National Shipbuilding Strategy
Debate between Douglas Chapman and Steven Paterson(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Steven Paterson (Stirling) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Douglas Chapman) on securing this important debate. The timing could not be better, given the revelations about the cost of UK defence projects in all forces, not only the Navy. I want to raise two points. The first is about our priorities. They are set in the national security strategies and should flow into the strategic defence and security review and the Government’s priorities in this area. The second is the effect of the recent National Audit Office report on procurement for large defence projects and the affordability of the national shipbuilding strategy that we anticipate.
The national security strategy and the SDSR should inform the procurement process and, because of that, the national shipbuilding strategy. However, there seems to be a logical inconsistency in how that is applied. In paragraph 75 of the SDSR, the Ministry of Defence is quoted as saying that the document will
“determine priorities for investment to ensure that the UK has a full suite of capabilities with which to respond to defence and security threats”.
Page 67 identifies the three tiers of domestic and overseas risks, grading them as tier 1, 2 or 3 threats,
“based on a judgement of the combination of both likelihood and impact.”
Taking that at face value, the National Security Council has identified terrorism, international military conflict, cyber, public health, major natural hazards and instability overseas as the tier 1 threats facing the UK. That exercise having been undertaken, one would have thought the resources would follow the perceived threats and their perceived likelihood, but that does not seem to be the approach followed by the Ministry of Defence, particularly in the present case.
Douglas Chapman
Does my hon. Friend feel that the amount of resource going into the Dreadnought programme is skewing all other budgets and making the Minister’s job of preserving our surface ship fleet much more difficult?
Steven Paterson
Yes, I think that is a concern that many of us have—that the priorities identified in the risk assessment done for the document I have quoted are not being followed in Government spending. Perhaps that is why there has been delay after delay in the project.