Search and Rescue Service

Lord Beith Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this extremely important matter, which has exercised the House for some time. I have raised it on several occasions, and it is time that we looked in detail at what the future holds for the search and rescue service, on which we all depend.

The search and rescue service covers 1.25 million nautical miles of sea and 10,000 nautical miles of coastline, as well as the entire land area of the United Kingdom. It is a joint service, which is operated by the RAF, the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm and Her Majesty’s coastguard. It uses more than 40 helicopters from 12 bases around the UK.

HM coastguard uses Westland AW139s and Sikorsky S-92s, which are under contract to the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. The RAF and the Royal Navy use Sea Kings. The Sea King has four crew members—the pilot, the co-pilot, the winchman and the radar operator, who is also the winch operator. There are two versions of the Sea King: the Mk 3, which entered service in 1977, and the Mk 3A, which is slightly newer. The age of the aircraft has been causing significant technical problems, and they require constant maintenance to keep flying—a point to which I will return.

The RAF bases are RAF Boulmer, which is the headquarters of A flight and 202 Squadron; RAF Lossiemouth, on the Moray firth; RAF Valley in Anglesey, where Prince William is based; Leconfield, near Hull; Chivenor, in Devon; and Wattisham, in Suffolk. The Royal Navy bases are Culdrose in Cornwall and Prestwick in the west of Scotland. HM coastguard operates from Lee on Solent, Portland, Stornoway and Sumburgh in the Shetland islands.

The RAF has just celebrated 70 years of involvement in the search and rescue service. It has 16 Sea King Mk 3 and 3A helicopters in service, which are divided between 22 Squadron and 202 Squadron. Each squadron maintains a 15-minute readiness state during daylight hours and a 45-minute readiness state during the hours of darkness. 22 Squadron operates out of Chivenor, Wattisham and Valley, while 202 Squadron operates out of Boulmer, Lossiemouth and Leconfield. The training unit operates out of RAF Valley with three Griffin HT1 helicopters.

In Boulmer, which is in my constituency, the RAF search and rescue service is a source of enormous local pride and satisfaction. It is hugely respected and very involved in the local community, and the RAF helicopter is often to be seen not only engaged in operations or training, but supporting local community events. That, of course, is good public relations for the RAF and adds to its excellent reputation in my area. Indeed, such activities are such a prominent feature of the RAF’s work that they tend to distract attention from the fact that the vast majority of the work done at RAF Boulmer is in the very different field of monitoring and guarding our skies and training people. None the less, it is the familiar yellow helicopters going about their rescue and training work that enjoy the greatest and most immediate public awareness.

Under the previous Labour Government, a private finance initiative contract proposal was developed under the name of search and rescue harmonisation. Commonality of function between the MCA and Ministry of Defence helicopter forces, and similar time frames for the potential introduction of new aircraft fleets, led Ministers in the MOD and the Department for Transport in May 2006 to announce a cross-Government approach to the acquisition of a harmonised UK SAR helicopter service. A joint project team from the two Departments was tasked with running the project, which was essentially a Labour privatisation project. I say that not as a criticism, but simply to set out the context, because if this Government contemplate privatising anything, the Opposition tend to say that they would never consider such a thing. However, the previous Government did devise a privatisation project, and that was because they thought that such a project was essential to ensure that new helicopters could be provided relatively quickly to replace the Sea Kings. The total project contracts were worth £6 billion.

During discussions on the project, a number of concerns arose and were subject to quite a lot of public discussion. What aircraft would be used to replace the Sea King? How long would it take to get them into service? Which personnel would be required to operate the new service? Would they be drawn from the military, civilian life or a mixture of the two? If there were to be a mixture of military and civilian personnel, how would that work in practice, given that the civilians would be covered by the European working time directive, while the military personnel would not? That has already caused issues at the coastguard-operated bases in the Hebrides and the Shetlands. Consideration would also need to be given to the equalisation of pay and other conditions.

