neither escalates nor de-escalates matters and maximises political freedom of manoeuvre. A submarine-launched ballistic missile system offers invulnerability, range and endurance. All promote the credibility of that deterrent and provide the ultimate safeguard for our national security. I pay tribute to the crews of our submarines and their families, and all the men and women, both military and civilian—including at Faslane—engaged in Operation Relentless, our country’s most enduring current operation, which has been in place for nearly 45 years. I thank them—Scots, English, Irish and Welsh—for their unwavering dedication.

The UK Government’s position on the referendum on Scottish separation is clear: Scotland benefits from being part of the UK and the UK benefits from having Scotland within it. Scotland has played an indispensable role in the development and history of the multi-nation UK. As a result, the UK has developed and flourished, and its constitution, laws and institutions underpin one of the most successful partnerships of nations in history.

If the result of the referendum on Scottish separation were to lead to the current situation being challenged, other options would have to be considered. It would be an enormous challenge to reproduce the facilities that we have at Faslane elsewhere, as we have heard, and any alternative solution would come at huge cost. It is impossible to estimate how much that would be, as it would depend on many factors, including time scales and the precise scope of the facilities that might be required, but it would cost billions of pounds and take many years.

Let me now make this point about Her Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde. The hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle) represents—[Interruption]. A constituency not far away; the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid) does indeed represent Clyde itself, and Helensburgh, where I went last year. Her Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde underwent a significant investment programme to prepare it for the introduction of the Vanguard-class submarines and the Trident missile system. That programme cost in the region of £3.5 billion at today’s prices, and that built on decades of investment in the base infrastructure and associated housing.

In April 1963, the Civil Lord of the Admiralty, Ian Orr-Ewing, whom I remember and who died only about 15 years ago, informed the House that the operating base for the planned fleet of Resolution-class Polaris ballistic missile submarines needed to be near deep water, to offer easy navigational access and to be a short distance by sea from the associated armament depot. He informed the House that it had been decided that Faslane was the area that was operationally most suitable for the basing of the submarine fleet. My hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey) pointed out that it is a perfect site. In this varied United Kingdom, we do not have a better site.

That decision was reviewed in the early 1980s, alongside the decision to introduce the Vanguard-class submarines. It was concluded that the Clyde continued to offer the best location. Nothing has happened since to alter that conclusion. Indeed, the Clyde has been chosen as the submarine centre of specialisation, and all our submarines will be based there by the end of this decade, which brings the additional benefits to the region that have been mentioned.

We have mentioned employment at Her Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde, but I now return to that, because it is the largest employment site in Scotland. The base is a major source of employment for highly skilled workers and a significant contributor to the local economy. The rise in the number of jobs during the next decade accompanies the move to base all royal naval submarines on the Clyde to achieve economies of scale and the greater effectiveness of collocation. That symbiosis of a submarine centre of specialisation and associated contractor and base support is a matter of pride, I would have thought, for the UK, for Faslane and for Scotland.

As the collocation benefits would be required in any alternative location, there would be no question but that the entirety of the submarine enterprise on the Clyde would be relocated if the nuclear deterrent force had to move. It is for those who demand the withdrawal of the Vanguard-class submarines from Faslane to explain how the quality and quantity of employment in the region would be matched if the enterprise had to be relocated.

As the UK Government have no plans to disarm unilaterally, there would inevitably be significant time and cost implications if an independent Scottish Government demanded the withdrawal of the UK deterrent. For reasons that I have already described, the UK Government will not pre-negotiate the departure of Scotland from the UK. Therefore, scenarios mentioned in the Scottish Affairs Committee report under which the UK may negotiate a basing agreement for the deterrent with an independent Scottish Government will not be discussed before to the outcome of the referendum and, God willing, will never need to be discussed.

As was said by the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash), who has just left the Chamber, NATO is a nuclear alliance, and it will remain a nuclear alliance while nuclear weapons remain in existence. NATO’s “Strategic Concept” of 2010 and the “Deterrence and Defence Posture Review” adopted at the NATO summit in Chicago only in May last year make that unambiguously clear. Those documents also make this clear:

“The supreme guarantee of the security of the Allies is provided by the strategic nuclear forces of the Alliance, particularly those of the United States; the independent strategic nuclear forces of the United Kingdom and France, which have a deterrent role of their own, contribute to the overall deterrence and security of the Allies.”

The contribution made by the UK’s nuclear forces is much valued by our NATO allies, and membership of NATO comes with responsibilities. One cannot join NATO and pretend that it is not a nuclear alliance, for it is, and one cannot join NATO and reject the concept of nuclear burden sharing within the alliance.

It is clear to me that a separate Scotland would face difficult choices about its defence arrangements. That would include decisions on the role of its armed forces, what threats it intended to counter and what foreign policy it intended to support—quite a bit of work required there, then—its international relationships, including membership of NATO; the resources allocated to defence, which we have just heard about from Mr Swinney; and the future of the defence industry in Scotland.

It is indeed the case that people in Scotland need to know how the Scottish Government propose to provide for the protection and security of Scotland if it separates, God forbid, from the UK. It is the UK Government’s view that whatever choice is made, a separate Scotland would lose significant benefits in this area that are currently delivered by Scotland being part of the United Kingdom. One of those benefits is the security provided by the armed forces of the United Kingdom, including the strategic nuclear deterrent.

Our nuclear deterrent has contributed to both our security and that of our NATO allies since the 1950s, and the continuous at-sea deterrence posture has been the central feature of our deterrence since the late 1960s. As the Trident system has been our sole nuclear weapons system since 1998, our nuclear deterrence posture is now based exclusively on CASD. Although I personally am committed and we as a Government are committed to multilateral disarmament, the circumstances that would justify the relinquishing of our submarine-based deterrent do not prevail and are unlikely to do so in the foreseeable future. For that reason, I reiterate that we have no plans to move the deterrent from Her Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde, which has a bright future not only as the base for all our submarines, but as the UK’s submarine centre of specialisation.

