Defence Spending

Robert Courts Excerpts

Tuesday 16th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan) on her passionate advocacy on all occasions and on the very valuable and insightful points that she made.

In the 1990s, we saw a supposed peace dividend. I suggest that was illusory then and, in the face of a revanchist Russia, is folly now. We live in a world of great power threats, where there are diversifying, multiple non-state actor threats, too. It is right that we invest properly in our armed forces.

We tend always to have this debate in the context of kit. I welcome the fact, as the Minister will probably remind us in due course, that we are due to see two new aircraft carriers coming on stream, and the F-35s too. Of course, we need enough to make sure that we can operate both carriers, but that may be a point for another day. I welcome the Poseidons coming on stream; the first British-marked example flew only last week. I very much value that, but we must not just see all those as expensive baubles that are signature-tick projects to show we are investing in defence. We need a holistic approach to our armed forces.

I am grateful that my hon. Friend mentioned deterrence—she is quite right—but she will realise, as I am sure most hon. Members do, that we need layered defence deterrents for them to work at all. It is no good simply relying on the nuclear deterrent, because that is devalued hugely if there are not the layers to support it. What we have done in the past is simply to salami-slice the defence budget—chop a programme here and a capability there, in order to make ends meet. That simply will not do. We need a strategic assessment of the threats we face and what kind of power we want to be: do we want to be a full-spectrum tier 1 power? If we do, we need to fund our forces appropriately for the threats we wish them to defend against.

We have to see the value of the kit beyond just the capability it provides. I always refer to the glory of the 1960s aviation industry in this country—multiple companies producing wonderful multiple aircraft—but that world simply does not exist anymore. We could buy cheap, capable kit off the shelf from the Americans. That is one philosophical approach we might take, although I do not think we should and I doubt many of us do, because we would lose our sovereign capability and investment in industry.

We have to accept, therefore, that if we want sovereign capability, it requires the Government to invest not just in money but in strategy. In the past, we have taken neither approach; we have bought a bit of kit; we have invested in some kit; we have built some kit ourselves; we have collaborated in other kit, but with no overall holistic approach. My view is unequivocal: we should have that sovereign capability for reasons of national defence and because it employs hundreds if not thousands of people in our industries. We are very good at it, and it provides the skills that our young people would like, but it requires Government investment in planning.

I very much welcome the shipbuilding and combat air strategies but, as has been referred to, we need plans for a number of other things, including autonomous capability, helicopters, transport tankers, carriers and training—there are probably others. Above all, we need the Treasury to recognise the value of defence and not the cost. I see that when representing RAF Brize Norton. It is difficult to expect bright young people to serve if they cannot get a hot shower in the middle of winter, or if they see that their accommodation is nowhere near as good as what their friends have in the private sector. Those bright young men and women do have options.

I will just make a plug with the Minister for the REEMA sites at RAF Brize Norton, which need redevelopment—I know it is not his fault. We have brownfield sites there. It is having an effect on west Oxfordshire’s housing stock and on the young men and women who serve at RAF Brize Norton. I appreciate that is not the Minister’s fault but the Treasury’s. The Treasury must see the value, not the cost. It needs to revalue the Green Book and see defence not as a cash drain but a net gain to the UK economy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Robert Courts Excerpts

Monday 8th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mark Lancaster]

I am not going to predict exactly what that date will be. We are seeing an increase month on month, but that does not apply to all establishments: for example, Sandhurst has only three intakes per year and Harrogate has only one. I cannot give the exact date when the target will be hit, and I do not think that the hon. Gentleman would really expect me to, but I believe that we are now heading firmly in the right direction.

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

I visited Carterton Community College last week and observed the striking success of the science, technology, engineering and mathematics programme set up there by RAF Brize Norton. Does the Minister agree that such programmes not only teach young people important life skills, but provide the inspiration that may lead them to take up careers in the Royal Air Force or other armed forces, which will help to increase service numbers?

[Mark Lancaster]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Indeed, there are many good reasons why young people would wish to join the armed forces, not least because our armed forces are now the largest provider of apprenticeships in the United Kingdom.

Combat Air Strategy

Robert Courts Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Combat Air Strategy progress and next steps.

It is an honour and a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

As we consider what aircraft will replace the Typhoon, it is appropriate for us to remember those who operate that aircraft now. I am particularly mindful that only a couple of days ago we heard the tragic news about the loss of two German Eurofighters and a pilot in a crash. The German air force remains a key ally, as it was during the cold war, and it is one of the best equipped in the world. Germany is one of our closest friends, as well as being a key NATO ally. I am sure that we are all mindful of the loss of that German pilot. We cannot know the reason for the crash at this stage, and we ought not to speculate, but it may be that we touch on issues such as training or serviceability as part of the debate. Whatever the reasons, it is a sad moment for all friends of Germany and of aviators. I would like us to remember them all at this time.

It is good to see so many Members here as we consider the combat air strategy, particularly given that so many were also present in November 2017 when the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) and I sponsored the original debate calling for a combat air strategy—in fact, it was for a defence aerospace industrial strategy; I will refer to that terminology, which is not just semantics, in a moment or two. Progress has certainly been made: the combat air strategy was published in July 2018, while Team Tempest—including the Royal Air Force, the Ministry of Defence, BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, Leonardo UK and MBDA UK—and the mock-up of the Tempest aircraft were unveiled at the Royal International Air Tattoo last year.

However, there is much more to do. It is appropriate for us all to take stock at this stage, not least because other competitors in the field are forging ahead. This is the right moment to have this debate, given that only last week at the Paris air show the Franco-German team unveiled what has been referred to as their “squashed Raptor” design; anyone who does not know what I mean should take a picture of the F-22 Raptor and then look the Franco-German model, then they will see it exactly. The Turkish fighter concept was unveiled at the same time. In some ways, they are a year or so behind Team Tempest’s efforts, but in some ways they are more developed. They seem to have dates for first flight outlined, which I think I am correct in saying we do not yet have. In any event, there is clearly no room for complacency.

I make one perhaps basic point, although it is not the most important: perhaps we could just call the aircraft that we are discussing “Tempest”. The name has historic resonance—the Hawker Tempest replaced the Hawker Typhoon, as this Tempest should replace our Typhoon. It also provides a logical progression, from Tornado to Typhoon to Tempest. I appreciate that this is not the most important point that we will discuss, but it might make it easier for everyone if we do not have to wrestle with baffling military acronyms or phrases such as “combat air” or “FCAS”—future combat air system. I would rather that we did not have a minor international incident, as with Typhoon, by debating at the end of the programme what the aircraft will be called. In any event, I suggest that we call this aircraft Tempest, and I will refer to it as Tempest today.

Before we get into the details, we should look at why it is so important that we have a combat air strategy. Defence aerospace has accounted for about 87% of defence exports over the last 10 years, and the UK combat air sector has an approximate annual turnover of more than £6 billion. The F-35 programme directly employs around 2,200 people, with Hawk at 1,500 and Typhoon around 5,000. Hawk is estimated—through the 1,000 or so aircraft built or on order—to bring in £15.8 billion over its lifetime to the UK Government, for an outlay of around £900 million. Typhoon will have brought in £28.2 billion, against an outlay of £15.2 billion, showing a clear economic benefit, entirely leaving aside the geopolitical desirability of British sovereign capability. Those figures are before we consider the recent Qatar deal or any future sales over which discussions are ongoing.

However, the issue is not all about money: it is also about finding a way to develop, sponsor and bring on the technology that then has a spin-off in other areas of everyday life, as it has throughout history; the combat air strategy rightly points out that the software used in the Tornado, the Typhoon and the C-130J now provides the rail timetabling system for the London Underground. However, the battle that we often seem to fight in the House is over funding for these projects, in the face of the short-sighted argument that military equipment is simply a financial drain. Of course it costs money, but it brings in money, as well as maintaining vital national independence.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for introducing the debate so well. He particularly highlights the contribution of the hardware side. Is it not also important that we maintain the military side, because of the impact right the way through the supply chain on many specialist subcontractors—often at tiers 3 and 4 —that are also a vital part of civil aerospace, Formula 1 and the motor industry? Those are all areas in which we are internationally competitive and which help us to pay our way in the world.

[Robert Courts]

I agree entirely. We often do not realise the impact of the defence industry on each of our constituencies. Many of us will have in our constituencies sometimes quite small companies that make something as part of the supply chain for a much bigger machine. That is absolutely right, and we must work hard to protect that. As the right hon. Gentleman rightly identifies, it goes to the wider impact of technology on the rest of our lives.

I would like each and every one of us, as individual MPs, to consider making arguments to the Treasury about how defence is accounted for. We have to start fighting the battle to turn the tide against the perception that defence and the defence industry simply cost money. I am very encouraged by the Secretary of State for Defence’s comments in the current edition of The House magazine; I hope you will not mind if I quote her, Mr Stringer. She says:

“I think that the Treasury has been missing a trick. It has not really understood the full value of defence to the nation. The methodology that it uses is flawed. So, in advance of the spending review I will be setting out why I think it should change its methodology towards its assessment of the return to the UK of investing in defence. I think there’s much more we can do to reap the benefits that defence brings to the UK prosperity agenda.”

