Oral Answers to Questions

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Monday 21st October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

6. What recent assessment he has made of the quality of service provided under contracts outsourced by his Department.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Anne-Marie Trevelyan)]

The Ministry of Defence routinely monitors the performance of all contractors, including those who provide outsourced services. Performance against contract targets is regularly scrutinised and officials take appropriate action when standards are not met.

[Bambos Charalambous]

The latest figures show that the Army is currently more than 9% under strength, and that the full-time trade trained strength is now well below the Government’s stated target. It beggars belief that Capita still holds the contract for recruitment. Have the Government just given up trying to hold Capita to account?

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I refer the hon. Gentleman to the multiple answers that my colleague has just given.

[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I warmly welcome my hon. Friend to her new post, which is very well deserved. She is a graduate of the armed forces parliamentary scheme—that is where she learned everything—so I am glad that she is now at the Dispatch Box. I very much welcome the fact that the new Type 31s are to be built in Rosyth, which should be a very good contract indeed, but what evidence can she bring forward that the contract will be delivered on time and within budget?

[Mr Speaker]

For the benefit of those observing our proceedings, so that they are intelligible, it ought to be explained that the hon. Gentleman is what might be described as the overlord, or the Gandalf figure, who oversees the armed forces parliamentary scheme.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

You know that your comments may go to my hon. Friend’s head, don’t you, Mr Speaker? I thank him for his question. Indeed, one of the most exciting things that I have had the opportunity to do in this role so far has been to set running the new Type 31 class of general purpose frigate. It will be built in Rosyth under Babcock’s guidance. At the moment, the contract is being drawn through to the final details so that we can hopefully get cracking early in the new year.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

I welcome the new Minister to her post. A report in the Financial Times today demonstrates that botched public sector outsourcing contracts wasted more than £14 billion-worth of taxpayers’ money just in the last three years, with the MOD found to be the biggest culprit, accounting for £4 billion-worth of the extra cost. At a time when our defences are badly in need of investment after nine years of Tory cuts, does the Minister accept that this Government’s ideological obsession with outsourcing is failing our armed forces and the taxpayer alike?

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. I have had a chance to look a little at the Reform think tank’s paper, which highlights some issues. All of us would agree that contracts have not always been managed as tightly as possible. I direct her, most importantly, to the outsourcing review that was done by the Cabinet Office and was set in place by the former Prime Minister in February this year. It has been very clear and set some really good guidelines for all Government Departments on thinking more proactively about early market engagement, in particular—I think that has been a weakness historically—and being much more active in the management of contracts, so that when we have great contracts, such as with Leidos and a new contract that I have just signed with Atos, we make sure that we are responsible in the governance of those contracts so that we get the best for our money and that the contractors provide the service that we need.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

19. Capita’s record of success in engaging with potential recruits has been particularly bad, as we see with the bureaucratic aspects of the recruitment process and the difficulty with the call centres. Does the Minister think that this is the appropriate way to go forward if we are serious about getting more folk into the armed forces?

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I am sorry, but I did not quite catch the start of the hon. Gentleman’s question. In relation to call centres and Capita, we have to remember that those who are applying, who are 16 and upwards, live in a digital world. They live on apps and dealing with those systems is very much part of that. The call centre is one part of the whole. That service ensures that young people can really ask those questions and get to grips with their initial questions about whether joining the armed forces is for them. How that follows on from that is something that, as I think we would all agree, my colleague the Minister for the Armed Forces has spoken about at length this afternoon. We are making huge progress in making sure that we get the numbers that we need in the armed forces.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

7. What steps he is taking to support the UK defence industry.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Anne-Marie Trevelyan)]

Defence exports will continue to be supported, not just by the Ministry of Defence but by other Government Departments including the Department for International Trade, after the UK leaves the EU. Work is ongoing to explore how to strengthen the competitiveness of UK industry and to support exports, both to the EU and globally. My right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary has regular conversations with the Secretary of State for International Trade, including through the defence security and exports working group.

[Harriett Baldwin]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her appointment. I know that she is a fervent champion of the tremendous exporters that we have in the defence sector. She will know that they often face non-tariff barriers when they export to the United States. Can she reassure me that she will be championing their cause and ensuring that those non-tariff barriers are broken down when we have a new trade deal?

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I thank my hon. Friend for her kind words. I reassure her that, through our long-standing bilateral relationship with the US, we work closely across the full spectrum of defence, including on issues of shared economic interests such as reducing barriers. Free trade agreements are not used as a means of increasing defence exports. For non-sensitive and non-warlike defence goods and services, the UK may pursue greater access to US public procurement opportunities through the free trade agreement.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

The 13 old nuclear submarines tied up alongside Devonport provide a really important case not only for generating jobs in Devonport but for exporting skills and technology around the world. Will the Minister put forward a strategy for how we are going to recycle those old nuclear submarines within the next year?

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his optimism that anything so big as that project could be done in a year, but I will certainly take up the challenge. I have been described by some in the Department as a poacher turned gamekeeper on this particular subject, especially as I have made it a priority to move this forward. I saw the work being done on the Resolution project up in Rosyth a couple of weeks ago, and I have been encouraged by the progress being made there. We are starting to see a structured framework that will enable us to move this project forward and move our way right through our elderly submarines that are now in need of retirement.

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)]

T2. Will the relevant Minister meet me as a matter of urgency to discuss the interminable delay in agreeing a lease for the Eastriggs site of MOD Longtown? This delay is causing a threat to important investment and job creation in my constituency.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Anne-Marie Trevelyan)]

I welcome the opportunity to meet my right hon. Friend to discuss the Eastriggs site in his constituency. I am aware of the aspiration of Rail Sidings Ltd to develop its railway rolling stock storage business at MOD Eastriggs. Defence Medical Services continues to manage the site and may support initiatives to commercially exploit the rail infrastructure, provided that any increase in use does not conflict with the primary demands of defence.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

Will the Secretary of State commit to publishing his Department’s analysis of leaving the European Union as far as forfeiting our rights and responsibilities under article 42.7 of the Lisbon treaty is concerned?

--- Later in debate ---

[Emma Dent Coad (Kensington) (Lab)]

T10. We heard earlier about Capita’s failures in Army recruitment and Carillion’s failures in Army accommodation. Is it not time to review the costly procurement process, under which the Government just last month signed a £1.6 billion contract to decommission Sellafield with Morgan Sindall Group, which was responsible for the Faslane leisure centre super-mess?

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

Sadly, I cannot speak about the procurement of other Departments, but I can reassure the hon. Lady that, in my new role, I take how we do procurement, who we do it with, and how contracts are managed extremely seriously.

[Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)]

T5. In London, some veterans are eligible for free travel under the veterans concessionary travel scheme, but Greater Manchester’s veterans do not have the benefit of year-round free travel on public transport. Transport is a devolved matter, and our veterans should be afforded gold-standard treatment on our transport network after years of service. What discussions has the Minister had with the Mayor of Greater Manchester?

Defence Spending

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Tuesday 16th July 2019 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered defence spending.

It is a pleasure to lead this important debate on defence spending, and to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting us time to discuss the funding of our nation’s defence at a time when our world is more unstable than ever and detractors wish the western liberal way of life and our values harm.

It is rare for us to be able to discuss money in this place. Today, we must consider what value we place on our nation’s defence, how the huge sums of money allocated to it are used, the interconnectivity of the Foreign Office’s assessment of global instability, our world-class military tacticians’ understanding of how we can protect our citizens and allies, and what we need to have in place to do so. We need to understand why projecting our cultural and economic values and ethos, and promoting Britain’s and our allies’ economic stability and prosperity, is vital.