What training would air crew receive? At the moment, there is a fairly heavy dependence on experienced personnel with RAF training moving into other areas of search and rescue and other helicopter services. Of course, it is true that RAF training is heavily drawn on in aviation more widely. Furthermore, what arrangements would be provided for SAR cover in the Falkland islands under the SAR helicopter scheme? SAR in the south Atlantic is currently provided by the RAF, using the same crews who man our stations in the UK. That is done on a six to seven-week rolling rotation, with two crews of four personnel based in the Falklands at any one time. A normal feature of a career spent in a search and rescue aircrew will therefore be time spent in the Falklands.

Where do the prospects of a new helicopter with faster flying speeds and a longer range leave the existing basing pattern? What changes would be feasible under SAR? Linked to that, would 24-hour cover be provided by each base? An early answer to that question made it clear that there were proposals to reduce the cover at a number of bases to 12 hours, after which time the area for which the base was responsible would be covered by the base in the adjoining area. That raised great concern. In the Lake district, for example, rescue operations are often mounted by the RAF Boulmer helicopter, and there was particular concern that the area could not easily be served from other bases. Those bases would, like Boulmer, have extensive responsibilities for the North sea and the east coast, and their helicopters could easily be on a rescue operation and be unable to respond. Bases would be covering two huge areas—their own area and the neighbouring area—so there was a lot of concern about the idea of 12-hour operation. Following a number of meetings with Ministers and others, it was decided that RAF Boulmer would continue to provide 24-hour cover, at least until new helicopters with greater range and the ability to reach other areas at greater speed were introduced.

In the course of the project, bidders were identified, although some did not stay the course until the end. On 9 February 2010, the Soteria consortium was identified as the preferred bidder. The consortium was made up of CHC Helicopter, which is the largest global supplier of civilian helicopter services and the current provider of the MCA’s interim SAR service; the Royal Bank of Scotland, as a PFI equity investor; Thales UK, the well known defence contractor, which has been involved in a number of PFI and partnership projects; and Sikorsky, which has long experience in the design and manufacture of military and commercial helicopters.

The consortium proposed a fleet of 24 Sikorsky S-92 aircraft, with a top speed of 190 mph and a cruising speed of 167 mph. The S-92 would have been fitted with an internal fuel tank, increasing the aircraft’s flying radius to 310 statute miles. The aircraft would also have been fitted with the latest high-speed twin hoist, providing for the possibility of single-hoist failure. It would also have had a 300-foot hoist cable and a lift capacity of up to 600 lb at 350 feet per minute. It is hard to envisage being raised on a winch at 350 feet per minute, but such things are necessary in certain situations—for example, on the moving deck of a ship in rough seas. The aircraft cabin would be fitted out to allow paramedic medical care to be administered to a casualty. The ramp at the rear of the aircraft would provide access for loading and unloading stretchers, incubators and medical equipment and access for rescue teams and their equipment. The other major bidding consortium went under the name of AirKnight, but two further consortia pulled out at a relatively early stage in the process.

At some stage—I must confess I now forget when it was—responsibility for the future operation was transferred from the Ministry of Defence to the Department for Transport, which is why the Minister with whom I deal with all sorts of other transport issues is replying to the debate. All that I have described of course preceded the dramatic events of the suspension of the SAR-H scheme and its subsequent abandonment. The first stage of that was just part of the process of the incoming Government reviewing the spending commitments left to them by the previous Government. In June the Chief Secretary to the Treasury announced that the Government had identified several projects, some of which were dropped, while others were to be reviewed. SAR was one of the reviewed projects.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

I understand that on average over the past five years there have been between 80 and 120 mountain rescues in the United Kingdom. Does the right hon. Gentleman think that such rescues could adequately be carried out using non-military personnel and equipment, in a way similar to what happens in France and the United States; or should they remain in the hands of the military?

