Oral Answers to Questions

Ben Wallace Excerpts

Monday 5th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to support employment in the defence industry throughout the UK.

[The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Ben Wallace)]

May I congratulate the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) on taking her place and state my personal admiration for both her bravery and her sense of duty in putting herself forward to stand for that seat after the tragic loss of her sister?

MOD expenditure with UK industry and commerce already directly and indirectly supports more than 200,000 jobs across the United Kingdom. The investment of £88 billion in the equipment plan over the next four years, along with the changes we are making as part of the defence and security industrial strategy, will contribute to further economic growth and prosperity, including jobs across the United Kingdom.

[Mark Menzies [V]]

I was proud to welcome the Minister for exports, my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), to BAE Systems in my constituency the week before last to visit the factory of the future. That followed hot on the footsteps of the Prime Minister’s visit back in March, so will my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State outline what is being done to support our world-class defence manufacturing export success, and will he commit to the continuation of the Typhoon export programme?

[Mr Wallace]

The defence and security industrial strategy published in March set out how the Government will support defence and security exports. The UK Government and BAE are leading on the current opportunity in Finland and will continue to support industry in this campaign and future opportunities where they are present. Typhoon continues to benefit from ongoing investment, including Leonardo’s European Common Radar System Mark 2 radar and MBDA’s Meteor and SPEAR—Selective Precision Effects at Range—weapons. This increased capability delivered by the core programme will strengthen export prospects.

[Karl MᶜCartney [V]]

Lincolnshire has the privilege of being the historic home of many MOD bases and personnel. I am proud to have RAF Waddington in my constituency of Lincoln; as my right hon. Friend is aware, it houses and employs thousands of my constituents. Will he assure me not only that RAF Waddington will play an active role in our nation’s defence for many decades to come, but that he recognises that the recently announced changes at RAF Waddington are a concern for many Northrop Grumman personnel? What steps are being taken to preserve those with critical skills, both locally and nationally? Will he work with potential overseas buyers of RAF aircraft to secure technically skilled jobs and provide extensive employment for my constituents?

[Mr Wallace]

May I express my gratitude to the Northrop Grumman team who have worked on the E-3D Sentry over the years? Retiring old aircraft will inevitably impact the people who work on them. However, RAF Waddington, which I recently visited, remains firmly in our plans: as it becomes a national and international centre of excellence for remotely piloted air systems and for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, it will be a source of skilled employment for my hon. Friend’s constituents. We are investing in 16 Protector remotely piloted air systems. RAF Waddington will be the future home of the Red Arrows as well.

[Scott Benton]

I was delighted to see that last week His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge cut the steel for HMS Belfast, the third ship in the Royal Navy’s fleet of next-generation Type 26 anti-submarine frigates. All eight Type 26 frigates are being built by BAE Systems on the Clyde. Can the Secretary of State outline how many jobs that programme will support?

[Mr Wallace]

The Type 26 frigate programme consists of a total of eight ships, as my hon. Friend says, with work sustaining some 1,700 jobs at BAE Systems in Scotland alone and 4,000 jobs across the wider UK maritime supply chain until 2035.

[Jacob Young]

A crucial part of our defence system is MOD procurement, with military equipment provided by companies such as Typhoon International, which makes dry suits and lifejackets for military divers, and First Choice Labels in Kirkleatham, which kindly provided social distancing floor stickers to businesses during the pandemic. May I invite the Secretary of State to Teesside to visit these great local British businesses and see for himself the high-quality military equipment and supplies that we produce in Redcar and Cleveland?

[Mr Wallace]

I would be delighted to come over to Redcar to visit my hon. Friend’s constituency. He highlights the real importance of the supply chain in any defence product. It is not always the big primes, although they often get the attention; it is all the little and medium-sized companies that string along behind that often supply the real detail behind the bids.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

I thank the Defence Secretary for his welcome to my hon. Friend the new Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater). I will ensure that his kind remarks are known to her.

The Prime Minister has promised an extra 10,000 jobs in defence each year for the next four years. Buying British is the best way to deliver that promise so that we design and build for ourselves in Britain: it strengthens our economy and it strengthens our sovereignty. The defence equipment budget is now £19 billion. What proportion goes not to Britain, but to US suppliers?