Dalgety Bay Radiation

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) on securing a debate on Dalgety Bay once again. We last discussed the subject in November 2011, and I visited the bay on 31 January last year. I walked on the beach and met local residents in the sailing club and heard about its problems. I also met Professor Curran, the chief executive of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency. I understand furthermore that the right hon. Gentleman had a meeting with the Secretary of State for an hour and more on this particular matter, so I do not think it is fair to say, as he suggests it is, that my Department has ignored the issues at Dalgety Bay, as we have not. Neither, for that matter, have we ignored the concerns of the local community and nor has the Ministry of Defence abdicated its responsibilities or sought to delay a decision on who is the polluter. I welcome the opportunity to explain how the MOD has actively been supporting SEPA over the last year or so.

The Department has actively supported SEPA in fulfilling its statutory duty to inspect the area of concern. I am afraid that this is more than can be said of other parties who have had an interest in either the former Royal Naval Air Station Donibristle or indeed in the foreshore. That includes the developers mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman, who have some responsibilities in this regard. Similarly, we have not acted inconsistently in our approach to sites that we formerly owned across Scotland.

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned Almondbank, which is a going concern. It is still operating, and we have a commercial contract which states that we will hand it over after clearing up contamination. That is rather different from the situation in Dalgety Bay.

[Mr Gordon Brown]

Is the Minister saying that the only reason he is taking no action on Dalgety Bay is that he has no such commercial contract in that instance?

[Mr Robathan]

I will explain why we dispute much of what the right hon. Gentleman has said in a moment, but there is one thing that I particularly dispute. I know that when he was Prime Minister, and indeed when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was very profligate with public money. He was very willing to spend it, and then to leave us in the appalling financial condition in which we now find ourselves. I must tell the right hon. Gentleman that we take a rather more parsimonious and sensible view than I think he did when it comes to the spending of our constituents’ money.

[Thomas Docherty]

My right hon. Friend mentioned the issue of aircraft carriers. Does the Minister regret blowing £100 million on two U-turns?

[Mr Robathan]

I think that you would rule me out of order if I pursued that point, Mr. Speaker, but, as the hon. Gentleman knows, it was not the actions of a Conservative Government that led to the rather ridiculous contracts for the aircraft carriers, which we have been trying very hard to tie down in many ways.

SEPA is the lead regulator in Scotland in relation to all matters pertaining to radioactively contaminated land. Notwithstanding that, my Department has undertaken voluntarily to assist SEPA and to deliver the necessary site investigation. That is in addition to the monthly beach monitoring, and it demonstrates how seriously we are taking the matter.

It is worth repeating that, in the opinion of the Health Protection Agency, the risk to beach users remains very low. The agency is on record as stating that the risk of contracting a fatal cancer is less that 1 in 100 million, which is significantly lower than the level that the Health and Safety Executive considers to be the upper limit for an acceptable level of annual risk for members of the public. Recent investigations of the incidences of cancers in the Dalgety Bay area appear to support the HPA’s assessment. I note the recommendation of the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment—which was mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman—that remediation should proceed, but this is a matter for SEPA, and it needs to be reviewed in the context of the risk posed.

[Lindsay Roy]

Is the Minister saying that this is some kind of modern hysteria, and that there is no real issue on the Dalgety Bay foreshore?

[Mr Robathan]

I am saying that the risk to health is extremely low. That is not my judgment, because I am not a scientist; it is the judgment of the Health Protection Agency and others.

As part of the monthly monitoring, contractors working for my Department have recovered and removed radioactive items from the foreshore, thereby ensuring that any potential risk is as low as reasonably practicable. We adopted that precautionary approach because it was consistent with the advice given by the Health Protection Agency, and provided a suitable safeguard while SEPA undertook its inspection. However, there appears to be a concerted effort in the media to circumvent SEPA’s statutory inspection by raising anxieties unnecessarily and calling for remediation. The press reporting of the recent investigations of cancers in the area appears to be a particularly egregious example. When I visited the area, the sailing club informed me that it seemed likely that it would have to cancel a regatta owing to heightened concern arising from media reports that did not reflect the low level of risk, and that people were unlikely to visit because they had read those reports.

The proper course of action is to allow SEPA to complete its work and form an opinion on whether any of the land meets the statutory definition of radioactively contaminated land, on what needs to be done, and on who is responsible.

We should bear it in mind that the royal naval air station at Donibristle was closed in 1959, 54 years ago, when the right hon. Gentleman and I were in short trousers and some Members of Parliament had not even been born. The publicly available records show an organised and systematic rundown of the various site activities, with a focus on the salvage and sale of assets. As the right hon. Gentleman will know, the statutory regime requires that, if land is deemed to be radioactively contaminated, it is necessary to consider all the actions of later parties which may have contributed to or caused contamination. The subsequent redevelopment for housing as part of the Dalgety Bay new town, together with the construction of what is now the boat park and sailing club, would have involved significant demolition, site clearance, infilling and land reconfiguration. This is supported by contemporary photographs and plans. Indeed, a refuse tip appears at what is now the headland in the 1964 Ordnance Survey plan, which was approximately five years after the developer took over the land. It is the areas of the headland and boat park where radium has been identified, and that could go some way to explaining either the current or historical occurrence of such material on the beach.

The presence of demolition material, including bricks, roofing material and other debris, is consistent with the demolition and site clearance that preceded the redevelopment of the Donibristle site. There is no documentary evidence that the MOD attempted to clear the land through demolition.