I entirely agree. However, I do not think it is a matter for only the Defence Secretary to deal with. It is a matter for each of us—whether we have military or the defence industry in our constituencies, or both—to keep making the case for what the defence industry and our armed forces bring to UK plc.

[John Spellar]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. What he describes requires a really significant change in mindset in the civil service, and particularly in the Treasury, regarding procurement guidelines: they relentlessly refuse to take into account the impact on the prosperity agenda, which they talk about, or even how much they will get in as revenue from the taxes of people working in this country, rather than working in other countries. That goes across the board. Is not it time for a fundamental rethink, in line with how every one of our major international industrial competitors operates?

[Robert Courts]

Again, I am grateful. The right hon. Gentleman has made the point succinctly. I agree entirely, as I suspect all of us will today—and I think that the Secretary of State is on the same page as we are. Yes, it is time; that is exactly what I am asking for.

[John Spellar]

Has the memo got to the Minister for procurement?

[Robert Courts]

We are very much asking for a fundamental rethink of the way the Treasury accounts for the contribution of defence. It is probably time for me to make the old joke that we often make when having these debates. I am mindful of the words of my grandfather, who was in Bomber Command during the war. He used to say that the opposition, the opposing armed forces, were not the enemy; they were just people who were playing the same game but at the other end of the pitch. The opposition are just the opposition; the real enemy is the Treasury.

As I said, we often make that old joke in these debates, but it is true. We all find ourselves constantly having to ask the Treasury for more money, but also begging the Treasury, as we have done on both sides of the House, to see the value that defence brings to the economy—it is not just the cost—when programmes have to be invested in. It was a slightly flippant point, but this is the ongoing battle that we have to fight every time any of us stands up to speak about the defence industry or investing in the equipment that our armed forces will need for the future.

That understanding is vital. Although I am addressing my remarks to the Minister responsible for defence procurement, the ramifications of what I am saying go far beyond this Minister and his Secretary of State. They extend also to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, because we need people to have the skills required to build the systems that we are talking about. We need to look also to the Department for International Trade and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, because of the diplomacy required to assemble the multinational team who are likely to be required to build the aircraft. Of course, the Treasury will always sit in the middle, because it is the one that holds the money, but this work will require top-level political direction to ensure that it takes place. We will want to see the next Prime Minister direct and ensure the cross-Government co-ordination required for this project to be a success.

We ought to look at the form of the project. The Franco-German team who announced their project last week have made it clear that it will involve the next- generation fighter, as it is called, but also remote carriers—they are sometimes called loyal wingmen; essentially they are unmanned aerial vehicles that feed off and support the main manned aircraft—and that that will encompass an air combat cloud, the manned aircraft accompanied by UAVs as a swarm concept. Although we are likely to look to do the same, the form of the project is not yet entirely clear, but it does have significant ramifications in terms of work share, intellectual property protection and, consequently, who the national partners are or can be.

I would like to talk first about national partners. We will all welcome the British drive and British lead, but it probably is not a wild stab in the dark to suggest that we will probably not design and produce a sixth-generation aircraft all on our own, only to equip the Royal Air Force, because sales and production of aircraft are inextricably linked to work share and to the ultimate sales partner. We are aware that conversations are taking place. The Swedish, the Italians and the Japanese are perhaps the obvious partners with whom we are considering working, but there is a real need for urgency.

In November 2018, the Spanish announced that they were considering options for replacement of their F/A-18 Hornet fleet and they were in discussions with the Dassault and Airbus team, who are a Franco-German operation, as well as Team Tempest. They stated that the key factor was the level of industrial participation that was offered. Of course, last week, they signed up with the Franco-German operation at the Paris air show. I have no way of knowing—the Minister may—whether that was as a result of a deliberate British decision. It may be that the level of expertise or financial input offered was unattractive to us, or it may be that it was a result of a Spanish decision to go elsewhere, but at the very least we can say that it is clear that there is competition between the rival British and Franco-German blocs, either to become the more established and advanced programme and to persuade the other to join in, but on their terms, or to ensure the success of their programme because national participation naturally brings orders.

The Franco-German operation is naturally looking at the same potential partners as we are, so it is essential that we have top-level political engagement, repeating Mrs Thatcher’s work in the early stages of the Eurofighter programme in the 1980s. I will turn to the issue of political engagement for a moment now. The Minister will have to forgive me. I know how deeply engaged he is, but this is something that goes beyond his hard work and his Secretary of State as well. It goes up all the way up to full Cabinet support and the support of the Prime Minister.

We can see the approach taken by France. President Macron launched the Franco-German project on 17 June, introducing the partnership of those countries with Spain and signing an agreement at the Paris airshow. There is no doubt that for the French and Germans, that is a national and European project in which they invest considerable prestige, and they will be determined to succeed and to claim for themselves, potentially, aerospace territory that has traditionally been the purview of the British, and they are deploying top-level politicians to achieve that.

The downside of the Franco-German approach is that they will want to be the architects of the project, shaping the capability and design of the aircraft. They may allow others to make the metaphorical bricks, but they will not allow them to sculpt the resulting edifice. We therefore have a golden opportunity to involve those who have outstanding aerospace sectors that either are under-appreciated—such as, perhaps, the Italians—or have not achieved the cut-through that they deserve, which may be the case with Sweden. However, as I have said, that will require political engagement at the very highest level to bring them together.

Just as the Franco-German project is a symbol of those countries’ increasing integration in political as well as military terms, so it is vital that the Tempest project is, for us, a symbol of an outward-looking, co-operative, internationally minded UK post Brexit, a practical illustration of the frequently uttered words that although we are leaving the European Union, we are not leaving Europe, and proof that European co-operation and a European identity exist and thrive outside the political union of the EU.

The current terms of the combat air strategy suggest that it would not be possible for Britain to join the Franco-German project, for reasons such as retaining UK IP—I will return to that point in a minute—but the very last thing that the country or industry needs is lukewarm political commitment leading to a British folding into a rival project, with all that that would mean for our national industry. I am wary of warm words. We are heading in the right direction, and the document that we have seen is very valuable, but history has shown that what I am warning about has happened all too often in the past. There is no avoiding the fact that top-level political commitment is needed not only now, but in the months and years ahead.

We have the biggest air show in the world at the Royal International Air Tattoo in July, as well as the Defence and Security Equipment International exhibition, which international leaders will be visiting, but I would like to see our national leaders going abroad to visit other countries to seek and gain their support. When that is got right—as it has been with Australia for frigates and Wedgetail—we can see the benefits, in terms of not just capability but international influence, as we are a country that does not just work within the Five Eyes intelligence network but provides top-class capability. We stand to gain skills and prosperity as well as international influence if we can manufacture and support aircraft. Hawk shows us how successfully that can be done.

The ambition to secure international influence is shown on page 25 of the combat air strategy, as part of the colourfully illustrated national value framework. I am glad to have that in front of me, and I know the Minister does as well. I am pleased to see it, but currently these are just words; they need to be supported by the top-level political leadership of which I have spoken. I would like to dwell for a moment on the wording of paragraph 38 at the top of page 25, which reads:

“The framework allows the Ministry of Defence to compare the relative benefits of a range of options from procuring ‘off-the-shelf’ to partnering with allies. When placed alongside detailed cost analysis it will enable us to determine relative value for money of the options and consider trade-offs.”

That seems to me to be very broadly drafted and to encompass about five possible options. The Minister might tell me that there are others.

First, that could encompass life extensions to Typhoon. Although that would be welcome for the purpose of bringing on new technology, it is not something that we should be looking at long term. Secondly, it could mean no aircraft—a re-heated Sandys report. I think that was wrong then and remains wrong now. Thirdly, that wording could simply mean buying off the shelf. In fact, the phrase “off-the-shelf” is used. There has always been a good argument, on the face of it, that we can buy good kit cheaply from the Americans. That is true, so far as it goes, but it would leave us without a domestic industry or the ability to make our own combat aircraft, and would remove the international influence that I have spoken of, which is the main advantage of a combat air strategy. I suggest that that option ought to be no more than a last resort.

Fourthly, partnering with allies might mean being a junior partner, as is the case with F-35. That is fine. We might have the advantage of large workshare, but be unable to shape the aircraft for our needs, obtain international influence or protect our leading high-tech capability, which we all want to protect. Fifthly, there is the option of being a leading partner, which is what Team Tempest seems to be aiming for. I would favour that option.

The wording leaves a lot of room for manoeuvre. Perhaps—heaven forbid!—it was deliberately drafted like that. I am pushing for the fifth option, where the UK is a lead partner. Other hon. Members and I are pushing for political leadership to that end. We do not want a strategy that sounds good in practice but ends up leaving sufficient space for a far less ambitious position, which does not provide the Royal Air Force with the capability it needs or protect the sovereign industry, about which hon. Members in all parts of the Chamber have spoken so powerfully. We have seen that in the past.

