Oral Answers to Questions

Elizabeth Truss Excerpts

Monday 16th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nick Harvey]

The Foreign Office is in constant dialogue with international communities and our allies about the grave situation in Syria. Nobody underestimates the difficulty that will be involved in trying to secure any international consensus in favour of action there. The recent events that we have seen are deeply shocking. The Government want to see an end to violence and an orderly transition to a more representative form of government, but the efforts being made so far are certainly hitting a lot of obstacles.

[Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)]

3. What progress his Department has made on selecting the future base for the joint strike fighter.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Nick Harvey)]

Although an initial decision had been made by the previous Government on the basing for the joint strike fighter, it is being reviewed in the light of the strategic defence and security review, as part of the work on the footprint strategy for the defence estate. The military requirement for the joint strike fighter has gone forward to the Defence Infrastructure Organisation, which is leading the work to deliver a defence estate of a sustainable size and shape, and one that delivers the most cost-effective approach to Future Force 2020 basing.

[Elizabeth Truss]

Three weeks ago, the Secretary of State for Defence is reported to have said that RAF Marham would be the logical base for the joint strike fighter. Can the Minister tell me when a decision on basing will be made to help to secure the base’s long-term future, as well as boost confidence for local businesses in west Norfolk?

[Nick Harvey]

This Thursday, the Defence Secretary will take delivery of the first of our joint strike fighter aircraft. A decision will be made on where it will be based in good time for the introduction of the strike fighter into service. Detailed work is taking place at the moment to look at the basing requirements, and we will make a decision as soon as is practically possible.

Oral Answers to Questions

Elizabeth Truss Excerpts

Monday 11th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robathan]

We are very keen to encourage more cadet forces. Indeed, I had a joint conference with the schools commissioner at the end of April on this matter. We are pushing it forward and will find the resources. I am delighted that my hon. Friend gained from the cadet experience and learned about things such as integrity, teamwork and leadership. I, too, was a cadet, but I will leave it to the House to determine whether my character improved.

[Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)]

Given that the Government are proceeding with the short take-off and vertical landing variant of the joint strike fighter, will the Secretary of State say when a decision will be made about the basing of that aircraft? Does he agree that RAF Marham would be an ideal location because of its engineering facilities and its proximity to the US base at Lakenheath?

[Mr Philip Hammond]

My hon. Friend is nothing if not diligent in promoting the case for RAF Marham to be the home base of the STOVL JSF aircraft. We are well aware of its engineering capabilities and of its proximity to USAF Lakenheath, where F-35s are likely to be based. The decision does not need to be taken yet, and it will not be taken until it needs to be.

Oral Answers to Questions

Elizabeth Truss Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robathan]

I pay tribute to those of my grandfather’s generation who did so much in the first world war—what they did is almost beyond our ken. The issue is to do with history, and for that reason the Department for Culture, Media and Sport leads on it. However, as the hon. Gentleman may know, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) has been appointed the special representative on the first world war and he will deal with all the commemorations. He will co-ordinate input from the Ministry of Defence, the DCMS and the Imperial War museum for the nation as we approach the centenaries of the 1914 to 1918 period.

[Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)]

Given the sterling performance of RAF Marham servicemen in Libya and the strategic and economic advantages of the base, when a decision is made in the spring about basing for the joint strike fighter, will RAF Marham not be the ideal candidate?

[Mr Hammond]

I give my hon. Friend full marks for her persistence on behalf of her constituency interest, but I have to tell her that it is far too early to make a decision about where the joint strike fighter will be based.

Defence Transformation

Elizabeth Truss Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I can accommodate very few more questions, I am afraid. Time is extremely pressing, and brevity is essential.

[Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)]

I am delighted that RAF Marham is to be retained, and I thank the Secretary of State for listening to the strategic and economic arguments put by the “Make it Marham” campaign, which includes 37,000 people of Norfolk and nine local Members of Parliament. Under the plan for the Tornado squadrons, how many will be based at RAF Marham?

[Dr Fox]

There are no changes whatever to the plans that we have previously announced for RAF Marham. I have to say, it would have been very hard to miss my hon. Friend’s voice on the subject in recent months, when there can hardly have been a single occasion when she did not raise it with me vociferously in the Lobby. I congratulate her.

