Carrier Strike Strategy

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Thursday 28th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

It is an honour to speak in this debate, and an enormous honour to follow the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth)—a woman who deserves all our support and respect for her resilience and extraordinary tenacity in the face of personal challenges in her political life. She certainly has the support and respect of all hon. Members present.

[Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)]

What a decent thing for the hon. Lady to say. We all associate ourselves publicly with her remarks about my hon. Friend.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. It is no hardship to commend the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North for her extraordinary resilience; all of us who believe in what this House stands for would do so. If every member of our armed forces were as resilient, tough and determined—not to mention charming—as she is, we would be able to take on the world without any trouble at all. However, let me return to the matter at hand and speak about a ship that I am particularly proud of.

The United Kingdom is a maritime nation and a coastal state. More than 90% of our trade in goods flows into and out of our ports on domestic and global sea lanes. Our trade flows remain entirely dependent on ensuring that home waters and international waters are kept open and safe for commercial sea traffic. This year is the 80th anniversary of the start of the battle of the Atlantic, the longest battle in the history of naval warfare. What was critical then remains true: our Royal Navy’s primary responsibility is to keep the high seas safe for the free flow of our trade in goods, energy and food. It can do so only if it has the best world-leading equipment and weaponry and the advantage over potential enemies.

As an island nation, the United Kingdom was highly dependent on imported goods, even in 1939. Britain required more than 1 million tonnes of imported material every week to survive, feed our population—albeit on rations—and fight. In essence, the battle of the Atlantic was a tonnage war, in which the allies struggled to supply Britain while the axis attempted to stem the flow of merchant shipping that enabled Britain to keep fighting. From 1942, the axis also sought to prevent the build-up of allied supplies and equipment in the British Isles in preparation for the invasion of occupied Europe. The outcome of the battle was a strategic victory for the allies—the German blockade failed—but it came at great cost.

The battle of the Atlantic has been called

“the longest, largest, and most complex naval battle in history”,

but at its essence was a critical message, which perhaps we have become a little lazy about: we are an island. Unless we choose policies to make us entirely self-sufficient, which would limit our choices dramatically, we must always invest in our Royal Navy to keep our sea lanes open.

As Brexit approaches and our view of ourselves as a maritime nation comes to the fore once again, there could be no more timely moment to discuss, and call on the Government to implement, a clear whole-of-Government strategy for our aircraft carriers and the carrier strike group of ships that sail the seas and oceans of the globe to keep the flow of goods to and from the United Kingdom’s shores as certain as possible.

Of the two new aircraft carriers being introduced into Royal Navy service, the first, HMS Queen Elizabeth, is already working her way up to full service, while the second, HMS Prince of Wales, is following closely behind. If I may, I will tell hon. Members a little more about these two extraordinary feats of British industrial design, construction, skill and innovation. I have had the honour to watch them grow from boxes of steel made in shipyards across our country and put together in Rosyth, with engineering so sophisticated that the margin of error was millimetres only on these vast steel structures. The ships have grown into their present form under the watchful eye of highly skilled shipyard workers in Rosyth, with a unique partnering relationship of industry and the Ministry of Defence with the Royal Navy. The Aircraft Carrier Alliance was the first of its kind as a procurement project. The end user was genuinely involved throughout the process to maximise value for money for the taxpayer and to create the most user-friendly vessel for the Royal Navy to live and work aboard.

In HMS Queen Elizabeth, we now have the most sophisticated and comprehensive carrier capability in the world. Her sister ship HMS Prince of Wales will be coming into service close behind her. The increasing speed of build with the second vessel demonstrates so well why ship classes get better and more finely tuned as more are built.

Perhaps it is not surprising that the Treasury decided that two was enough, at £3 billion each and a crew requirement of 800 or more sailors. We are at an all-time low in manpower terms for the Royal Navy. All those factors are important. Mind you, £3 billion for a 50-year lifespan strikes me—even as the critical friend to MOD that I am, sitting on the Public Accounts Committee—as a pretty good investment return, considering the choices the carrier group can offer Governments and NATO.