The question is: is a percentage figure the way to judge whether we are investing enough? We need to look ourselves in the eye and ask why there is so little appetite among politicians to invest properly in defence spending. The issue is simply not in our postbags. The NHS is now in receipt of a huge extra budget of £20 billion a year by 2024. The Prime Minister agreed to such an enormous increase because it was clear from the hundreds of colleagues who spoke up on the matter that their constituents had too much unmet need and that resources needed to be increased. We needed to address old age—that great success story of the NHS—and mental ill health, because we want a healthy and happy population, and we now realise that it makes economic sense. In wishing to improve the lives of our constituents, the Government assessed that a step change in funding was required.

Defence, on the other hand, does not feature in our postbags. Commanding officers are not allowed to talk to MPs about the problems they are experiencing, including a lack of investment in the sites that they manage and resources to support their serving personnel, who have no choice about their location and environment. There is no mechanism to share concerns about kit provision or whether we will be able to sustain a long conflict. Due to secrecy or national security, the politicians who should be speaking up about whether more investment in defence is needed have too few facts to assess the reality of the situation.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. Does she agree that this is about not just how much money is spent, but where it is spent? The national picture is one thing, but there are huge regional disparities in defence spending. For example, it is just £60 per head in Yorkshire, compared with more than £900 in the south-west. That obviously has a huge impact on the jobs that are supported in the defence industry.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I thank the hon. Lady for that point. It is important to look at how we spend that investment for UK prosperity. The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) is nodding—he is thrilled that the south-west is doing particularly well out of the regional disparities. I agree that we need to think about how the funding is allocated.

In the busy life of a constituency MP, it is often too easy to assume that all must be well in our defence investment. Surely no Government would fail to meet their first duty of governing—to protect their people. When budgetary constraints are imposed, our military leaders cannot talk directly to MPs to tell them whether funding is getting to the frontline or into the investment paths that they need to deliver what we ask of them.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. I want to make a technical point about defence spend. We can spend now to save later, but I draw a distinction between capital spend and revenue spend. Everything I have looked at on defence spending in my short two years here suggests that the Ministry of Defence is not being very clever. Going down the capital route, rather than the revenue route, would be much more efficient in the longer term.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

The hon. Gentleman pre-empts some of what I am going to talk about. He is absolutely right.

Our doctors and nurses tell us directly and bluntly if the funding systems for the NHS are not working properly so we can do something about it and advocate for them. However, that is not an option for our defence chiefs, so it is hard for us to know whether their resources would be sustainable and resilient if there were a major crisis. The question is not only whether enough funding is going into our defences but whether we are spending it correctly—a narrative that ran successfully after the strategic defence and security review in 2010, when the country was in dire financial straits and the former Member for Whitney had the unenviable challenge of trying to put it back on to a stable financial footing. SDSR ’10 declared—conveniently, perhaps, to match the financial crisis—that the Ministry of Defence, like other Departments, had to find efficiencies. There is no question but that that was the right thing to do.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

First, I resent the use of the word “efficiencies”. Basically, that is Treasury speak for cuts, and it would not face up to that. Secondly, the hon. Lady is clearly under a misapprehension: the country was on a very steady path to reducing the deficit. Owing to the crash-and-burn tactics of Mr George Osborne, we went into a recession, which lessened the revenue coming in, deepened the crisis and worsened the deficit.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

As ever, the right hon. Gentleman is a great defender of his party’s financial position. I would not choose to pick a fight with him, because he is a staunch defender of all matters defence.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar) on the use of the word “efficiency”. It is a fact—there is no reason to hide from it—that the Conservatives in the coalition Government cut the defence budget by 16%.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments.

The challenge is that the premise of SDSR ’10 was not just financial; it was that there was no longer an existential threat to the UK. It said that Russia was no longer a nation that we had to watch and fear. That has turned out to be a false premise, if it was ever anything other than an excuse to reduce defence spending. We were told that, owing to the sudden outbreak of global neighbourliness, we could return our Army from Germany. The freedom to move safely around international waters was assured because the middle east had become stable and unthreatening to the 20% of the UK’s energy requirements that travels by sea through the strait of Hormuz, so a reduction in the size of the ageing fleet was a perfectly sensible idea. Global airspace was going to be full of fluffy clouds and rays of sunshine, so there would be less need to patrol the skies or deliver force from the air to those who wish our allies harm, and we could reduce the number of airframes we would need. All that has, perhaps not surprisingly, turned out to be a false premise.

The Government seemed to make a conscious choice conveniently to forget that new equipment, recruitment and high-tech training takes time and money if we are to maintain our military advantage by having the best and most advanced equipment with the best-trained men and women in the world. I am afraid that SDSR ’10 was allowed to set out that false premise due to financial pressures. There was a realignment, as those in post realised that the position that was set out was not right. The work done for SDSR ’15 started to assess more honestly the instabilities across the globe and their risks to UK safety and prosperity, but the cash needed did not follow that strategic assessment.

It is a pleasure to see the Minister for the Armed Forces in his place; it is not him whom I challenge, but our Treasury Ministers. The pertinent question is, after setting out what was eventually understood to be required to meet minimum security risks in SDSR ’15, why have we not funded it properly to get the outputs that we know we need? We must be able to look our constituents in the eye and promise them that we can defend them. This is about not just the level of GDP that we use to invest in a larger force, but whether we are meeting future need.

In SDSR ’10, the MOD declared that we should reduce RAF aircraft numbers substantially while pushing forward with the aircraft carrier class of warship, but by SDSR ’15, those decisions had evidently proved incompatible, given that we need to increase aircraft numbers once again. We need to think holistically about transformation—the time it takes, the training requirements to achieve it and the best value-for-money methodology for doing it. As the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) said, that is the invest-to-save model, and the Treasury needs to help the Department. Short-term decisions for annualised cash-flow rules simply do not work for our defence programme and produce an output that meets our defence needs or our value-for-money rules.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Ind)]

The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech, and I congratulate her on securing this debate. Her point about through-life costs is very powerful. Does she agree that there should be more scrutiny—possibly independent—of the increase to the overall cost of projects caused by changes early in the cycle? I am, of course, thinking of the decision to delay the vote on renewing the deterrent submarines, which has added a significant amount of risk and cost to the project. Many of us said that to the Government at the time, but there was no ability to assess independently what the increased costs would be.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

The hon. Gentleman’s point is well made. I will refer to submarines later. We need to challenge the Department continually on whether Committees such as the Defence Committee and the Public Accounts Committee, on which I sit, have the tools to look pre-emptively at the risks of those sorts of decisions.

There is also a mantra that technology is changing how we do everything and that it will, as if by magic, solve all challenges. It is implied that it will make everything cheaper, and that we can stop doing things the old way because there will be a whizzy, less manpower-hungry solution. Although it is true that world-leading UK defence businesses are creating extraordinary cutting-edge kit, that is not the only tool for solving our defence challenges. From Florence Nightingale and her medical advances to Alan Turing, the urgent need to gain advantage over the enemy has always brought out the brilliance of our citizens’ inventive genes. Defence has always been at the forefront of innovation because defence in action stretches human ingenuity under the insane pressures of war.

[John Spellar]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on her excellent speech. However, for industry to be able to respond, there needs to be an industry. That requires the British armed forces and the Treasury to put orders into British factories and British yards, rather than applying a model of international competition that takes no account of the prosperity agenda and no account of the long-term sustainability of the defence industry and its ability to innovate.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

That question of sovereignty and the prosperity agenda—the third pillar of defence’s remit—is one we need to continue to challenge. As a Brexiteer, I am happy to say that I think we will have more authority to speak in how we choose to do that—

[John Spellar]

That’s not true.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

Well, that is my opinion. Leaving the EU will give us more flexibility to bring the various parties together and will enable UK businesses, which are world leading, to make their case as effectively as possible.

