UK Amphibious Capability

Debate between Andrew Bowie and James Gray

Tuesday 21st November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)]

It is a genuine pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) on securing this debate. It is nice to speak in a debate where there is such consensus in the room.

The year 2017 was supposed to be the year of the Navy. As the former Secretary of State said, it was

“the start of a new era of maritime power, projecting Britain’s influence globally and delivering security at home.”

This year has seen unprecedented levels of building and investment in the Royal Navy, creating a backdrop for the first ever mounting of a guard by the senior service at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. Undeniably, this has been a year of historic significance for the Royal Navy and British sea power.

A key part of our sea power and a key strategic part of our non-nuclear deterrence is our amphibious capability. As former First Sea Lord Admiral Zambellas told the Select Committee on Defence:

“Nobody in the world of complex warfare…thinks that a reduction in the sophisticated end of amphibiosity is a good idea.”

Unfortunately, in a year that has otherwise been positive for the senior service, that is in fact what we are discussing.

Only four other countries in the world can boast such a strong amphibious capability: the United States, China, Russia and France, which happen to be the other four permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. That capability is integrated into NATO, serving a key role there. Its primary role for much of the cold war was reinforcing our northern flank; it was strategically crucial in controlling access to the North sea and the Atlantic. Who can tell whether such a role might not be required again in the near future?

We know how any downgrading of our amphibious capability will be received in foreign capitals: with great delight, I am sure, in Moscow, and with great disappointment in Washington. Only last week, General Ben Hodges of the US army said of potential cuts to our amphibious capability:

“I’d hate to lose that particular capability...Whenever you take something off the table unilaterally, then you’ve just made the job a little simpler for a potential adversary.”

What we are debating is the potential loss of 1,000 marines and our landing platform dock vessels HMS Bulwark and HMS Albion. I urge the Government to discard any suggestion of decommissioning either of those specialised world-leading ships. If we got rid of our LPDs, would we ever recover that lost capability?

Although in this debate we are making the case for protecting the Royal Marines and the fleet, we must also be clear that any progress on the issue must not come at the expense of other areas of military spending. Last week, in an answer to my written question, the Ministry of Defence confirmed that quick reaction alert Typhoon aircraft launched from RAF Lossiemouth and RAF Coningsby intercepted aircraft on 12 occasions in 2016. That shows beyond any doubt the importance of our Typhoon squadrons and why we must not eschew the need for our new F-35s, which are planned to become a core part of our defence capabilities in that area.

It must also be recognised that the Government will struggle to make any significant savings from the Army without jeopardising our capability on that front. In an answer to another written question—

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. This is a little wide of the topic.

[Andrew Bowie]

I found out two weeks ago that of the Army’s current strength of 70,000, almost 18,000 soldiers fall into the medical deployability standard categories “medically limited deployable” or “medically not deployable”. We need to spend more on our armed forces. In an incredibly uncertain and unstable world, for our allies and dependencies, we must fund our armed forces properly so that they can do the jobs we need and ask them to do.