A Better Defence Estate Strategy

Drew Hendry Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Owen Thompson (Midlothian) (SNP)]

I commend the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) for securing this debate. I was delighted to join her at the Backbench Business Committee to make the case for it.

When the announcement was made, the shockwaves went through my constituency of Midlothian, where the closure of Glencorse barracks has been intimated. Understandably, the community were upset at the lack of consultation before or after the announcement, but there are two glaringly obvious issues in Midlothian that compel me to speak in the debate today: first, the huge loss that the base would be to service personnel, their families and the wider community, but also to infrastructure and the local economy; and secondly, the enormous financial investment made by the Ministry of Defence a number of years ago, which now seems entirely pointless.

The position I take today is an entirely cross-party one. Every elected member at all levels for the community representing the Glencorse barracks supports the position. All six local councillors, Christine Grahame MSP and myself have joined together and have met the local community. This is an entirely united position. A petition is on its way and, in due course, we will look to present it to the House—I am sure many hon. Members will do the same.

The history of Glencorse barracks is well-known, from its start in the Napoleonic war as a prisoner of war camp, through to its current situation. Unlike many other bases, Glencorse is fit for purpose following a £60 million upgrade in 2003 to 2005, at which point it was hailed by the MOD as benchmark accommodation for our forces. It is frustrating that some of the information around that investment is difficult to come by—it was announced not in Parliament, but on a visit to a construction firm by the then Defence Secretary. When we ask the MOD for information about the investment, we are simply told that the information requested cannot be provided in a format that would not incur a disproportionate cost. As an elected Member, it is very frustrating trying to get to the bottom of some of the details. It would appear that I am able to get more information from Midlothian Council and through the Scottish Government than from the Ministry of Defence. I ask the Minister to reflect on that experience—Members of this House ask questions to be better informed when making cases in situations such as this one.

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech about Glencorse. Does he agree that, in the case of Fort George in my constituency, very little evidence has been supplied to say that it would save the MOD money? In fact, it will simply leave a £12 million to £16 million annual hole in our economy.

[Owen Thompson]

I agree. That is certainly true for many of us who are making the case for retaining our local bases.

Given the investment in Glencorse, it makes no financial sense to close the barracks. It has already been upgraded to the condition of a modern Army base, and it meets the criteria set out in the most recent defence estate reviews. It would be financial suicide to throw away such an investment.

There are rightly concerns that closure would damage the local economy, given the number of troops that are based there. Penicuik is a thriving community, but it needs more to support it. Given the investment in local schools and the special training given to local teachers to support our armed forces, if those Army personnel and their families were removed from the community, the impact would be felt down the line well beyond any closure.

Lastly, I must address the disappointing regard that the MOD has shown to Midlothian councillors and the Scottish Government following the announcement. I urge the Minister to take that on board and engage with all of us in the future. If the closures go ahead, what happens afterwards is vital. This ill-thought-out decision is financially unsound and strategically absurd, and it needs to be urgently stopped.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Rosindell, and I thank the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) for securing this important debate. All hon. Members who have spoken have made interesting and valuable contributions.

The hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald quoted the words of the Ministry of Defence, that the aim is “improving military capability” and “rationalisation of the estate”. She spoke about the extensive “engagement”, but expressed serious concerns about whether that had taken place. She was right to have those concerns.

The hon. Lady also spoke about a real lack of information and huge uncertainty for serving personnel, their families and the wider communities. Her points and those of the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) about the potential impact on the already poor figures for retention and post-service employment were particularly well made.

It is important, as the hon. Lady said, for the whole process to be viewed through the lens of the armed forces covenant. I am, however, no more convinced than she is that that has been the case, particularly in relation to the impact on families. The points that the hon. Member for Canterbury (Sir Julian Brazier) made on spousal employment were especially important.

