Armed Forces Restructuring

David Rutley Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

As I have been at pains to point out, the fact that we are making people redundant in certain areas does not always mean that we will not be continuing to recruit in those areas. The armed forces are bottom-fed organisations, and we have to get the correct rank structure within each of the specialisms. My hon. Friend will have heard me say that the maximum number of Royal Navy redundancies will be 10, all of which will be in the medical and dental field. I expect the impact on the Royal Navy to be very limited. We will, however, have smaller medical and dental services in the future, to reflect the way in which we provide those services to our armed forces in peacetime.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend remind the House of the scale of the financial challenge faced by the MOD in 2010 compared with that in other nations? Will he also tell the House what steps are being taken to ensure that we do not face such challenges again?

[Mr Hammond]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that. I know that Opposition Members do not like it being said that we inherited a £38 billion black hole in the defence budget. We have dealt with that and we have put in place a balanced equipment plan that is fully funded with a contingency of £4.5 billion in it. More importantly, we have put in place mechanisms to ensure that projects do not get signed off willy-nilly by politicians when the resources are not in place to pay for them. That ensures that we have a coherent defence budget and that we never again find ourselves in the position of the former Labour Defence Secretary Lord Hutton who, for the want of £300 million over two years, was forced to delay the aircraft carrier project and drive £1.6 billion of additional costs into that programme. We will not get ourselves into that position.