[John Spellar]

The hon. Lady should not allow herself to be misled by Treasury-speak. In both European regulations and the Treasury Green Book, the Ministry of Defence has all the tools it needs to support British industry. The problem is a lack of will. It does not help to blame the EU. The problems are in Whitehall, not in Brussels.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman. The Minister will have heard his perspective.

One of the key issues for defence is its people, who are flexible, selfless, uncomplaining and serve willingly—indeed, alongside the Minister, who puts his life on the line to serve his country. Equipment changes constantly—if it did not, we would still be sending our Navy to sea under sail—but the quality of our people is always critical. We spend more than a third of our defence budget on people. I say that that is an investment, since they are highly trained and we invest in their training throughout their careers, in a way almost no other employer does. However, we classify them as a cost, so departmental behaviour fails to look after them—our human capital—as assets.

We would not fail to repaint a warship—clearly, that would make her less seaworthy or less capable of dealing with the scars of battle—yet we are perfectly content to fail to invest in the personnel who serve, by not looking after their families and by failing to demonstrate what the armed forces covenant should mean: that if someone has served or is serving, this country genuinely thinks they and their family should not suffer disadvantage. It is imperative that we change the financial models the MOD is allowed to use so that our human capital can be classified as an asset. Service chiefs cannot determine how to reward their personnel, because they are not allowed to use their budgets freely to maximise the benefit to their people and their service. For small change—in both senses of the word—the behavioural changes achieved by flexibility would be substantial and immediate.

I believe the reason change is not happening is that the Department and the Treasury fail to understand the nature of military preparedness, and do not seem to question our resilience if we need to put our military under pressure. Although we put kit that is small, plentiful, cheap and speedy to resource on to the soldier, we put highly skilled men and women, who take years to train, into equipment in the Royal Navy and the RAF that takes years to build. A modern warship or fast jet cannot be whipped up in a few months. It is at the mercy of international supply chains, the risks of which, as the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar) mentioned, perhaps are not properly understood.

Importantly, that equipment would take a long time to replace if lost. Although bullets for small arms can be produced at speed if necessary, the missiles sustaining our warships and Air Force cannot be churned through a production line at speed if they are suddenly required. Training a submarine commanding officer or fast jet pilot takes years of investment—it takes time. Too often, it feels like the Department’s financial models simply refuse to acknowledge that and fail to understand the human capital investment that is being made, leaving us with huge risk from poorly assessed decisions.

We must consider the key tenets of successful defence and assess whether we are investing enough to sustain them. The first is deterrence. Deterrence works. Nuclear is the ultimate deterrent, but we must never forget that conventional deterrence has greater utility and that strong power generates respect. Let us consider for a moment our nuclear deterrent in its 50th year in our Royal Navy. Our continuous at-sea deterrent is an extraordinary feat. I always refer to it as our best weapon of peace, because the threat of nuclear war has ensured that we have had no more global wars. Humanity understands genuine existential threat, and the CASD is the embodiment of the UK and USA’s global policing, which reminds any rogue state why using a nuclear weapon would be a bad decision. But do we invest properly in our submarine service?

[John Woodcock]

indicated dissent.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

The hon. Gentleman shakes his head violently. I have talked about the CASD repeatedly in the House since I was elected in 2015. It strikes me as bizarre that the long-term nature of that critical weapon of peace is stuck in a funding framework that stubbornly refuses to allow long-term planning and flexible funding. All credit to the former Secretary of State for Defence, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson), for persuading the Treasury last year to bring forward £600 million of funding—not additional funding but simply to reduce future financial risk—to assist in making efficient decisions to move the Dreadnought programme forward a little more effectively. Deferred cost is always increased cost. I speak as an accountant who has done this many times.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

The money the hon. Lady refers to was already in the contingency budget. Does she agree that the delay under the coalition Government in making a decision to build the Dreadnought class of submarines not only delayed the programme but added cost to it?

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I agree completely. Deferred cost will always be increased cost in such big projects. We need more financial flexibility to get better value for money. Why did we have to battle so hard last year to get the Treasury to move on that £600 million? Why is the Treasury not doing its long-term cash-flow thinking in a rational way? If we are going to keep the CASD—there is overwhelming support for that across the House and the nation—it would make financial sense to allow a multi-year rolling financial commitment so Ministers can make rational decisions.

[John Woodcock]

The hon. Lady is making a superb case. Is there not a case for going so far as to make good on the commitments, which have been made at various points of the successor programme but then conveniently forgotten when there have been changes of personnel, to properly insulate the programme and remove it from the conventional defence budget? That would allow it to be managed as a proper long-term national endeavour capital commitment, rather than being subject to the in-year in and out of defence spending on other programmes.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I completely agree. Both I and the hon. Gentleman have pushed that campaign. I would not dare to suggest that I want another general election in a hurry, but we attempted to put that in the Conservative manifesto at the last election to bring about a change. I will continue to do that as and when the appropriate moment arises.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: the MOD is not like any other Department of State. It has these 20-year programmes, which should be funded in a different way—a more intelligent and stable way. We need to get the Treasury to hear us and realise that the financial models need to be separate so that, exactly as he says, those programmes are treated as national endeavours. In the same way we funded Crossrail through a separate fund so it could roll forward as effectively as possible, despite the often challenging technical issues as we create state-of-the-art kit, we should give those working on these programmes the best financial framework to work within.

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Lady is making a very effective case for multi-year spending and the need to reappraise entirely the Green Book principles. Does she agree that, in this instance, the restrictions on multi-year spending for programmes—particularly the Type 26—put at risk our sovereign capabilities, such as the electric motors factory in Rugby, which manufactures critical components for anti-submarine frigates? That may have been lost had the MOD not responded. We cannot continue to fight a war of attrition; we need a strategic approach.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I completely agree. We must continue to hammer home the importance of sovereign capability and work with industry to build opportunities. I say again, despite the criticism of the right hon. Member for Warley, that there will be opportunities once we have left the European Union to think more coherently than we have before—I think we have chosen not to do that—and for us parliamentarians to challenge the system more aggressively on the question of what sovereign capability should look like in the long term. Getting our shipbuilding strategy right will be critical to ensuring that we have throughput of work and know that, if we get into times of crisis, we have the supply chain we need within our borders.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

Some time ago in her speech, the hon. Lady mentioned the Army covenant. I am sure she agrees it is vital that the covenant is implemented in full to servicemen and women in Northern Ireland. Doing so may cost a little more money, but the benefit to those people suffering from post-traumatic stress and mental health issues far outstretches that.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I absolutely agree. In my role as chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on the armed forces covenant, I have spent some time in Northern Ireland, where we have some real challenges at the grassroots level—not the political level—to try to help those who need day-to-day support to look after themselves. I have met some extraordinary women and extraordinary wives—I take the opportunity to say they are extraordinary—who are looking after very damaged former soldiers, some of whom are the hon. Gentleman’s constituents. They deserve all credit.

The world is not a safer place, and while the nature of warfare may be changing, at the end of the day we need to be able to reach wherever the threat is, bearing in mind that, as my son always reminds me, five sevenths of the globe are covered in water. Ships are therefore a critical tool, and our shipbuilding strategy must reflect the importance we play as a United Kingdom, and a critical part of NATO.

The key point is that presence is influence, and with influence come positive outcomes. We cannot do deterrence if we are not there. We saw that demonstrated in stark images on our TV screens last week when HMS Montrose in the strait of Hormuz assured the safe passage of a BP tanker, protecting it from the insurgent threat of Iranian military attack. If Montrose had not been there, I dread to think what might have happened. Freedom of navigation around the world’s seas and oceans is critical to our economy: 95% of all our imports come by sea, and it is NATO’s navies that keep the sea lanes open for commercial traffic. We would all be very cross indeed and notice quickly if Felixstowe or Dover were shut down by enemy attack. In the same way, just because we cannot see the huge areas of oceans from which our goods and energy are being brought to us, that does not mean we should forget that we need to police those waters, too.