[Sir Alan Beith]

Some of the rescues are done in that way even now. Not all SAR services are provided by military crew, but a high degree of training is required, and there must be consistent co-operation with local organisations such as mountain rescue teams. That depends on consistent good working relations. The military operators such as RAF Boulmer and 202 Squadron have done that particularly well. In general I think that most people feel more confidence about military crew, because they know the high standards of training that are involved. However, it is quite an expensive way to provide the service, and other options probably should be considered. Some of the training and experience that the military has, and some of its operational practices, would need to be transferred if there were any wider civilianisation of the service. The hon. Gentleman is right to raise that as a matter of concern.

The review announced by the Chief Secretary was about cost-effectiveness, against the background of a huge deficiency in defence capital programme funding. It was not about the issues that finally brought down the contract. Indeed, Ministers were on the point of announcing the final decision on the contract. Various other things had been going on, however. There were rumours that as part of the comprehensive spending review the Government had proposed that the project should be rewritten, so that an entirely civilian work force would operate the service, rather than a mixture of civilian and military personnel. Of course, if the Government had done that, it would have created a big saving, because it would have taken about 66 higher-paid military personnel out of the project, and probably created up to an additional £100 million over the lifetime of the project in personnel costs for the contractor. It also sidestepped the problem of some personnel being subject to European working time directive rules, while others were not. That issue was rumbling in the background.

On 16 December a dramatic announcement was made—I think that it was the very day on which we were to have heard the final decision about the contractor. The Secretary of State for Defence announced that information had come to light about the preferred bid in the search and rescue competition, which required clarification. The preferred bidder had informed the Government of irregularities in the conduct of the bid team, which had only recently come to light. The irregularities included access by one of the consortium members, CHC Helicopter, to commercially sensitive information about the joint Ministry of Defence and Department for Transport project team’s evaluations of industry bids, and evidence that a former member of that project team had assisted the consortium in its bid preparation, contrary to explicit assurances given to the project team at the time.

I believe that a considerable time previously a letter went to the Ministry of Defence warning it of potential irregularities of that nature. One of the matters that I hope is being investigated is why that warning was not heeded. Of course many other matters are being investigated as well, not just by the Ministry of Defence but by the police. A former member of the MOD team, subsequently employed in the industry, is, I believe, the subject of investigation. I do not know to what extent others are as well.

On that basis, we were told that

“the Government have sufficient information to enable them to conclude that the irregularities that have been identified were such that it would not be appropriate to proceed with either the preferred bid or with the current procurement process.”

The statement continued:

“The Department for Transport and the Ministry of Defence will now consider the potential procurement options to meet future requirements for search and rescue helicopters in the United Kingdom, including options to maintain continuity of search and rescue helicopter cover until new longer-term arrangements can be put in place.

We will make a further announcement once a way forward has been agreed.”—[Official Report, 10 February 2011; Vol. 523, c. 17WS.]

That brings me to the focus of today’s debate, which is what progress has been made in reaching those decisions and when we are likely to get a proper announcement about it. Other factors could be at work. There is the potential for legal action involving contractors. An unsuccessful contractor might want to pursue the successful one over bid costs incurred. There might be legal action between the Government and a contractor. The Minister may be inhibited in what he can say about that, but it could be going on at the same time.

What will happen next? The Sea Kings were due to be withdrawn by 2016 or 2017. They are ageing and they continue to need substantial levels of maintenance to keep them operating. Those of us who keep in close touch with the search and rescue service know that there are many occasions when the Sea Kings are not available to fly. I have seen that for myself. I was flying in a Sea King that returned to base because the radio system failed. The other aircraft was on land having returned from necessary maintenance work, and was not yet tested and available to take over. At that point therefore neither was available. There have been moments when no helicopter has been available at Leconfield, Lossiemouth or Boulmer at the same time. That clearly is a situation we cannot allow to continue.

[Mr David Laws (Yeovil) (LD)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing an extremely important debate. I urge him to keep an open mind about whether a life extension to Sea King could be a short and medium-term option. Is he aware that in the United States, Germany and India the Sea King fleets, which are all older than ours, are having their lives extended, and that on the whole Sea King availability recently has been quite good?