[Mr Wallace]

Many suppliers in this country may not be entirely UK in their country of ownership, but the Ajax, for example, is made in St Athan by General Dynamics, and Boxer is made in Shropshire by a combination of BAE and the German Rheinmetall. We often insist that a significant proportion of those projects are made in the UK: for example, over 65% of the Boxer vehicle’s components are UK-made, including the metal frame made in Stockport. That provides British jobs, even if sometimes the countries of ownership are international. It is important to have international components because, as hon. Members have mentioned in previous questions, we also want to sell abroad. If we shut everyone else out, we should not be surprised if they do not buy from us.

[John Healey]

The Defence Secretary ducks and dives to avoid the answer, but the highly authoritative Defence Analysis has the figures: 31% of Britain’s defence budget now goes to US suppliers, up from 10% only five years ago. Britain can make the best, but it requires the Government to give it backing. In the past month alone, the Defence Secretary has rejected the world-leading UK-built Brimstone missile and bought US instead. Is it not the truth that Ministers are making big promises to UK industry while the big money still goes abroad?

[Mr Wallace]

The truth is that the right hon. Gentleman does not seem to understand defence procurement or how things are manufactured. For example, 15% to 20% of the global components for all 3,000 of the F-35 aircraft—the rear part of the aeroplane—are made in Lancashire. Many of the highly complex, highly expensive defence projects are a collaboration. Typhoon is often championed on both sides of the House: that is an international collaboration between Spain, Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom. When the right hon. Gentleman mentions the word “supplier”, he is of course deliberately confusing that with the actual number of jobs and the ownership of their business. Let us ask the question: how many people are working on American companies’ business but based in the UK? He will find that most of them are here in this country.

[Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to support the families of UK armed forces personnel.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to support the families of UK armed forces personnel.

[Mr Wallace]

The Government support families by providing successful wraparound childcare pilots, and in the last financial year awarded grants totalling £4.5 million from the MOD’s education support grant fund and its early years and childcare fund. Through Forces Help to Buy, we have helped around 24,100 personnel to buy a home or move as their families’ needs changed. The future accommodation model is looking at how we can support service families with more choices about how, where and with whom they live.

[Andrew Lewer [V]]

What is the Ministry of Defence doing to ensure that eligible personnel know that the continuity of education allowance—an important and necessary support for young people from military families, the vast majority of whom are a great asset to the schools they attend—is available to NCOs as well as to officers?

[Mr Wallace]

The CEA is available to all ranks, and we should encourage as many people as possible to take it up. It is used to achieve essential continuity of education for children, providing educational stability when personnel are assigned to service locations to meet the obligations of their service. Service personnel of all ranks may qualify, subject to their satisfying eligibility criteria, and they are encouraged to seek advice from the chain of command if they wish to take it up.

[Steve Brine]

Armed forces families are very much the backbone of our military, including those living at Worthy Down in my constituency, and it is only right that we do everything we can to guarantee that they and their loved ones enjoy the best possible quality of life as much as anybody else. Can the Secretary of State confirm that it is his mission to see that every service family can live in the modern, sustainable accommodation that they deserve?

[Mr Wallace]

It is my mission that they get the accommodation that they deserve. The Defence Infrastructure Organisation has recently awarded contracts up to the value of £2.1 billion to a number of market-leading suppliers to provide maintenance services across the UK estate for the next seven years. Those contracts will benefit from the increased investment announced in the integrated review to address the legacy of underinvestment across the estate, enabling improvements for our armed forces and their families.

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

May I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) on her election? This is the first Defence questions we have had since Armed Forces Day, when we normally thank not only the personnel but their families. As the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) mentioned, the families really are the backbone of serving personnel across the UK. We know that the Government provide £2,000 for the childcare subsidy, but families are often spending three times as much as that and sometimes even more, so I have a very simple question: will the Secretary of State increase the childcare subsidy available to personnel and their families?

[Mr Wallace]

First, we are going to increase spending on wraparound childcare to over £165 million a year for families with children up to 11 in primary school. That reflects the fact that most service personnel do not have a nine-to-five job, and it will help them considerably. In fact, where we have run the pilots, this has been incredibly popular. On the continuity allowance, one way to manage the disruption that families suffer is not necessarily by increasing that allowance but by increasing forces’ families ability to find a place they want to live, so that they can be settled and their children can attend the same school. That is a growing trend from when I served, and the 24,000 benefiting from Help to Buy is a really positive number. It shows that a number of people have now made the choice that when they deploy, they will go on their own, and their families and children will stay stable in one place.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

It is good to hear that there is going to be increased support, and we know from surveys that childcare costs, in particular, can be crippling for service families. May I move on to employment issues for the families of service personnel? At the minute, in the UK, helping the spouses of those who serve in the armed forces is largely left to the third sector. Canada, a fellow NATO country, has a thing called the spousal employment network, which is a very successful model, run in-house by the Government, to help the spouses of those who serve to find good-quality work that suits them. Will our Government look to bring this type of thing in-house, rather than leaving it to the third sector? Although that sector does a good job, the state should be taking on more of that responsibility.

