National Shipbuilding Strategy

Lord Sterling of Plaistow Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie]

The noble Lord, Lord Campbell, raises two interesting points. On the back of the defence reviews, there is more clarity about budget. No one is pretending that budget is an easy subject—it is not—but, equally, there is a responsibility to take seriously, with regard to one of our primary services, the Royal Navy, the recommendations of Sir John Parker, and that is what the Government are endeavouring to do. The whole point about having a naval facility is that we cannot have a kind of naval facility; we have to have one that is relevant to the needs of the current age. Sir John Parker has greatly assisted in identifying not only what that should be but how we do it.

The Type 31e will be a different kind of vessel and will have an innovatory, modular type of design. It will be specifically built to introduce a flexibility that we hope will be attractive to potential export customers. The expectation in the industry is that that is a reasonable assessment, and it will be rigorously prosecuted by both the Government and the shipbuilding industry.

[Lord Sterling of Plaistow (Con)]

My Lords, I very much welcome this announcement. As some of your Lordships will be aware, I had a project done by King’s College London on the advantages of sovereign purchases in this country. It will give a huge amount of business to a large number of small suppliers, apart from the major companies we are talking about. From the point of view of how successful it will be, taking into consideration the points made by noble Lords, Sir John and I worked together for many years, building ships all over the world. I will make two points. First, if you are going to deliver well, you cannot have interference—too many cooks in the kitchen—as regards what you should or should not be doing. Secondly, can we do it? Do we have expertise in this country to do it? Unquestionably, yes, we do. A great deal of that expertise today is in design firms. One of the biggest problems we have had in the past in this country is that we have “prototypitis”—we go on trying to do it. That has happened, and I am afraid that, frankly, Type 26 is an extremely good example of it.

On the points which have been made by other noble Peers here, will it be enough? Many of us have said in previous debates on defence that, unquestionably, it will not. Following Brexit, the Queen’s Speech and the Prime Minister’s speeches, we are going global again—we are going back to our old responsibilities worldwide. That means presence; you need presence if you are to be seen to have hard power. I do not believe that the number of those frigates or workhorses—call them whatever you want—will be enough. When we are talking about the time it will take, we need many more. I would like to see us coming up to at least 25 of those frigates in years to come.

Finally, if you are really going to get an industry going in this country, the only way it happens from a business point of view and everything else we are involved in is that you have to have continuity. They have to know that shipping orders will be given for the next five, 10, 15, 20 or 30 years. That is how you build up the expertise, knowledge and resources to be able to do it. However, having said that, I very much welcome this announcement. If we can get our act together to get more moneys for the armed services, which are absolutely vital, and if we can get the people to join us—this will be key in the future—that will be marvellous.

[Baroness Goldie]

I thank my noble friend very much for making a number of helpful observations. There is the idea that you can have too many cooks and maybe that is what plagued previous processes and procedures. What Sir John Parker recommends is a new clarity, a focus and a simplicity so that everybody knows exactly how the whole business of procurement is to proceed.

A very important point is how we sustain our shipbuilding industry in the United Kingdom. Coming from Scotland, I know that there have undoubtedly been anxious moments over the past few decades, and the commissions by the Ministry of Defence for the Clyde shipyards have been of huge importance. Interestingly, many shipyards in the United Kingdom have managed to diversify, taking on other forms of engineering activity to make them slightly less reliant on Royal Naval contracts. That is a healthy development because, as the Statement identified, we want to try to protect the shipyards from the troughs and peaks of when Royal Naval tenders are available and when they are not.

Going back to the point that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, raised and the general matter of budget, I can say only that the defence budget is growing year on year. It is very important that against that background—certainly in relation to the whole area of the procurement of vessels for the Royal Navy—we know exactly what we are trying to do and how the structure is going to work, and it is important that the shipbuilding industry knows that as well. That is why I think that today’s Statement and announcement are a watershed in how the United Kingdom embarks upon the procurement of these naval vessels.

As to what the optimum or desirable number of vessels is at any given time, I doubt that that is an issue on which there will ever be agreement. However, I think that the commitments given by the Government, particularly regarding the baseline of frigates, are very important, and in conjunction with the two new Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers, not to mention our submarine presence, that all amounts to a significant and important naval defence capability.