[Sir Alan Beith]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend who, from his constituency, knows well the work of Westland in that area. I have an open mind about whether a major refit of at least some of the Sea Kings could be carried out. It is one of the options to be considered. However, we cannot simply go on as we are with relatively short-term maintenance of the Sea Kings.

The personnel who work in search and rescue with the RAF and the Royal Navy are also in limbo. That is also true of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency personnel, although they already have a contract; but it expires within the year, I think, so they too are in a state of uncertainty. The Government need to get a grip on the situation and some people need to know pretty soon, for their careers, what will happen. Are they likely to have a future in search and rescue, whether on the military side or as contractors’ employees? What will happen?

We also need to bear in mind some of the warnings given during the contract process. My right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), to whom I am sure the Minister will want to listen, as he is now the Government Deputy Chief Whip, said in February 2010:

“It is essential that this contract…is better negotiated and has fewer loopholes than the interim contract we had for the last few years”—

the MCA contract. He said that the contract must protect against situations like the one that arose in 2008. The back-up helicopter based at Sumburgh was off-station for a whole week, but the Department for Transport and the MCA were powerless to do anything about it. He also wanted to see the new service rooted properly in the communities that it serves rather than being dependent on a stream of temporary pilots and support officers constantly being shipped in and out.

What are the options? What are the Government considering? First are the short-term immediate continuity arrangements. The RAF will carry on, as it always does. It has the resilience and determination to cope in situations, whether created by Governments or world events, that would challenge many other organisations, and I have every confidence in its ability to do so. However, we need answers on how long it will be before a new scheme replaces the present arrangements. Personnel have careers to plan, and MCA helicopters are contracted only until next year. As I said earlier, the Sea Kings are now extremely difficult to keep airworthy. How long will this situation continue? What level of refit of the Sea King is possible? Would a major upgrade of the Sea King be a short-term option, or would it be too expensive? Should it therefore be considered as a longer-term measure?

What is being considered in the longer term? There are obviously several options. One is to retender a version of the contract. The Government clearly ruled out retendering the contract in its present form when they made their announcement, so they have obviously given it some consideration. There are several reasons why retendering is not the answer. There were too many flaws in the original contract, some of which I referred to earlier; once it became impossible to continue it, the questions that had arisen while it was being considered then needed to be considered again. At that stage in the contract process, it may have been too late to resolve those questions, but when the matter was reopened they needed to be reconsidered.

Another reason why it would have been difficult to retender was that experience has shown that the procurement process is not up to the job. To go back to the same process and risk another failure was not something that the Government could properly have done. We have seen many other weaknesses in the defence procurement process, which has led many to lack confidence in it.

In some respects the previous contract was not cost-effective, which is why it was under review. The reason why the Government did not stop it as a result of the Chief Secretary’s review, but were about to announce that it would go ahead, was that the contract had gone too far to be stopped and the gap would be undesirably long if the process had to be started again. However, events have now forced us into that very gap. The Government concluded during the cost review that it would be unwise to have such a gap, but they now have one. That puts a particular responsibility on Ministers to tell us how they intend to deal with a situation that they felt obliged to avoid until dropping the contract became inevitable because of the irregularities that were found. Simply retendering does not seem to be a proper option.

Another alternative would be to lease helicopters for use by existing RAF, Royal Navy and MCA-based crews. There are various options, but even in the short term it may be necessary to have short leasing contracts. What else is the MCA to do when its existing contract expires? What can the RAF do if it is found that a major refit of the Sea Kings will be too expensive to be considered as a short-term measure? Will aircraft have to be leased? The option of leasing of helicopters is clearly on the table, but will there be a new form of contract, involving both leasing aircraft and crew, with some of the features of the previous contract but rather better developed?

There is significant private sector interest in providing helicopters to the oil industry, the police and other services where they are essential. The market is not devoid of other operators, but as we heard earlier, the service requires a particularly high level of skill and training and it has to serve a wide range of functions. Rescues take place at sea, in dangerous coastal areas, in mountains, in fog—conditions that would defy many traditional commercial operators. It would be a pretty demanding contract, and the public are entitled to know that it will be carried out by people with the skills and equipment to do so.