[Jamie Stone]

What the hon. Lady is saying about the Royal Navy is music to my ears. I look forward to participating in the armed forces scheme next year.

The F-35 is a splendid aircraft that I fully support us buying from the Americans, but the bitter fact is that, as we all know, we will never own all the intellectual property of that aircraft. We will never know exactly how it works because of security aspects. Why should the Americans tell us? That is one reason why keeping manufacture here in the British Isles as much as we can is crucial. Only if we make it, or do so in partnership with others, will we know everything there is to know, with that information being secure.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

The hon. Gentleman’s point is well made.

The question today is defence spending. Let me therefore share with the House the assessment the Public Accounts Committee made of the latest equipment plan:

“In May 2018 we reported that the Ministry of Defence…did not have enough money to buy and support the equipment it needs.”

Bear in mind that buying is 50% and supporting is 50%. Our report continued:

“the Department has made little progress, continuing to delay the difficult decisions needed to make the Equipment Plan…affordable, particularly around which programmes to stop, delay or scale back. It now estimates a most likely affordability gap…of £7 billion across its Plan… It also estimates that the gap could widen to £14.8 billion, but even this looks to be unlikely and overly optimistic. The escalating and continuing affordability issues have led to short-term decision making which has only worsened the longer-term affordability risks.”

We continue to watch that on the Public Accounts Committee, but the sense of anxiety just builds as we keep seeing a lack of change in policy frameworks. Instability across the globe is increasing, so if we do not build the equipment we need to achieve our SDSR ’15 goals, let alone what those in SDSR ’20 might look like, we will simply not be able to meet politicians’ requirements.

Politics is about making choices and we need to think carefully about this one. Our military will always offer their political masters choices and solutions as required, but they may have to bend themselves out of shape with collateral damage, gaps and risks elsewhere in order to do so. I do not believe that we can expect them to do so if we, the politicians, do not give them the funds they need to meet at least the SDSR ’15 asks. If we do not show confidence in our military personnel with, in the scheme of things, a very small amount of cash investment in human capital, which is utterly vital to success in warfare, we will continue to lose too many people who have been willing to commit their lives to defending us and our families.

We must not leave our armed forces with the impossible decision of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Short-term decisions on finances can have long-term implications on recruitment, retention and equipment capability and availability. Defence is an insurance policy, so if we get our deterrence right, it stops wars and attacks on us or our allies. That is success, but it costs to achieve that, and it is invisible. No soldiers on our TV screens battling in the desert does not mean that we are not maintaining a global presence to deter those who would wish us and our allies harm. Military personnel are defending us and our way of life invisibly 24 hours a day.

We all have house insurance not because we expect our homes to burn down, but because a roof over our family’s head is so important that we plan to protect ourselves just in case. Our armed forces are our nation’s “just in case.” I worry about how our political leaders sleep soundly at night thinking that we have only a budget insurance policy and hoping that we will never have to claim on it. The budget is large at £40 billion a year, but, without the right decisions and an acceptance that that is not quite enough for what is needed to keep us all safe, the shortfall in funding and financial frameworks leaves us horribly exposed to unknown threats.

We must bring the defence budget up at least to the point where the political ambitions set out in our own SDSRs are matched by the funding for our military experts to deliver those for us. To do that, I estimate we need an increase of some £4 billion a year to the budget and, equally importantly, flexibility to fund long-term projects intelligently for best value and speediest output. It cannot be right that we allow our military personnel to be put at greater risk than they need to be by failing to invest properly in our Army, Navy and Air Force.

I do not mind if the Treasury wants to invest more because it is morally the right thing to do to ensure we can protect our people, our trade and our allies, or simply because it is the right financial method to make better use of taxpayers’ money over the long term to get real value for money. If the financial models set out in the Green Book do not deliver that, we should change them so that they do.

We are in charge of our country’s destiny and we can set the framework to maximise the positive outcomes for this great nation of ours, which is respected around the world for its military prowess and its people. I thank the Minister for his loyal support of our armed forces, and I hope that the Treasury is listening.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I thank all colleagues and the Minister for their continuing commitment to the armed forces and for speaking out so that those who have no voice of their own know that many of us in the House understand the incredibly difficult role they play in our defence. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Bill Grant) said, they run towards danger as most of us are running away from it. It is extraordinary that there are people willing to do that—as he did as a fireman—in defence of our nation, security and children. The issue is not a percentage figure; it is about making sure we can meet the operational requirements, whatever problems arise.

As ever, I thank the Minister for his support and his willingness humbly to agree that it is the Treasury we need to continue to fight. We will find a way, as the hon. Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald) said, to bring the Treasury to us to listen to the arguments. I think we all agree that funding for defence is not like funding for any public service Department and we must find new, more effective ways to spend taxpayers’ money.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered defence spending.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Monday 8th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

When those who have served in uniform depart for civilian street, it is very important that they are aware of the benefits for which they may or may not be eligible. Our transition programme now includes making sure that we improve the understanding of what armed forces personnel veterans can receive. I am pleased to say that the Secretary of State is working with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to make very clear that universal credit is available for those who are eligible.

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

Will the Secretary of State meet me to discuss further how we can create the position of an armed forces covenant ombudsman, who would be an advocate for those who, like the constituent of the hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham), cannot get the resources they need from our public services and whose MPs are also unable to make progress?

[Mr Ellwood]

I am aware that my hon. Friend has done a huge amount of work on this important matter, not least by lobbying me many times. She will be aware that the armed forces covenant is growing—we now have almost 4,000 signatories—but it is important that if somebody signs the covenant it meets their expectations. If it fails or falls foul of that, we need a system to recognise that. She raises a very interesting idea. I have spoken to the Secretary of State about it and we would be delighted to meet her to discuss it further.

Combat Air Strategy

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2019 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to speak in this important debate after my great friend the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth), and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts) on securing it. It could be described as a continuity debate, because it gives us the chance to review progress on the combat air strategy, for which the hon. Lady and my hon. Friend both pushed the Ministry of Defence so successfully two years ago.

The strategy document published last year sets out a clear industry relationship proposition. It even committed funding for development—always an exciting thing to see in the military space—and committed to trying to keep sovereign capability in the UK as far as possible. This is clearly important and part of the MOD’s commitment to the UK prosperity agenda. The strategic defence and security review clearly sets out clearly that we have three key objectives: to protect, to project and to promote. Our armed forces personnel do all three in all that we ask of them, and the reach of UK military plc through the soft power of global industry leadership from UK defence businesses is without question.

The combat air strategy’s focus on the issue of industry sustainability, through the commitment to British defence companies and the opportunities for export and economic outputs from technological developments, is to be welcomed. Following on from the comments by my hon. Friend the Member for Witney, I will share most proudly the story of the production of a very small but critical part of the Typhoon wing, which is made in a small business in Alnwick. It has always made fishing rods, but it has a particular turning machine that makes this very fine and critical piece of the Typhoon wing. Across the UK we are all connected, in ways that may be unexpected for many colleagues, to the extraordinary defence industry that we are so proud of.

The combat air strategy is an important part of the sustainability discussion, and the MOD has begun to adopt a more focused and joined-up approach. We saw that first with the shipbuilding strategy, which was published by Sir John Parker at the end of 2016. As one of the members of the all-party parliamentary group on shipbuilding and ship repair—I am the only woman and the only Conservative in that group, of which I am proud to be a part—I am pleased that the MOD has welcomed our review of that strategy. Much of our focus was on the question of sustainability for industry, since new classes of ship only come along every 30 years, but they have such high capabilities that we now only build a few of them. For far too long we have failed to consider export markets for those models or similar ones to ensure that the yards remain open, expert shipbuilding skills are maintained and new generations of shipbuilders are brought on.