Any hon. Members who have been in debates with me before will remember my aviation history lessons—I will not give them another. [Interruption.] I am sorry to hear that that is regretted. Perhaps I will do so another time; I have spoken for long enough already. The whole point of the combat air strategy, which the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North and I pushed for way back in November 2017, was precisely to avoid that happening again. Can the Minister confirm that the Government are determined to pursue the lead partner option and whether any of the options that I have posited have been ruled out?

We will need to consider whether the offer of an airframe alone will be enough to make a success of this strategy, or whether it will need further expansion. I suggest that we ought to be looking at a system, rather than an airframe, so that we can include other capability and diplomacy. We can look at the Qatari Typhoon sale as an example. As part of that multibillion pound contract to supply Qatar with Typhoon and Hawk, No. 12 Squadron is integrating Qatari personnel, including pilots and ground crew at RAF Coningsby, before moving to Qatar.

That is a package of training and co-operation with UK counterparts that has not been seen since the second world war, when the RAF last formed a squadron with another nation. Perhaps we need to be a little careful and assess the success of that project, to ensure that it is working for the RAF as well as for industry. However, we have seen from that sale that the need for training—particularly the desire for training associated with the world-class quality mark of the Royal Air Force—may be a major part of any deal in the future, whether regarding aircraft alone or as a package. We ought to consider that sort of thing as part of the combat air strategy as well.

Saab has added GlobalEye airborne early warning and control aircraft to its offer of Gripens for the Finnish air force, which Typhoon is already also competing in. If we are to offer Tempest to other nations in due course, will it include, for example, an air combat cloud, and if so, who will we be able to share that IP technology with? Would we want to offer, for example, tanker or ISTAR—intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance—transport assets as part of the package? Would we want to offer training packages or training aircraft?

That last point is important, and it is why I return to the title of the debate. I am not simply focusing on semantics here. The debate held in November 2017 called for a defence aerospace industrial strategy. That encompasses more than just combat air, which is what this strategy principally deals with. This deals with the airframe that will become Tempest, but I suggest that an overall strategy ought to consider what will replace, among other things, Hawk. I ask the Minister to approach that issue again.

The point of having a defence aerospace industrial strategy is to understand what air power we will need as a nation in the future. That includes not just the frontline fast jet aircraft, but the training aircraft and the training regime that will be needed to accompany it.

I would like to talk about the industrial base and the skill base before I conclude—I am conscious that other hon. Members want to speak. I welcome the Eurofighter Typhoon development plan that was launched last week, with the NATO Eurofighter and Tornado Management Agency. We need to ensure that Typhoon has ongoing investment in the years ahead. It might seem counter- intuitive, but everyone here will realise that, to an extent, the airframe is simply a framework into which other things are put. That is not entirely true, because there is technology around low observability, engine nozzles, stores carriage, and optimisation for air-to-air or air-to-ground; but to some extent it is true.

Much of the technology we will see on Tempest will not really be brand new, but will have been debuted on Typhoon, so it is essential that the Typhoon and Future Combat Air System teams are in constant contact with each other, rather than being in separate silos, to ensure that the capability is rolled out as it becomes available, so that it is bedded in and matures on Typhoon, which therefore not only benefits from the upgrades, but leads us to a seamless transition from Typhoon to Tempest in about 20 years’ time—it is extraordinary to say that.

The political engagement that I have spoken of also needs to be deployed in order to continue to see Typhoon exports, and to produce and continue to protect the industrial skills base that will be needed for Tempest. That brings me to the importance of engagement with science, technology, engineering and maths in education. Students throughout the UK should realise that this is their aircraft. It is something that they can work on and perhaps even fly. We cannot wait until people are in their teens or 20s before trying to get them interested in defence aerospace.

I am grateful to Royal Air Force Brize Norton for engaging enthusiastically with Carterton Community College to design a STEM programme, which was so successful that it has been mentioned in the report from Chief of the Air Staff to Her Majesty the Queen. I appreciate that that is not possible everywhere, but where there is a local asset, whether in the defence industry or a military asset, let us try to link up local schools and enthuse young people about the possibilities of the exciting national project that Tempest will be.

That will also require a Government assessment of the skills that we will need and consideration of how we will keep them. We cannot consider what skills we will need until we have decided whether to build radar, airframes, pilot support, or mission control systems and so on. That must all start now, which is the reason for my gentle prodding today.

I have four asks of the Minister, beyond the more detailed Team Tempest updates that he will remember having promised when we discussed military manufacturing in May, in particular on the outline business case that the report said would be produced by the end of last year. I hope that the Minister will relay to the Department that top-level political support and re-engagement are needed to require international partners to come on board. We need improved cross-departmental working, with the Treasury seeing the benefits to British industry as a project of national value, rather than seeing the defence industry simply as a cash drain. We also need next-stage funding; the £2 million that Team Tempest has had is only seedcorn money, and more will be needed to move to the next stage. Finally, the wider requirements of the defence aerospace industrial strategy should be considered alongside the Tempest combat air strategy.

We are on the cusp of a very exciting national project. I look forward to the Minister’s comments and to driving this forward with colleagues in all parts of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Courts]

I thank the Minister for his full and comprehensive answer. One of the things I love about debates such as this is that no matter how much I rack my brain to try to cover every point, I never do. Every hon. Member brings to the table something new and interesting that I have not managed to cover, and I always learn something. I am very grateful to all hon. Members who have taken part, and to the Minister for his response.

I echo the words of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth), who said that the Government have done a wonderful thing. The spirt of our remarks is of celebration and—I hope the Minister will forgive me—gently pushing for a bit more. That is where the enthusiasm takes over. The Government did a wonderful thing in listening to a debate secured by Back Benchers from both sides of the House, responding to it and producing a detailed plan, which, as the Minister said, has led to the employment of 1,000 people in new jobs, rising to 1,800 by the end of the year. It has created something from nothing, and that is a great example of the Government listening to Parliament. I thank the Minister, the Department and everybody who has worked very hard on it for all their work.

That does not mean that we will not keep pushing for more; I make no such promise. I ask that the Minister consider some of the broader issues that we have mentioned today, particularly those relating to the broader defence industrial strategy. We are talking about a platform, vital though it is. The Minister is right about the vision that it gives us for the future, but perhaps it should be wider.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North for emphasising that SMEs must be deeply embedded in the strategy, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan) for rightly mentioning the historical context. We must consider whether we will be fighting as part of a NATO alliance with allies, or whether we will be fighting alone. We always hope that we will be fighting with allies in a NATO context but the Falklands is the obvious example of a time when we were not, for a reason we could not foresee. If history teaches us one thing, it is that whatever comes around the corner probably will not be the thing that we are expecting. My hon. Friend was right to point that out.

My hon. Friend was also right to talk about space, which we have not dealt with, but with which the Royal Air Force and the Ministry of Defence are increasingly engaged. It is of increasing importance.

I am also grateful to my hon. Friend for rightly raising the issue of whether we should have a manned platform or not. My personal view is that we are not quite there yet, for a number of reasons. For issues of morality and accountably, people are probably not quite ready for us to take men and women out of platforms altogether. There are also questions about technology: who we work with and whether we can afford to allow that high level of technology out of the country. We are not quite there yet, but she is quite right that that will be more and more important. I think she said that we should not put all our effort into that. I think the Minister will agree that Tempest includes an unmanned element—it is an airframe that can be flown manned or unmanned—and I believe that the Minister and the combat air strategy are correct in taking that approach.

I am always humbled to speak in the presence of the Chair of the Defence Committee. He is right to argue, as he always does, for the financial base. I think his target is 2.5%—

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Three.

[Robert Courts]

Sorry, it is 3%—that is even better. We all agree about that. My right hon. Friend’s overarching point is that we cannot expect the industrial base to be there in the way that it has been in the past. In the past, the Government have been able to allow the industry to create the incredible machines that the Air Force has used and exported, but because of the extraordinary complexity and cost, the Government now have a greater role in identifying what we will need and why. He is right that more Government input will be required.

My hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) echoed the point about increased funding—I quite agree. I am also grateful to him for emphasising that the Hawk is the last all-British aircraft. Perhaps it will not be the last; let us hope not. It is a flying British ambassador that does wonders for our international influence and our standing as a country every time it is seen at an air show.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) for emphasising both the multiplier effect of jobs in the supply chain, and primary school involvement. She is absolutely right that the younger that people get interested, the better. In her intervention on the Minister, she put her finger on something: in the past, industry or the military went into the school and everyone had a great day, enjoyed themselves and remembered it, but the next week they moved on to something else. I am conscious that it is no longer like that—not at Carterton Community College, which has a partnership with Brize Norton. Perhaps one of my letters will follow to the Minister, who might like to come and see the interplay between the base, the industry on the base and the local school, where they are starting to build almost a supply chain of engaged, technically aware pupils. That is very much what we aim to do at Carterton, and I am grateful to the hon. Lady for putting her finger on that.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) for mentioning the F-35 model point. I did not go into detail on that because it is slightly away from the topic, but he has given me an idea. I might apply for something on that issue in the near future.

