National Shipbuilding Strategy

Debate between Douglas Chapman and Lord Beamish

Thursday 11th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Douglas Chapman (Dunfermline and West Fife) (SNP)]

Thank you very much, Mr Evans; it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I will try to maintain as best I can the level of optimism displayed by the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis). I congratulate the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) on securing the debate. I welcome the opportunity to talk about the great importance of this issue not only to the industry but to those who work in it and—from the perspective of a Scottish MP—to the Scottish economy.

As hon. Members will know, shipbuilding has been part of the industrial fabric of Scotland for most of the last three centuries. The world’s highest-quality ships were once built on the River Clyde, where around a fifth of the world’s ships were constructed in the early 1900s. As we all know, the industry’s decline has hit Scotland hard, but there is still a sense of pride among Scots about our shipbuilding heritage. There are plenty of reasons why shipbuilding can and should survive in Scotland today. We have the talent and the infrastructure to take on large shipbuilding contracts, as we have seen in the construction of both aircraft carriers, and it is imperative that we maintain that capability as part of a sensible industrial strategy and defence strategy for future years.

If the Government are serious about protecting the future of shipbuilding and about the delivery of the shipbuilding strategy, they must award the contract for the fleet solid support ships to the UK consortium’s bid. My views on the issue have been clear from the start: it was a huge mistake for the Ministry of Defence to tender the contract internationally. I maintain that position.

Francis Tusa, an expert from Defence Analysis, prepared a compelling report on behalf of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions last year, setting out the case for the fleet solid support ships to be built in domestic shipyards. The report notes that retaining the contract in the UK would result in serious returns to the Treasury of up to £415 million—even by Treasury standards, that is not small beer. The report also points out that a yard in Rosyth, which is in my constituency, is big enough to accommodate those ships. That yard is crying out for work to secure its future after the contract for the HMS Prince of Wales aircraft carrier comes to an end.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the fleet solid support vessels are big enough to be built in block form, as the carriers were, with the work spread around the UK?

[Douglas Chapman]

Absolutely; the right hon. Gentleman makes a valid and accurate point. The Minister has visited Rosyth and has seen for himself what we have to offer, but he is assiduous and visits areas across the UK, so I am sure that that point will not be lost on him when decisions have to made in future. The GMB estimates that if the support ships order were placed in UK yards, it would create up to 6,500 jobs. Not only would that help to protect the future of Rosyth but the benefits would be shared across the UK. A Government who say that they have a prosperity agenda at their heart must show that it is real and not just something that trips off their Ministers’ tongues. It must be made real and must have a real impact on our economy.

The Government continue to roll out their tired old party line: “These vessels are not warships and are therefore subject to international competition.” How can they peddle that myth when the Minister’s predecessor confirmed in an answer to a written question that he expects the support ships to be fitted with close-range guns, such as the Phalanx? The Phalanx is a 20mm Gatling gun designed to shoot down fast anti-ship missiles, aircraft and fast-attack craft. To argue that a vessel fitted with such weapons is not a warship is difficult for everybody to fathom.

Like many hon. Members, I have repeatedly raised this matter, whether at Defence questions, via written questions, during debates in the Commons Chamber and in Westminster Hall, and again today. The Government must look at this again to be absolutely sure that they are making the right decision, not just for the future of the shipbuilding industry but for the prosperity agenda that they say is so important. I have also raised the matter with the Prime Minister during Prime Minister’s questions, and followed up with a written invitation to her to visit Rosyth dockyard in my constituency, to see for herself the skills, talent and infrastructure that we have there to fulfil such a contract. To echo the right hon. Member for New Forest East, the new Prime Minister will receive an invitation as soon as he is appointed, and I hope it will be met with more optimism and will provoke a better response than last time.

My message has received cross-party support. I tabled an early-day motion calling on the Government to restrict the support ships tender to domestic competition, and it was signed by Labour, Conservative, DUP, Plaid Cymru and SNP Members. I would be grateful if the Minister gave some reassurance that our plea for those ships to be built on these islands was not falling on deaf ears.

Although it is an island, the UK’s ability to protect its own coastline is severely lacking. Scottish maritime territory accounts for 60% of UK waters, yet the UK Government have failed to maintain any surface vessel presence in Scotland. All Royal Navy vessels are based on England’s south coast, so it currently takes more than 24 hours for a ship to reach us. I visited Devonport on Tuesday, and it took me half a day to fly there by plane. A 24-hour delay by ship is too big a risk for us to take with our national security.

I am not privy to diplomatic cables—I know that some people are—but I have heard rumours that the US are looking at developing a naval base somewhere in Scotland. Imagine the US having a larger naval presence or footprint in Scotland than the Royal Navy. If there is any truth in that rumour, we live in very strange times indeed.

The RAF Nimrod maritime surveillance aircraft were scrapped in 2010, and we are told that we would need to wait until 2021 for the full P8 fleet to be delivered. That is outrageous when, in recent years, incursions into Scottish waters have increased to their highest level since the cold war. Incidents of Russian transgressions into Scottish waters were reported in 2011, 2014 and 2019. The previous Defence Secretary admitted to the Defence Committee that

“Russian submarine activity in the North Atlantic has increased tenfold in recent years.”

