Royal Yacht Britannia: International Trade

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope. I thank and congratulate the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) for securing this entertaining and interesting debate. The enthusiasm of Conservative Members and the sparsity of Labour Members in the Chamber will be spotted by those elsewhere.

I like the fact that the UK is looking up and wants to catch up with the great powers of the world: Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Saudi Arabia—places with royal yachts. It is great to the see the UK having such ambition to catch those countries, and good luck to it in doing that. Perhaps the royal yacht will be the answer, but I do not think it will.

I am very familiar with the former royal yacht Britannia. As a child, I used to see it often behind the island of Vatersay, from Castlebay. Its three masts were seen every August as the Queen went on a cruise around Scotland to the castle of Mey. I am delighted that it is now tied up at harbour in Leith, and that there are no designs today on that ship that now belongs to Leith. The designs today are based on pomp and circumstance, and I can see no circumstance at all for this pomp. In fact, we nearly had civil war between Ramsgate and Portsmouth at one stage—

[Mrs Drummond]

And Plymouth.

[Mr MacNeil]

And Plymouth, sorry.

It was pointed out that Her Majesty is Queen of 16 realms, and that perhaps Commonwealth countries could contribute to the yacht, which might mean that they would want it themselves for rambling trade expeditions across the world. Who knows? I think they would be reluctant to call it Britannia in that case; they might want to call it The Commonwealth. Otherwise it might fuel awful sentiments, such as republicanism in Australia, if people were paying their taxes to contribute to a yacht for a far-off country.

That brings me to the name: Britannia. I thought some hon. Members might have looked at the opportunity of having the yacht for the 100th anniversary of the UK, which will fall in December 2022 when the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland becomes 100 years old. That opportunity was missed—perhaps there is some nervousness that Britannia as currently constituted might find itself being two states before that date, with the boat perhaps needing to be called Scotia.

The answer to the calamity facing the UK is not a yacht, which I think a number of hon. Members, in the backs of their minds, really do feel. The answer is not the superstitious notion that all future trade success depends on having a royal yacht. The idea that getting to the front of the queue is based on having a royal yacht belongs on the back of a fag packet. It is not the back of a yacht that gets nations to the front of the queue; it is the professionalism of being a good trading nation and having negotiators—the UK currently has twelve, but it needs about 200. There is a real danger that the UK could be mugged at international negotiations because it does not have the experience of small places like the Faroe Islands or Iceland, which have 50,000 and 300,000 people respectively. Those are the issues that should be bothering the UK.

Top trading nations do not have a royal yacht. China does not have a royal yacht, the USA does not have a royal yacht, Germany does not have a royal yacht. Nor do South Korea, France, Hong Kong or Italy, and all those nations are ahead of the UK.

[Oliver Colvile]

The countries the hon. Gentleman has just talked about do not have a royal family; we do.

[Mr MacNeil]

I am not sure what point the hon. Gentleman is making, because they are ahead of us in trading. As a monarchist myself, I do not particularly like the republican sentiments he is leaning towards by indicating that we might be better off in trading if we were a republic. I do not find that at all appealing.

If the UK were able to build a ship, could it not be doing so now? The idea that the Conservatives have suddenly become Keynesians and are looking for a fiscal stimulus to ignite industry across the country rings hollow, particularly when we have seen the fetish of austerity, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) said.

The hostility to the gin market today has surprised me—I would have thought that people could have supported the gin industry, but no. Hon. Members have shown some hostility towards it this afternoon, although happily the whisky industry, in which Scotland excels, was not included in that.

The hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) made a serious point about a royal yacht being a very big target. A lot of royal naval assets would be tied up in ensuring its safety. In the world we are in at the moment, it would be a sitting duck, and it would cost an awful lot of money to make sure it was safe. In fact, although the costs were put at £7 million a year to finance the boat back on charter from her owners, the crew of about 250, which the royal yacht had, would cost about £7.5 million to £12 million in wages, and the officers would cost a further £1.2 million. That is not including the cost of defending the yacht, which was the important point that the hon. Gentleman made.

Reality came crashing into the debate in the fantastic speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith, which some of the hon. Gentlemen present greeted with, indeed, great honour and gentlemanliness. She made a great point about food banks and cuts to social services. To add to that, with the pound crashing, the current projections of costs for the royal yacht may go further north. She correctly made a point about the shortage of armed forces equipment. It is a rose-tinted fiction that we will have a royal yacht, and then all will be well with the situation the UK has found itself in.

This debate has shown that the UK has found itself in some sort of trouble, but I say to colleagues that the answer is not the comfort blanket of a royal yacht. In fact, to the outside world the idea will look bizarre. I cannot wait to see “The Daily Show” with Trevor Noah; the previous presenter Jon Stewart had great fun a few years ago with the UK’s fetish for shipping on the Thames, but this will be seen as high comedy across the world. The idea is that a royal yacht will make Britain great again—I cannot remember which hon. Member said Britain was not great. He did not exactly say that, but he implied that Britain was not great by saying that the yacht would make Britain great again. Another hon. Member said that Britain would stand tall in the world, indicating that Britain does not stand tall in the world at the moment. Indeed, it does not, because of Brexit. It is a laughing stock from Reykjavik to Buenos Aires—that is the reality, and building a royal yacht would only add to that. I am sorry to say that to hon. Members, and I wish them well in what they are trying to do, but the idea of having the comfort blanket of a royal yacht is barking up the wrong tree.