Interestingly, the debate is titled “A Better Defence Estate Strategy”, although in reality that is simply not true: it is not better, and it stretches credulity to describe what has been announced as a strategy, which would suggest some forethought and a plan. The Government do not have a great history with plans, and this is a case in point. We heard, for example, from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) about the staggering lack of ongoing investment and maintenance over recent years. The strategy, if we may call it that, is in essence a farce. It aims for the loss of a fifth of the entire Scottish defence estate, which is extremely important and very concerning. Furthermore, the plans will have a real impact on the ability to provide conventional defence.

We heard about the lack of consultation, either with the public or with the Scottish Government, yet the aim is to close so many bases, many of which are of historical and cultural significance to our communities, as has been described so eloquently today, and all of which provide stability and important economic value to serving personnel, their families and their host communities. The lack of proper consultation leaves it somewhat unclear whether any of those factors have properly been taken into account. We anticipated that there would be cuts, but the volume proposed for Scotland is crushing and the justification for it is simply missing in action.

I asked the Minister some written questions about the plans, because I was keen to understand what was proposed and what financial projections could have led to such devastating decisions. The answers I got back left me, sadly, no clearer. I queried what savings would be achieved in running costs in each of the 10 years of the infrastructure reform programme. The Minister, for whom I have great respect, told me what savings it was hoped to achieve across the piece: £140 million over 10 years, rising to nearly £3 billion by 2040, all apparently to be reinvested “back into Defence”. Interesting, but not an answer to my question, which was a valid one, so I tried again.

This time I asked what capital investments were planned and what receipts were planned to be realised in each of the 10 years. I thought that was quite straightforward—clearly, the MOD would not have a plan that it had not based on proper financial metrics, would it? This time the answer was—well, the same as the first answer, although it helpfully clarified that the profile across the 10-year programme was “being refined”. In plain English that means that the MOD does not know—the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan) said the same a little more politely.

The MOD has therefore announced this hugely important and hugely destructive programme for the Scottish defence estate without doing the maths. That is outrageously irresponsible. Scottish armed forces personnel, their families and the local communities will feel gravely let down by that back-of-a-cigarette-packet approach to their lives. The hon. Member for City of Chester, for example, spoke powerfully about the impact on personnel and children, which is hugely important. The rest of us might reflect on how comfortable we are with our conventional defence footprint being planned with that kind of so-called strategy.

What exactly are we looking at? What is the scale of the cuts? My hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) pointed out that the Black Watch will leave its historical home at Fort George with a loss of more than 700 jobs and £16 million a year to the highlands economy. The Army barracks at Redford and Craigiehall in Edinburgh, and historic Glencorse in Midlothian, which is home to 2 Scots, are to be axed.

[Drew Hendry]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful argument about the financial cost, but promises to people have been broken as well, including the solemn promise that the Black Watch would have a permanent home at Fort George. How will the Minister respond to that betrayal of the people who have served in the Black Watch?

[Kirsten Oswald]

My hon. Friend’s point is particularly well made. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Interestingly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson) pointed out, although it is only 13 years since a £60 million investment in Glencorse, which was described by the then Secretary of State for Defence as a “super-barracks”, even Glencorse has not been saved from this Government’s financial mismanagement of and disdain for the defence of Scotland. No wonder Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, expresses such concern about the plans, saying that they throw the future into doubt for thousands of staff.

Even if numbers of service personnel remain steady, significant numbers of civilian jobs will be lost, estimated at 700 at Fort George and 200 in Stirling. Unite described the closures as “brutal” and emphasised the impact on our local communities. As the MOD should know, in many instances the bases earmarked for closure are at the heart of their local communities, providing a source of decent and secure employment. Not only is the MOD weakening the defence of Scotland, but it is creating real problems for thousands of people.

All we can say with certainty is that, in the MOD’s own words, there is “reprovision intended for Scotland”. Meanwhile, a massive upheaval and a great deal of uncertainty for service personnel and their families will certainly result. All of that is accompanied by the staggering lack of detail and clarity that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) described so well, which is causing huge concern and uncertainty and throwing huge doubt on the programme and on defence planning and provision for Scotland.