The current feast-or-famine nature of military demand threatens our ability to maintain the sovereign capability to produce warships, and the national shipbuilding strategy significantly reduces the scope of ships that the UK is qualified to build. That could threaten the long-term viability of those fragile shipyards. The very shape of today’s UK shipbuilding industry is the result of rationalisation, following a period of policies that urged shipbuilders to compete with each other, with the result that some yards went bust.

Furthermore, the Government’s inability to provide certainty for industry through a secure timeline of contracts endangers the UK’s position as a world leader in shipbuilding. When it comes to future orders, driving the industrial drumbeat would enable private sector shipbuilders and the wider supply chain—always a critical part of the industry—to invest in infrastructure, facilities and emerging naval technologies, and renew the UK’s competitive advantage.

The secondary economic impact and tax returns to the Exchequer would provide further benefit to the UK as a whole. I reiterate what my hon. Friend the Member for Witney said earlier: to get the best value and the most effective outcomes, the Treasury models absolutely need to adapt and change to ensure that there is understanding across the whole of Government. I know that the Minister is at one with the Secretary of State, who is trying to pitch that battle in a new way.

The argument goes so much further, because one could confront the combat air industry with the same challenges. A new aircraft carrier costs £3 billion—there are two of them—but each F-35 that will travel in her costs around £100 million; the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North regularly picks fights with me about this, but the cost is around £100 million. Those jets are only such good value because we buy them from the USA, from a programme that produces thousands of them, in order to get some benefit in relation to the enormous development cost of the F-35.

The combat air strategy already asserts that sovereign capability for a sixth-generation combat aircraft just is not going to be realistic as a UK-only proposition, and that we will end up working in partnership with our allies to develop and build such a plane. I reiterate my hon. Friend’s comment about wanting to make sure that we are a lead partner in that development. Although we see a level of work sharing on the F-35, there are risks to creating a big gap in our capability and production by buying in from the USA. In so doing, are we all working to the same basic principles and seeking similar freedom of action? That is the really challenging part of the military question. Will we all be working together in NATO against a common enemy, or should we be considering that the question of being able to fight alone must never be ignored? The eye-watering costs of such technologically extraordinary planes means that we need to consider honestly the sort of warfare we could conduct if needed.

In the maritime space, the Royal Navy is looking once again at the question of quantity, as well as technological quality and advantage. For some challenges, high-end war-fighting kit is not the necessary weapon. Of course, the simpler and cheaper warship also has value as an export commodity for smaller countries whose defence budgets will never reach those of the top 10 spending nations.

What is the answer to that question in the combat air space? Eurofighter Typhoons, which came into operational service in 2003, are now expected, with a bit of a stretch, to stay in service until 2040. The F-35s are coming on stream as the Tornado is retired, and I imagine that we can expect them to have a life span of at least 30 years. However, with this strategy we are simply considering a sixth-generation replacement for Typhoon in 20 years’ time. Typhoon’s gestation to service has taken longer than that, thanks to the vagaries of multinational partnership.

If historical timelines are anything to go by, we are certainly cutting it fine, and the nature of international co-operation also risks slowing progress. However, my central concern is that technology and the nature of warfare are changing so fast; and the nature of airspace, its congestion, and the rapidly improving reach and resilience of unmanned drones make me wonder whether a manned sixth-generation fighter jet is where we should invest all our thinking and cash.

If the Navy cover on and below the sea, and the Army cover all that is land, the Royal Air Force must cover air and space. There is an excellent nascent and growing team of people in the space division within the RAF, but space does not seem to feature in the strategic thinking at all. Perhaps the Minister will reassure me that a space strategy will come to us soon, but even if he does so, it would somewhat miss the point. For me, “combat air” means combat activities above ground and sea. That will, without doubt, be more than 33,000 feet up in the decades ahead.

My hon. Friend the Member for Witney and the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North first called for a defence aerospace strategy, and that is what we need. The threats to UK plc, to our economy and to the direct safety of our citizens are as likely to come from those Russian “Bears” trundling over the horizon and into Scottish airspace—our quick reaction alert pilots at RAF Lossiemouth are ready to go and politely escort them away—as from attacks on our satellite systems or long-range targeted disruption using the space above us, in ways that mean that a manned fighter jet is simply not the answer.

If the roles of air power are to incorporate intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance—or ISR, which is so much easier to say—and control of the air and up into space with cyber-technologies that we have not yet dreamed up, we must consider how we invest UK taxpayers’ cash into an industrial base that can be flexible, creative and adaptable at pace, and that can be sustainable for our sovereign capability needs.

Back in 1940, my great-grandfather—a mathematician, a vicar and a schoolmaster—was asked to expand his wartime role as an RAF padre to set up and run a training school to provide maths lessons for the young men who needed to understand and be able to use trigonometry in order to navigate a Spitfire. They were sent to the school before reporting to their squadrons. This training was not a particularly high-tech activity, but it was vital to enable those young airmen to fly their planes safely and use the tools at their disposal effectively against the enemy. I set the Department the challenge of telling us how it proposes to empower the RAF to plan for, maintain and build up skillsets—as yet, they are unknown—in the men and women who will be flying or controlling future combat air technology.

The strategy document has nothing at all on training, maintenance and development of present-day pilot skills. In the House in recent weeks, we have discussed with Ministers the lack of trainers for our pilots, who have to use private training facilities and displace private training programmes, thereby stunting wider civilian flying training business models.

Surely the Minister agrees that if we are to prepare for the unexpected—the as yet unthought-of—we must ensure that we are planning flexible training programmes for this generation of our serving RAF personnel and for the generations to come. They may well not be pilots, as we consider that word now—the strutting pilot walking confidently to his or her cockpit to take to the skies to battle an enemy, or to use firepower to provide air cover for ground or maritime forces—because that role may be in its last throes. Unmanned equipment and war-fighting far from battle zones may become the norm.

My concern with all these strategies—do not get me wrong; they are a great step forward—is that they do not address the changing nature of war and persistent conflict, or the question of what tools, weapons and skills we need to plan for in order to maintain our operational advantage over enemies unknown and as yet unidentifiable. We are really talking about a weapons system and how we plan to get to its birth, rather than wider strategic questions.

The textbook consideration of strategy challenges us to consider the ends, ways and means of our plans. It seems that in our strategic documents, we are discussing the means of fulfilling a strategic intent, with some discussion about the ways in which we will do so. However, we are fundamentally ignoring part of that equation—I do not doubt that it is the most difficult—in our discussions. Surely, a strategic document from the Ministry of Defence, which is one of the world’s leading defence organisations and has the best service personnel in the world working for it, ought to be setting out in a broad-brush manner, at least, what ends we should be considering. That is not just a new, faster, whizzier, cleverer and more tech-filled piece of kit—designed in the UK, I hope, and made or at least built in part here—but the big questions of what our intent and reach will be.

I ask the Minister to come back to the House with the next phase of the combat air strategy—perhaps, as he keeps being reminded, with its new title. That strategy should help parliamentarians to gain confidence that there is clear thinking and planning about more than just the next generation of a fighter jet to replace Typhoon, since that may not be the sort of warfare we need in 20 years’ time, and that the Department is not acting in a piecemeal way on technology or its commitment to the UK defence industry, but is thinking in the coherent, long-term way that, for too many decades, we have not had. It should build into the strategic statements for land, sea and air—they are most welcome—a clearer indication that the Department is working to draw together and support our strategic thinking. We look forward to the full aerospace strategy in due course.

Armed Forces Day

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Wednesday 26th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Smeeth]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention and, more importantly, I thank his father for his service.