It is to be hoped that in the months ahead, as the modernising defence review progresses and real changes in the business model take place within the Department, the imbalance in funding between the three services’ top-level budgets since the 2010 strategic defence and security review will be sorted out, so that the Royal Navy can meet its activity requirements—a point which my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts) raised earlier—and be able to increase its output, after nine years of trying to meet requirements and the challenges of the continuous at-sea deterrent commitment without ever quite enough funding. We want to be able to maximise the outputs—in the Royal Navy, that is time at sea—so that our sailors and our ships are out there doing what we ask them to do.

Unlike the French, who only have the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier, the beauty of having two of these great ships is that we can ensure that we have that at-sea capability 365 days a year. I hope the Minister will reassure the House today that rumours emanating from Treasury sources that it might be fine to mothball or sell Prince of Wales are unfounded. We need two ships to provide 365 days of output.

I could talk about the Queen Elizabeth class military capability in more detail, but I think it is safe to say that my colleagues are all over that already. However, I have had the privilege to visit these ships in construction and to watch Queen Elizabeth leave Rosyth on her maiden voyage. That was a real hold-your-breath moment, because she had to squeeze under the bridge with her hinged radar lowered to get out into open seas on the lowest tides in the summer of 2017.

I then had the even greater privilege of being aboard this mighty vessel on 8 December 2017, when she was formally commissioned into the Royal Navy and her ensign changed from blue to white. The Queen and I—and a few others—were inside this enormous hangar, as the Princess Royal took on the weather on deck to perform the formal ceremony.

Amid all the pomp and circumstance, and the real honour of hearing my monarch speak of her own naval life, in her words, as the daughter, wife and mother of her family, who had all served in the Royal Navy, I looked at the young sailors, some of whom looked very young indeed, though that may be a reflection on me. These young men and women standing to attention before their commander-in-chief. The young sailors were simply brimming with excitement and pride at their opportunity to be the first sailors to serve on a ship that will be in service for 50 years or more—a ship that will be the cornerstone of our UK defence and military posture for decades to come, both at home and across the globe; a ship whose last commanding officer has not yet been born.

Why do these state-of-the-art aircraft carriers make even the US Navy jealous? For anyone who knows my interests, they will know of my enduring respect for those in our silent service, who have for the past 50 years served on our continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent under the waves. Our submarine service has been deployed 24/7, 365 days a year since April 1969, with no pomp or circumstance—just the silent invisible defence of our citizens, NATO allies and our interests, bearing the unimaginable responsibility of holding our greatest weapon of peace, the Trident missile, at readiness in case it is ever needed.

The aircraft carrier is the surface equivalent. Our carriers will, between them, provide our surface at-sea conventional deterrent, if that makes sense. With their fighter jets aboard and the strike group of ships with them, they will provide the most effective defensive capability for the United Kingdom and our allies. Crucially, both in home waters and in maritime theatres of operation around the globe, HMS Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales will also be able to operate offensive capability as determined by our Government, either alone but most likely in concert with NATO and other allies. As with the continuous at-sea deterrence—our nuclear deterrent carried on submarines—the carrier is a national asset whose deployment will be determined and informed by political and diplomatic priorities.

Some of the narratives that question our carriers and why we have bothered to invest in them raise issues such as vulnerability and purpose. If the carrier group is questioned, why is it that the Chinese are building aircraft carriers as quickly as they can? Why is it that the Americans are so keen to work with us and our carrier groups in the years ahead? It is quite simply because this is a powerful and effective tool. Critically, however, these are not ships to be mothballed and only put to sea when needed for naval warfare, as some of our illustrious naval ships of old were.

I love ships’ names and I think we should take a moment to consider those ships of old, and the men who served, and died, in them. Early aircraft carriers in the Royal Navy have included, in the first world war, HMS Furious, Argus and Hermes; in the 1920s, HMS Courageous and Glorious; in the 1930s, HMS Illustrious, Ark Royal, and Formidable; through the second world war, HMS Indefatigable, Indomitable, Unicorn, Colossus, Edgar, Audacious, Ocean, Vengeance, Mars, Venerable, Warrior, Theseus, Triumph, Majestic, Terrible and Magnificent. These are powerful names for powerful war fighting machines—floating airbases from which to command battle space since world war one and the creation of air power—but they are nothing like our latest carriers.