Oral Answers to Questions

Elizabeth Truss Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robathan]

I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. He says that people suffered grievously. Some people are of course ill, and some are ill because of their service. It is important that the Government should look to that. The previous Government did, as we do, through the war pensions system. However, there is no study showing that people who witnessed those nuclear tests have more cases of cancer than their cohort groups. We must base our response and expenditure of taxpayers’ money on evidence, not on emotion.

[Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)]

12. When he plans to publish the recommendations of his Department’s basing review.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Nick Harvey)]

As I have said before, the Ministry of Defence will make an announcement as soon as we are in a position to do so, and that will be before the summer recess. But as I have also said, this is a complex piece of work and we will take the time necessary to make sure we reach the right conclusions.

[Elizabeth Truss]

On Friday I attended the disbandment parade of 13 Squadron at RAF Marham, which was a moment of both pride and sadness. Given the additional commitments taken on by the RAF in Libya and the statement by the Chief of the Air Staff that our air force is heavily stretched, will that have an impact on the basing review?

[Nick Harvey]

That will not have an impact on the basing review, but I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to everybody involved with 13 Squadron, which was involved in the early stages of the operation in Libya and has a proud history going back 96 years, including distinguished service in the second world war and later in the no-fly zone in Iraq and Operation Telic. The name will live on next year when a new squadron of reaper, the remotely piloted aircraft, will take on the number 13, and I am pleased to say that most of the personnel involved have been found other roles elsewhere in the Tornado force.

Armed Forces (Redundancies)

Elizabeth Truss Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

When we finally get to the point when redundancies are announced—that is some way off yet—nobody who is in pre-deployment training, or deployed and in receipt of the operational allowance, or recovering from injuries sustained on operations, or on post-operational leave, will be made compulsorily redundant.

[Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)]

It is sad news that 13 Squadron at RAF Marham is to be disbanded, although I understand that this will not lead to automatic redundancies. Further to earlier questions about the basing review, which the Secretary of State has said will be announced in the spring or summer, can he confirm that it will not only cover the short term and the Tornado, but look at where the joint strike fighter will be based, to provide long-term security for the armed forces personnel in my constituency?

UK Military Basing Review

Elizabeth Truss Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Gerald Howarth)]

I commend the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) on securing this important debate. He and I have been on trips together, we are both officers of the all-party Royal Air Force group—I have very much enjoyed his support in that group—and we have conferred many times in the past on these matters. I know that he takes a genuine interest in this subject, not least because, as he said, he has a defence-intense constituency. Of course, I am entirely in sympathy with him, because my constituency of Aldershot is also heavily defence-oriented. He will, of course, point out that it is in the south of England. We cannot move Aldershot—it is in the south of England.

There can be no doubt that this debate is important to those who take an interest in the future of Her Majesty’s armed forces, and to the constituencies of a number of Members in the House. I see that my hon. Friends the Members for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) and for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) are here. The hon. Member for Moray has therefore rightly set out several concerns which are, understandably, felt by many Members.

In today’s and previous debates, several RAF bases have been mentioned. I would like to put on record the Government’s gratitude for the exceptional work of all those who serve in the RAF. I was commissioned in the RAF volunteer reserve and would have joined the service—I nearly did—had I not had political aspirations. Our gratitude extends to the local communities which have, over the years, given such strong support to the bases from which the RAF operates—a point that the hon. Gentleman made forcefully.

However, given the context of this debate, I would like to focus for the moment on RAF Kinloss and its proud association with the Nimrod. The Nimrod force played a vital role in helping to keep this country secure during the cold war. More recently, it played a key role in support of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and some RAF Nimrods continue to do so. Kinloss has been the home of Nimrod and those who flew and supported them for nearly 40 years. I am an aviator, and I am acutely aware of the bond between RAF personnel and the aircraft that they service and fly. I understand the shock that was felt when the decision was announced. I know that there is a real sense of loss in the tightly-knit service community, and that seeing pictures of the Nimrods being broken up will have been extremely painful to all of them, as it was to me.