My officials have previously raised concerns as to whether “designation” of the land is appropriate. While I fully recognise that the very mention of radioactivity gives cause for concern among some of the right hon. Gentleman’s constituents, the current view held by the Health Protection Agency remains, as I have already stated on at least two occasions, that the risk is very low.

Nevertheless, given that items, often referred to as “particles”, with a relatively high level of radioactivity were found beneath the beach in October and November 2011, the HPA felt there was a need for a detailed risk assessment. The comprehensive investigation undertaken by my Department, the results of which are to be released very soon, will enable SEPA to undertake a full and conclusive assessment.

[Mr Brown]

Will, therefore, the investigation report, which is the basis on which SEPA will be able to make the decisions, be before the Dalgety Bay Forum when it meets next Monday? Otherwise, we will face considerable delays before this report can be examined. Will the Minister also accept that, despite all the information he is trying to give us, SEPA has already said its investigation has not indicated any other persons who may have introduced radium to the location?

[Mr Robathan]

First, there has indeed been a delay. One of the problems was with accessing some of the land, which delayed things. I understand that SEPA has yet to publish the analytical data, which delayed our factual report, but we are meeting with SEPA on 14 March, which will be next—

[Mr Speaker]

Thursday.

[Mr Robathan]

Yes, Thursday. Thank you, Mr Speaker. At that meeting we will hand over the factual report and discuss the way forward. I will not say that will take place on Monday, but it will take place next Thursday. [Interruption.] Indeed, it would be possible to move the meeting of the Dalgety Bay Forum.

So my officials have already agreed to meet SEPA on 14 March to ensure the prompt transfer of the factual findings. It will then be for SEPA to make its determination as to whether or not any land at Dalgety Bay meets the requirements for designation as radioactive contaminated land, based on all the scientific and technical evidence.

My officials have raised a number of concerns with SEPA in connection with its approach, in order to provide clarity on the MOD’s position and avoid any future misunderstanding. These included, for example, the lack of consideration of activities other than those of the MOD that could have caused, or knowingly permitted, the contamination to be present within the foreshore. SEPA confirmed that it was now carrying out an investigation to identify all the potential appropriate persons, should any land at Dalgety Bay be designated as radioactive contaminated land.

In conclusion, I am as keen as the right hon. Gentleman for the issue of contamination at Dalgety Bay to be resolved to the satisfaction of all concerned, and I do understand the concerns of his constituents—who would not be concerned? However, the risk remains very low.

The right hon. Gentleman contends that the MOD has a responsibility for remediation, but this is not his determination to make. I should point out that, perhaps, for some 13 years it could have been his determination to make, but he did not choose so to do. It is for the professionals at SEPA to establish the need for remediation and who is liable for the cost, based on a proper scientific and technical assessment. However, we have assisted, and will continue to assist SEPA in every way possible.

In closing, may I say how pleased I am to see the right hon. Gentleman in the House?

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

8. What plans he has for the training of reservists.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

Defence has committed an additional £1.8 billion investment over 10 years, starting last year, into the reserves, including for training, equipment and recruitment. Reservists will receive the kit and the challenging individual, collective and command training they need to enable them to contribute as part of a fully integrated force.

Army reserves will be trained and be able to routinely deploy at up to sub-unit level and, at times, unit level. This operational requirement will drive improvements in training and equipment, and provide sustainable command and development opportunities both for officers and other ranks. It will also reinforce unit ethos and identity. There will be more structured and focused training up to sub-unit level, and company level overseas training exercises have already started; these will increase in number significantly by 2015.

[Richard Drax]

I thank the Minister for his answer. Is it wise to scrap regular battalions, such as 2RRF—2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers—before our reservists are fully recruited and trained?

[Mr Robathan]

Many years ago, I served in the same regiment as my hon. Friend, and he raises a good point. Nobody would pretend that we wish to reduce the regular Army, but unfortunately we are in a dire financial position left by the last Government. We are quite confident that we will be able to recruit up to the 30,000 trained reserves that we want, and we are making good progress.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

Timely and financially prudent training of reservists who will be able to deploy at short notice alongside regular personnel will require the Ministry of Defence to have accurate figures on how many reservists it has, how many it is recruiting on a monthly basis and how many will actually turn up for training. Will the Minister agree to supply, on a monthly basis, figures that show the number of new recruits to reservist forces?

[Mr Robathan]

I will not agree to do that on a monthly basis, because I do not think it is necessary. However, I will give the hon. Lady some figures. In 2000, under the last Government—whom she supported—the number in the Territorial Army was more than 40,000. We inherited approximately 25,000, and we are very hopeful that we will get the figure up to 30,000, which is what we want to see. The figures will be obvious and we will put them in the Library on a regular basis, but not monthly.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

In the future, the Army’s composition will mean that it is more reliant on reservists, with more reservists being enrolled. In the interests of leading by example, how many civil servants in the Ministry of Defence will be called up as reservists?

[Mr Robathan]

It is not a question of calling people up, because all reservists, like all regular forces, are volunteers. However, we are encouraging people in the Ministry of Defence to join the reserves. My hon. Friend will know that, among others, the Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty’s Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Mark Lancaster), is a reservist, and my hon. Friends the Members for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) and for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) have served on operations. We certainly believe in leading by example.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

9. What progress his Department has made on the aircraft carrier programme.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

10. What plans he has for the future of the defence estate at Bicester.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

The Ministry of Defence continues to rationalise its estate and dispose of surplus sites such as RAF Bicester, where a preferred purchaser has been selected and disposal is expected to be completed by the end of the financial year. We have been preparing the Graven Hill site for disposal by submitting a planning application for new homes and commercial redevelopment.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

I appreciate that a lot is happening with the MOD at Bicester, with surplus land being sold and investment in new logistics and new warehousing, which is good news, because it will mean new opportunities and new jobs. Will my right hon. Friend assure the House, however, that while all that is going on, he will ensure that the existing work force are kept properly informed about what is happening and what is being planned?

