Alan Brown
Main Page: Alan Brown (Scottish National Party - Kilmarnock and Loudoun)Department Debates - View all Alan Brown's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(2 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberI am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving me the opportunity to make something very clear about the agreement with Australia and the United States. This is not a programme about nuclear weapons; it is a programme about nuclear propulsion, to give the Australians the strategic capability that they have decided is the right capability to meet the threat. That aside, Aldermaston is an incredibly important part of the defence establishment, and the amazing workforce contribute and have contributed over the decades to ensuring that Britain has a nuclear deterrent that is credible. I am delighted to say that we continue to invest in those people, their livelihoods and the science base that is so important to ensure that we have that capability.
The Secretary of State talks about the workforce. The reality is that the Government have just outsourced the fire service to Capita at both Faslane and Coulport. Capita is now, shamefully, cutting jobs—it has cut eight posts. The fire service has unanimously voted for industrial action and currently has an overtime ban on. When will he get a grip on the situation, end the outsourcing experiment and give the fire service the support it needs to keep the bases safe?
Yes, it is really important that we seek to build more British ships, but we should also recognise that there is an international collaboration on shipbuilding. I recently signed with the Indonesian Defence Minister to buy the design of the Arrowhead Type 31. That design originated in Denmark, but the intellectual property was shared with us, so we and British jobs now profit from that sale. International collaboration is important and it unlocks investment. We are now going to indicate the longest shipping pipeline for many decades so that British companies can invest knowing that there are ships in the pipeline.
The hon. Member should have listened to my answer. He was making a point about privatisation and I was making the point that Aldermaston had just been nationalised by the Government, which was the opposite ideological scene than that which he was trying to imply.