Carrier Strike Capability

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising a point that perhaps I should have made before. The STOVL variant—indeed, any variant of the JSF—is a fifth-generation aircraft and represents a step change in capability. It is a stealth aircraft with an autonomous intelligence-gathering capability, and the STOVL variant has significantly greater range than the Harrier had. It is an aircraft with greater capability, greater range than the Harrier and a range of capabilities that previous generations of aircraft simply did not have.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

I have received a good deal of correspondence from constituents, both those serving in and those retired from the armed forces, who for a long time have expressed huge concern about the strategy and direction of our procurement. They will be relieved and delighted to hear today that my right hon. Friend has been able to continue to assess the strategy and come up with the right decision and brave enough to announce it to the House. Will he reassure the House that he will never let the woolly thinking and loose purse strings shown by the previous Government undermine our armed forces again?

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Fiscal incontinence undermines the support that we can offer our armed forces. Doing this in a disciplined way is not, as the right hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr Murphy) would try to present it in a rather sneering fashion, some sort of obsession with spreadsheets; it is about doing our job as politicians, which is to ensure that the support for our armed forces is there, is sustainable and can actually be delivered to them.