Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Francois and Lindsay Hoyle

Monday 20th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker, I think my hon. Friend the Minister for Defence Procurement may have—inadvertently, I am sure—just misled the House of Commons. Pegasus bridge was captured in a glider-borne assault by the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, not a parachute assault. I know that because I was at the D-day 70 with the then Prime Minister David Cameron at 12.16 am to commemorate the assault. I am sure it was an error by my hon. Friend; no one will want to believe that an MOD Minister tried to change the history of D-day because the aircraft did not work.

[Mr Speaker]

The good news is that that is a point of clarification, which have been resolved.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Francois and Lindsay Hoyle

Wednesday 13th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Final question—Mark Francois.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

Prime Minister, in the 1930s, one of your less illustrious predecessors, Neville Chamberlain, so denuded the British armed forces of funding, until it was too late, that we failed to deter Adolf Hitler, and 50 million people tragically died in the second world war. Russia has invaded Ukraine, China is threatening Taiwan, and British shipping is being attacked by Houthis in the Red sea. Could you please assure me, as the son of a D-day veteran, and the House of Commons that we are not going to forget the lessons of history and make the same mistake again?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Francois and Lindsay Hoyle

Monday 11th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Mark Francois.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

Thank you, Sir. It is good to see you back safe and well in the Chair. As this is the nearest I am ever going to get to it—No. 10, please! [Laughter.]

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (David Johnston)]

I wondered what was happening there, Mr Speaker.

As part of our £2.6 billion investment to reform the SEND and AP system, we have announced 41 new special free schools, with a further 37 in the pipeline. We have also set out plans for new national standards to make clear the support that should be available in mainstream settings for children with special educational needs.

[Mr Speaker]

When did the vacancy come at No. 10?

[Mr Francois]

Can I take this opportunity quickly to thank the Secretary of State, her junior Ministers and officials for all the help for the schools affected by RAAC—reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete—in my constituency?

Turning to SEN, demand in Essex far outstrips supply. The Secretary of State will know that just prior to the summer recess, I launched a campaign for a new SEN school in south Essex. I am delighted to tell her that we have a trust that is seriously interested, we may have a site and we may even have some money. On that basis, could I meet her or one of her junior Ministers—early in the new year, please—to update her on where we have got to and to ask for help to make this dream a reality?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Francois and Lindsay Hoyle

Monday 16th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am sure that the Minister should meet the district leaders as well.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

I welcome the Minister to his new job. Several months ago, Essex MPs met his predecessor to talk about the possibility of a combined authority for Essex. We were overwhelmingly against it. The people of Essex do not want this ridiculous white elephant; there is no demand from them. This is all being brought about by some highly ambitious Essex county councillors and some officers who think they would do well out of it. As most people in Essex do not even know that it is going on, will he and his boss meet me and other Essex MPs to hear our objections?

Points of Order

Debate between Mark Francois and Lindsay Hoyle

Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

I do not want this to continue for too long. I do need to answer. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will be brief.

[Mr Francois]

I will be brief, Mr Speaker.

The members of the Committee were nominated by the Committee of Selection in the normal way last week. So far so good, but when I checked with the Chairman of the Committee of Selection, I learned that he had not been informed of the changes, which had been made by the Whips and not by the Committee. This is basically a sixth-form politics stunt, which came about because the Government feared that the people concerned would vote against that element of the Windsor framework. Why have our Government been reduced to this?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Francois and Lindsay Hoyle

Monday 15th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

T6. Clive Sheldon KC, of 11 King’s Bench Walk chambers, submitted his Lessons Learned report on the AJAX programme to the Ministry of Defence some four months ago. We are told that it is still undergoing a “fact-checking” process, but there are growing rumours that some people who are adversely implicated in the report are trying to water it down or even suppress its publication. As the Secretary of State personally commissioned the report, and as it is his birthday today, and as this is, I think, my fourth time of asking, will he please give us all a birthday present and tell us when the report will actually be published?

[Mr Speaker]

Happy birthday.

Procurement Bill [Lords]

Debate between Mark Francois and Lindsay Hoyle

2nd reading
Monday 9th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

As a former Defence Minister, I will confine my remarks to the Defence-related aspects of procurement, which feature multiple times in the Bill, particularly in parts 1, 2 and 4. The United Kingdom’s system of Defence procurement is broken. That is the considered opinion of the all-party Public Accounts Committee, on which I now serve, which concluded in its 2021 report, “Improving the performance of major defence equipment contracts”, that,

“The Department’s system for delivering major equipment capabilities is broken and is repeatedly wasting taxpayers’ money.”

The Government’s auditor, the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, audits all major infrastructure programmes from HS2 downwards. It produces its findings each summer, in which it grades each project on a traffic light or dashboard system. The definition of a red project is that,

“Successful delivery of the project appears to be unachievable.”

Amber projects are those where,

“Successful delivery appears feasible but significant issues already exist”.

In its latest report of July 2022, the IPA audited 52 of the largest MOD procurement programmes from Dreadnought downwards, which total more than £80 billion of British taxpayers’ money. Of those, nine projects were rated red or unachievable, 33 were amber where significant issues already exist, seven were classified on national security grounds, and only three were rated green, whereby,

“Successful delivery of the project on time, budget and quality appears highly likely”.

I submit to the House that a system where barely 6% of our new major Defence programmes are judged to be confidently on track is indeed a truly abysmal record and fully in keeping with the PAC’s verdict of a “broken” system.

