Graham P Jones
Main Page: Graham P Jones (Labour - Hyndburn)Department Debates - View all Graham P Jones's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(13 years ago)
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The Minister for the Armed Forces (Nick Harvey)
At the time of the SDSR, there were eight qualified Harrier pilots trained to operate off an aircraft carrier, only one of whom was trained to do so under night-flying conditions. The previous Government envisaged that the Harrier force would be worked up to support a small-scale contingent operation by the end of 2011. The Harrier force did not have the ability to have conducted both the Afghanistan and the Libya commitments at the same time. Indeed, my advice is that it would have taken 18 months to regenerate the Harrier force to support operations in Afghanistan alone.
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
In recent weeks, BAE Systems has made it absolutely clear that the reason that there are 3,000 job losses is the slow-down in the Eurofighter order. In the light of that, can the Secretary of State clarify the Chancellor’s comments to the House on 1 November? When asked about job losses by the hon. Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies), who is in his place, he replied that the job losses reflect the fact that
“the US defence budget had an impact on BAE Systems.”—[Official Report, 1 November 2011; Vol. 534, c. 758.]
Will the Secretary of State clarify which UK-US defence cuts the Chancellor was referring to?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Peter Luff)
The F-35 joint strike fighter slow-down.