[Mr Robathan]

I agree with my hon. Friend that that is extremely important. I believe that we will do what he asks, and if we do not, I am sure he will bring it to our attention. Since I first went to the Ministry of Defence nearly three years ago, he has been a doughty exponent of the need for the development of commercial and residential estates on old MOD sites. I pay tribute to him for his work on behalf of his constituents.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

12. What support his Department provides to gay people serving in the armed forces.

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[Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)]

14. What assessment he has made of the credibility and effectiveness of a part-time nuclear deterrent.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

As stated in the 2010 strategic defence and security review:

“The Government will maintain a continuous submarine-based deterrent and begin the work of replacing its existing submarines.”

A deterrent works only if it is credible and available. All the evidence points to a continuous at-sea deterrent, based on Trident, as the best way to deliver the UK’s deterrent effect. A part-time deterrent—for example, where we do not have a submarine permanently on patrol—would make us vulnerable to a pre-emptive strike, and the act of deploying the deterrent in a period of tension would risk escalation at a potentially critical moment.

[Karl MᶜCartney]

One of the key elements of our nuclear deterrent has been its uninterrupted nature. Does the Minister agree that it is vital that we not only maintain that continuous deterrent, but refrain from conducting defence policy with an idealistic, flip-floppy, Lib Dem view of the world?

[Mr Robathan]

My hon. Friend draws me to make some disparaging comments before the by-election. I shall refrain from doing so, but I most certainly agree with him.

[Mr Speaker]

I call Siobhain McDonagh. Not here—[Interruption.] We are never going to be troubled for any length of time, any more than the right hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Mr Robathan) is.

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[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

T5. Since 1990, the Army has been reduced by about 40%, but officer numbers are down by less than 30%. Indeed, there are more colonels now than there were then. Is there more that we can do to ensure that the cuts are proportionate?

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

We are committed to reducing—and, indeed, are reducing— the star count in the Ministry of Defence by 25%, which means those with the rank of brigadier and above. It is true that the number of colonels is higher than in 1990, but it has fallen by 80 since 1 April 2010, and some of the jobs that those officers do are specific to NATO or to defence engagements. For instance, some are defence attachés. We need all those jobs, and that is why we employ those people. However, my hon. Friend has raised a very good point.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

T9. The Minister for defence personnel will know that for the past two months I have been trying to secure a meeting with him to discuss the financial losses faced by Army officers who are being made redundant shortly before their immediate pension point. To date, he has not agreed to such a meeting. Will he do so today? If not, can he tell me how members of our armed forces should raise their concerns with this Government about broken promises on their conditions of service?

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

T6. Last year, with colleagues, I visited the British peace support team in Nairobi. Does the Secretary of State agree that the valuable work it does at the international mine action training centre and in training peacekeepers from the east African armed forces plays a vital role in helping to bring about the stability that is essential to economic, social and political development?

[Mr Robathan]

I certainly agree with my hon. Friend and pay tribute to the work done by the team, which, as the House will note, is broadly in peacekeeping, ending conflict and mine clearance. We should all pay tribute to that work and we very much value our defence engagement in Kenya.

[Mr Frank Roy (Motherwell and Wishaw) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State tell the House how many jobs will be lost at Faslane nuclear base if Scotland separates from the United Kingdom?

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[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

I would like to ask the Secretary of State whether it is the case that when service personnel are accused of breaking the law their pay is stopped with immediate effect, which can cause real hardship to service families who are left unable to meet the costs of rent, bills and food, as well as of independent legal advice. If that is so, what is the justification for that and will he review the situation?

[Mr Robathan]

The hon. Lady raises a very important point, but I am pretty certain that that is not the case, although I will write to her if it turns out that I am wrong. Nobody has their pay stopped until and if they are convicted of a criminal offence or at a court martial. If I am wrong I will let her know.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

Products from Belted Galloway beef cattle reared and slaughtered on the Falkland Islands travel 30 miles to the NAAFI shop at Mount Pleasant. To be used in the kitchens, I am told by the Falkland Islands Government, the beef travels 8,000 miles back to the United Kingdom, is rebagged and goes back. Is that smart procurement?

Maritime Surveillance

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr James Arbuthnot (North East Hampshire) (Con)]

We are an island. That makes what happens around our coasts of great importance to us. We are a member of the permanent five in the UN Security Council, of the Commonwealth, of the European Union, of NATO and of other organisations, which, added together, means that we are a world power, with global responsibilities and interests. That makes what happens in the seas of the world of great importance to us.

We are a trading nation. We are a nation that cannot, or at any rate does not, feed itself. We rely on food, as well as countless other goods, from abroad. Most of that comes by sea. That makes what happens at sea of great importance to us. We operate under the conditions of “just in time”. Those wonderful warehouses in London’s docklands have now been turned into rather chi-chi flats, and we no longer have the reserves to feed, fuel or supply the country for many weeks, let alone months. That makes us vulnerable.

It is because of all the crucial interests that I have outlined that the defence of our country is of such importance. Within that defence, maritime surveillance plays a central role. Therefore, the Defence Committee decided to conduct an inquiry into it. We called the inquiry “Future Maritime Surveillance”, because we wanted to focus not on the decision to cancel the Nimrod MRA4 programme, the successor to the MR2, in the strategic defence and security review, but on the future needs of the nation and how, given where we are now, we could address those needs. Obviously, however, the cancellation of Nimrod was a big matter, and I shall consider that first.