In a similar vein, in March 2021, the Defence Committee published a hard-hitting report, “Obsolescent and outgunned”, which highlighted that in two decades, the British Army has not successfully introduced a single new major armoured fighting vehicle into service. As it powerfully concluded:

“This report reveals a woeful story of bureaucratic procrastination, military indecision, financial mismanagement and general ineptitude, which have continually bedevilled attempts to properly re-equip the British Army over the last two decades.”

The biggest scandal in this sorry tale is that of the General Dynamics Ajax armoured reconnaissance vehicle which, after 10 years and the expenditure of over £4 billion of UK taxpayers’ money, has still not resulted in a single new vehicle entering frontline service, for which the MOD is even now unable to provide a definitive date. Even if it could, the future communication system on which the highly digitised Ajax would rely, called Morpheus, is still many more years from entering service. The lead contractor on the Morpheus evolve to open project is General Dynamics, the same prime contractor as for Ajax. Last year, the Defence Secretary commissioned Clive Sheldon KC to conduct an independent inquiry into the flow of information surrounding Ajax, including to Ministers, which is due to report very shortly. I suspect it may well prove uncomfortable reading for some of those who were working on the Ajax programme.

To take another example of a red programme, it has taken nearly seven years to integrate an airborne early warning radar into a Merlin helicopter to provide air defence coverage for our aircraft carriers—a project called Crowsnest. In stark contrast, during the 1982 Falklands war, we integrated an earlier version of the same radar into a Sea King helicopter in just over three months. This is just one more example of how ponderous, bureaucratic and inefficient our procurement system has now become.

One associated area that is also desperately in need of reform is the procurement of the maintenance of accommodation for service personnel and their families. The future defence infrastructure services—FDIS—contract, which went live earlier this year, is an utter shambles. Complaints about mould, lack of heating and multiple contractor visits, which still failed to carry out basic repairs, such as fixing broken boilers, have appeared in numerous media outlets in recent months. We cannot carry on like this. Our service personnel and their families deserve better. I understand that Defence Ministers may now genuinely be considering terminating the FDIS contract and seeking alternative arrangements. I co-authored a report for a previous Prime Minister on military retention—entitled “Stick or Twist?”—three years ago, in which we suggested establishing a bespoke housing association instead. Whatever solution Ministers now finally adopt, I earnestly hope they will stop reinforcing failure via FDIS and opt for something successful instead.

In summary, the Public Accounts Committee was right: our system of defence procurement is broken, and it is going to take much more than this Bill to fix it. With a war under way in Ukraine and the Government’s integrated review being updated as a result, there is now an opportunity to put right these weaknesses in our defence procurement process, which are deep-seated and have taken place, it must be said, under Governments of both colours for many years. We certainly need to increase our defence spending, but we also need to spend what we allocate for defence much more efficiently as well. This system is crying out for an extremely thorough analysis to be subsequently followed by dynamic reform. We cannot let this go on much longer. Our national security depends on it, and if hon. Members do not believe me, then perhaps ask a Ukrainian instead.

[Mr Speaker]

We now come to a maiden speech. I call Samantha Dixon.

Russia: UK Companies

Debate between Mark Francois and Lindsay Hoyle

Wednesday 7th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Francois]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. It cannot come now. It has to come after the next statement.

[Mr Francois]

It is just something that we wanted the Business Secretary to hear.

[Mr Speaker]

Well, we cannot change the rules. There are more Members than you with points of order—that is my problem. I would be opening a can of worms. I would love to, but I dare not.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Francois and Lindsay Hoyle

Monday 7th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

The Type 26 frigate is literally a world-beating design, which we have exported to both Canada and Australia, and we all want to see it in service as soon as possible. So it is doubly disappointing that, last week, the Department issued a written ministerial statement to say her entry into service is now delayed a further year from October 2027 to October 2028 and the lifetime cost to the programme will be over a quarter of a billion pounds more of taxpayers’ money. Given the defence budget is likely to come under great pressure, why does it take BAE Systems 11 years to build a ship the Japs can build in four?

[Mr Speaker]

Just before the Secretary of State answers, may I say that we even have the Speaker of Canada here, which is very appropriate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Francois and Lindsay Hoyle

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

No one believes you any more.

[Mr Speaker]

Order.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Francois and Lindsay Hoyle

Monday 15th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

Hello, it’s me again.

I will gladly take the Secretary of State up on his offer of a meeting about procurement, but there is an old Army saying: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. This is broke—it is official. This is the worst report on MOD procurement in living memory, Ben. We both know it is, so can we please do something about it and put it right?

[Mr Speaker]

The Secretary of State, I think you meant to call him.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Francois and Lindsay Hoyle

Wednesday 3rd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Don’t forget that the Prime Minister is asking the country to get together and clap at six o’clock.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

Is it related to Prime Minister’s questions?

[Mr Francois]

Yes, Mr Speaker. If it assists the House, perhaps I could help to correct the record. On 31 January 2017, the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) said to the House, as recorded in Hansard:

 “Why would we want to be outside the European Medicines Agency, which ensures that all medicines in the EU market are safe and effective?”—[Official Report, 31 January 2017; Vol. 620, c. 827.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We are not continuing the debate. That correction will be on the record, but I am not reopening the debate.

I am suspending the House for a few minutes to enable the necessary arrangements for the next business to be made.