That brings me to the Minister, and again I am grateful to him for everything he said. He gave me another idea: I might apply for a similar debate, but I will work with the House authorities to see if I can get a Treasury Minister to answer instead of him. That would be valuable. I have issued an invitation to him to come and see Carterton, which I know he would enjoy. I am grateful to him for agreeing in principle that more money should be spent on defence. I emphasise that, and I make that plea again. We have gone as low as we can, given the world we face and the complexity of our armed forces’ requirements. We need more money in defence, but—this is not aimed at the Minister—we must reassess the way in which its contribution to the entire country is measured. I thank you, Mr Bone, and everyone who took part in the debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered Combat Air Strategy progress and next steps.

Oral Answers to Questions

Robert Courts Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Aircraft such as Poseidon and Rivet Joint that are coming onstream rely on a boom refuelling system. What assessment have Ministers made of the requirement for fitting a boom refuelling capability to the aircraft refuelling fleet at Brize Norton, either through retrofitting or with new airframes?

[Penny Mordaunt]

These aircraft have an endurance that will enable them to meet the requirement for core UK missions without the need for air-to-air refuelling. For extended endurance missions, they are fitted with boom refuelling receptacles, and our allies can also provide air-to-air refuelling as required.

Military Aircraft Manufacturing

Robert Courts Excerpts

Wednesday 8th May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Stuart Andrew]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his intervention, and I say with some trepidation that I am looking forward to appearing before his Committee in a couple of weeks’ time. He is absolutely right to raise that important issue. We are doing a tremendous amount of work across the Department, and a lot of it is of course the focus of the fantastic report by our right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne) on the important prosperity that the defence industry can bring. We are also engaging a lot with small and medium-sized enterprises around the country to encourage more of them to take part in many of the competitions, and to ensure that they do more business with defence. Wherever we build new platforms, we are encouraging wider prosperity among those in the supply chain in the United Kingdom.

I know there has been some controversy about some of the platforms we are buying from overseas, but we are working with these industries to ensure that they work closely with the UK supply chain, so that we can increase the prosperity that comes about because of the platforms we are buying. For example, Boeing recently took a lot of SMEs over to the United States to talk through how they can bid for business from that company. Of course, Boeing has made investments in this country, but we want to see even more of that happening, and I will be happy to develop a bit more of that when I come before the Committee chaired by the Member for New Forest East (Dr. Lewis) my right hon. Friend.

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister for taking an intervention on that point. I apologise to him for having been delayed in a Select Committee, and I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I was very interested in the answer the Minister gave to my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) vis-à-vis investing in the defence base of this country, and, of course, I agree 100% with that. However, with regard to the combat air sector, I was encouraged by the Minister’s comments about Team Tempest. Could he update the House as to whether there has been any further discussion as regards international partners in that programme going forward?

[Stuart Andrew]

I will come on to those points in a minute. A number of points were raised in the debate that I will happily respond to when I have finished these remarks.

As part of the wider strategy programme, my Department has now launched its next-generation combat air acquisition programme. This will develop the capabilities that the RAF will need to replace Typhoon when it goes out of service in 2040. The programme’s two-year concept phase has now begun, following my approval of the strategic outline case.

Furthermore, new forums have now been established to explore the possibilities for collaboration with other military aerospace partners. Early discussions have gone well, and my Department will provide more detailed updates in the summer. However, I can assure my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts) that we are having very detailed conversations with a number of our partners around the world because we recognise that, for this process to be effective and, importantly, affordable when we deliver it, and, probably even more crucially, because of the importance of interoperability, it is vital that we have partner nations on board. However, as I say, those discussions are still ongoing. I hope I will be able to update the House on them later this year.

Carrier Strike Strategy

Robert Courts Excerpts

Thursday 28th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered carrier strike strategy and its contribution to UK defence.

It is a great honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. May I at the outset refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests?

I thank the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) and my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan), who are co-sponsors of the debate. We will each deal with one of a trident of points, namely the strategy for operating large carriers, which I anticipate I will largely deal with; the foreign policy element; and a celebration of the industrial impact of the large defence procurement policy being rolled out by this country. My overall ask of the Minister is for an overarching national carrier strategy, to deal with every aspect of this afternoon’s discussion.

I will start by placing myself on the date spectrum, as it were. One of my earliest memories is of HMS Hermes returning from the Falklands war. I was very young at the time, but I remember very well that very large grey carrier nosing slowly into Portsmouth harbour, surrounded by many small ships welcoming it back. I was particularly struck by the fact that she was rusted and battered from having been at sea for months on end—battered but victorious at the end of that unique campaign. I well remember the white uniforms of the sailors lined up in perfect formation on the deck, and the noses of our little Sea Harriers, which in the freezing south Atlantic of 1982 had proved themselves to be an air defence system second to none.

HMS Hermes was laid down during world war two as HMS Elephant, the last of the Centaur-class of light fleet carriers. She entered service in 1957 as an angled-deck carrier before being converted into a commando helicopter carrier, and then being adapted again with a ski jump to operate the then new Sea Harrier, which was coming into service. We have not had large fleet carriers since the decommissioning of the Audacious-class HMS Eagle and HMS Ark Royal at the end of the 1970s, and the absence of the Royal Navy from the big carrier game has been sorely noted by the Navy and the nation.

The Sea Carrier was unquestionably a brilliant aircraft but was limited in its range and payload, while the RAF’s land-optimised Harrier was severely limited by the absence of an air-to-air radar, meaning that it was never an adequate fleet air arm aircraft. While that Harrier-Invincible class concept—the combination of those small carriers and the vertical take-off and landing jets—was a potent combination in the unique circumstances of the south Atlantic, or in the north Atlantic as part of NATO groups hunting Russian submarines, there is no doubt that the inability to operate conventional fast jets of the nature of the Phantoms and Buccaneers that we lost at the end of the 1970s has severely restricted the power that Britain can exercise. The country has mourned that loss ever since, resulting in Governments of all colours seeking to restore that capability.

The years have shown that although the end of empire has meant a smaller country, it has not meant a retreat from expeditionary warfare. Every 10 years at least, Britain has been involved in a capacity that has meant it has required expeditionary air power, often from sea. The country’s desire to express power and its values has not diminished at any stage over the course of the past 40 years. In 1966, the country took the decision to run down the fixed-wing carrier fleet, which was part of a series of extraordinarily inept defence decisions taken during that time. I am not making a party political point, as all Governments were involved. Within 10 years, that decision was regretted. In a curiously British fudge, to get around the politics of why we were not having aircraft carriers anymore—except we were—the three Invincible-class carriers were called through-deck cruisers. That always amuses me; it strikes me as the most absurdly daft political euphemism imaginable.

Although the ambition to return to the big carrier game is long standing, the political chicanery around re-establishing carrier capacity has meant that the philosophical, strategic concept of what big carriers are for, how they are to be used, who with, and under what circumstances, is lacking. To a large extent, that culture has been lost, and we need to re-establish it. I suggest that now is the time to do so, because so much of carrier design throughout history has been British, be it the first carriers such as HMS Furious during the first world war; the angled flight deck that came in with the advent of fast jets at the end of the second world war and in the 1950s; or the ski jump in the 1980s. British technology and British ideas were leading the world, with others having no alternative but to follow. The same is true now: we are not the only people using the F-35B, but we are the only country in the world using it in combination with aircraft carriers designed from the keel up in order to support that aircraft. We are not the only people using the F-35, but I can say with total confidence that the aircraft carriers we are using are better than anyone else’s.

The return of Britain to that big carrier game must also be accompanied by a strategic philosophy of what carriers are about and how they are to be used. For 20 years or so there has been a tacit, if not expressed, understanding that Britain will probably not act alone in another military conflict, or at least not a major one. We will act with allies, most likely with NATO, and hardly ever without the Americans offering support in one form or another. It is sadly inconceivable that we could undertake an operation such as the Falklands again. In 1982, we had approximately 60 destroyers and frigates. That taskforce comprised 127 ships, consisting of 43 royal naval vessels, 22 from the Royal Fleet Auxiliary and 62 merchant ships. At the end of the 1980s, the Royal Navy had two aircraft carriers, seven amphibious ships, 13 destroyers and 35 frigates. After the 2010 strategic defence review, their combined number declined to approximately 19, and remains at roughly that level. In November 2018, there were 75 commissioned ships in the Royal Navy. Twenty of those are major surface combatants, including six guided missile destroyers—the Type 45s, which are primarily air defence destroyers—as well as 13 frigates and the new aircraft carrier.

Let us look at what a modern carrier group demands of a modern Navy, so that we can match what we are asking for with what we currently have available. We need to think innovatively about how to address what we need and what we have. No carrier strike group is a fixed body: its composition depends on the circumstances, what it is being asked to do, and the allies it is operating with.