Not only have we had the opportunity to celebrate our D-day veterans, but next year we as a country will be able to enjoy VE-day. This gives the whole country the opportunity to thank everybody who served then, who serves and who will serve, as well as their families and everybody involved. It annoys many of us that we focus on our veterans’ community only on Remembrance weekend and that we are able to ignore them for the rest of the year. We should not. They need our support day in, day out, because let us be honest: they earned it. Many of us in this Chamber believe that we act in public service every day, but the hours that we are away from our families and that we commit to our constituents are nothing compared with what we ask our armed services to do for us in every corner of the planet, without hesitation. If they dare to say, “No,” they are no longer in the armed forces. We thank them and their families, which is why I am adamant that this House should become a covenant employer, as should every Department. They should not just be covered by the Government saying, “But the Government signed up to the covenant.” Every employer in this country should turn that into a reality.

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

One of the challenges we have with the covenant and Government Departments is to see in a practical way the well meant and written covenant pledges. An issue being raised with me relates to the Treasury, and the MOD has had to help those serving in Scottish parts with changes to taxation through the Scottish legal system to make sure that they are not disadvantaged by location. Another issue that has appeared is stamp duty tax. For a short time, serving personnel have the ownership of two homes and the Treasury models are not working to support them. Again, that challenge is for the family as much as for the serving personnel. Does the hon. Lady agree that the Treasury perhaps needs to focus a little more closely on its covenant commitment?

[Ruth Smeeth]

I could not agree with the hon. Lady more, as I do on most, if not all, issues. One thing that we miss with those who are currently serving is the burden that is placed on their families, who have to deal with not only the tax burden and costs associated with moving up and down the country but whether they have the right qualifications—if a teacher is suddenly deployed to Lossiemouth, for example, they might not be able to teach. If a member of our serving personnel gets a traffic ticket, their family has to sort it out if they have been deployed. The responsibility for all the small, day-to-day things of living fall on the families who are left behind, male or female, which is why we need to make the covenant real.

My concern about the covenant is that so many people say that they support it but do not know what it means. My wonderful city became a signatory to the covenant five years ago, but none of the people who signed it still holds the post that they held then. Unfortunately, my city has decided that its version of supporting the covenant is resending an RBL email once a quarter. That is not delivering the covenant—yet there are many places that do even worse. We have to make the covenant real. We need an ombudsman—I know that the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan) supports that—and we need to ensure that the covenant means something to everybody.

Among those who do not understand what the covenant is are those who would be its beneficiaries. They do not know how or when to access help, and do not come to us and ask for it. One of the issues in this House is that too many of our teams do not know how much support is out there for serving personnel. That is why the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed and I organised an event in this place two weeks ago, so that our staff could meet people from veterans charities to learn how to get support for our constituents who are veterans when they need it. There are two questions that all of us should ask our constituents when they come to us for help: “Have you ever served in the armed forces?” and “Are you a member of a trade union or trade body?”. We can help them in a way that no one else can if we know those two pieces of information. We have to make sure that they can get the right support, from places as diverse as the charity SSAFA, Veterans UK and even the right part of the NHS. Obviously, in all our constituencies, there are many small veterans charities that can also assist.

I appreciate that many other people wish to speak, but I want to point out that this week is the centenary of the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund, a wonderful charity that has supported hundreds of thousands of people across the country over the last century. It has chosen to launch a wonderful campaign this week to mark its centenary. It is asking the wider community to identify RAF veterans, because it believes that more than 100,000 RAF veterans are not getting the support that they need, warrant or could do with. It is asking all of us to put those veterans back on the radar, which is appropriate for the RAF. I have today tabled an early-day motion on the subject; I hope that everybody in the Chamber will sign it.

There is nothing more important than ensuring that the people who serve, and served, our country get support from everyone in this place. I thank everybody for their support today.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stuart Andrew]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s kind comments. It was a pleasure to meet a number of businesses in his constituency. We have been engaging a lot with the small and medium-sized enterprise supply chain. In fact, on 9 May, I held a roundtable with small businesses in north Wales, and they felt very optimistic about the future. Through our equipment plan, we are actively engaging with the supply chain to ensure that the opportunities in each of our projects will maximise the input that they can have.

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

I welcome the Secretary of State to her place. It is a pleasure to see such an amazing woman on the Front Bench, standing up for defence.

Last Thursday, myself and colleagues from across the House on the all-party parliamentary group on shipbuilding and ship repair launched our report on the national shipbuilding strategy. We have real concerns that competition, particularly for naval shipbuilding, is based on a model that does not include the economic benefits to the UK being recycled back in when we spend UK taxpayers’ money. Can the Minister give me an assurance that the Ministry is looking at that and will work with the Treasury to change our model, so that we can get the best value and ensure that our shipbuilding pipeline lasts in the UK?

[Stuart Andrew]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. She will be aware that Sir John Parker is currently doing a review of his initial report. International competition is also about encouraging UK industry and UK shipyards to be as competitive as possible, so that they can not only maximise the opportunities that UK defence offers, but take advantage of competition around the globe, too.

Continuous At-Sea Deterrent

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

I am now going to come on to the economic case. It ought to be the case, for sure—and on this I am sure we do agree with others—that the Government carry out a threat analysis and, subsequent to that, get what they need to meet that threat and to keep people safe. But we do not believe, quite simply, that Trident complements that effort. The total cost of Trident, from design to through-life support, ran into many, many billions of pounds—estimated by some to be as high as £200 billion. We know for sure that the current renewal project is already woefully out of control. Indeed, over £1 billion of the £10 billion contingency that was set aside by the Ministry of Defence has already been tapped into, and of the extra £1 billion announced by the Chancellor, £400 million is exclusively for the nuclear renewal project. The most recent House of Commons Library figures tell us that the £2.2 billion per year spent on maintaining the deterrent is roughly equivalent to £42 million each week. That is about the same as we spend on income support, statutory maternity pay, carer’s allowance or winter fuel payments.

All that represents a drain on conventional defence, which has always been the priority of the SNP. This is at a time when the Department has enormous funding gaps in its equipment plan, estimated by the National Audit Office to be well over £10 billion, and big gaps in the funding of the defence estate, which is draining money as though it were going out of fashion. It is at a time when the Ministry of Defence continues with the bizarre fetish of privatising and outsourcing things that do not need to be privatised or outsourced: the defence fire and rescue service, the war pension scheme, the armed forces compensation scheme and even the medals office. Those things must remain in the hands of the MOD in their entirety. In the armed forces, it is not uncommon for serving members to have to buy substitute kit because the money is not there to get it through the Department’s budget.

Far from enhancing our national security and providing the necessary capability to keep us safe, Trident is a drain on conventional defence, particularly as the Government keep it as part of the overall defence budget, to the point that it diminishes our conventional defence and security posture, which is in need of proper investment and oversight.

To make one last point, it can be concluded that this country is now an irresponsible nuclear power. The timing of this debate could not be more breathtaking if the Government had tried. We sit here today to mark 50 years as a maritime nuclear power, but just last week the National Audit Office told us that hundreds of millions of pounds are being wasted by the Government on storing obsolete nuclear submarines and their utter failure to decommission them properly and responsibly. The independent NAO—this is not me—has said that it puts the UK’s reputation as a responsible nuclear power at risk.

The MOD has not decommissioned a single submarine successfully since 1980, twice as many are currently in storage as are in service, nine still contain radioactive fuel, seven have been in storage for longer than they were in service and no submarines have been defuelled in the last 15 years. It is a total failure, and the liability costs estimated by the Secretary of State’s own Department run to £7.5 billion. We can be sure, as night follows day, that that figure will get higher. The auditors said that the MOD did not have a fully developed plan to dispose of operational Vanguard and Astute submarines or its future Dreadnought-class vessels, which have different nuclear reactors.

Here the House sits with the iron-clad consensus that we must renew a nuclear submarine programme that the Government do not even have plans to decommission in the future, even though the National Audit Office has just outlined what a costly farce that has become. This cannot just be shrugged off as though it is business as usual. The public expect us to get to the bottom of it. I ask the Secretary of State—perhaps the Minister will say when he sums up—whether he will set up a public inquiry into the farce of nuclear submarine decommissioning.