Let us be clear about Nimrod. It was late—very, very late. It was vastly over budget, at a time of deep financial stringency. It was an aeroplane that had serious aerodynamic problems. It was, in other words, a deeply troubled project—and no doubt one for which, in the usual way, I should take the blame as Minister for Defence Procurement between 1995 and 1997.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

Quite right!

[Mr Arbuthnot]

No, that was a joke—at least, I think it was. But the cancellation of the project was the one change that troubled the Ministry of Defence most in the SDSR. The Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff told the Defence Committee:

“It would be fair to say that among the Chiefs of Staff and in the military advice, it was one of the most difficult decisions to come to terms with, because it has multiple uses.”

In the Government’s answer to the concerns that the Defence Committee expressed in our report on the SDSR of August 2011, they said:

“Like the Committee we regret that we had to cancel the Nimrod MRA4 programme. It was a capability that we would, in an ideal world, have preferred to acquire…we reluctantly concluded that cancellation was the least bad option.”

The reason for that unhappiness was described to us by Professor Julian Lindley-French. He told us that

“the point is that of the seven military tasks in the SDSR, the MRA4 could have played a very important role in all of them. It was the loss of the enablers, because the single services were forced back to defend their own core competencies by the process, which for me was the biggest failing of the SDSR process. Forget all the strategic stuff: there was a haggle at that last weekend, which was utterly unacceptable in terms of the national strategic requirements.”

The report that the Defence Committee produced earlier this week on defence acquisition contains a bit of an echo of that statement.

In our report on the strategic defence and security review, we expressed concern about the resultant capability gaps of cancelling MRA4. In their response, the Government acknowledged that there is currently no single asset or collection of assets that could fully mitigate the resultant capability gap. That is enough about Nimrod; let us look at the other assets and look to the future.

The Government said in 2011 that they continued

“to maximise the use of…assets”—

other than Nimrod—

“such as Type 23 Frigates, Merlin Helicopters, Sentry and C-130 to contribute to Anti-Submarine Warfare, Search and Rescue and Maritime Counter-Terrorism where possible. In the longer term, if the Government were to conclude that it needed to close the gaps completely because”

threats emerged that could no longer be managed in the same way as today,

“some additional funding or reprioritisation would be required.”

In our report, “Future Maritime Surveillance”, we concentrated on the strategic requirements for maritime surveillance, identifying current capability gaps and the future requirements for maritime surveillance and how they might be met. Given the wide range of maritime surveillance tasks and the number of Departments and agencies that require access to maritime surveillance capabilities, we also looked at cross-Government co-operation. We published our report in September 2012 and the Government’s response in December 2012. We have also placed on our website the Minister’s response to some follow-up issues that we raised following the Government’s response. I am grateful to him for that.

I pay tribute to the Committee’s staff and military advisers, who provide us with invaluable support and advice. We are all grateful to them. I would like to thank personally the Committee members themselves. They work extremely hard to very good effect, which is one of the reasons why chairing it is the best job that I have ever had.

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[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

I will.

[Bob Stewart]

Good. The Minister will tell us how we are to keep those extremely specialised skills alive. I suspect it will be by using allies such as the Americans. I thank my other Chairman for raising what was an omission in my speech.

Of course, an effective and modern maritime patrol aircraft capability is available, without the need to wait to 2020. Even assuming that SDSR 2015 looks at it, however, there is no guarantee that a decision will be taken to return to this extremely vulnerable capability—[Interruption.] Goodness me. Forgive me, Mr Brady. That was probably the Prime Minister calling.

I very much welcome Ministry of Defence funding for investigative work on other potential options. We have had briefings about unmanned systems, lighter-than-air vehicles and space technology. Additionally, hybrid air vehicles, such as the AIRLANDER, which have long endurance and operating costs a fraction of those associated with aircraft, are being considered. Of course, all those options need to be studied, and when the results are analysed, we must ensure that delivery time scales and effectiveness are carefully assessed.

I endorse the establishment, which my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire has highlighted, of the maritime security oversight group and the National Maritime Information Centre. Those are superb moves. They are steps towards a more strategic and co-ordinated output and will help, as my right hon. Friend—I mean my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt); she will be right hon. in due course—has already highlighted, to mitigate some of our capability gaps, I hope, quickly.

We need a decent maritime surveillance capability for the United Kingdom as quickly and effectively as possible. We must of course consider a range of options, but a rejuvenated maritime patrol aircraft capability, with a truly multi-role capability, should probably remain a key element—if not the key element—of any proposed solution. I apologise for the Prime Minister interrupting my speech.

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[Thomas Docherty]

I look forward to being shepherded out safely by the Doorkeepers later.

If the decision about the carrier was the largest financial decision, the break-up of the Nimrod aircraft is probably the most visually impressive one to come out of the 2010 SDSR. I do not think that there is anyone who did not watch those images of JCBs tearing up a multi-billion pound project with incredulity. I shall touch briefly on the lessons that the MOD must learn and things that the Committee has discussed in our subsequent report on defence acquisition.

Quite a lot has been said about the Nimrod model and its role, but other capabilities were deleted as a result of the SDSR. The most notable for maritime surveillance was, of course, the Type 22 frigate, which the hon. Member for Beckenham also mentioned. The Type 22 was, as the report says, originally designed and constructed purely as an anti-submarine warfare vessel during the cold war. In its latter years, it took on a broader role, and the Committee was, I think, unconvinced by some of the MOD’s arguments that that capability had been fully covered. Perhaps the new Minister for the Armed Forces will say something about how that matter is being addressed. I should probably take this opportunity to congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his promotion to his new role.

[Mr Robathan]

You are kind. It was six months ago.

