Defence Spending (Wales)

Huw Irranca-Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mrs James]

I agree, and I congratulate my hon. Friend on that; it is important that places such as RAF Valley continue to thrive and prosper. They add to the defence footprint in Wales and need to be enhanced.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend share my regret that over the past few months we seem to have lost cross-party consensus on protecting the interests of Wales, particularly in terms of defence? I pay tribute to the work of those hon. Members who, under the previous Government, fought to persuade military chiefs and the MOD that south Wales was worth investing in. That support has been lost, and it bodes badly for the future that there will be only one or two parties in Wales to speak up for the interests of Wales.

[Mrs James]

My hon. Friend is correct. I was part of that lobbying group, and we worked hard to demonstrate how we could provide a service that would have been world-beating, and that would help ensure the safety and future of our brave young men and women.

When I talk about those brave young men and women, I am thinking about people in my community. When we talk to families about how well their sons and daughters are doing, they tell me about the problems and challenges that they face as individuals and as part of the wider community. They are troubled about their future, and given that more than 60,000 people face losing their jobs, the decision on St Athan means that many people have little hope for the future. Those families deserve to be rewarded for the great contribution they have made.

The defence training academy is not only an economically sound investment, a socially beneficial plan and a strategically intelligent initiative, but fair. It is fair that a highly skilled work force should get the investment they deserve, and it is fair for our armed forces to be equipped with the best training and facilities possible.

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[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate, Mr Gray, and it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. As a member of the Defence Committee, although not a Welsh MP, I take a keen interest in these matters. As the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) will acknowledge, the Committee’s report pulled no punches when it came to reviewing the Government’s attitude to the strategic defence and security review, and in reporting its conclusions.

I agree with the concept of a defence training college. One of the critical challenges facing the armed forces is the need to avoid duplication and streamline training processes. When the Defence College of Electro-Mechanical Engineering—DCEME—was formed in April 2004, it brought together a number of separate service training organisations, all of which delivered different forms of engineering. The aim was to exploit synergies, improve training delivery and increase efficiency and effectiveness.

The notion of a defence training college is sound. There is a lot of training duplication across the three services, and anecdotally, there are many common factors to basic engineering training programmes, although that is not always acknowledged by the different services. It is clear that St Athan should play a key role in delivering a harmonised service.

In theory, a further rationalisation to one site could reduce costs and save money. That should bring areas of expertise and excellence together and lead to greater co-operation between the services. However, it is not clear whether the work has been done by the three services to align their training requirements. There are always good reasons to compromise, and different services have different needs. Such matters need to be ironed out, and we must be clear what we are aiming for in this investment.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I appreciate the fact that the hon. Gentleman is taking part in the debate. It is important to have members of the Defence Committee in the Chamber, because this discussion is not only about Wales but about what is best for the armed forces. I appreciate his train of logic, which steers us towards the rationale of having tri-service training on one site—we hope that it will be in Wales, but please let it be somewhere—for the good of the armed forces. However, the hon. Gentleman is approaching a compromise.

I do not want to digress from the subject of the debate, but when the decision was taken on Sheffield Forgemasters, there was an undertaking that discussions would continue. However, nothing has happened. We hear that the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) is delighted that discussions are continuing on this matter, but yet we have heard nothing. Will the hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen), or perhaps the Minister, illuminate us on what exactly the future holds for the tri-services and St Athan?

[John Glen]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I am confident that my hon. Friend the Minister will deal with that point; obviously, I am not in a position to verify it. However, I will point out that the defence academy at Shrivenham is a good example of successfully bringing together different service needs in delivering training. That defence academy has proved a resounding success. The majority of training there is postgraduate, with accredited civilian qualifications the result for many people.

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[John Glen]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I have a great deal of respect for her and her knowledge of this subject, but it was her party that was in government for several years and had an opportunity to bring this matter to a conclusion before the election. I wonder why it did not do so.

For me, the challenge remains the need to rationalise defence training and spending across the three services to the broadest possible extent. Let us consider leadership and management training. There are a huge number of locations throughout the UK. There are separate leadership schools and centres of excellence. There are vast numbers of adventure training establishments and music schools. I am frustrated that there is not enough clarity about taking the process that I have described to the furthest extent and perhaps giving greater scope for initiatives such as those that I am discussing.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[John Glen]

Yes, but this will be the last time; I have nearly finished my speech.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I worry that what we have here is a softening up. The hon. Gentleman serves on the Defence Committee. Surely he has the ear of the Minister and speaks to him in the corridors, as we try to do as well. Our suspicion is that discussions will continue about St Athan till the cows come home on the pastures of St Athan and that we are being softened up for the tri-service academy not going ahead in any shape or form that we recognise. It will be dispersed somewhere else in the UK or to various other sites in the UK. That is what the hon. Gentleman is hinting at.

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[Simon Hart]

Absolutely, Mr Gray. I apologise for coming—unnecessarily, as it turns out—to the defence of my colleague.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Simon Hart]

No, I want to make a wee bit of progress. Fun though these exchanges are, they will come to an end in the very near future.

The facts are these. As I said earlier, one of the depressing features of the Welsh Grand Committee—I will be reprimanded again in a minute—is the extraordinary denial about the past 13 years; it is as if they never existed. The truth is that Metrix simply could not deliver what we hoped on time or on price. If there is a difference between the previous and the current Governments, it is that the current Government are not prepared to go down the road of signing off, willy-nilly, contracts that we can justify neither financially nor in the context of defence.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I genuinely thank the hon. Gentleman for his clarity and honesty, because we are seeing a complete volte-face from the Conservative party’s position before the election, when there was cross-party sign-up and support for the Metrix bid and the MOD’s analysis of it. The hon. Gentleman has now made it clear that the bid did not stack up—not in terms of the MOD’s priorities, but in terms of spending, and that is a tragedy. We now know that if we argued for the Metrix bid for St Athan, we would not have the Conservative party’s support.

[Simon Hart]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman—I think he is right honourable—for his contribution.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I would like to be, but I am not right honourable yet.

[Simon Hart]

It is only a matter of time. Despite that, I do not agree with a word that the hon. Gentleman said. The Government faced some extremely difficult choices—hon. Members have heard that expression before—in the context of not only defence spending, but every other form of inward investment in Wales. The evidence speaks for itself, and the Minister will no doubt put us right. We should also not allow ourselves to be tempted into believing that this is somehow the end of the road for St Athan, because it has been made perfectly clear that it is not. However, we will hear more about that, and I do not want to steal the Minister’s thunder.

I said that this would be a brief contribution, although it has been slightly longer than I had intended. However, as an ex-serviceman on the very fringes of the military, I think it is simply nonsense to believe that decisions can be taken on the basis purely of local need or local economic considerations, rather than the nation’s overall defence needs in the overall context of the UK economy.