Despite that, the Tories have perpetuated a nosedive in the number of Royal Navy ships from 77 in 2010 to 66. Furthermore, during the Scottish independence referendum, we were promised that 13 Type 26 frigates would be built on the Clyde, but that figure has since been reduced to eight. The commitment to a frigate factory is another promise that was rolled back and has come to absolutely nothing.

When he was Defence Secretary, the right hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr Hammond) repeatedly told the people of Scotland that the only way to secure the future of Scottish shipbuilding was to remain part of the UK. Yet inside the UK, Scotland’s shipbuilding industry has been eroded. Shipbuilding in Scotland employed 15,700 workers in 1991. That figure has more than halved to just 7,000 in recent years. Compare that with independent Norway, a state of similar size to Scotland, where over 37,000 people were employed in that sector in 2008.

During the Scottish independence referendum, we were also promised 12,500 full-time military personnel in Scotland, yet levels are now well below 10,000. In Norway, again, 20,000 people are employed in the armed forces—double the proportion of the population in Scotland.

It is safe to say that the Tories have broken their promise to Scottish shipbuilding and on many other fronts. They clearly cannot be trusted with the future of the industry—although I will be happy to hear more positive sounds from the Minister today. Plenty of small states such as Denmark manage to maintain their sovereign naval defence capability very successfully. With independence, I am sure that Scotland could do exactly the same.

Last year, as a member of the Public Accounts Committee, I led an evidence session on the defence equipment plan, which highlighted a £15 billion black hole in the MOD budget. Sufficient funds have not been made available to dispose of any of the 20 submarines that the MOD has decommissioned since 1980, seven of which lie in the dockyard in my constituency. All the while, the nuclear arsenal continues to burn a huge hole in the defence budget, to the tune of £2.2 billion per year. Continuing to spend such astronomical sums on nuclear weapons that will never be used while our coastal defences are compromised is simply unsustainable and unacceptable.

The Public Accounts Committee findings uncovered the fact that the Type 31 budget did not exist. It is a smaller frigate, but its exportable elements are important to the future surface ship business, in particular in yards such as Rosyth and others across the UK. All the skills and talents that we developed while building two of the largest ships that the Royal Navy has ever built— the QE class—will be lost unless we can maintain the shipbuilding industry through contracts for the support ships or, for example, the Type 31s. In terms of the numbers, the Type 31s could employ 2,000 people over the term of the contract, attracting 150 new apprentices into the industry. That is a price worth paying to ensure that we have a good industry into the future.

In conclusion, in the context of ever-tightening budgets, in the MOD in particular, the Government must reconsider their defence spending priorities and review their ship- building strategy. Shifting resources to shipbuilding would mean responding directly to 21st century security threats. The Government must also review their decision-making process for tendering shipbuilding contracts abroad to ensure that a vital industry is protected from further decline. We must also see fulfilment of the unmet promises that the Government made to the people of Scotland during the 2014 independence referendum.

There can be a bright future for shipbuilding in the UK and in Scotland, although the jury is still out on whether the Government can produce the prosperity agenda that we all look for. Agreeing to the contracts for the fleet solid support ships, the Type 31e frigates and the missing list of Type 26 frigates is paramount in the future of shipbuilding and in making the national shipbuilding strategy not just a document to lie on a shelf gathering dust in the Main Building but a real plan for action and prosperity.

National Shipbuilding Strategy

Debate between Douglas Chapman and Lord Beamish

Wednesday 8th February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Douglas Chapman (Dunfermline and West Fife) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the National Shipbuilding Strategy.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. I stand before you with the sense that we have been here before, and indeed we have. It is déjà vu on a grand scale, because at Defence questions, during Westminster Hall debates, in answers to urgent questions and in ministerial statements, the Government have had the chance to put at rest the minds of the various parties interested in the shipbuilding strategy. Yet again, we find ourselves hoping that the Minister will give us something more than the usual scorn sometimes reserved for SNP Members.

Any time I tire of waiting for answers, I simply remind myself that many people have been waiting much longer, whether they be the men and women who serve us in the Royal Navy or those in the yards on the Clyde and at Rosyth. That is not to mention the average taxpayer, who demands nothing more from the Government than that their money is well spent on equipment that actually works and the assurance that the Government are doing their utmost to fulfil their most basic duty—defending our homeland.

In 2021, it will be two decades since HMS St Albans slipped from Yarrows on the Clyde and became the last-of-class Type 23 frigate, meaning that the state that has always prided itself on being a maritime power will not have built a single frigate for the best part of 20 years. Furthermore, as the first-of-class Type 23, HMS Norfolk, left that same shipyard in 1990, it found that the mission for which it had been specifically designed had all but ended. It is quite incredible that in 2017, we are still unable to see a signed contract to begin the replacement of the Type 23s, which are a cold war platform. No one I have spoken to through my work on the Select Committee on Defence, whether fellow members, academics, shipbuilders, trade unionists or even civil servants, sees that as an acceptable way forward, yet here we are.

