A Better Defence Estate Strategy

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Sir Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) on securing the debate and on her excellent speech. Let me be clear: I agree with the principle of what the Government are trying to do. We have to take some painful decisions and some of those decisions will inevitably have effects on individual constituencies that some of us will not like. However, I share the concerns of a number of other speakers that we are in danger of losing our national footprint.

I should like to introduce two specifically defence elements into the equation. First, spousal employment continually comes up in the top three reasons for leaving the armed forces. The second factor is local house prices. I do not support the idea of an allowance to replace service family accommodation, but I do support aspirations for more members of the armed forces to have the opportunity to buy housing.

In terms of those two factors, if we look at the footprint of what is proposed, we find all too often that the bases under threat are places where there is plenty of spousal employment and plenty of affordable housing—Canterbury in my constituency, which closed recently, Maidstone in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald, Chester, Ripon and so on. The expansion is increasingly taking place in places such as Catterick, completely isolated and in the middle of nowhere, or in areas such as the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth), where housing is desperately expensive. That cannot be retention-positive. It is not fair to ask my hon. Friend the Minister to take account of wider community issues beyond a certain point, but those points are critical for the future manning of the armed forces.

I echo a point made by the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry). I happen to know Redford barracks quite well. When I had some responsibilities for Scotland, I visited it a couple of times. It is a prime historic military site on the edge of Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Unlike the hon. and learned Lady, I am a passionate Unionist. That site should be one that we make more of, as we get rid of some of the frankly uneconomic and unmanageable garrisons in the edges of Scotland. I know Fort George and the rest are unhappy, but I support those closures. Redford should be a place we concentrate on. I am not going to ask my hon. Friend the Minister for the figure because that will be commercially confidential, but I will ask him to write to me to reassure me that the estimate for the value of Redford barracks in his considerations takes account of the fact that it is listed and, as such, is of very little value to a developer. I understand that even the outbuildings are listed.

That point is paralleled all over the country. To take the point through, there is the alternative of moving more units to Leuchars, which is a very nice base—my son happens to be serving there. Unfortunately, the local community is not large enough to provide spousal employment for a large expansion and, because it is right next to St Andrews, house prices are among the most expensive in Scotland.

My hon. Friend the Minister has to take difficult decisions. I am with him on the fact that difficult decisions have to be taken within our shrunken defence budget, which I, like others, would like be greater. However, in deciding where we focus the armed forces of the future, we must take account of the two key factors of spousal employment and house prices, and the overall footprint.