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

The hon. Gentleman will know that his colleague the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Douglas Chapman), the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) and I are working with the Department to make progress on this matter. Will he and the SNP support us because, despite their position, we need to find the line of credit for nuclear decommissioning, which is an enormous one across the board? Rather than bashing the Government on a question that is long and historic, will they help us to move forward and get the Treasury to support that decommissioning line?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I am sure the hon. Lady wants to catch my eye to speak. I do not want her to use up her speech just yet. I am bothered that, with 19 speakers, there will now be less than 10 minutes each.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is a great honour to speak in this debate and to have the opportunity to share with the House and all those who follow our proceedings a little of the unique and extraordinary commitment and sacrifice of those who serve in our Royal Navy’s submarine service, delivering our continuous at-sea deterrent—our silent service.

In the late 1950s, it became clear to the US and UK Governments that in order to ensure that those infamous words of Sir Winston Churchill,

“Indestructible retaliation…is the secret”,

could be credible, nuclear deterrence needed to go out to sea, where, as Admiral Arleigh Burke, the then chief of naval operations of the US navy, said

“the real estate is free and where they are far away from me.”

The creation of Polaris meant a deterrent system that could be effective because it was capable, reliable, available and invulnerable, and, most importantly, because there was the political will to use it in extremis. I always describe our nuclear deterrent as the most effective weapon of peace ever created, because by its existence and invulnerability it fulfils the modern function of military force to prevent war. Once the power and destructive force of nuclear weapons had been created, and demonstrated, those charged with trying to maintain global order and peace after two world wars had to find a way to harness the awesome and terrifying power of these weapons to reduce future risks to populations around the world.

We have been running CASD for 50 years, and it happens, at the sharp end, because the submariners who man our strategic deterrent agree to go to sea, below the waves, for 100 days or more at a time, in the harshest of watery environments in the depths of our seas and oceans, in a long metal tube reminiscent of a caravan with no windows. It is cold and pitch black, the sea is unforgiving and corrosive, and there are inordinate pressures on the submarine hull.

I ask Members to consider for a moment that, when the sailor closes the hatches as he enters his vessel, he will not be physically able to open them again until they resurface. The pressure of the water at depth means that once he is in, there is no getting out again until he resurfaces. That happens for months at a time.

What submariners at sea most fear, however, is not the external pressure on their metal tube, the lack of fresh food or milk, the lack of internet or the inability to get Amazon to deliver. What any submariner fears most is fire. The whole submarine will fill instantly with smoke—noxious smoke, creating zero visibility, so they cannot see their hand in front of their face; choking, acrid smoke from burning oil or plastic. The relationship and interdependency between every member of a submarine crew is like that of no other team on earth—or indeed on sea.

They have only themselves to rely on. They eat four meals a day together—frozen, dried or tinned food after using up all the fresh milk, fruit and vegetables over the first few days. They work six hours on, six hours off—every day—and getting into a warm bed for four hours’ sleep is normal, since the previous occupant will have just got out to go back on duty. It is not your average work routine.

We take completely for granted our ability to keep in touch with family and friends, more so than ever nowadays, through text, WhatsApp, email, a quick phone call, popping next door for a coffee with neighbours or nipping to the shops for that thing we ran out of. None of that is possible for those serving in our Royal Navy’s submarine service. They and their family can send and receive one message a week—short, read by the commanding officer and potentially censored. They will not be given the message if someone is ill, or has died, until they get back from the three-month patrol. Lovers develop codes to share their affection, away from prying eyes, with ploys that Alan Turing might have been proud of. Fundamentally, however, submariners on duty on HMS Vengeance, Vanguard, Vigilant or Victorious are out of contact with the rest of the world they are protecting.

For the past 50 years, the greatest unsung heroes of CASD have been and remain, in my humble opinion, the families of those who serve. Being the wife or child of a submariner is a job that most of us will never fully understand or appreciate. These sons and daughters, wives and lovers, parent and grandparents have to be stoic and as committed to their submariner’s service as the sailor himself or, since 2011, herself.

Imagine celebrating children’s birthdays or Christmas without dad and having to remember to plan to celebrate them at another time. For children that represents a displacement of normal routines, which makes no sense to their friends at school, and for partners there are the logistics of thinking about how to include their sailor in the special events of life that happen without them when they are deployed, such as the first day at school, the first tooth, the birth of a baby, parents’ evenings, broken bones from sports matches not cheered on, school plays missed, family events, weddings, funerals, and a child’s first steps and first words.

The sailor misses them, but the partner not only has to experience them without being able to share the joy, the anxiety, the sadness and the grief, but has to remember that when their husband or wife, son or daughter, returns from their tour that these events have happened and need to be shared and re-experienced. The spouse also has to deal with life’s challenges, which cannot be shared because of the silence in communications—things such as broken washing machines, insurance problems, money worries and decisions, problems with the in-laws and family discipline decisions. It is a strange and unique continuous stress, because it is single parenthood some of the time and then not. The spouse has to keep their children’s world stable in a profoundly unstable environment; be able to remain strong alone, going to sleep every night not knowing where their sailor is or being able to tell them that they love them.

For the sailor who has been isolated from all these ordinary normal day-to-day activities, it is a real challenge to return to normal life after 100 days underwater in a pressured tube, living with a nuclear reactor and fellow sailors in very close proximity. Normal life is noisy, full of confusion and complexity, and full of events, news, gossip and change of which they have no knowledge. It falls to their spouse or parent to try to help them adjust back to shore life just for a while before they deploy again.

Submariners man our bombers—the SSBN, or sub-surface ballistic nuclear vessel, as NATO describes it—tour after tour, with some serving below the waves for 20 years. That is extraordinary commitment not only by those who serve, but by their families who silently wait for their return and keep their world going while they are away.

The continuity of delivering our strategic deterrent is critical to doing all we can as key NATO allies to maintain global peace. In the past 50 years, whether the world has been more or less stable, the white ensign has commanded respect and admiration around the globe. The challenge of delivering the continuous strategic deterrent—one achieved by the Royal Navy since HMS Resolution began this continuous deployment rotation— continues to elude many nations’ navies. It requires a commitment from our manpower, from industry’s ability to provide engineering resilience, a political strength in the national psyche and the sheer will to meet all those challenges—every second, of every minute, of every hour, of every day, of every week, of every month, of every year since April 1969, which is when I was born.

For the whole of my life there have been submariners willing to serve under the sea, and families willing patiently to wait for their return, to deliver the continuous at-sea deterrent on our behalf. I pay tribute to every single one of them and thank them for their service to our nation’s security over the past 50 years, as well as to all those who are yet to join the extraordinary ranks of our exceptional, world-class, silent service.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for the personal interest that he takes in this issue. He is absolutely right: people need signposts so that they know where to go. We are working far more closely with NHS England and the devolved Administrations to understand where the complex treatment services are, and to ensure that when people make the transition, they are handed across to the civilian agency that will look after them.

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

It is wonderful for me, as the founder of the all-party parliamentary group on the armed forces covenant, to see an Order Paper that is full of those three words, which did not exist a few years ago. This is a conversation that is critical to the House. Will the Minister meet me to move forward the discussion about the creation of an armed forces covenant ombudsman, so that when the issues raised by colleagues get stuck and we cannot find a solution, we have a real authority to fix things?

[Mr Ellwood]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work that she has done on this issue as chair of the APPG. I should be more than delighted to meet her. It is important that we carry out the necessary scrutiny and are seen to be doing so, and that we do what is best for our veterans.

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.

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[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.

Defence

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Monday 18th February 2019 Commons Chamber

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

This statutory instrument is vital and not Brexit-related. It is an annual requirement that Parliament restate its approval for the raising of our standing Army, Navy and Air Force in the modern world. Without it, we could not defend our citizens from enemies or send our armed forces to assist our allies around the globe.