I did not come into government to take such decisions, nor did the Defence Secretary or the Prime Minister. Nor did I come into government to make communities fear for their future as we take difficult decisions on the fate of their bases. The decision to scrap the Nimrod MRA4 programme was one of the hardest we had to take. So how did we come to this situation? That decision must be viewed in the context of the previous Government’s dire economic mismanagement of the public finances. Under the stewardship of the former Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), Labour doubled the national debt and left us with the biggest budget deficit in our peacetime history. Today, we are spending £120 million every single day just to pay the interest charge on Labour’s debt. That is Labour’s legacy.

[Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for allowing me to intervene in this important debate. I understand the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Moray about bases in his constituency. My concern, given our deficit, is that costs should be taken into account in the basing review. Given that in January the Minister for the Armed Forces said that it would be prohibitive to move engineering facilities away from RAF Marham, could I ask what is being considered in respect of the joint strike fighter maintenance facilities? We need a long-term decision that will reflect the costs and the expertise that has built up in RAF Marham, which employs more people than Kinloss and Lossiemouth put together.

[Mr Howarth]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I had the benefit of visiting Kinloss and Marham, so I am acutely aware of the assets of both bases. All I can say to her is that final decisions have not yet been made. I will come back to that point later on. Ministers will make the decisions based on military advice as well as detailed investment appraisals. I am afraid that that is as far as I can go to reassure her today.

I shall continue on the economic legacy we inherited. In defence, the consequences of 13 years of the catastrophic mismanagement I mentioned a moment ago are more severe than in any other area. Labour allowed a black hole of £38 billion to build up in the forward defence programme, over half of which was made up of equipment and support, with no plans in place to fund it. Restoring the nation’s finances is not only critical for the health of our economy and for the future funding of public services, but essential for national security, because a weak economy creates a national security risk.

Every Department has had to make its own contribution to reduce the staggering budget deficit we inherited, and the Ministry of Defence is required to shoulder its share of the burden. However, due to the priority we place on security, the defence budget is making a more modest contribution to deficit reduction than many other Departments. Even so, we are not immune from tough decisions. Some of the toughest decisions were about the Royal Air Force’s structure, not least the future of Nimrod.

There is no doubt that the Nimrod MRA4 would have performed an important role. It would have contributed to a wide range of military tasks. We have sought to mitigate the gap in capability through the use of other military assets such as frigates, helicopters, and C-130 Hercules aircraft. We will also request, where appropriate, assistance from allies and partners. However, it is important to remember that the country has been without Nimrod since March 2010. That was when the previous Government withdrew the Nimrod MR2 from service, so this was not a decision of this Government alone.

Why was that necessary? As the hon. Member for Moray knows only too well, the original plan conceived in 1996 was for 21 aircraft to be delivered in 2003—eight years ago. By the time the new Government took office in 2010, the programme had already been reduced to nine aircraft, was almost £800 million over budget and had seen the unit cost of each aircraft rise by 200% from £133 million to £455 million. At the time of the review, a number of design faults had been identified on the first MRA4 aircraft, which would have taken additional time and money to resolve. The headquarters of the contractor, BAE Systems, is in my constituency yet, as the hon. Member for Moray knows perfectly well, that has not stopped me being a vocal critic of its performance on this programme.

As we all know, the decision to scrap Nimrod was not the only difficult decision facing the RAF: the fast-jet fleet of Harrier and Tornado air defence was also affected. The RAF now plans to make a transition to a fast-jet force comprising the Typhoon and the joint strike fighter by 2021. Those were decisions about military capability and priorities. An inevitable consequence was that the RAF no longer requires RAF Kinloss and two other bases. I need to emphasise that—no longer required by the RAF. That does not mean that they are no longer required by defence. I will take the opportunity now to say again that we have not yet taken a decision about the long-term future of RAF Kinloss or any other air base as a result of the strategic defence and security review.