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this debate. The Government have inherited a difficult situation, and I agree with what he says about the importance of introducing some certainty.

Many people in my constituency work at RNAS Culdrose, which plays an important role in our community. We are proud of its role in search and rescue, as it works closely with Falmouth coastguard. The Sea King helicopters provide what I would call a more inshore rescue service, but does my right hon. Friend agree that we must not lose sight of the important role of the Nimrod, and the necessity to have some replacement for the much more distant sea rescues, which are also part of the search and rescue service?

[Sir Alan Beith]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for those comments. She obviously has similar experiences to mine in working with the RAF locally and being very aware that its work is respected by the community.

My hon. Friend spoke also about the Nimrod. That is a big problem for the Ministry of Defence, and it illustrates similarities to the subject of our debate, not least because it has been dragging on for a long time and we still do not have a proper solution. However, it is probably beyond the scope of today’s debate—and, I believe, beyond the responsibilities of the Minister answering it—but my hon. Friend was right to flag it up.

Much has been said in public recently about the relationship between the RAF and the coastguard. I simply make this comment. If its relationship with the coastguard were dependent on where the major control centres were situated, we would have got into difficulties years ago, when our major control centre moved from Tynemouth to Humberside. What makes the relationship work well is not only that the control centres operate efficiently, as they should, but that the RAF develops good close personal relationships with the coastguards—mostly volunteers in coastal communities up and down our coastline—as it does also with the lifeboat service. The building of those relationships, and therefore the desirability of having crew in place for reasonable periods, is essential to the success of the service.

I emphasise a few more points that I believe the Minister needs to consider. What about 24-hour cover? It raised great concern when the idea that two or even three search and rescue areas—a single area is huge—could be treated as one for 12 hours of the 24 became part of the proposal, and even more concern when it was suggested that it could be done with existing aircraft before the new contract came into being.

That concern remains. People want to know that there is 24-hour cover on no larger a scale than the existing areas, because if a neighbouring area is already on operational duty and carrying out a rescue, there will be no search and rescue helicopter within a reasonably manageable distance for 24 hours of the day. We need an answer on that. We also need clarification on what is going to happen to the Falklands support operation if the RAF is no longer to be involved in SAR there. We need to know about the potential impact of legal action, and whether it is likely to cause delay to the key decisions that are now being taken. I hope not.

Overall, it is an awful business. We will know fully when the investigations are completed, but it approaches what we could call a scandal. Courageous and skilled aircrew have been let down by the inadequacy of the Ministry of Defence procurement process and the way in which it was carried out. The challenge for the Department for Transport is to carry out the task rather better than the MOD, which has conspicuously failed. The time scale now is short and demanding. Can the Department do it? How will it do it, and what assurances can the Minister give to those employed in, or dependent on, search and rescue that they will have satisfactory continuity arrangements over a reasonably short time and that a new system will be put in place in which the public can have confidence?

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

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[Mike Penning]

The shadow Minister is very knowledgeable in this area because he was around in the Department at the time, so I pay tribute to his knowledge of the problems that occurred during the consultation. It will always be difficult, because some of the stations are operational and so an operational capacity need has to be addressed as well as the secondary use, which is the air-sea rescue.

[Sir Alan Beith]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mike Penning]

If my right hon. Friend will bear with me, I want to answer on this point and will then gladly give way—we have plenty of time, to say the least.

The procurement will now be Department for Transport led, with MOD involvement. I say this in the presence of listening ears from the MOD: we certainly will be as open and honest as we can, and will provide as much access as possible both to colleagues throughout the House, and to local communities, because it is important that they feel part of what is going on. We are all about trying to do the right thing and developing a service that we can all be continually proud of—we are very proud of the current service, but we know that there are issues. I assure Members that we will do as much as possible as we lead on this in the new procurement programme, which is why I say that we have a plain piece of paper. We can learn from mistakes and from a lot of the issues that the shadow Minister has mentioned, but we will not necessarily take on everything. We have a blank piece of paper, and can ask, “What’s best for us?”