The 21st-century aircraft carrier is not only a warfighter—the only dedicated fifth generation platform in the world equipped and designed to deliver the F-35B fighter jet— but she can serve in any number of roles supporting and promoting our national interests.

As we leave the EU and seek to stand tall on the global stage once again as a sovereign nation, these platforms can provide a range of opportunities for diplomacy, intelligence gathering, trade, humanitarian support and disaster relief. That is really why we have called the debate today, because if we are to reach our stated aims of becoming once again a global-facing Britain, reaching out to old friends and new in trade and alliances, it is vital that we make full use of these extraordinary ships.

The carriers are diplomatic tools for our country—the royal yacht Britannia of the 21st century, perhaps—able to deliver a diplomatic message, hard or soft; to assist with trade delegations, as indeed HMS Queen Elizabeth has already done in New York last autumn; and to provide humanitarian relief on a scale never before seen by the UK, if needed, anywhere in the world.

The Government’s PR and official statements to date about these carriers of ours have been focused on size, tonnage and capability. All of those are impressive, but the important conversation that we need to have with the UK citizen needs to be about much more than those good stories of skills, jobs and next generation ships. As these great ships cruise our vast oceans, they will be a hub for intelligence collection and dissemination to assist all our allies in keeping our world as safe as possible. The platforms are the epitome of the vision created by our national security adviser, Sir Mark Sedwill, the fusion doctrine, which properly joins up all the strands of defensive, offensive and humanitarian activity, ordered and put into effect by Government. These great ships of ours are the epitome of fusion afloat.

The aircraft carrier in its carrier strike group, from whichever nation, is operated by navies, but is programmed by Prime Ministers and Presidents. The President of the United States receives a daily brief on the whereabouts of the US Navy carrier battle groups. The French President personally authorises the deployment intentions of the Charles de Gaulle. Leaders visit their carriers as part of their demonstration of national pride and, of course, power.

We have restored to our naval capabilities two great ships and the opportunity to create carrier strike groups with huge reach, for the next 50 years. They are the cornerstone of a naval taskforce to project UK power and influence in many ways in the decades ahead, in a way we have been unable to for several decades. I look forward to hearing from the Minister how the Government are making progress, across departmental silos—everybody knows they drive me crackers—in building an effective and coherent strategy for our state-of-the-art carriers, the latest in a great historic line of British aircraft carriers. This is a great opportunity and I urge the Government to take full advantage of what a constantly at-sea carrier strike group can offer global security and British power projection.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Lewis]

I think that is a very perceptive suggestion. When it comes to the issue of keeping the country safe from threats to our way of life, which now take on new forms that are much more difficult to recognise because they do not operate at a level that would automatically trigger the same sort of alarm bells as traditional military threats, the support that I find as chairman of the Defence Committee from Members of all four parties represented on it is absolutely outstanding. The House should acknowledge more than it does the high degree of consensus among defence-minded people in all the major parties, irrespective of occasional disagreements on specific aspects of defence now and again.

I want to bring my remarks to a conclusion by talking about the 1998 Labour Government strategic defence review, which I described as unfunded but highly strategic. It was a very good review. If the funds had been made available for it, it would have been an outstanding success. At that time in 1998 the threat from the Soviet Union had gone away and it was hoped that we would not have to consider a major confrontation in Europe. So the thinking behind that review went something like this: given that we do not anticipate our armed forces having to be engaged in the European theatre in future, it follows that if they are to be engaged on a significant scale anywhere, it will be at some considerable distance from Europe. Given that we no longer are a global imperial power with a network of strategic bases around the world from which to intervene, it follows that we need a concept that enables us to have a movable strategic base. At the heart of that strategic defence review of 1998 was the concept of the sea base, which had two central pillars. One was carrier strike and the other was the amphibious taskforce.

Carrier strike was to enable us to exert air power to the land from the sea, and the amphibious taskforce was to enable us to insert land forces on to territory likewise from the sea, taking the whole strategic concept into a way in which we could travel to the theatre where the need to intervene militarily applied.