If we look at the US Navy, we will see that a typical carrier strike group would include the supercarrier—of course, we would have a supercarrier—and the carrier air wing. The Americans would have one or two Aegis guided missile cruisers of the Ticonderoga class and a destroyer squadron with two or three guided missile destroyers of the Arleigh Burke class, which are roughly comparable—I stress the word “roughly”—to the Type 45s. That is a multi-mission surface combatant, used primarily for air defence, and it is air defence and under-surface defence with which I am particularly concerned. The Americans would have two attack submarines, which would be used to screen the carrier group against other submarines and surface combatants, and they would of course have support ships.

The Italians, who also have a carrier battle group, would have the carrier, two destroyers, two support ships and three amphibious support ships. However, they may have to accept that they would need to expand or to operate with allies if they were to go into a near-peer environment.

This is not a lament for lost naval power, although I make no secret of the fact that, as far as I am concerned, we do not spend enough on defence. Our armed forces are constantly being asked to do too much with too little, and I will not even start on the pastoral aspects of armed forces funding, the combination of pay and conditions and the overall offer, which is a serious issue for recruitment and retention. I do not have time this afternoon to start on that topic. I know that whatever the Minister can say publicly, he almost certainly agrees with me, and I accept that I should be making this plea not to him but to the Treasury. However, I ask the Ministry of Defence to give serious strategic thought to how the carriers are likely to be used and with whom, to ensure—putting it bluntly—that we have sufficient mass and capability to ensure that there is space to be able to sustain loss or damage, either during a conflict or in its immediate aftermath. If we do not do that, we will probably be unable to use those carriers at all.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a superb case. There is a great need for the supply chain to be in place in order to repair and build again, and I would like the benefits of that supply chain to be spread across the whole of the United Kingdom. I know that rebuilding and repairing can take place only in specific places, but none the less there is a need for that supply chain to be representative of the four regions. Does the hon. Gentleman think that such a supply chain is in place and that all the regions are getting the benefit of it?

[Robert Courts]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that excellent point. I will refer to it in a little more detail shortly and I know that some of my hon. Friends will, too. I am keen to make the point that while the carriers are big grey ships that live in Portsmouth, they are not purely a Portsmouth matter. They have been built by constituents in all our areas and by companies across the whole United Kingdom. That has sustained the building of the carriers, but we need to ensure that they can be maintained and kept in service for decades to come. For that reason—it is exactly the point that the hon. Gentleman made—I am asking the Minister to consider a strategy.

We need a whole-Government approach. It is no good us just looking at this purely as a Ministry of Defence issue. I am conscious that I am asking the Minister to do more than is in his power, but it has to be a cross-Government approach. We have to look at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to see whether we have the industrial base to ensure that the supply chain that built the carriers remains in place to sustain and maintain them in the years ahead. The hon. Gentleman’s point is absolutely the point I wish to make.

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. He is making a brilliant speech. I am just thinking about the point he made earlier about the improbability or unlikeliness of us using the carrier fleet to act unilaterally. Although it might be difficult to imagine such circumstances, we cannot rule them out. There may be a time when we will have to act unilaterally, possibly on a smaller scale than the Falklands conflict. It is also not strictly easy to make a comparison between the carrier fleet today and what we sent to the Falklands. The capabilities are infinitely greater, even if it is smaller in size.

[Robert Courts]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who must have read my speech in advance, because I will go on to make exactly that point. If he will forgive me, rather than respond directly to his intervention I will move on to the next part of my speech.

In the Falklands, as I have said, we had approximately 60 destroyers and frigates as escorts. Of those, eight destroyers and 15 frigates were part of the taskforce. In the course of that conflict, four of those were lost and many more were damaged, some very seriously. The initial concern is that a similar impact today would destroy about one third of the Royal Navy’s air defence fleet, which would be unsustainable. Of course, we need more than the minimum deployed in case such damage takes place. I appreciate, as my hon. Friend said, that history never repeats itself exactly, and I entirely accept that the Falklands was a one-off, probably unique event. We would need many more ships available if we were looking to support an invasion force, as we were then, particularly when operating at the other end of the world, a long way from supply chains. I entirely accept that, and the parallels are not precise.

I accept entirely that the Type 45s are vastly more capable than the Type 42s that they replaced. It is also true that they are the best in the world as air defence destroyers. Essentially, they combine the Ticonderoga and Arleigh Burke mission platform into one. They are better than each of them on a platform-to-platform basis, but it is not always the case that we can do the job with fewer. The Type 42s were the cutting-edge destroyers of their day, but as soon as the Falklands war started, we found their weaknesses ruthlessly exposed, particularly with regard to the survivability of damage. That was so horrifyingly exposed in the case of HMS Sheffield. I simply suggest that there comes a point where we need mass.

Although I want us to be able to act unilaterally—I do not disagree with my hon. Friend at all—we need to consider that in most cases we will not be doing that, so I simply ask the Government to consider a strategy for that. I am instinctively very reluctant to follow a line of argument that says that because a single platform is more capable than what it replaced, we can make do with less. I say that simply because all these high-tech platforms—this is true across the whole military capability—can turn out to be horribly vulnerable in ways we do not expect. I am thinking of the USS Cole incident with the speedboat packed with explosives. I am thinking of small drones, cheaply and easily available on the internet, that are packed full of explosives in a swarm capability, such that they overwhelm even the most potent defensive systems. I am thinking of the carrier killer missiles that we know are being developed by some potential adversaries. We can already see where the threats are. I simply say no more than this: while I accept that the parallels are not precise and the capability is streets ahead of what we saw when I was a child, there comes a point where we need mass, and we need to think about how we are going to provide that, given our finances.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making an outstanding contribution that I cannot stop listening to. I pay tribute to him. As well as capability, there is another basis for mass and numbers, which is that we have commitments spread around the globe, including commitments to our allies. It does not matter how good the platform is; to maintain those commitments, we also need numbers.

[Robert Courts]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and I could not agree more with him. If we look at the ratio of ships available in 1982 against the number deployed in the taskforce, we can see that the Navy was highly tasked as it was. There has been no downscaling in the amount of commitments that we have practically.

The Government are addressing that in many ways, and I entirely applaud the Type 31e concept, which would mean we can try to rebuild mass with a smaller, perhaps cheaper, modular type of ship that we can export. We can perhaps have some platforms so that a cutting-edge Type 45 is not needed to deal with anti-piracy operations, but instead a smaller corvette-type frigate could be used. I entirely agree with that. The hon. Gentleman’s essential point is right: there comes a point where mass is needed because no ship, however good it is, can be in more than one place at any one time. I could not agree more with him.

My point is that countermeasures are being developed for all the threats I have mentioned—drones, speedboats and so on—but as von Moltke said,

“no plan survives contact with the enemy”.

It is equally the case, as I have referred to in the case of the Type 42, that no platform’s wartime capability ever quite matches up to its paper peacetime capability, because no war ever takes place if the other guy does not think he also has a chance. As much as we think our platforms are great, others are looking at ways to undermine them. They only have to be right one time out of 100 and they will cause us damage. There is a time when mass is required.

I know the Government are thinking along those lines already, and I welcome the October announcement that the Royal Netherlands navy will send a warship to be part of the carrier battle group for the first operational tour. That is an important part of the strand of thinking that the warship will form part of a combined NATO battle group. However, I suggest that a broader strategy is required to involve other allies. It is easily foreseeable that allies may not wish to take part in all operations, such as when France—a very close ally—decided that it did not wish to be part of the action we undertook in 2003. That is perfectly understandable, but it should not mean that the UK’s carrier group is unable to put to sea because a certain ally does not wish to take part. The MOD has refused to be drawn thus far on exactly which vessels will deploy, but part of my ask for a strategy is for that thinking to be fleshed out to ensure we can go to sea in all circumstances in terms of numbers, capacity and national partners. We need to ensure we address all the different possibilities.

Those possibilities must also include potential operations. Because it is a fleet carrier and a return to the big carrier concept that we have lost in the past, I have tended to think in terms of fleet carrier and carrier strike operations, but I know the Government are thinking about the utilisation of the carrier in the littoral role. That will mean we have different troops and machines on board, and the support vessels required will be different, too. Coming back to the point made by hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson), in 1982 we had sufficient mass that we could put together a taskforce over a weekend and go to sea. That is not likely to be possible anymore, because we simply do not have the mass or the numbers. We will have to think in advance about how we will do that for each potential likely scenario.

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent and comprehensive speech. He will note that the carriers are being used in the littoral role, which they are not designed for. Does he lament the decommissioning without replacement of HMS Ocean, and note the excellent work that Intrepid and Fearless did in that role during the south Atlantic conflict?

[Robert Courts]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. The Secretary of State recently made an announcement regarding ships that will take on at least some of the capabilities of HMS Ocean, with the commercial vessels refitted to take helicopters in the littoral role. Essentially, yes—I do mourn the loss of HMS Ocean, although I note that she required a heavy refit at the time, and there was an economic case surrounding that. I could not agree more that we should have a proper littoral capability with a platform designed for it, which was the essence of the hon. Gentleman’s point. Although the carriers will have a littoral role, it is not something that they are really designed for, and it strikes me that we will keep them as far out to sea as possible if we are in any kind of near-peer environment.