[Thomas Docherty]

It feels like yesterday, I am sure, to many in the MOD. I had the pleasure of serving with the Minister in the Armed Forces Bill Committee when he was merely an Under-Secretary, and I thank him for the letter that he kindly sent me this morning on another matter; I am most grateful that we could resolve the issue. Obviously, he is not directly responsible for many of the decisions, or the comments made by the MOD on the report; but of course he believes in collective responsibility, and I am sure that he will be happy to respond in relation to his predecessor’s comments and to our observations. I have a huge amount of time for the Minister’s predecessor, who was very able and sound, which is probably why the Deputy Prime Minister got rid of him in the Liberal Democrat reshuffle.

Without a doubt, as we said on the acquisition report earlier this week, many decisions in the lead-up to the SDSR were rushed and not fully thought through. Thinking was not done for the long term. With a little charity towards the Government, I must say that the programme is probably the finest example of how not to procure. Four parties each bear some responsibility. First, I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), who played no part in the decision when he was at the Ministry of Defence, will accept that my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) and other colleagues over the years perhaps did not provide enough scrutiny of the acquisition process.

--- Later in debate ---

[Thomas Docherty]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I will come on to that very point shortly.

There has been some discussion already about the joint equipment programme and the whiteboard, and we have touched on the balanced budget. Without prejudging what the Minister might say in response to the debate, I suspect that that might be one of the arguments that he seeks to advance. He knows well my view—and, I think, that of the Defence Committee—and that is a healthy scepticism about the claims that have been made about the size of the so-called black hole and whether or not, in the space of eight months, it has been balanced.

One of the things that concerned us in producing our report was an issue that was touched on briefly by the hon. Member for Beckenham: the long-term replacement for the maritime surveillance capability is sitting on the whiteboard, without a funding line and without even a probable time line for moving off that whiteboard and into the joint equipment programme. I wonder whether the Minister, when he responds to the debate, will clarify for the House what the status is of the whiteboard. The Minister shakes his head. With the greatest of respect to him, it is difficult for the Defence Committee to believe that the Ministry of Defence has a fully funded JEP and a clear idea of what is on the whiteboard when they will not tell us what is on the whiteboard.

[Mr Robathan]

Until now, the hon. Gentleman has been making rather a lot of sense—it is unlike me to compliment him, as he knows—but the whole point of the whiteboard is that we look at things that we want to have and then we assess whether we can afford them, and if everything that we thought that we would like to have was revealed to everyone else, I am afraid that we probably would not be mentioning a whiteboard at all, because we would not want to have our internal thinking announced before we have got as far as making decisions. These are not decisions; these are things that we want to have.

[Thomas Docherty]

I am very conscious that the title of this debate is “Maritime Surveillance” rather than “Acquisition”; I suspect that we may well seek a broader debate on acquisition. Let me just say to the Minister—again, I thank him for his career-helpful advice and praise—that maritime surveillance, as the Committee has so clearly identified, is not a “like” or a “nice to have”. It is absolutely essential.

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[Mr Jones]

I have read Lord Browne’s articles with great interest. I consider him a friend, but the weakness of his argument in The Daily Telegraph is that he makes a point about alternatives without giving one.

A maritime surveillance capability, as the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) said, is vital to ensuring that we know the location of threats to our independent nuclear deterrent. From personal experience, I know the importance that the Ministry of Defence places on ensuring that any threats to our independent nuclear deterrent and our nation are taken very seriously.

Having read the report, I do not think there is disagreement between the Committee and the Government. Uniquely, there is agreement between the Government, the Committee and the National Audit Office that the decision in the 2010 strategic defence and security review was wrong. In a minute I will address why I think the decision was taken, because the contribution from the hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) is enlightening.

Yes, mistakes were made in the discussions on Nimrod. I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman criticised BAE Systems because, as he said, he is referred to in many parlours as the “Member for BAE Systems.” On this occasion, he has been frank and clear in his criticism of the company.

The mistakes made in the early days were like trying to turn a 1962 Mini Cooper into today’s model with the same frame. That was highlighted by the reports on the project from when I was a member of the Defence Committee. Was there a time to pull out of the contract? Yes, I think there was. Our report from the early 2000s suggested that there should have been that option. When spending public money, we get to a point where people think, “A little bit more might get this done.” In hindsight, had there been some revision of the project in the early 2000s, Conservative Members would rightly have thrown criticism at us for wasting large amounts of public money. Making the decision earlier might have led to a capability being in place today.

There is no disagreement that there is a capability gap. The report states:

“The National Audit Office’s (NAO) Ministry of Defence Major Projects Report 2011 considered the capability gaps left by the…MRA4 decision. The NAO Report said that according to the MoD, the Nimrod contributed to eight out of the 15…priority risks set out in the National Security Strategy. It added that the Nimrod was uniquely able to rapidly search large maritime areas, a capability relevant to long range search and rescue, maritime counter-terrorism, gathering strategic intelligence and protecting the nuclear deterrent. The NAO Report further said that the MoD had carried out studies in the lead up to the SDSR to assess the capability gap from cancelling the Nimrod MRA4 and the MoD ‘assessed that cancelling Nimrod would have consequences for the military tasks that the aircraft was expected to undertake, some of them severe’. The Report also outlined the capability gaps”.

[Mr Robathan]

I was not involved in defence before the general election, but I understand that the MR2 was retired from service in March 2010, when the hon. Gentleman was a Minister. That is when the capability gap started, because there was no maritime reconnaissance aircraft from that day forwards. Is that correct?

[Mr Jones]

The important point is that the earlier decision on the MRA4 should have been reviewed. We would then have avoided the capability gap.