Only a year ago we faced yet another major potential crisis. It was widely reported in January last year that the core ships—HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark of the amphibious taskforce—were going to be pensioned off 15 years before their due date. I can honestly say that the most influential report of the 27 so far produced by the Defence Committee since I have been chairing it was the one that we brought out in February 2018, which described the proposal to lose our ability to exert land power from the sea as militarily illiterate. I absolutely welcome the intervention of the Secretary of State for Defence, who could see the risk and what was going to happen. Some people have criticised the modernising defence programme for not being been quite as substantial as they expected. However, that is to miss the point, because although I welcome the concept of the fusion doctrine, which my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed referred to, there was a way in which it posed a risk to the future of our armed forces. The way in which the defence theory for the future was being amalgamated in the national security capability review with newer threats, such as those from cyberspace and disinformation, was conceptually sound but economically dangerous. I shall explain after taking an intervention from my hon. Friend.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

On that point, the great challenge of the fusion doctrine, whose strategic vision is really intelligent, as my right hon. Friend says, is that, as ever—it is difficult to say out loud—the adversary in the Treasury and those who were in my view driving the policy forward saw it as an opportunity to take hold of the defence budget and bring it into a greater whole, without fully understanding the need for hard power to remain in our national picture.

[Dr Lewis]

I am delighted with that intervention, which has saved me at least the next two paragraphs of what I was going to say. That was precisely the danger. The defence budget was being wrapped up inside an overall defence and security budget and we were being told that that national security capability review would have to be fiscally neutral. So effectively, if £56 billion was going to be put together overall, and if more money was to be spent to meet the new sorts of threats we are constantly told about—threats in space or cyberspace, or threats of disinformation that are not really new but are moving into new dimensions—every £1 received for those threats would mean £1 less for the Army, the Royal Navy or the Royal Air Force. That is why there were leaks— clearly authoritative—about potential cuts in each service, including about the loss of HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, which would have happened if the Secretary of State for Defence had not fought and won the political battle to strip out the defence elements from the national security capability review and have a separate modernising defence programme. That meant that he was no longer caught in that fiscal or financial ambush.

Let us not be too complacent in congratulating ourselves on the advent of such marvellous vessels, because they very nearly did not happen, first because of the Treasury, back in 2009-10, and secondly because even as we brought in half the concept of the sea base—carrier strike—we were in danger, right up to a few months ago, of losing the other half of the concept. That was amphibious capability, without which we would not have a rounded overall capability to intervene strategically in whatever theatre of the world a threat might arise unpredictably. Believe me, when a threat arises in the future, it will be unpredictable and we will be lucky if we are sufficiently equipped to meet it. That luck depends on the advocacy of people such as those we have heard from this afternoon, in every party represented in the debate. I hope that my hon. Friend who speaks for the Scottish National Party, the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes), will presently make a speech and keep up the tradition.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vernon Coaker]

I accept that that has been published, but I want to say something further to the point that the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed made, about the UK citizen. My point—and this shows how much work has to be done—is that, as the Defence Committee Chair said, on 11 February the Secretary of State for Defence makes a speech about where the new aircraft carrier will go on its first operational tour, and then a trip by the Chancellor to China is cancelled. Then a furious row erupts, apparently. If that is wrong, it is wrong, but that is what was reported. Somehow or other we have to have an approach where we do not have a row about it and the whole blame goes to the Chinese for refusing to accept that we have a perfect right for our aircraft carriers to go where we want. Instead, it became “Well, yes, the Chinese shouldn’t have done that”—but why are we worrying about it as well?

I have a broader point to make. It is not only about the need to win the debate and the argument in Government. The Chair of the Defence Committee has made the argument time and again, and so have the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North and the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes), who speaks for the Scottish National party. Where on earth is the engagement with the UK public? My constituents would see massive spending on tackling the terrorist threat as something to pile money into. The debate about whether we should spend billions of pounds on aircraft carriers is a totally different concept for them: why should we be spending that money? I agree with spending it, but have we won that debate with the British public? I very much doubt it. I would say that there is a need, with respect to Russia and China. On the middle east, people might get it, although they could say “You can already bomb the middle east from Akrotiri if you want to, so why do we have them?” Hon. Members have articulated the argument.