As Members will be aware, another major decision of the SDSR was to return to the UK 20,000 service personnel from Germany, with the intention of returning half by 2015 and the remaining personnel by 2020. Like all other parts of the public sector, defence is looking hard at its land holdings to ensure that we are using them as efficiently as possible. We have the cancellation of Nimrod, a rationalised fast-jet fleet, the return of large numbers of personnel from Germany, and a requirement to realise better value for money and efficiencies through broader estate rationalisation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Elizabeth Truss Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Peter Luff]

The investigation into the issue notified by the preferred bidder is ongoing. Until the issue has been properly considered it is not possible to progress to procurement. I hope that it will be possible to make a further statement to the House on the way forward. No decision has yet been taken on this matter and, in view of the issues involved, there is nothing more I can say at this stage to the House.

[Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)]

10. What estimate he has made of the cost to the public purse of relocating Tornado maintenance facilities away from RAF Marham.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Nick Harvey)]

As I said in answer to my hon. Friend on 8 November, all relevant costs, including those arising from any necessary relocations, will be given full consideration prior to any decision being taken. However, because the facilities she refers to are a major infrastructure installation, operated by contractors, it would inevitably be expensive to relocate.

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank the Minister for his answer. In Thursday’s The Press and Journal he is quoted as saying:

“The costs of relocating out of Marham would be very high”.

He also described the economics of making that decision as being “not…clever”. When is he going to present a full analysis? Given the state of the deficit, does he agree that cost should be a major factor in making the decision?

[Nick Harvey]

Let me make it clear to the House that the primary consideration in the basing study will be the military advantages and the military necessity of locating particular things in particular places. We will, of course, have to take account of the financial climate in which these decisions are being made and their socio-economic impact. We are addressing all these things and hope to make a full announcement in the spring.

Armed Forces Bill

Elizabeth Truss Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

I declare an interest as a serving member of the reserve forces. Unlike my smart friends who were in the Chamber earlier, my hon. Friends the Members for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) and for Milton Keynes North (Mark Lancaster), I am a private soldier, not an officer. I had the honour and privilege of taking part in Operation Herrick 9 in Afghanistan with 3 Commando Brigade as a gunner in the ranks and enjoyed it very much, so I suppose that gives me a different perspective. Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North, who said he was not going to be partisan, I am, so I hope that anybody reading Hansard tomorrow will see that my speech was not delivered by an officer and understand where I sit on the political spectrum.

Today’s debate on the Second Reading of the Armed Forces Bill is most welcome. Since the first few weeks of the coalition, the Government have put the welfare of our nation’s servicemen and women at the top of the political agenda and moved swiftly to ensure that any lapses in the commitment between the Government and our armed forces are rectified.

[Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)]

I am concerned that the result of the strategic defence review and the basing decisions now being taken might have caused some uncertainty—I am thinking of RAF Marham in my constituency. What is my hon. Friend’s view on how to maintain the military covenant in these difficult times?

[Jack Lopresti]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. We Members have a responsibility to ensure that, when there are issues in our own constituencies, we bring them to the House, question Ministers and raise them in debates, so that it is on the public record that we are doing our utmost the protect the interests of service people in our constituencies.

I shall focus my contribution, as others Members have, on clause 2, which I very much welcome. It ensures that provision is made to place a statutory duty on the Secretary of State to report annually to Parliament on the effects of service in our armed forces and on the welfare of serving and former members of the armed forces and that of their families. That provision will ensure that the military covenant, which the Government are rebuilding, will be advanced year on year.

We ask our armed forces personnel on operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere to face paying the ultimate price for the protection of our country, its citizens and our freedoms and way of life. We should do that only if they are properly equipped for the task, if they are trained to the highest possible level and if they and their families are provided for when they retire, or are wounded or killed, in recognition and admiration of the sacrifices that they have made.

The unwritten contract between the state and the men and women whom we ask to defend it is rightly a long-standing tradition. In the dangerous, unstable world that we face today, and in the ongoing war on terror, its continuation and development is more important than ever before. Disappointingly, the previous Administration reneged on the covenant. They did not adequately equip our troops for the most hostile of conflicts, they neglected the welfare of our service families, our injured personnel and our veterans, and they left a £38 billion hole in the Ministry of Defence budget at a time of war.