I remember that at the time we were facing an Opposition who were calling not only for larger armies, more ships and more aircraft, but for an increased defence budget. I am sure that if we had decided to cancel some of the things that they have subsequently cancelled, they and their allies at the time on The Sun would have given us a harder ride than they have had in recent years.

The NAO report sets out that

“limited analysis was carried out on how specific military tasks could be covered”

by a combination of the various options. The report continues:

“However, the Department noted that there would be ‘significant shortfalls without significant investment, and the co-ordination of such assets at the right place and the right time’”.

There is no disagreement that the Government have created that major capability gap. Worse, there is no solution to fill that gap. I agree with the hon. Member for Aldershot that we are relying heavily on our allies. I pay tribute not only to the Norwegians but to the US and others that are helping us with that capability.

The next question is why was the decision taken? Again, I am interesting in what the hon. Gentleman said: the decision had to be taken because of the mythical £38 billion black hole. I notice Ministers sometimes use that figure, but sometimes they do not. We must recognise that those decisions had to be taken because of the 9% cut in the defence budget introduced by the SDSR. The decisions were not strategic; they were budgetary. Knowing the defence budget as I do, there are only two simple ways to take out in-year cash. The first is to take out capability, as happened here, and, for example, with the Harriers. The second is to sack people, which has happened over the past few years.

I have never figured out where the £38 billion figure came from, even though my parliamentary colleagues, the Public Accounts Committee, the Defence Committee and I have asked for explanations. We have been promised explanations that we have never received. I suspect the figure came from the 2009 NAO report, but that was on the equipment budget.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) said, it gets to £36 billion only if everything in the programme is included, flat cash, for 10 years. Adding the inflation rise meant £6 billion. As the hon. Member for Aldershot knows, as he has admitted this afternoon, there might be aspirations in the equipment programme, but that does not mean it will all be delivered. Some things come out and others go in.

The weakness of the current situation is that the Secretary of State claims to have balanced the budget but, so far as I can see, that refers only to the equipment budget, rather than the remaining 55%. If he has been so good at plugging a £38 billion black hole within months, he and his predecessor, who made the same claim, should not be in the Ministry of Defence, but in the Treasury. We need some honesty.

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[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Brady. Of course, the Conservative parliamentary party always serves under your chairmanship.

I begin by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot) on the work he and his Committee have done in this area. Since we are all being nice to those who help us, I add my thanks to the huge number of serving personnel and civil servants who came to fill in one or two knowledge gaps in my portfolio. I have already made that point. They have come along to see whether they have repaired the gaps in my knowledge, and I think they did.

This is an important and wide-ranging subject and it is right to give it serious attention. As has already been pointed out, maritime security is vital to the defence of our nation and our interests around the world. The military and non-military dimensions of maritime surveillance are key elements. We highlighted our position as an open, outward-facing island nation in the national security strategy and placed an emphasis on surveillance and intelligence in the SDSR. Put simply, we cannot protect ourselves against existing and anticipated threats if we do not understand and cannot detect them. Doing so successfully requires a range of capable platforms and sensors, highly trained personnel and procedures to ensure effective action is taken on the information they provide.

The geography of the United Kingdom means that we are dependent on the sea for our economic prosperity. Maritime security and surveillance underpins our trade: the vast majority of our imports and exports are transported by sea. As much as 90% of world trade is carried by sea, so we not only need to secure our own territorial waters but to contribute to protecting key global sea lanes and our vital interests overseas.

I think everybody here would agree that we also wish to be able to project military power with our allies through the use of expeditionary forces. We rely again on maritime surveillance assets to protect those forces wherever they are deployed. Closer to home, the Government have responsibility to protect our people, our borders and our exclusive economic zone. I have always said that the first duty of Government is the defence of the realm. That requires that the different agencies charged with doing so—the police, borders, immigration, intelligence agencies, coastguard, Department for Transport, search and rescue providers and the armed forces—have the capabilities they need and work closely together.

None the less, hon. Members will be well aware that we did not start on firm financial ground in planning for the future. The parlous state of the defence budget inherited from the previous Government and the overheated and unrealistic equipment plan meant that hard decisions had to be taken. I am not going to engage again with the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), who is in denial, yet he was a Minister in the previous Government and knew what the situation was. He remains in denial and we have had this conversation before.

I understand that the Secretary of State has written to the shadow Secretary of State detailing exactly what the situation was.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

No.

[Mr Robathan]

If he has not, I will come back to the hon. Gentleman and ensure he gets a response. It is also the case that the parlous state of the nation’s finances is visible for all to see. Yet, instead of having any guilt about it, he sits and smiles and says it is not true and that everything was going swimmingly, as the previous Government in a profligate manner distributed money everywhere and left us in this ghastly situation that none of us enjoys.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Robathan]

I have told the hon. Gentleman that I will not engage with him again, because we have done it before and he is in denial. One cannot have military or economic security based on unsustainable defence spending. The Soviet Union found that out. That is why we took a number of difficult decisions during the SDSR, including the decision not to bring the Nimrod MRA4 into service.

At the beginning of the debate, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire said that he did not wish to concentrate on Nimrod, but I am afraid that it has been largely about Nimrod, which I will therefore have to deal with in some detail. I asked the officials present—this huge number of serving personnel and civil servants—at what date the original Nimrod decision was taken, so I knew before his confession that it was, sadly, taken under the previous Conservative Government.

We should not forget the background to the decision to cancel Nimrod. There were no maritime reconnaissance aircraft flying in the RAF when we came into government. We did not create the capability gap—the capability did not exist. Owing to cost growth in the programme, the original plan to convert 21 airframes for the MRA4 had by 2010 been scaled back to only nine. The in-service date had been delayed from 2003 to 2012, costs had none the less risen from £2.8 billion to £3.6 billion, there were still outstanding technical problems which would have taken further large sums of money to solve and we knew that it would cost about £2 billion to operate over the next decade. While the capability’s role in support of anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare, strategic intelligence gathering, and search and rescue remained important, in a financially constrained environment dominated by the operations in Afghanistan among other threats, it made the most military and financial sense to discontinue the programme, however unhappy that made us.