Norway has been mentioned. I had the privilege of visiting the Falklands last week, with the armed forces parliamentary scheme. Our defence of the self-determination of the Falkland Islands is absolutely something of which we can all be proud. We do so much more, but who talks about that? HMS Clyde is there as a projection of naval power—I did not much enjoy being on it myself, but they do a phenomenal job—but it is not there only in defence of the Falklands. It is also there to patrol the waters near the South Sandwich Islands and South Georgia, and to defend the Antarctic treaty, fishing rights and other things that some other nations exploit—or would if we were not there.

That is a role for naval power, but who articulates that in a practical way to UK citizens so that they understand? It is not just the Government who need to wake up to that, but the whole of Parliament as well, so the matter is addressed much more fully.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

The hon. Gentleman rightly points out that through the continuous deployment of those ships across the globe, the Royal Navy is engaged in environmental protection. That is exactly what HMS Clyde is doing. That speaks to my son’s generation, who are passionate about the environment, ecology and looking after rare species to make sure that we leave our planet in a better state than we found it. Yet we seem unable to join that up with the importance of what looks like hard power but which, most of the time, is not, thank goodness.

[Vernon Coaker]

I agree. That supports my point that the use of the aircraft carriers is of course about hard power. I say to the Minister that we ought to put various scenarios to people and explain, “These are the sorts of situations where we might expect the aircraft carriers to be used when it comes to hard power.” Of course, as the hon. Lady says, there are so many other ways in which naval or military power of any sort could be used, including for the environment or to support human rights and freedoms, as we have seen so well displayed by our armed forces’ humanitarian efforts in the past few years.

In my view, however, we do not explain—or, if you like, exploit—that enough to win public support. That is the major point I wish to make. I repeat that my constituents understand why we spend money on tackling terrorism. Those who support a much broader defence profile, including the hon. Lady and others—and I count myself in this category—need to explain much more clearly to constituents why this country rightly invests in what it does and why we should perhaps invest more in our defence across the world.

The hon. Member for Witney made a powerful point about Britain as a global force for good, but what does that actually mean? We could explain that, but we need to unpick it so that people understand what it means across the world and how we will operate with our allies to achieve it. That is what I mean about joining up foreign policy, international development and defence.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

The hon. Gentleman is very kind to give way again. On his point about reaching out to constituents, I visited Ellington Primary School in my constituency a couple of weeks ago. The children had read a book about landmines and their impact on communities after the war was over. They set me a challenge, as the Minister knows, to make landmines a thing of the past. That is quite a big ask for a single MP, but I hope others will assist.

It is fascinating that the children came across that story in a book. They must have been completely transfixed by it, because it had motivated those 10-year-olds’ political activity—their desire to do something better. The challenge that the Minister and I are working on is to see if we can find a member of the Army—perhaps even the Minister himself, who is an expert in bomb disposal—to go and talk to those children about what it is to be a military person, and the skill and bravery that will help change the world into the better place that they want to see.

[Vernon Coaker]

I agree. The Minister, with his distinguished background, would be much more able than me to articulate that. That is the essence of what I am saying. Although we often talk about this in Parliament, we never seem to reach the point where we have a scheme to deliver that message more forcefully.

Rather than making broad strategic points, I want to mention a few specifics and it would be helpful if the Minister could address them. What does having two fully operational carriers mean? Does it mean having one fully operational taskforce at sea 24 hours a day, 365 days a year? If so, what is the other carrier doing? If not mothballed, is it tied up or ready to go? Do we have two because we assume that one will be in the dry dock? Can the Minister explain what we actually mean by “two fully operational carriers”?

Can the Minister confirm what the plan is for the number of aircraft on each of the aircraft carriers? He will correct me if I get my figures wrong, but we have ordered 48 F-35Bs. One presumes that those are all for the carriers, so if I have understood correctly, that means two squadrons of 12—one for each carrier—and that all 48 will be on the carriers. Is that right? What does that mean for the purchase of the additional 90 aircraft still to be ordered, and will they be As, Cs or more Bs? Can he say a bit more about how the aircraft strike group will work with NATO and in interaction with the different navies and air forces of NATO?

Can the Minister say a bit more about the aircraft carriers operating in littoral space and what that means? Some parliamentary answers have stated that we cannot do that because it might put some of the operational capabilities of the vessels at risk. I wonder whether Ministers sometimes retreat to that answer. How will the carriers operate with helicopters? What does the loss of HMS Ocean, which has been criticised, mean for our helicopter landing capabilities at sea, and should we expect that to happen on carriers? If so, how near would they have to be? Those are a few of my specific questions to the Minister.