RAF Marham

Elizabeth Truss Excerpts

Thursday 11th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)]

I am delighted to have secured this Adjournment debate today on an issue that is critical not only for my constituents but for Norfolk as a whole and, more broadly, for East Anglia. There has been a lot of talk over the past few weeks about the future basing of the Tornado aircraft. These discussions have involved high politics, not least because we are in the run-up to the Scottish elections. I want to talk today about how the decision ought to be based on military and economic criteria, taking into account issues such as employment and deprivation. We cannot allow this debate to be dominated by politics. On this day of all days, as we pay tribute to our brave service personnel, it is important that their needs should be taken into account.

RAF Marham was established in 1916 to defend us against the German zeppelins. Its personnel fought in the first world war, the second world war and, more recently, in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is a great deal of anxiety about their future among the personnel at the base, some of whom have recently returned from Afghanistan.

[Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)]

I had the privilege of visiting RAF Marham recently as part of the all-party parliamentary armed forces scheme, and of meeting members of the Tornado squadron there. That squadron has been in combat for almost six years solid, and it makes a big contribution to our activities in Afghanistan. Does the hon. Lady agree that it is up to us to support it by giving it some stability?

[Elizabeth Truss]

That is exactly how I feel. The 2 Squadron recently returned to a heroes welcome in Swaffham, and I know how important it is for the local community and for those people who are based at RAF Marham that this decision be taken properly and rationally. We cannot play politics with people’s jobs and with our nation’s defences.

Among the key features of RAF Marham are the engineering and maintenance facilities based there. There is a high level of expertise, on the industry side and on the military side, which has taken years to develop. Indeed, there were previously eight separate locations for the maintenance and engineering facilities, but they have been consolidated at RAF Marham. I understand that those facilities are one third more efficient than their US counterparts in manpower terms. Over the years, they have saved billions of pounds for the Exchequer. To move those facilities elsewhere would cost at least £50 million, simply because of the levels of hardware and personnel involved.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

My hon. Friend visited RAF Marham with me earlier this year. Will she reflect on what we were told by BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce engineers about the specialist layout for depth maintenance at Marham, which cannot be replicated elsewhere because of the size of the facilities?

--- Later in debate ---

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend has made a good point about the facilities, but I am thinking not only about the facilities but about the staff. I fear that, at a time when we are involved in a conflict in Afghanistan, moving the skills base—as well as the physical presence to which my hon. Friend has referred—would be dangerous and costly, and I do not think that we can afford to do it.

RAF Marham has built up a tremendous skills base locally. Unfortunately, the area suffers from relatively high unemployment and deprivation, and the skills and jobs at RAF Marham are very important to local people. I recently visited Hamond’s high school, where many young people told me of their aspirations to join the Royal Air Force and become engineers. It would be disastrous to remove such a source of aspiration for young people from that area at this time. Many young people take up apprenticeships at RAF Marham, and it has built up tremendous support in the community.

I am very pleased that so many of my hon. Friends from Norfolk, East Anglia and elsewhere are in the Chamber. All nine Norfolk Members of Parliament—and let me point out to the Minister that they are all flying the coalition colours—have backed RAF Marham, because they know how important it is to the Norfolk economy. All eight councils in Norfolk, controlled by all three major parties, have also come out in support of RAF Marham as part of our “Make it Marham” campaign. I believe that in due course a petition will be presented to the Secretary of State and at No. 10 Downing street. That is not to mention the town mayors and the local businesses, which will be affected by any change.

There is a huge degree of local support for RAF Marham, and a huge amount of local pride has been invested in it. However, it is not just a question of the support that it commands locally. There is also the military presence that it affords, and the location that it provides for the conflict in which we are engaged in Afghanistan. It is possible to fly from RAF Marham to our forward operating base in Cyprus without the need for in-flight refuelling. That does not apply to other air force bases, and I think it is an important factor. RAF Marham is also well located for our United States allies in Lakenheath and Mildenhall.

RAF Marham has the RAPTOR—Reconnaissance Airborne Pod for Tornado—system, which my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) and I saw during our visit, and also a tactical imagery intelligence wing, which produces high-quality images that are used not only by our service personnel but by our key allies. A large amount of important equipment and military intelligence is collected there. During the current conflict, we hear a great deal about the ground forces but slightly less about the role of the Tornado, because it is rather more secret and not open to public view in the same way. As was said earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths), we ought to support what those people are doing.