I was particularly interested in the comments of the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife. I joined the armed forces in 1970 and, during my time in the Army and in Parliament since, I have seen a long list of poor procurement projects—[Interruption.] That is the Leader of the Opposition ringing. Out of a litany of procurement disasters, as the hon. Gentleman said, this has been one of the worst. It was more than nine years late, each aircraft was to cost three times the original amount and we still had not finished. We did not where the programme was going, there was no end in sight and we were not asked to throw good money after bad. I am afraid that that decision, much as it is regretted, was the right one.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I apologise to the Minister and to other right hon. and hon. Members for coming late to the debate. I was serving on the Justice and Security Bill Committee, which has only just finished. Given that so much money was sunk into this project and that considerable technological advances were made for the equipment that was to be carried on the Nimrod, will we still get the benefit of that advanced technology development for possible use in future programmes?

[Mr Robathan]

My hon. Friend asks a good question, but I am afraid that I cannot answer at this moment. I will write to him and let him know but, certainly, technological advance does not go away—it has happened.

We have not been idle in dealing with the consequences of the decision. Revised plans and operating procedures are in place for other platforms to mitigate the absence of a maritime patrol aircraft capability. I will not go into too much detail, as some things are classified, but we can request support from allies and partners if necessary and we have established a seedcorn initiative to maintain the skills and knowledge necessary to operate maritime patrol aircraft in the future, should circumstances change. I was in New Zealand last year and saw some of our RAF personnel who were taking part in the seedcorn initiative. They said it was extremely valuable, and I thought it also sounded like a pretty good posting.

[Thomas Docherty]

The Committee said that we support seedcorn, which was a sensible move by the Government, but we were specifically concerned that the capability could not be maintained beyond 2019. Given the ongoing delays, what reassurances can the Minister offer to the Committee that that issue has been met?

[Mr Robathan]

That is a perfectly good question. We are coming up to another SDSR in two years’ time, when we will consider how to take this forward. I was going to cover the subject subsequently, but we are stretched for time. Hot off the press, I point out to my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) that some of the equipment destined for the MRA4 is now destined for the Merlin Mark 2 from 2015. Living within our means will continue to guide our decisions. Hard-headed realism and rigour will determine what we buy.

I have many things that I want to put on the record, but the sitting ends at 4.30 pm, so I must be circumspect in what I say. I turn to submarines, which have been much discussed. Submarines use their stealth and global reach to collect information, indications and warnings of threatening activity; where appropriate, they operate in support of naval taskforces. Bringing in the Astute submarine is a major step forward; it is a quieter submarine and gives us greater capabilities. Also, internationally we are not operating alone. Not only the French and Norwegians, but the Americans and Canadians can provide support through maritime patrol aircraft. We have existing agreements with some of those countries and have recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Norway to co-operate on maritime air surveillance. We are also supporting a NATO smart defence initiative to look at long-term solutions to challenges, which could involve buying maritime patrol aircraft.

We are not complacent. There is a great deal of agreement in the Chamber that this is something we wish to have: greater ability for maritime surveillance. We are looking at ways to have that in future. In order to answer the questions, however, I will not go through the rest of my speech, except to comment on the helicopters. We are looking at the Merlin Mark 2 coming into service this year—two are already in service—and we have SKASaC or Sea King airborne surveillance and control, which will operate until 2016, although the airframe is quite aged, as my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) said. We are not in any way suggesting that life is perfect at the moment.

When winding up, one should answer Members, so I will give some replies. My right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire asked five questions. We see co-ordination of maritime surveillance as being done by the maritime security oversight group, up to the National Security Council. I agree that further development is needed, and I think that it will develop further. His second question was on the strategic analysis of maritime threats and the need for surveillance. I do not have a specific answer, because that is something we are doing the whole time. If he wants to ask a specific question later, I am happy to answer it. On progress on developing maritime ISTAR, some is classified, but optimisation study is going on as we speak. The air ISTAR optimisation study will consider the potential contribution to maritime surveillance of lighter-than-air vehicles, which were mentioned earlier; the initial report will appear in April this year, for consideration of options by April next year. His fourth question was the general ability to deal with contingency operations. Generally, contingency—a much overused word in the MOD—seems to rule everything at the moment. After Afghanistan, that is very much where we are looking. His fifth question was on updates, which we will continue to provide. If we do not, he can come back to me and ask for them, as I certainly will update him.

I did not entirely agree with the point made by the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne) on the deterrent, although I entirely agreed with her point about Scottish separation. We have layers of defence for the deterrent, so I echo the CDS, and I have just mentioned the Merlin upgrade to Mark 2, going into service this year. They regularly deploy to Prestwick to rehearse anti-submarine warfare in support of deterrence protection. Therefore, what she said is something we are using, although not permanently.

[Sandra Osborne]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Robathan]

I do not think that I should; I have one minute left.

I agree entirely with the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife that the procurement and acquisition process has been appalling in the past. I hope that he will have some confidence in the pronouncements by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and, indeed, by my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne), the Minister for Defence Equipment, Support and Technology. We are trying extraordinarily hard, with the assistance of Bernard Gray, the Chief of Defence Matériel, to get this right. The Select Committee will come back to me or the Ministry of Defence if we do not get it right. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the black hole, but I do not want to go there again.

May I say how much we miss my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) at the MOD? He was absolutely right about money, but I am afraid to say—