Defence Spending (Wales)
Debate between Alun Michael and John Glen(14 years ago)
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John Glen
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I understand from colleagues that my hon. Friend is working in the Vale of Glamorgan today. Obviously, I cannot account for the movements of other hon. Members.
The concept of St Athan was good, but it was decided that the project was undeliverable by the Metrix consortium. It is clear that a huge number of courses across the services need harmonising.
Alun Michael
I am a little puzzled about the decision. What the hon. Gentleman refers to was clearly decided—he is right about that—but it does not seem to have been decided on the facts, which demonstrated savings for the armed services as well as efficiencies from the proposals, which were assessed very carefully before the decision to go ahead was made. So why was the decision made to change that? It had all-party support. There was careful examination of the benefits to the services. Where did the decision come from?
John Glen
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. No doubt the Minister will want to deal with the point about the logic of the Government when they made the decision.
What is confusing to me, as someone who has taken an interest in defence matters, is the extent of the investment at St Athan. Let us say that three services are coming together and, for example, work is being done on ship engines. How reasonable and cost-effective will it be to get engines from Portsmouth to St Athan? Is that the right option? To what extent will all that work be cost-effective? Presumably it would be helpful to have a driving range for tanks if people wanted to test the tanks on whose engineering they had been working.
How does the Minister reconcile the fact that, as the hon. Member for Swansea East (Mrs James) said, Wales receives the second lowest “investment” from the MOD with the arguably bigger imperative to achieve value for money for the MOD as a whole and for UK defence as a whole? Looking to the future, I am clear that defence training needs to be harmonised. That issue needs to be considered on two levels. Where would be the best place to site such a college from a UK defence perspective? In addition, such a decision should not be wholly based on relative under-investment in one region of the country or another.