[Mr Wallace]

The hon. Gentleman will know that we are working on a families’ strategy, and his suggestion is in exactly an area we are working on in that strategy. He is right; when I was serving in Germany in the BAOR—the British Army of the Rhine—where there was a much more settled, huge Army, there were lots of those organisations around, and I think they need some reinvigorating. Whether that is done entirely through the state or through a blend of non-governmental organisations, charities, volunteers and the state is something I would welcome being looked at, and I think there will be some solutions. What he says is totally in line with our policy and view that we have to do more for spouses to help them with their jobs if they move around.

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

What steps he has taken to help improve transition from the armed forces into employment.

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[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

What recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of funding allocated to his Department.

[The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Ben Wallace)]

The 2020 spending review settlement for defence provided a cash increase of more than £24 billion over four years compared with last year’s budget. That represents an above inflation increase in capital and resource spending over the period, and exceeds the Government’s commitment to increase the defence budget by 0.5% above inflation in each year of this Parliament.

[Dave Doogan]

In the whole of NATO, only Luxembourg spends less on its personnel than the UK. In 2020, the MOD spent just 34% of its budget on personnel—half the figure that Belgium spends. Does the Secretary of State believe that it is the woeful lack of investment in our personnel that is driving the current recruitment challenges in our armed forces, or is it the chronic accommodation that he expects our service personnel to live in that is to blame? Soon, the size of the Army will be at its lowest since 1714. How does the MOD splashing £200 million on a new royal yacht help with these challenges in our armed forces?

[Mr Wallace]

I think the hon. Gentleman does not understand how we spend our money in the defence budget; that is 34% of a very large budget on armed forces that are expeditionary and require lots of capital equipment. Of course, the proportion that we spend on human beings compared with equipment will be less than a country such as Belgium, which potentially has a large personnel budget but very little capital budget. That simply explains the different proportion. It does not mean that we spend less. Our forces’ salaries, and terms and conditions, are comparably better than in most countries—not only in NATO, but across the world. It is just that we choose to buy things to put our people in, such as Boxers or aircraft; that is simply the reality of it.

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

What steps he is taking to consult on and deliver reparations for service personnel adversely impacted by the historic ban on homosexuality enforced by the armed forces.

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[Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)]

  If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Ben Wallace)]

As part of the carrier strike group deployment on 23 June, HMS Defender, during innocent passage through Ukrainian territory waters, was overflown by Russian combat aircraft and shadowed by Russian ships. No warning shots were fired and no bombs were dropped in her path; these assertions were Kremlin disinformation. The Royal Navy will always uphold international law. In the Mediterranean, the group’s ships and aircraft have bolstered NATO, conducted highly successful exercises, flown armed sorties against Daesh and been welcomed into port by many friends and allies, boosting Britain’s trade and diplomatic links. In the coming weeks, we will continue to build relations with our partners as we reach the middle east and the Indo-Pacific.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

We pay tribute to the total professionalism of the HMS Defender crew.

This is a profound moment for the more than 150,000 UK men and women who served in Afghanistan. I pay tribute to their service and their sacrifice, especially those of the 457 who have lost their lives. Where does this withdrawal leave the UK strategy of forward deployment in a region that sits between Russia, China and Iran—three of the main state-based threats identified in the integrated review—and how will the Government ensure that Afghanistan does not again become an operating base for terrorism directed against the west?

[Mr Wallace]

I join the right hon. Gentleman in his tribute to the men and women who fought, some of whom never came back, and contributed during the many years in Afghanistan. I have previously placed on the record the fact that in my view the United States leaving made it very difficult for us to continue that mission. It left many of us unable to continue that without a significant international uplift. That has not been forthcoming, and therefore we are in a position where we, too, are on the path of withdrawal, with all the risks that may leave in the future—in the next 10, 20 years—so we have to do our very best with what we have now. That means we will continue to work with the Afghan Government. We will continue to focus on the threats that emanate from Afghanistan and may grow towards the United Kingdom and our allies. We will do whatever we can. However, it is important, in forward presence, that we are always in such countries with the consent of those countries. There was a Doha peace agreement, and that means we have to consider what we are going to do next.