Without the strategic thought and overarching strategy that I urge, we risk being faced with a wonderful carrier capability that simply cannot be used without running an unacceptable risk to the carriers, or to the Royal Navy’s overall capability. I do not know whether many hon. Members have read General Shirreff’s novel “War With Russia”. It is worth reading. General Shirreff describes a British Prime Minister who, desperate to make a strong political gesture, sent the new Queen Elizabeth carrier to sea without an adequate escort, with the result that she was sent to the bottom by a ruthless Russian regime, which had been listening for months to the carrier’s precise acoustic signature, as we can guarantee all our potential adversaries in the world will be doing at this very moment. The book is meant as a warning; it is one that we should all take seriously.

I will try to speed up, as I know that others wish to speak. I am not talking just about royal naval ships; the biggest change in British maritime strength post-Falklands lies in the drastic reduction of merchant vessels sailing under the British flag. In 1982, approximately half the taskforce was requisitioned—the Royal Navy merchant reserve. These days, for such a capacity, the Government would have to look at chartering foreign vessels, with everything that that would mean—although I accept, as my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) said, that that may not fully reflect what we are doing. Again, it is part of the strategy, and something that we should look at.

I have spoken mostly about escort warships, and will now spend a little time talking about the aircraft. Each carrier can have up to 36 aircraft embarked, and we are expecting a first squadron of 12 for an initial operating capability to be ready shortly, with two by 2023. I welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement on 11 February that the US marines’ F-35Bs will be ready for the carrier’s first deployment cruise. That is good news, not just because it means that the carrier will be operational sooner than it otherwise would have been. It seems to provide a potential template for future operations, with embedded, close co-operation with allies to achieve our common military aims.

However, as central as our relationship with the Americans is and always should be to our defence and to NATO, I suggest that we look further. Italy, Japan and Turkey, all of which are scheduled to operate the F-35B, are all potential partners—I know that the decision has not been made—for Team Tempest, the next generation replacement for the Typhoon. If we are looking to co-operate on one programme, it seems a good idea for us to consider operating, as part of an overarching strategy, with other international partners in terms of carrier air groups. Italy, as I noted, has one of its own.

I am delighted that the Crowsnest platform to provide airborne early warning is being brought forward. Ever since the lack of one in the Falklands, it has been clear that there simply must be a carrier-borne, organic, airborne early warning capability. However, let us think about stores and supplies. We have talked about the littoral role. I suspect that it is likely that carriers will be kept out at sea, simply to reduce their vulnerability. In that case, lift capability will be required by helicopters, which have limited range, payload, speed and load-carrying capability. Otherwise, we are looking at ship-to- ship transfers at sea. I would merely observe that the V-22 Osprey, which is used by the US marines and navy, is very expensive and has been built to hold an F-35 engine. What is more, it can do so with speed, lift and range. We currently do not have that capability. I note that Lord West in the other place has made the same suggestion. It is something that we should consider.

Since 2010, as a country we have turned our back on the need for close air support operating from and within a naval task group. That is being put right, which I wholeheartedly welcome, but we need to ensure that we do not replace that issue with a strong core operating capability that lacks the support in terms of ships and supplies to sustain it. Before I let others have their say, I will make two other brief comments. The first is about foreign policy, and the second is about industry, which the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned.

Recently, there has been much talk of global Britain. Personally, I do not see that as a reaction to Brexit, or an attempt to find a role, but simply a reassertion of a natural British desire to act globally. As an island nation, we have always had very broad horizons. Much of the brilliance in our island history has been down to the way in which we have explored, found new cultures, adapted, assimilated, exported the best of our values and adopted the best of that we have met elsewhere. The sacrifice of this country in defending freedom and democracy through two world wars needs no explanation here.

Britain has always been a global nation, and we should view the carriers within that tradition. We should consider the ability to project world-leading global air power around the world as an opportunity to act as a force for good—to defend democracy and human rights, and to defend the weak and downtrodden. Clearly, there is a major foreign policy aspect that should be considered in partnership with the defence agenda that I have laid out. I ask for that strategy to be adopted across the Government, in the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence and BEIS.

I welcome the announcement that a deployment to the Pacific will be part of the first Queen Elizabeth deployment. A combined Defence and Foreign Office strategy should be worked up to address those circumstances—and I do not mean purely for warfare. Let us never forget the prestige of the Royal Navy. Its soft power, and by reflection that of Britain itself, is enormous. It demonstrates the very best of British skill and professionalism, and I am delighted to see from my time on the armed forces parliamentary scheme—I am on the Navy scheme this year—that the Royal Navy is once again utilising its enormous prestige to bring together parties abroad, who otherwise would not necessarily be able to come together, in a diplomatic capacity. How much more could be done with world-beating carrier capability as a showcase for British industrial and military prowess? Let us see a tie-up with the Foreign Office, DFID and the Department for International Trade.

My last few remarks will celebrate industry. As I have said, they are not just big grey ships that benefit the people of Portsmouth, although they unquestionably do. They also benefit the whole United Kingdom, because they have been built by our constituents in companies all across the country. UK industry is set to benefit from a 15% build share of the jets—£13 billion to British companies. UK shipbuilding employs 23,000 people and contributes £1.7 billion a year to the UK economy.

We are lucky to see coming into service the finest ships of their type anywhere in the world, crewed by the most professional Navy. They are bringing the glory of the Royal Navy’s history together with the technological, industrial prowess that is our hallmark for the future. The carriers can help us to unite new friends around the world in times of peace, and to defend freedom in times of war. They are the very best of our country, and I wholeheartedly celebrate them, as I hope we all can.

[Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

May I correct my friend and colleague, the hon. Member for Witney (Robert Courts)? Women will be serving on the aircraft carrier, too; it will not just be men.

[Robert Courts]

The hon. Lady is quite right to correct me. I meant “men” in the global sense of “humanity”, but of course I was referring to men and women. I am sorry about that.

[Ruth Smeeth]

Moving on, may I alert the Chamber to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests? I am also a vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for the armed forces, and its lead on the Royal Navy—something that I am incredibly proud, as a woman, to be doing. You are going to get some grief today, my friend.

Let me briefly give my own perspective on some issues that have been already been addressed. The Queen Elizabeth class is exquisite: its ships are beautiful and will be a wonderful addition to our Royal Navy, as long as we ensure that we have enough crew to staff them—I will not say “man” them. The people who will serve on those platforms are incredibly important and we face challenges in recruiting them, but today I wish to speak about the wider military family, because the people who make the platforms are just as important for our national security.

Our capacity to continue to be a tier 1 military country depends on having a wider military-industrial complex to build our national security capabilities. Whenever I visit Rosyth shipyard or other defence establishments, I am always struck not only by people’s professionalism, but by their dedication. As the Minister knows, they build our ships because they know that their friends and family may well serve on them. It is important that they know that they are doing a perfect job to ensure that the best possible platforms are afforded to our service personnel—the best in the world for the Royal Navy.

The Queen Elizabeth class is an extraordinary feat of engineering. Some 11,000 people in six shipyards have touched the pieces of metal that were used to build its extraordinary capabilities. The platform represents £6.2 billion of capacity and equipment, not counting the F-35s that will be on it, or even the tableware that our service personnel will eat off; as MP for the Potteries, I am sure that the Minister will reassure me that the tableware will be purchased from my constituency. Please, Minister—give me a nod.

I want to consider the aircraft carrier in the widest possible context, because it demonstrates the challenges that we face in the sector, not only in procurement for the carrier itself, but in securing the carrier strike group over the longer term. It has been 12 years since 2007, when the then Secretary of State signed off the paperwork for the aircraft carrier and finally launched the programme to start the process of building it. Flight trials are happening this year. Even from the moment we agreed to build, it took us 12 years to get to this point, but prior to that there was a decade of debating, designing and determining the concept of our future aircraft carrier.

The project has challenged our shipyards. It has challenged us on whether we have the resources, the skillset and the domestic sovereign capability to build the platform. During the lifespan of the Queen Elizabeth class, we will have to replace the Astute programme and update and replace the Type 45. We will also have to replace the Type 23 with the Type 26, and then start talking about the Type 26’s replacement—all in the lifetime of this capability. By that point, we may even have seen one Type 31e.

Just ensuring strike group capability for the Queen Elizabeth class requires a long-term plan for procurement, so my urge, demand and request to the lovely Minister is that we look at the longer term. We need to consider the steady drumbeat of orders needed for our domestic industry to deliver the long-term capabilities that we require. We are still not sure how many fleet solid support ships we will actually get—we could probably do with three.

We should recognise how fabulous these platforms will be and what is required for their use, both from a military perspective and from one of diplomatic and soft power. We should also remember the people who made them: our constituents up and down the country. My constituency could not be more landlocked, but my constituents helped to contribute to the Astute class and the Dreadnought class. This is a national programme, with national consequences, making a national contribution to our GDP. I urge the Minister to give me my steady drumbeat of orders.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Courts]

My right hon. Friend is making an absolutely outstanding point. Does he agree with this summary of it? We need to have a strategic look at what we want to achieve with our strategic defence goals and then fund them, as opposed to having the funding and then seeing what we can still manage to do.