We have many dedicated and highly skilled armed forces personnel. Our Royal Marines are working with allies to train in the toughest conditions on the planet hundreds of miles north of the Arctic circle, as our Secretary of State for Defence discovered for himself this weekend—we are all grateful that he did not die plunging into the frozen ice. As the House knows, I have visited twice to learn about the survival training that our young commandos undergo in order to take on some of the most challenging military tests. We are also training US marines up there and working closely with Dutch forces to build this uniquely challenging skillset. Furthermore, with the approval of this statutory instrument, we hope this year to see the development of the littoral strike group to allow the Royal Marines to go back to sea—back to their roots.

As the defence lead on the Public Accounts Committee, I hope to see the MOD making efficient and value-for-money purchasing decisions for the ships they will be using. Getting the right kit—not necessarily gold-plated—is so important if we are to offer our exceptional Royal Marines the skills that will enable them to cross the globe to where they are needed, whether for military or humanitarian intervention.

As part of our world-class and worldwide-respected Royal Navy, our Royal Marines will also be an element of the carrier strike group which we hope will develop in the coming year. The new carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, are world-leading national assets. I look forward to hearing Ministers set out more fully the Government’s strategy for our aircraft carriers. For all the young sailors who are already serving on HMS Queen Elizabeth, it is an exciting and challenging posting, and many will look forward to serving on her in the years ahead. The last commanding officer of HMS Prince of Wales has probably not been born yet, so we will need many more before that last posting is required.

Our Royal Navy reaches across the globe to deter enemies, above and below the oceans, and to keep our sea routes safe for civilian trading traffic. Below the surface, quietly, members of our submarine service are out and about 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. For 50 years this April they have provided a continuous at-sea deterrent to protect our nation, support our allies and ensure that enemies are deterred from taking us on. That is a terribly important part of military procedure, because the nuclear threat is so great. It is, in my view, the greatest weapon of peace that man has ever invented, because it deters—forever, we hope—those who would start world wars.

Those submariners are often forgotten, because they are not seen and we do not generally talk about them, although I do occasionally. We forget, so often, the important and continuous work that they do. While they are under the oceans and the Navy is on the oceans, our own islands are kept safe 24/7, thanks in great part to the quiet but critical work that is done at RAF Boulmer in my constituency. The air defence that is provided by the aerospace surveillance and control system force commander—I had to read that out, because I would never get it right otherwise—is crucial work. It takes place, unseen, in a bunker deep below ground, with remote radar heads across our far northern borders watching the skies.

From RAF Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides—which I was privileged to visit a couple of years ago—to RAF Brizlee Wood, which is in my constituency, to RAF Buchan and the new RAF Saxa Vord on Unst, the most northern of the Shetland Islands, RAF personnel who live in my constituency watch and manage all the data provided by the radar heads, watching for enemy aircraft and so much else. I had the privilege of visiting the bunker recently, and was taught how to identify space junk, the international space station—which comes round twice a day—and much else besides. Extraordinary technicians have learnt to identify those who enter our airspace illegally, and, if necessary, are able to call RAF pilots to challenge them. All that happens quietly underground at RAF Boulmer.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Space junk intrigues me. Does the hon. Lady think that a piece of nut—that big—can be identified from her constituency?

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I was not given that much training, but I think it is safe to say that one of the most extraordinary things that was explained to me is that there is now so much space junk—objects that have broken up over the years—that it is incredibly difficult to find a clear route in order to launch any new satellite into space. The ability of our RAF personnel to understand what is there, and to recognise it as it comes round on the radar screens again and again, means that they are vital components, understanding and supporting the civilians who want to work in space and the military who continue to view it as one of the new potential areas of combat. I am enormously proud to represent that team of exceptional RAF personnel, and also to represent their families.

I set up the all-party parliamentary group on the armed forces covenant when I was first elected, because I was shocked by some of the poor housing in which RAF families have to live. I was confused by the fact that the Government had not done more to act on the multiplicity of evidence that clearly exists to show that family comfort is critical to our retention of the highly trained personnel, in whom we have invested so heavily, to serve their country for as long as they want to do so. When the families are unhappy and feel that they cannot cope with the challenges that military life brings, we lose some of our most wonderful personnel. Moreover, they have cost us a fortune: we have invested millions of pounds in some of our most sophisticated and highly trained RAF pilots, for instance. To lose them because family housing is too much of a problem is a bad investment decision, quite apart from the human cost.

In the knowledge that the Minister is passionate about getting this right, let me ask again whether the Government will consider changing their financial models so that we can make joined-up decisions on, for instance, housing investment and how the Defence Infrastructure Organisation spends its money. We do not want to find that commanding officers cannot secure the decisions that they need in order to keep the personnel they want. We should be able to make joined-up decisions on access to schools, so that the Department for Education understands that if a family is moving outside the normal cycle there must be a framework to ensure that the children get into the right schools, and on access to healthcare when families are suddenly posted elsewhere and are no longer able to be on the same waiting list. The theory is there, but the practice does not always work. Our military families, who support the extraordinary people who have chosen a career which, as part of their contract, means that they agree to put their lives on the line for us all, can know that Parliament values them if it demonstrates that through policies that work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Foster]

I think it safe to say that one thing that has been consistent since the armed forces were formed is that there have always been gripes and comments put up by those who serve, and rightly so, but we would expect them to be dealt with by chains of command and in appropriate areas. Having a separate representative body of the military would not be the best way forward, and I do not see that as the solution.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

Does my hon. Friend agree that military families sometimes do not feel that they can, as civilians, contact their own MPs to raise concerns—not about military matters their partners might be involved in, but about matters for the family unit? There is often a real lack of confidence that families can talk to Members of Parliament, and we should be doing much more to help them in that regard.

[Kevin Foster]

No one should feel afraid to contact their Member of Parliament in any scenario. At the end of the day, we are here to act as our constituents’ advocates and champions, and ultimately, if necessary, to do so confidentially. I am always clear that my surgeries are open.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Cleverly]

I have, and I do not like it.

Also inherent in this SI are provisions for enlistment, pay and the redress of complaints, and all those things at heart are J1 considerations, so I intend to restrict my short speech to the people carrying out the J1 function—the men and women who serve in our armed forces—and our responsibility and, as the Minister mentioned during his opening speech, our offer to them.

The armed forces currently face a challenge with regard to recruitment and retention. Ironically, it is a challenge that has been brought about through good news. The British economy currently has record low levels of unemployment, including record low levels of youth unemployment. It is the sad truth that it is a lot easier to recruit into the armed forces when there are few jobs available in the civilian world. Therefore, because actually unemployment is at a record low, the talented young men and women that we seek to recruit into our armed forces have other credible options.

The shadow Minister mentioned that the delay in the processing of recruitment applications through Capita has had a detrimental effect on our ability to recruit the brightest and best young people whom we need and want in our armed forces. People who are credible—people who have other employment options—are exactly the people we want to recruit and exactly the people who will be snapped up by civilian employers, who are currently competing with our armed forces to recruit them. We have a duty to improve and speed up the recruitment process—not just a duty, but a self-interest.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we must ensure that we change part of the medical assessment program for recruitment? Those who are diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder—often Asperger’s—should not automatically be disbarred from applying. We are looking to select young men and women who have that sort of skillset—that particular unique kind of mind—and we need to find a way to ensure that the system is changed so that those people make it through the system.

[James Cleverly]

My hon. Friend makes an important point—one that I will touch upon briefly later in my speech—about the changing nature of conflict and the skills mix that we require from young people coming into the armed forces. We need to ensure that we are able to be a meaningful and relevant set of armed forces in the here and now, rather than think about the conflicts that we have had in the past.