The National Audit Office has identified a black hole of at least £8.5 billion of unfunded costs caused by the steady decline in the condition of the estate. It states that there is significant risk that the poor condition of the estate will affect the Department’s ability to provide the defence capability needed. In addition, the UK Government’s military priorities are all wrong for Scotland: we are a maritime nation with no maritime patrol aircraft and not one conventional ocean-going vessel in our ports. We have grave concerns that as our conventional capability shrinks further and further to pay for nuclear weapons, the United Kingdom’s last line of defence is increasingly becoming its first and only line of defence.

The announced closures are, as my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey put it so well, the latest in a series of betrayals and the breaking of promises made to the Scottish people before the independence referendum when we were told time and again that defence jobs could only be protected in the Union. We were threatened with dire repercussions in the event of a yes vote. The then Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr Hammond), claimed that in the event of independence “the Scottish people” would not benefit

“from anything like the level of security the UK armed forces currently provide, or the level of prosperity that Scotland’s defence industry currently delivers.”

Just as with the non-existent national shipbuilding strategy, the Trident safety issues that we can hear about on CNN but not in this House and the national equipment plan that the auditors say simply does not add up, we have vital questions about our future defence estate going unanswered. The Government are full of warm words for our forces—perhaps the Minister will also take the opportunity to update us on what he is doing to secure the return of Billy Irving and the Chennai six—but in reality such words are sometimes seen as just that, words. The UK Government seem quite unable to ensure the defence of the realm. The UK Government have failed in their first duty to their citizens and betrayed the people of Scotland yet again. An independent Scotland would have a proper conventional defence force built in our national interests.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Lancaster]

The whole purpose of consolidating into larger garrisons, often near large centres of population—York is one but not the only one—is to give that stability so that people are not constantly being moved. For example, the consolidation of three armoured engineer regiments around Salisbury Plain means that, as a soldier progresses in their career and is posted between the three regiments, they can stay in the same home. That is the sort of stability that we want to create, rather than having them posted from one end of the country to the next every three years.

Finally, a better defence estate will deliver better value for money for taxpayers. By releasing sites we no longer need, we can help build the houses that we do need. Our strategy includes plans for the release of sufficient land to build up to 55,000 homes in this Parliament. Yes, some areas will lose their military establishments, but the timely publication of our better defence estate strategy will give the MOD and the affected communities both the time and the opportunity to plan the future uses of those sites.

My hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald gave a passionate opening to the debate. I understand her concerns, but the simple fact is that her barracks, Invicta Park barracks, is too small. I know it well as a Royal Engineer. She knows that the Engineer regiment currently on that site has to have one of its squadrons displaced at Rock barracks up in Suffolk. It is difficult for a commanding officer to command a regiment when one of their sub-units is more than 150 miles away, and there is no opportunity to expand the site of their barracks.

Both my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) mentioned the Gurkha community. As my hon. Friend knows, I joined the Queen’s Gurkha Engineers—the regiment she talked about—as an 18-year-old in 1988 and served for three years in Hong Kong. Subsequently, the regiment moved to Kitchener barracks in Chatham and has now moved to her location. I think only four of us in the Chamber were in Parliament at the time of the great debate about our fight to try to equalise the terms and conditions for Gurkha soldiers in the British Army. That was absolutely the right thing to do, but she and the hon. Lady now seem to suggest that we should treat Gurkhas differently from other British soldiers. I find that worrying, and it could be the wrong thing to do. As someone who is a strong advocate for the Brigade of Gurkhas and probably the only Member of Parliament who has served—twice—in the Brigade of Gurkhas, I urge a degree of caution about how we make progress on that front.

I met the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) recently and talked about Dale barracks. I confirm that Fox barracks—the reserves barracks—will remain in place, and the Mercians will relocate in the north-west, co-locating in the King’s Division.

In many ways, my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) articulated the vision for the future. We want to invest in our infrastructure in the years ahead to create the first-class environment. Hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber spoke of their concern about the lack of infrastructure, but no one who argued against the estate strategy explained where the money would come from if we do not have the opportunity to dispose of some of the estate. I confirm that all of the money we will release from disposal of the estate will be reinvested in defence.

[Drew Hendry]

Will the Minister give way?

[Wayne David]

Will the Minister give way?