I say all of that as a great supporter of the building of the carriers and the creation of a carrier strike group, and we all wish the defence programme well. The whole thrust of this debate is that the Government need to look at what more they can do to ensure that our foreign policy, defence and international development objectives are married in a much more effective way, and that that is explained to the citizens of the United Kingdom.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mark Lancaster)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts) on securing this important and timely debate. It has been a good-natured and collegial debate. We can certainly agree on two things: we are all delighted that the age of carrier strike has returned and that the Treasury is the enemy.

A number of colleagues have made thoughtful and intelligent contributions. It has been one of the best debates I have been in as a Minister for some time, which is why I stand in slight trepidation as I make my own contribution. There have been a number of detailed questions. I will do my best to answer them, but I have no doubt that I will not be able to answer all of them, in which case I will write in detail to hon. Members. Many of the subjects that have come out during the debate are worthy of debates in their own right, be that recruiting or the national shipbuilding strategy. I cannot begin to do those subjects justice, but hopefully I will touch some wave tops—no pun intended—as I respond.

We are a proud maritime nation, dependent upon global access to the sea to build our prosperity and project our influence. For centuries, the Royal Navy has been a vital instrument of sea power, ensuring our unrestricted access to trade routes and protecting our vital interests around the globe. Over the past 100 years, the aircraft carrier has increasingly come to epitomise the strength and ambition of leading naval powers. It is a statement of intent and a manifest example that a state is a player on the global stage, which is able to reach out and exploit the attributes of maritime manoeuvre, organic sustainability, and the speed and flexibility of air power to coerce or reassure. As such, the rebuilding of a world-class carrier strike capability offers a step change in our ability to globally project military power and constitutes a new strategic conventional deterrence.

The United Kingdom’s carrier strike capability has three component parts. The first two are the state-of-the-art Queen Elizabeth aircraft carriers and the cutting-edge fifth generation F-35B Lightning combat aircraft, which the aircraft carriers have been specifically designed and built from the hull up to operate and accommodate, as highlighted by several hon. Members. The third element is the Crowsnest airborne early-warning surveillance and control system, which will provide the eyes and ears of the carrier strike task group, and enable command and control to the Lightning aircraft.

Where are we on this journey? Last year we saw HMS Queen Elizabeth complete successful first of class flying trials off the east coast of the United States, which followed the declaration of initial operating capabilities in secondary roles earlier in the year. I will come back to the questions about that raised by hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) in a moment. HMS Queen Elizabeth is now in Portsmouth undergoing a capability insertion period prior to deploying to the east coast to conduct an operational test, which will be the first time we will operate frontline F-35Bs with the ship.

Meanwhile, HMS Prince of Wales is on track to be accepted by the Royal Navy at the end of the year. Last summer we saw 617 Squadron stand up in the UK with the Lightning force, subsequently declaring initial operating capability from land in December. They are now developing their understanding of operating the aircraft prior to deploying with the ship to the east coast. Crowsnest is working to a challenging timeline to marry up the other two components to enable declaration of initial operating capability for carrier strike in December 2020, prior to the inaugural operational deployment in 2021, which will be the start of a 50-year life.

The formidable F-35B Lightning will be at the centre of this. Jointly manned by the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy, it will be able to conduct strategic attacks, support our troops and be able to work in threat environments hitherto unimagined by previous commanders. This is timely given the sophistication and proliferation of air defence systems in recent years, but the Lightning can do more and possesses an impressive ability to collect intelligence on enemy formations and threat systems. Just as importantly, it is then able to relay that information to other friendly forces working within and around the carrier strike task group, providing unparalleled situational awareness and so contribute to information superiority.

On the questions specifically regarding the F-35, as hon. Members know, to date 17 jets have been delivered and we have approvals to purchase the first 48, of which we have formally ordered 35. Ultimately, we are committed to buying 138. Our 18th is due to be delivered in the summer of 2019 and I am pleased to say that the programme remains firmly on schedule. Our first frontline squadron, the 617, which I have already mentioned, has already arrived in the UK and the operational conversion unit—those that have been working in the US—will arrive next summer. A second squadron, 809 Naval Air Squadron, will join 617 and 207 at RAF Marham in due course.