[Dr Lewis]

I will go some way towards acknowledging that, with this one caveat: our strategic goals cannot be defined more tightly than the ability to have a full range of military capability to meet whatever threats may reasonably be regarded as likely to arise. I am afraid that all speeches that I make about defence policy and military strategy come back to the same three basic concepts: deterrence, containment and the unpredictability of future conflict. Libya and the Falklands were unpredictable.

The only thing we can predict is that the vast majority of conflicts in which we will be engaged in in the future, as in the vast majority of conflicts in the past, will arise with little or no warning significantly in advance, and that is why we have to have a comprehensive range of military capabilities. It is very difficult to persuade budget-conscious Treasury officials not to take a chance with the nation’s security. That is why the Defence Select Committee comes back time and again to the same point, which is that defence has fallen too far down our scale of national priorities. When we compare it with other high spending Departments we can see that because in the 1980s, at the stage when we faced an aggressive Soviet Union and a major terrorist threat in the form of Northern Ireland and the IRA insurgency, we spent approximately the same on defence as we spent on health and education. Now we spend four times on health and two and a half times on education as we spend on defence. We can get away with that as long as things do not go wrong, but if they do we live to regret it bitterly.

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[Mark Lancaster]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about interoperability. Of course, that is the whole point of the first deployment, when we will have US marine corps jets on our platform. We have an eye to ensuring that we have that interoperability, which is precisely why we keep our options open on what we will buy next. Narrowing our options right now on what future jets we will buy would be premature.

These attributes, together with other forms of attack from the task group, such as long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, constitute a powerful ability to reach inland—all this in a mobile force able to range 500 miles a day and at immediate readiness, without the need to seek the permission of other nations for the land-basing of our fighter aircraft. Once our Queen Elizabeth-class carriers, including HMS Prince of Wales when accepted at the end of the year, become fully operational—we have already highlighted that timeframe—the United Kingdom will maintain a carrier ready to deploy at very high readiness, that is, within five days.

That goes back to the question that the hon. Member for Gedling asked about how the two carriers will work together. Like any platform, the physical side of the ship will go through a natural cycle. Having been built —or, in future, having been through a long period of maintenance—it will enter the force generation period, when manpower and jets are married with the ship. We will go through a training period. We always think about the platforms, but we do not always think about the people. They will go through their careers; new pilots and junior sailors come in, and we must ensure that they are trained in the appropriate way. Then the ship goes on deployment. When it comes back, it goes into a period of maintenance—and the cycle continues.

The point of having two ships and effectively offsetting that process is that at any one point we will always have one at very high readiness. There may be times when we potentially have two carriers available; they would not both be at very high readiness, but a second carrier could, for example, go off and do a secondary task. As we said in the SDSR, who knows what is around the corner? Who predicted Hurricane Irma in the Caribbean last year? We were able to send a vessel to deal with that situation. By having two vessels—especially new vessels—and offsetting that cycle, we can maintain the flexibility to ensure we have those vessels available to do a number of different tasks.

While delivery of carrier strike is absolutely main effort—the primary role—the inherent flexibility of the carrier enables a range of secondary roles to be undertaken, if that is what the situation dictates, as I have just tried to describe. Those roles range from supporting our Royal Marines in undertaking amphibious operations, to providing discrete support to our special forces and, as we saw, humanitarian and disaster relief.

The new capability will enable the UK to make an unparalleled European contribution to NATO, the cornerstone of our defence policy. Indeed, carrier strike is “international by design”, with the convening power of the Queen Elizabeth-class carriers already evident. Other European nations have already expressed a clear interest in exercising with, and more importantly deploying as part of, the carrier strike task group. Thus, carrier strike provides not only a potent additional capability to NATO, but also a means of coalescing European naval effort. It will, of course, also be able to operate with our partners’ aircraft, a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan) made.

That is especially so with our closest ally, the United States, which will be embarking United States marine corps F-35B Lightning jets alongside our own on board HMS Queen Elizabeth for her inaugural operational deployment in 2021. That level of close co-operation has been reached through extensive work over the past decade between our two nations, requiring levels of information sharing and trust that are only evident between the closest of allies.

My hon. Friend the Member for Witney talked in his opening comments, which were excellent—I have not heard a better opening to a debate for some time—about a “loss of culture” of carrier strike. I will gently say that that was anticipated, which is why over the past 10 years we have had many Royal Naval personnel and pilots operating on US carriers, so that we have not completely lost that skill set. Personally, I was delighted and honoured to go on board the George H.W. Bush the summer before last, when it was operating in the North sea.

[Robert Courts]

I am grateful to the Minister for clarifying that. To clarify what I meant, I did not intend any criticism from 2010 onwards; I fully appreciate that we have had people embedded with the US navy. I meant operating big carriers, as opposed to the smaller carriers we have had since the Invincible days, and the change in culture from the late 1970s, when we had the Audacious class.

[Mark Lancaster]

I think my comments demonstrate that we are well placed to renew this capability in the Royal Navy and, crucially, how well placed we are—a point made by several hon. Members—to ensure that we have interoperability with our closest allies.

Carrier strike not only offers political and military advantage to Her Majesty’s Government and our allies, but provides significant benefit to the UK industry. Before I get on to the industry element, I will touch on strategy, because the point was raised by several hon. Members. I gave one example to the hon. Member for Gedling of how the Government are genuinely trying to bring a cross-Whitehall approach to formulating strategies in this area. That is something we have already been doing with carrier; as I have already said, the past five years have been getting us to this point. We now have a cross-Whitehall strategy being formed about how exactly we should use this asset.

Of course, that all cascades down from the formation of the National Security Council in 2010, which brought together for the first time the different strands of Government to try to make the very decisions that hon. Members have rightly said we should be considering. The framework is in place and, of course, as we move forward through operations and gain experience, it will be refined.

With regard to industry, the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers have been built over six locations, involving over 10,000 people, in addition to 800 apprentices and 700 businesses and suppliers. This includes 7,000 to 8,000 jobs at the tier 1 shipyards around the UK, plus a further 2,000 to 3,000 people across the UK supply chain. UK industry also provides approximately 15% by value of each of the 3,000 Lightning aircraft scheduled to be built over the life of the programme. That will potentially create a £35 billion net contribution to the UK economy and up to 25,000 jobs in the UK.

In addition, the UK’s role as a key partner in the global F-35 programme was reaffirmed earlier this month, with the announcement of a major boost to the F-35 avionic and aircraft component repair hub, which was awarded a second major assignment of work, worth some £500 million, by the US Department of Defence. This is an excellent outcome and will support hundreds of additional F-35 jobs in the UK, many of them at the MOD’s Defence and Electronics Components Agency at MOD Sealand in North Wales, where the majority of the work will be carried out. It will involve crucial maintenance, repair, overhaul and upgrade services for an even wider range of F-35 avionic, electronic and electrical systems for hundreds of F-35 aircraft based globally.

The hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Sweeney) talked at length and with great, detailed knowledge about the impact and the tempo, if you like, of not losing skillsets, and about the relationship between Government and industry. I accept that he does not support many of the recommendations of the national shipbuilding strategy. Owing to the scope of the debate, I will not get into the procurement of fleet solid support ships, or that relationship. However, as he probably spotted in February, Sir John Parker announced that he will undertake a review of that strategy, which is due to report later this year. I hope that that demonstrates to the hon. Gentleman that, while I support the strategy, we are not dogmatic in our approach to it, and that we are prepared to review the strategy one year on to see how it is bedding in. He made some important points.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Courts]

I will canter through some of the points that struck me in the debate, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and from which I have learned a great deal. It really was an example of our all coming together with various kinds of expertise and being able to make progress in an area. I am grateful to all hon. Members for that.

I entirely associate myself with the comments of others about the fortitude of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth). Never mind the aircraft; I very much look forward to the carriers being stocked with crockery from her constituency, off which the men and women sailing on the aircraft carrier will eat. I thank her for her contribution. My hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan) made many excellent points, including on the battleground of the great sea war. Nothing much has changed regarding the importance of the sea. She was quite right to draw attention to the Aircraft Carrier Alliance, a particularly successful, innovative endeavour.

I really enjoyed the detailed knowledge that the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Sweeney) brought to the debate, and two of his points in particular: first, the point that a carrier covers the equivalent of 0.3% of an airfield—I have never thought about it in quite that way before, but he is absolutely right—and secondly, his point about the industrial legacy of the space shuttle. Again, I have never thought about a carrier in that way, but he is quite right that we must make use of carriers in the way the Americans did with the space shuttle.

I feel terribly impertinent saying anything about defence in any room in which my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) stands, because of his expertise. He is absolutely right about the predictability of unpredictability, and I loved his point that the Treasury has sunk more ships than our enemies ever have. I could not agree more with the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) on linking foreign policy with defence, and on engaging with the UK public—something that I hope we have started to do today, at least in a small way. My hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) made a similar point on the need for links between DFID, the FCO and the MOD, and I entirely agree with him on that.

