Carrier Strike Capability

Jim Murphy Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jim Murphy (East Renfrewshire) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. Let me start by saying again that when the Government do the right thing on defence they will have the support of Labour Members. In politics, however, one can often judge what a Government genuinely feel about their own policy not just by what they say but by when they say it. They have told the media that this is positive news and yet they announced it here in the Commons the very first day after the council election defeats. It must be the first ever example of a Government waiting until the polls close to announce good news.

It is worth reminding the Secretary of State how he got here. The Government were elected promising a bigger Army but are delivering the smallest Army since the Boer war, they have curtailed anti-piracy duties owing to Royal Navy cuts and the RAF has lost long-term surveillance capabilities. On the defence budget, decisions this Government have taken have increased costs. Changes to the Astute class submarines added a further £200 million and the carrier U-turn has cost up to £250 million. On top of that, they are failing on reform with the defence procurement plan delayed for two years. Last year, the largest defence programmes were delayed by a combined 30 months adding £500 million to their costs and while hundreds of defence workers across the country are losing their jobs the Government have no defence industrial strategy to speak of whatsoever.

The biggest blow to the Government’s defence credibility is this chaotic carrier programme. Standing at the Dispatch Box, the Prime Minister announced his plans to U-turn on Labour’s carrier strike policy, scrap the Harriers, sell Ark Royal, build two carriers but mothball one, sack trainee pilots and downgrade British sea power. But that U-turn has now come full circle. Nothing has been gained and two years have been wasted. In tough times, £250 million have been squandered while the forces are having their allowances cut. Harriers are being sold to the Americans for a fraction of their value, we are subject to international ridicule and there will be no jets on carriers for a decade. Mr Speaker, you do not have to be a military strategist to know what aircraft carriers are meant to carry—the clue is in the name.

The Government say their policy is cheaper, but it is more expensive. They said there would be interoperability with the French but their chosen jet cannot land on the French carrier. The Prime Minister personally derided a policy that he is now defending. The Government said that Britain did not need jump jets and Ministers scrapped the expertise needed to operate STOVL aircraft only now to decide to buy a new fleet of jump jets. We now need to retrain people and redevelop the skills that were so carelessly cast aside just two years ago. That is as incoherent as it is ludicrous.

The Secretary of State’s defence today is that the facts have changed, but that is not the full story. I know the advice that the Prime Minister received—that the defence review policy was high risk and high cost—but the Prime Minister overruled that. The Public Accounts Committee warned of rising costs, the National Audit Office said that the Government had an “immature understanding” of the costs, and the Select Committee on Defence warned against strategic shrinkage. The Prime Minister’s decisions have cost British time, British money, British talent and British prestige.

I know the Secretary of State always likes to blame someone else, and he has done that again today. He recently accused British families of causing the financial crash, but he cannot scapegoat the former Defence Secretary for this decision. He has to take some responsibility for the Prime Minister’s mistakes. The Secretary of State has carefully nurtured a reputation as a spreadsheet king who is most at home over his paperwork, so he needs to share some of it with us today. Will he publish a full breakdown of the costs of the plans being abandoned? Will he confirm that the cost of the U-turn is greater than the income from the sale of the Harrier jump jets? How many of the new aircraft does he plan to purchase? Will he confirm that Ministers were warned 18 months ago about the risks and costs inherent in this decision? If Britain will have two aircraft carriers, will the Royal Navy have to increase the number of its personnel? Finally, there is another question that the Secretary of State did not cover in his statement: what will now be the total cost of the carrier build programme?

In conclusion, the Secretary of State has said the Government will do the right thing when the facts have changed, but the previous Labour Government got things right whereas this Government’s policy has unravelled. In recent weeks we have seen incompetence piled upon political hubris. Only a Government who started a petrol crisis when trying to avoid one and whose idea of putting more police on the streets is having thousands demonstrating outside Parliament would have a policy of building two carriers, mothballing one immediately, selling the Harriers and having no planes to fly off aircraft carriers for a decade. Describing the Government’s defence strategy as an “omnishambles” would be a compliment. It is time the Prime Minister started to take responsibility. He should be at the Dispatch Box apologising for his and his Government’s incompetence.

[Mr Hammond]

Before the right hon. Gentleman climbs too far up his high horse, perhaps we should, to give a bit of context, remind ourselves of the role that his party played in the history of this project. It was Labour’s fiscal incontinence that created the black hole that we are trying to climb out of and Labour’s decisions that left us facing the challenges we faced at the time of the strategic defence and security review. It was Labour that ordered two 65,000 tonnes carriers, three times the size of a typical STOVL carrier, without cats and traps.

It was Labour who let the contracts on a sweetheart deal, which meant that cancelling the second carrier would have cost more than going ahead and building it. It was Labour who ordered the ships without having the money to pay for them, and then drove costs of £1.6 billion into the carrier programme by delaying the build to accommodate a £250 million cash-flow problem—a performance described by the Public Accounts Committee as setting

“a new benchmark in poor corporate decision making.”

Let me turn to the couple of specific questions buried at the end of the shadow Defence Secretary’s rant. He asked me about the timing of the statement. I have come to the House at the earliest possible date after the National Security Council took the decision to make the change. He said that £250 million has been squandered. I tell the House frankly that expenditure has been incurred in appraising the option of building a CV carrier and fitting it with cats and traps, but it has been nowhere near the £250 million that the right hon. Gentleman referred to. He asked me if I would publish details of the costs involved.

[Mr Murphy]

You don’t know.

[Mr Hammond]

The right hon. Gentleman says that I do not know. If he had ever been a Defence Minister, or inside the Ministry of Defence, he would understand why I do not know. These are complex contracts. I can give him an approximate idea. We think the cost of the design work that has been carried out and the appraisal work will be between £40 million and £50 million. There may also be some exit costs payable to the US contractors responsible for the EMAL system. We will be negotiating around those issues, and I give the right hon. Gentleman this commitment: once we have a definitive figure, I will make it available to the House.

The right hon. Gentleman said that we will have no jets on our carriers for a decade. I do not think he was listening to the statement. We will take delivery of the first test aircraft this year. We will receive the first STOVL variant aircraft in 2016 for operation off land. The carrier will go into sea trials in 2017 and, as soon as she has completed them in 2018, flights will begin from the deck of HMS Queen Elizabeth. It will take us two years to work up full military operational capability, but it is important that the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), who is shaking his head, understands what that means. It is the gap between getting from the point when we fly the jets off the carrier to the point when the military are satisfied that we have full operational capability.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about the number of aircraft that we will be purchasing. The plans for deployment of aircraft have not changed as a result of this announcement. We will routinely embark 12 aircraft and we will be able to surge that number to 36. On the purchasing of aircraft in the joint strike fighter programme, I can tell him that there is no requirement for us to go firm with numbers at this early stage of the programme. Where we can retain optionality, we will do so, as part of prudent budget management.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about risks and costs in this project and in the carrier variant project. We are talking about a project with a total cost of around £10 billion. It is hugely complex, probably the second largest industrial project under way in this country today. There will always be risks, and there will always be risks of cost escalation in such a project. The challenge is not to eliminate risks, but to manage them. That is what proper management of the Ministry of Defence is all about.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about the operation of two carriers. If at the next strategic defence and security review, the Government and the National Security Council take the decision to operate two carriers in order to give us continuous carrier availability, there will be an additional cost of about £60 million a year on average for additional crewing and maintenance to keep the two carriers in high readiness.