[Mr Speaker]

These are topicals—short and sweet. I call the Chair of the Select Committee.

[Mr Speaker]

Can I just remind people—Front Benchers as well, and Chairs of Select Committees—that if they want a long question, they should go in questions earlier? These are short and punchy questions, and we have to keep it that way to get the rest in.

[Mr Wallace]

I would say two things. First, my right hon. Friend, as I said earlier, has the means of his own salvation. He chairs the Select Committee, and if the Select Committee wishes to have an inquiry, I will be happy to make sure the Department services it.

[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)]

  In my constituency, a significant risk of homelessness comes with having served in the armed forces and suffered trauma during that time. A lot of the rough sleepers in my constituency are former members of the armed forces. With the eviction moratorium now ending, what further steps will the Ministry of Defence be taking to help those who have previously served who are now at risk of losing their homes?

[Mr Wallace]

First, I would not like the hon. Lady to strengthen the wrong perception that a greater number of our armed forces personnel are rough-sleeping or a greater number suffer certain things; the numbers nearly always either reflect the national trend in wider society or, indeed, in some cases are significant lower. There are plenty of schemes that we encourage and support to get behind our veterans and get them back into work, and we are also working with a range of non-governmental organisations. Of course, I would be very happy to meet her to discuss issues in her own constituency and what more can be done to make sure that, if they are rough sleepers, veterans get the best support they can.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

  The Harlow branch of Royal British Legion is supported by thousands of local residents, and they do much to keep the light of remembrance burning strong in our town, and support our veterans. What steps are the Government taking, working with local authorities, to support the Royal British Legion, especially when clubs face difficulties with maintenance and capital building costs for older premises? Will the Minister join me on a visit to the Harlow Royal British Legion branch to see the wonderful work it does?

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[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

  The Ministry of Defence’s own figures suggest that just 20 out of 200 non-UK service personnel who left the regulars in 2019-20 were covered by the Government’s proposed visa scheme. Is it time that the Government woke up to the injustice of our brave Commonwealth and overseas service personnel paying twice for their citizenship?

[Mr Wallace]

The hon. Gentleman has often raised this cause, and I entirely agree with him. That is why we are now in the middle of a consultation to waive those visa fees for service personnel who have served over 12 years. We think that is absolutely right, and no doubt he will contribute to that consultation.

[Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Con)]

  The residents of Blackpool are sick and tired of seeing the images of illegal immigrants crossing the English channel on a daily basis. While the legislation proposed by the Home Secretary in the autumn will help to address this issue in the longer term, many people are becoming increasingly frustrated at our inability to deal conclusively with the problem. What discussions has the Secretary of State had with the Home Office in relation to the use of Royal Navy vessels to help address this issue?

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[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I welcome the defence memorandum of implementation signed between the UK and Ukraine, which will see our two countries working together on new Ukrainian naval bases and eight fast missile warships. Can the Secretary of State confirm that we will not be deterred, and the Royal Navy will not be deterred, by Russia’s recent attempts at intimidation in the Black sea?

[Mr Wallace]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the real importance that we attach to Ukraine as a friend and a partner, and to reiterate the fact that the Royal Navy will always uphold international law and will not be deterred by bullying. The transit by HMS Defender was through Ukrainian waters; we do not recognise Russia’s claim on Crimea. Our Navy will continue to uphold the rule of law wherever she sails.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

  The first ship that the late Duke of Edinburgh served on, aged 18 as a midshipman, was HMS Ramillies, which eventually went on to serve in Operation Overlord. Would it not be a fitting tribute to the late Prince Philip to restore that name to one of the new Royal Navy ships?

[Mr Wallace]

The right hon. Lady makes a really good suggestion. I have slight scars on my back from dealing with something called the naming committee of the Royal Navy, but I absolutely welcome her suggestion. We should absolutely think about how we name our ships and use them more to remind us of great events but also to inspire a future generation.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

As the Secretary of State will know, Sir John Moore barracks has been home to the Army Training Regiment in Winchester since 1986, when the Light Division moved from Peninsula barracks. He will also know that it is being disposed of, and the Defence Infrastructure Organisation is consulting on a masterplan. Will he or a member of his team please meet me at the conclusion of this exercise to ensure that what comes out of it is something that Winchester will be proud of and not just thousands of new houses to meet quota?

[Mr Wallace]

I will be delighted to ensure that either I or the Minister for Defence Procurement meets my hon. Friend.

[Mr Speaker]

I am suspending the House for three minutes to enable the necessary arrangements to be made for the next business.