[Mr Keith Simpson (Broadland) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her hard work in support of RAF Marham, which affects a number of our hon. Friends. If RAF Marham were to close completely, only one Ministry of Defence base would remain in Norfolk—at Swanton Morley, a former RAF base that is now the base of the Light Dragoons. There is a lot of concern in Norfolk. RAF Coltishall, part of which is in my constituency, closed six years ago, but 80% of the base—now owned by the Ministry of Justice—has still not been taken over. The fear has always been that RAF Marham would be left on its own. Perhaps the Minister will tell us whether, if either RAF Lossiemouth or RAF Marham lost the RAF operational element, any of the military units from the United Kingdom support division would go into whichever base was closed.

[Elizabeth Truss]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend about the detrimental effect of the closures that we have already seen in Norfolk and East Anglia. I should like the Minister to consider the future of RAF Marham when the Tornado is retired. My understanding of the 2005 report on the joint strike fighter is that RAF Marham was considered a suitable option for the JSF. As the equipment is modified and—I am given to understand—the noise levels would be lower, it might be a potential future location, so we could continue building on our excellent engineering and maintenance facilities.

[Mr Bacon]

On my hon. Friend’s point about the JSF, because Marham has an extra-long runway it could be used by a wide variety of aircraft, not just the JSF. Also, when we were there, we saw an enormous amount of expensive work, paid for with taxpayers’ money, being done to refurbish the runway.

[Elizabeth Truss]

That is right, and my hon. Friend makes a very good point about the amount of taxpayers’ money that has already been invested. I agree that that would be wasted if we were to give up on even an alternative Ministry of Defence use for Marham, which is so specialist in the RAF. That is an extremely important point.

We have had a long discussion about the economic and military value of RAF Marham, and I thank my colleagues for their interventions, but I also want to talk about its economic value locally and the key factors for west Norfolk, about which I know my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham), who is present today, is also well aware.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate on this of all days. I have absolutely no axe to grind as I live some distance from Norfolk and represent a constituency that is a great distance away. I also congratulate the hon. Lady on her delicate approach to this issue, but does she agree that it is crucial in the review that community is not set against community and that the MOD makes decisions on their merits? It is important that all communities behave in as dignified a way as the hon. Lady has this evening.

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments, and I think that is absolutely right. No MP wants to see the source of much local employment and pride in their constituency closed down. I fully appreciate that, and I know that Opposition Members are genuine in the case they might make for the base in their constituency. However, I want to make the case today that RAF Marham is located in an area with particularly high unemployment and deprivation, and I will draw the comparison with Lossiemouth. The unemployment rate in the west Norfolk borough is 7.4%, whereas in Moray in Scotland it is 4.8%, so west Norfolk has significantly higher deprivation. We should also look at the skills levels: 15% of the population in west Norfolk do not have any qualifications, compared with 9.6% in Moray.

[Thomas Docherty]

rose—

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am sorry, but I will not give way again, as I have already taken a number of interventions.

There is also a higher proportion of children on free school meals in west Norfolk. I say that not to denigrate other bases, because I accept that no MP wants bases closing in their area, but to make the point to the Minister that west Norfolk has relatively high unemployment and deprivation, and that ought to be taken into account. I should also point out that more people are employed at RAF Marham than at Lossiemouth and Kinloss combined. More than 5,000 people are employed at RAF Marham, as against 2,300 at Lossiemouth and 1,800 at Kinloss. Those statistics also need to be taken into account when the decision is made.

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point that all areas are suffering from their own difficulties, but it would be wrong for those very high levels of unemployment and deprivation not to be taken into account in the national debate just because some parts of the country shout louder than others. That is a concern to me, because it is very important that this decision is made on proper grounds—military grounds, economic grounds and the grounds of the public purse. This should not be about politics trumping economics; it should be about a secure skills base for communities—in my case, in west Norfolk—and a secure military future for our country, and in this instance not just for the Tornado force, but for the JSF moving into the future.