When it comes to ordering future aircraft, and the question of what type they should be—B, A or other variants—that is a decision we do not yet have to make. It is important to note that we are starting a journey. I will come back to this point when we talk about the strategy. Up to now, as I have described, we have been consolidating the three elements for carrier strike, and now we begin the operational phase. This is a new piece of work and, as that operational phase continues, we will see how effectively these squadrons work together and whether we need more Bs or whether in future we will buy As. That is not a decision we have to make right now, and in many ways it would be wrong to make it right now, before we have experience of operating this platform. It will be made in due course.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

In relation to our future purchasing of more jets, are the Government at all considering purchasing Cs rather than As, which clearly have a more bespoke outlook to them? We would then be able to fly the Cs off American aircraft carriers as well.

[Mark Lancaster]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about interoperability. Of course, that is the whole point of the first deployment, when we will have US marine corps jets on our platform. We have an eye to ensuring that we have that interoperability, which is precisely why we keep our options open on what we will buy next. Narrowing our options right now on what future jets we will buy would be premature.

These attributes, together with other forms of attack from the task group, such as long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, constitute a powerful ability to reach inland—all this in a mobile force able to range 500 miles a day and at immediate readiness, without the need to seek the permission of other nations for the land-basing of our fighter aircraft. Once our Queen Elizabeth-class carriers, including HMS Prince of Wales when accepted at the end of the year, become fully operational—we have already highlighted that timeframe—the United Kingdom will maintain a carrier ready to deploy at very high readiness, that is, within five days.

That goes back to the question that the hon. Member for Gedling asked about how the two carriers will work together. Like any platform, the physical side of the ship will go through a natural cycle. Having been built —or, in future, having been through a long period of maintenance—it will enter the force generation period, when manpower and jets are married with the ship. We will go through a training period. We always think about the platforms, but we do not always think about the people. They will go through their careers; new pilots and junior sailors come in, and we must ensure that they are trained in the appropriate way. Then the ship goes on deployment. When it comes back, it goes into a period of maintenance—and the cycle continues.

The point of having two ships and effectively offsetting that process is that at any one point we will always have one at very high readiness. There may be times when we potentially have two carriers available; they would not both be at very high readiness, but a second carrier could, for example, go off and do a secondary task. As we said in the SDSR, who knows what is around the corner? Who predicted Hurricane Irma in the Caribbean last year? We were able to send a vessel to deal with that situation. By having two vessels—especially new vessels—and offsetting that cycle, we can maintain the flexibility to ensure we have those vessels available to do a number of different tasks.

While delivery of carrier strike is absolutely main effort—the primary role—the inherent flexibility of the carrier enables a range of secondary roles to be undertaken, if that is what the situation dictates, as I have just tried to describe. Those roles range from supporting our Royal Marines in undertaking amphibious operations, to providing discrete support to our special forces and, as we saw, humanitarian and disaster relief.

The new capability will enable the UK to make an unparalleled European contribution to NATO, the cornerstone of our defence policy. Indeed, carrier strike is “international by design”, with the convening power of the Queen Elizabeth-class carriers already evident. Other European nations have already expressed a clear interest in exercising with, and more importantly deploying as part of, the carrier strike task group. Thus, carrier strike provides not only a potent additional capability to NATO, but also a means of coalescing European naval effort. It will, of course, also be able to operate with our partners’ aircraft, a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan) made.

That is especially so with our closest ally, the United States, which will be embarking United States marine corps F-35B Lightning jets alongside our own on board HMS Queen Elizabeth for her inaugural operational deployment in 2021. That level of close co-operation has been reached through extensive work over the past decade between our two nations, requiring levels of information sharing and trust that are only evident between the closest of allies.

My hon. Friend the Member for Witney talked in his opening comments, which were excellent—I have not heard a better opening to a debate for some time—about a “loss of culture” of carrier strike. I will gently say that that was anticipated, which is why over the past 10 years we have had many Royal Naval personnel and pilots operating on US carriers, so that we have not completely lost that skill set. Personally, I was delighted and honoured to go on board the George H.W. Bush the summer before last, when it was operating in the North sea.