Its cold war mission may have ended, but the Type 23 has certainly done all that was asked of it, and more. Let us not forget that the range of tasks the Royal Navy has undertaken in the post-cold war era has dramatically increased, yet paradoxically, as the senior service’s task list is increasing, the number of frigates and destroyers available to it has sunk to an historic low. It is that paradox that I hope the Minister will help me with today. Although the Ministry of Defence has long been able to exploit the convoluted and confusing history of the Type 26s and Type 31s, there is no way to hide its failings. I will make it easy for the Government by posing three straightforward questions that I hope they will take in good faith and respond to appropriately.

First, and most simply, when will we see the national shipbuilding strategy? Secondly, the MOD has made much of 2017 being the year of the Navy, but 2023 is a much more appropriate choice, as that is when the MOD completes the purchase of 24 F-35B planes to fly from the carriers, and when HMS Queen Elizabeth becomes fully operational. Will the Minister reassure us that the Royal Navy will be able to form a fully functioning carrier group with Type 26s, Type 45s and the requisite Royal Fleet Auxiliary Service ships? Thirdly, on a related note, various media outlets have reported in recent days on the bandwidth problems in the procurement budget, which were highlighted in a National Audit Office report. So far as the equipment plan is concerned, how will the shipbuilding strategy ensure that surface naval ships are prioritised in procurement decisions?

When the Government committed to the national shipbuilding strategy as part of the 2015 strategic defence and security review, many of us thought we were reaching the end of a long journey with respect to the modernisation of the Royal Navy. How wrong we were. Early studies of what in 1994 was called the “future surface combatant” certainly thought outside the box. A whole range of options were considered, including a radical trimaran hull design. After a decade, the FSC had become the “sustained surface combatant capability”, which had as many as three designs. It was not a concept that would survive the financial crash. Indeed, by 2009, it was possible for my friend the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), who chairs the Defence Committee, to call for a future surface combatant that was as “cheap as chips”. How did we get from as “cheap as chips” to building £1 billion frigates in less than a decade?

I contend that the blame lies squarely at the door of the MOD. One thing has become clear from the numerous conversations I have had with both management and unions at BAE Systems: it is a global company with a world-class workforce that is able to turn its hand to whatever design and specification is provided by the MOD. Up to this point, it has done that. Quite simply, the MOD’s unerring ability to change horses midstream has added to the cost, timescales and uncertainty of the ongoing naval procurement programme.

That continued after the shipbuilding strategy announcement in 2015. The initial reassurances we were given were replaced with disquiet last spring, when no contract for the Type 26s was signed. When The Guardian broke the story in April about potential job losses at the Clyde yards, there was a crushing realisation that, yes, it had happened again. Any hope that a refreshed team in the main building over the summer would lead to clarity on the Type 26 or the shipbuilding strategy did not last long. When the Minister repeatedly assured us in the Chamber that we would see a strategy by the autumn statement, we knew she was using alternative facts. When my colleagues and I on the Defence Committee released a report that concluded

“it is now time for the MoD to deliver on its promises”,

I imagine we already knew that it had no intention of doing so—although I am interested to know if that report played any part in delaying the strategy, or if Ministers simply chose not to tell Parliament of their intentions.

It was not entirely clear, when Sir John Parker’s independent report was announced, whether informing Parliament was part of the original strategy. When the report was finalised, we thought that it would be the formal strategy going forward. There is plenty to agree with in Sir John’s report. Many of its findings chime with my experiences of MOD procurement, namely that there was a

“vicious cycle of fewer and much more expensive ships being ordered late and entering service years later than first planned”,

and:

“The Government must drive cultural and governance changes in Defence that inject genuine pace into the procurement process with a clear grip over requirements, cost and time.”

However, we are now getting to a stage at which the report, far from being too little, too late, is too much, much too late. It will once more allow Ministers to take us around the houses and hope that we forget that they are running out of time to fulfil previous promises made to the House, the Royal Navy and the men and women on the Clyde.

While there is

“no precedent for building two ‘first of class’ RN frigates in one location in the UK”,

there appears to be no real alternative to the Clyde, as I am sure we will hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens). Let us get on with signing the Type 26 contract and ensure that the Type 31 is ready to go as soon as possible.

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

Can the hon. Gentleman shed any light on what the Type 31 is? There have been generalised views of what it will do and what it will be, but I understand that there are no plans and no actual specification. Is the Type 31 not one of those pipedreams that seems to be put out there to reassure the industry, when actually there is a lot of work to be done not only to design it, but to find out where it fits into the broader naval strategy?

[Douglas Chapman]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. We are constantly told that the Type 31s are also for the export market. I have asked parliamentary questions on whether the Government could provide details of their homework on what that export market might look like. I am afraid that, to date, there are no answers. We need to make progress with the information we have, which is why we are questioning the Minister today.

Anyone who has taken an interest in this matter will know that BAE Systems has two possible designs. It is important that we get on with picking one, so that we can ensure—to follow up on the hon. Gentleman’s point —that we have an exportable product that we can take to market. However, we are falling behind. The Franco-Italian Aquitaine class frigates are already in service with La Royale and have been exported to Egypt and Morocco, so we are already missing the export boat with regard to the Type 31s.