I thank both Opposition Front-Bench spokespeople, the hon. Members for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) and for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones), for their contributions. Both seemed a bit startled by the extent to which we all agreed in the debate. It happens occasionally, and maybe we should all celebrate it when it does.

I thank the Minister for all his detailed answers. My final request to him, which I think every Member here made, in different ways, is for an overarching carrier strategy that brings together all Departments and everything we have discussed in one document that we can then debate and take forward. That is the central ask of the debate. I look forward to working with him and with every colleague in doing battle with, if not foreign countries, at least the Treasury.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered carrier strike strategy and its contribution to UK defence.

A Better Defence Estate

Robert Courts Excerpts

Thursday 28th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

I will resist the temptation to reopen the Brexit debate again, but the right hon. Gentleman is right to raise concerns about future confirmation of what is happening to our sovereign bases in Cyprus—I could add Gibraltar to that, as well. I served in both localities and I assure the right hon. Gentleman that all the necessary details have been addressed to make sure that they are not affected by any outcome of Brexit.

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

I note the Minister’s statement that the programme will allow the MOD to maximise the amount of land that could be used to build more homes and help more people on to the housing ladder. As the Minister is aware, the REEMA sites in Carterton already provide land for hundreds of homes.

I also note the Minister’s comment that in some areas local authorities are the block to development; that is certainly not the case in West Oxfordshire, where planning permission for these sites was given some 10 years ago. What is awaited is the money for the MOD to redevelop those sites. Can the Minister tell me whether West Oxfordshire, Carterton and the Royal Air Force can look forward to some of the proceeds from this announcement being invested in the REEMA sites in Carterton or whether there is a blockage elsewhere in the system that I need to explore?

[Mr Ellwood]

First, I pay tribute to the work that my hon. Friend has done in liaising with the local authorities and in representing Brize Norton, one of the most significant RAF garrisons across the country and dealing with the heavy lift. He is absolutely right to point out various plans to build extra housing. That has been delayed—not because of the MOD, but because the money was taken away from us, given changes to the private finance initiative. That is why I was surreptitiously hinting that I hoped that in the spending review another solution would be provided that allows any PFI project that has been removed to be put back in place, so that we can build the houses that my hon. Friend wants.

Oral Answers to Questions

Robert Courts Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mark Lancaster]

As I say, I am sympathetic, but the aircrew have been recognised, through the award of the clasp to the medal. We are just being consistent in how the policy has been applied over many years.

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

Redevelopment of the REEMA sites in Carterton is an urgent priority for west Oxfordshire, not only for RAF personnel who depend on the housing, but because of its effect on west Oxfordshire’s housing stock. Will the Minister meet me again to discuss how we can progress this urgent matter?

[Mr Ellwood]

I would be delighted.

Modernising Defence Programme

Robert Courts Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

We have made clear that we are not looking at making capability cuts in the MDP; we have been looking at how we invest in our armed forces and new capabilities.

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

The Secretary of State is right that retention is a challenge. Mindful of the use of reservists at Brize Norton, particularly in the AirTanker programme, will he consider expanding the use of reservists in the RAF?

[Gavin Williamson]

We always look at how we can expand the use of reservists. Their use is critical to what we do in so many of our defence functions, and we should not see them as separate from what our armed forces do; they are absolutely critical and will always be so.

RAF Centenary

Robert Courts Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

It is always an honour to speak in this House. It is humbling, too, especially on a day such as this, when we have heard so many extraordinary speeches from hon. Members and hon. and gallant Members in all parts of the House. I am grateful to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who quoted Winston Churchill. I have the honour to live in the village in which Churchill is buried. Churchill famously spoke of “the few”, and we tend to think of the few in 1940 as fighter pilots, but of course Churchill was at pains to point out that he was also referring to bomber crew. That is where I first became interested in the Royal Air Force.

When I was young, I became aware that my grandfather had done something remarkable during the war. He, typical of that golden generation, vehemently denied that he had done anything remarkable at all, but he was a navigator on Wellington bombers in 1940 and 1941. While the few in the fighter squadrons were defending this country above our heads, he was taking his Wellington bomber to bomb invasion barges on the Channel coasts, and he later took his bomber to the first raid on Berlin —a raid that caused little military damage, but did cause Hitler to switch Luftwaffe attacks from Fighter Command’s air bases to London, which gave Fighter Command the space it needed to get back to full strength.

Lest we think of the Bomber Command of later years of the war, with 1,000 bomber raids and bomber streams, let me remind the House that in the early days of the war, when my grandfather was going off in his Wellington, the bombers went off alone, as single aircraft, albeit in a squadron, which was strung out over many miles, so that in the event of attack from night fighters or ack-ack, they were alone. We should all think about the particular kind of psychological courage it took to take the battle to rampant evil in the freezing skies over occupied Europe.

Later in the war, my grandfather was reinforced by his brother, my great uncle, who flew as a bombardier in Lancasters in No. 5 Group, which was involved in special operations—U-boat pens and the like. They were known as the bomber brothers. Their influence was strong in the early years of my life, as I became aware of what they had achieved. Superlatives are thrown around quite easily in this place, but there is a reason why we come back to 1940. The Royal Air Force has achieved extraordinary things during the past 100 years, but it is impossible to exaggerate the importance of what it achieved in the second world war. It really did, along with many others, save the world at the moment of its greatest threat, particularly in 1940, and keep democracy alive for us all.

Having had that family interest, I now have the enormous honour of representing Royal Air Force Brize Norton in my constituency. No speech I make about the Air Force in this House would be complete if I did not mention RAF Brize Norton. It is commanded by new station commander Dan James. It is quite simply the pride and joy of west Oxfordshire. It is the very best of our country and our county. Everything that the RAF does is made possible by RAF Brize Norton. Nothing would happen without it, but luckily it makes everything happen. In Operation Ruman, for example, the A400Ms took part in vital humanitarian work. That was only possible because RAF Brize Norton was able to respond highly efficiently at late notice and with high speed.

The Typhoons taking off from RAF Lossiemouth or RAF Coningsby to tackle the Russians as they probe our air defences are refuelled by Voyagers from 10 Squadron or 101 Squadron at RAF Brize Norton. The Secretary of State, in his opening speech, kindly referred to global reach. The only global reach in Europe is provided by the C-17s from 99 Squadron at RAF Brize Norton. NATO air policing in eastern Europe is resupplied by the Hercules, the C-17s or the A400Ms from RAF Brize Norton. The aircraft taking the battle to Daesh are also supplied by those same transport aircraft and are refuelled and tanked en route by the Voyagers from RAF Brize Norton.

I apologise to the House—actually, on one level I do not apologise—for making quite clear exactly what the Royal Air Force does and what RAF Brize Norton does to facilitate everything it does.

[Bob Stewart]

I think that I am right in saying that my hon. Friend has omitted one element of RAF Brize Norton: the parachute jump instructors of the RAF are there, too. I seem to recall that I had to jump out of an aeroplane from Brize Norton 50 years ago.

[Robert Courts]

My hon. Friend is correct. I gave way to him out of deference, but I was about to mention the military training that takes place at RAF Brize Norton. We always think of the RAF Falcons, the wonderful display team, but everybody who learns to parachute jump in the British military will do so at the parachute training school in Brize Norton. The Airborne Delivery Wing supplies all the aerial drops. I thought my hon. Friend was going to admonish me for not having mentioned the Royal Air Force Regiment. We have 2 Squadron, which has just come in recently. It is also assisted by some of the auxiliary services as well.

I will not trouble the House for much longer, as I know other Members wish to speak, but there are two or three other things I would like to mention very quickly. First, I have talked a lot about units and aircraft, but let us not forget that it is the people who make the Royal Air Force work. That was as true in the past as it is today. We have a number of excellent auxiliary Air Force units at Brize Norton in pretty much every trade that can be imagined: movements, regiment, air crew and aeromedical. These people give up their free time to train, travel and serve at weekends and during their time off. They really make the modern Air Force work, particularly with the whole-force concept.

The second thing is air cadets. We have three excellent units in west Oxfordshire—at Brize Norton, Witney and Chipping Norton—who are enthusing for the future, particularly in introducing the concept of STEM skills, which we have talked about a great deal in the debate.

Lastly, looking to the future, I am very grateful to the Secretary of State for bringing forward the combat air strategy, which I pressed for and which I welcome warmly and wholeheartedly. Perhaps in due course he can give us an update about the progress on that, and I am thinking particularly of national partners. We have talked in the past—this has been trailed in the press—about the possible involvement of Japan, Sweden, obviously the Americans, and others. While I am talking about the combat air strategy, I press him to start thinking about helicopters. If we start thinking about what we need in the future, we need to think about all aircraft types, and of course, I have to think about transport as well as fast jets.

I am grateful for the time that the House has given me. The Royal Air Force has had an incredible 100 years, but those proud years are only to be succeeded by even prouder years.