[Sir Alan Beith]

It would be helpful to know what machinery has been set up to make the decision, or to prepare the ground for Ministers ultimately making it. That cannot be a state secret. Is there a joint project board between the two Departments, or a working party? What stage is it at, and what mechanisms are in place for making this important proposal?

[Mike Penning]

As my right hon. Friend will realise, we are at a very early stage, not least because there are legal issues—he mentioned them in his speech—which are very difficult and technical. The police are fully involved and there is a full inquiry going on, so I am very restricted in how far I can go down that line. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that others may decide to take action in the civil courts, and it is entirely down to them to decide that. We have to ensure that the existing contract is not affected in any shape or form by the private finance initiative contract. It is completely separate, but it has been lumped in with the existing one, certainly in the media. That contract is close to its end time, and we have to negotiate best value for the taxpayer as well as ensuring that we have the service provision. At this stage, I am not in a position to say, “This is the mechanism that we’re going to go forward with,” but we will announce it as soon as possible. This will be led by the Department for Transport, and that decision has been made.

[Mike Penning]

The PFI contract went way beyond the existing spending review period, and so we do not know how quickly we can get this going. It is crucial that we get it right, so that we do not get anywhere near this position ever again. The PFI was signed off for this spending review period, but it went way beyond it, as I am sure my right hon. Friend is aware. The key is that the interim measures, which must be in place, are what it says on the tin—“interim”—and that we then have a proper contract. We have not just gone to another re-bid, we have said, “Whoa, let’s look at this another way.” That will take longer than if we just said, “Okay, there’s a few mistakes here. Someone’s been naughty, and we’ll do it this way.” That would be the quick option, but it is right to say, “Let’s put this completely on hold and look fundamentally at the contract.”

[Mr Joe Benton in the Chair]

[Sir Alan Beith]

I would like to press the Minister a little further. It would be helpful to know whether there is one process, or two separate processes, with a team of people from the two Departments assessing the viability of the existing arrangements and what has to be done to keep them going for the time being, and a separate team considering the future options.

[Mike Penning]

There are two separate processes, which is why, when I began my speech, I stated that there is what we need to do now and what we need to do in the future. I have just been passed a note with some information that I did not know, which is that the Secretary of State for Defence has already been in contact with AgustaWestland—last month—to see if we could engage with the company to consider how to extend the life of the Sea Kings beyond 2016. That is because of the interim short-term situation, and how we go forward. It was mentioned earlier that perhaps the most cost-effective way of doing that would be a major refit, taking us a long way forward, or we could do a shorter-term refit. Two separate projects have to take place, although I am not saying that the same people will or will not be on the working groups. The key is to get on with this now, so that we have the provision in place and can then go forward.

As to when the announcement was made and the reason why it was not made to the House first, it was, obviously a significant market announcement, which is why it had to be made to the stock exchange at 7 am. I am always passionate in the belief that things should be announced to the House, and I have done so myself on many occasions, but an announcement involving such a large private finance initiative had market significance, which is why it needed to be made, and was made, at 7 am.

I know the Falklands rather well. Sadly, several of my friends are there in war graves. Luckily or unluckily, when the Falklands war began, I was with the Grenadiers on spearhead, who were not deployed, but my friends in the Welsh and Scots Guards were. As my right hon. Friend knows, one of my closest friends is Simon Weston, who was disfigured and scarred while he was there and has done much work for charity since he came back. The Falklands is not affected by the PFI. The MOD will continue to provide air-sea rescue in the Falklands and will decide its future. It was never part of existing search and rescue helicopter procurement. There are still a lot of MOD and service personnel in the Falklands. I have flown in a Sea King down there in recent years, although not during my time in the armed forces.

We have mentioned the effects of service personnel and knowing what they are doing. Service personnel work on tours of duty. The original time scales involved in the PFI meant that they would have been beyond their tour of duty—the Prince would have been away from Wales, serving in whatever other duties Her Majesty had in mind for him—long before the changes took place. The MOD will, obviously, continue with its own tour of duty process. That is a matter for the MOD, not for me as a Transport Minister. As we enter the interim period with cover, I am sure that tours of duty will be addressed in many ways.

The hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley), who has left the Chamber, mentioned the interim contract for the coastguard. The existing MCA contract is not interim; civilians have been doing that work for many years. We need to find out what the interim contract is now, but the existing contracts are not interim. We can also learn a lot from the concerns about the MCA contract as we go forward. There are concerns involving the working time directive; I assure hon. Members that it is one of the pains of my life as a Minister. In the past couple of days, I signed off on a document exempting the military from certain things such as driving time, tachographs and so on. At the same time, the MOD manages brilliantly to provide cover within existing restraints. All of that will be part of the documents as we go forward with the concerns.

I do not want to pontificate for another half-hour, as there is not much more that I can say. We are conscious that there are concerns, and we as a Government are concerned. In a perfect world, this would never have happened. But we do not live in a perfect world and, sadly, an anomaly has occurred with the procurement programme that has created real concerns and legal ramifications. A huge amount of taxpayers’ money has been expended on the procurement programme, and we will be looking to recoup it, as it is not the fault of taxpayers or the Department for Transport. To be fair, the MOD, which was criticised earlier, could not have predicted that the persons involved would do what they did. I know that there are concerns about the MOD’s procurement programme—that is for the MOD to address—but the criticism that the MOD is to blame for what happen might not be right. Individuals are responsible, rather than the MOD.

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[Sir Alan Beith]

I thank the hon. Members who have taken part in this debate. There are, obviously, other hon. Members whom it would have been useful to have present to represent other areas. I am particularly grateful for the support shown by my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for the work of RAF Boulmer in his constituency, of which air-sea rescue is a significant part. We have also heard interventions from my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton), my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws) and the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen), in whose constituency is located basic training for all RAF search and rescue pilots, a fact of which people might not have been widely aware until a royal prince became one of the aircrew there. Their interventions have been helpful.

In concluding, I will focus on what the Minister could and could not do today. Clearly, Ministers cannot comment on what has happened in any detail while investigations are taking place, and legal action—not just legal action arising directly from the investigations but civil legal action—is a possibility. He said that he had a blank piece of paper, but I remind him that it cannot stay blank for long, particularly in respect of the continuity arrangements, and that he does not have a blank chequebook with which to make extremely expensive temporary arrangements that might prejudice what is done in the long term. That is why I am so concerned to establish that there is a clear process at work. I am not sure whether we are entirely clear about that yet. The long-term alternatives have to be looked at in some detail, and I assume that a joint working party is doing that at the moment.

On the continuity arrangements, the centre of gravity has shifted back to the Ministry of Defence, which must affect the way this is being done. The Minister has a more direct responsibility for what is happening in relation to the Maritime and Coastguard Agency—it has a contract that will expire shortly—but the dependence on the continuing RAF and naval provision shifts the centre of gravity of the immediate decision-making process back towards the MOD.

It has never been clear whether the Department for Transport has become a purchasing Department with the relationship of a purchaser with the MOD that says, “This is what we want, even in the short term. How can you provide it for us?” or whether this is a traditional joint departmental process with a degree of fuzziness about who is really in charge. We cannot afford that in situations such as this, so I will continue to press Ministers in both the DFT and MOD to be clearer about how decisions will be taken in both the short and long term, and how the relationship between the two Departments can be operated in a way that ensures that decisions are made quickly on the things that have to be decided quickly. It is bad enough trying to get decisions out of the MOD alone, but when two Departments are involved, unless there is some sort of purchaser-provider split between the two, there is too much uncertainty about how decisions are taken. I am not even sure how confident the Minister is that we have a real grip on the issue and an effective process in operation.

The situation inherited by the Government is difficult, but difficult situations call for resolute action and I want to be sure that there is a process that can do that. Will the Minister, when he reflects upon this debate, write to me, in a letter that can be published, an explanation of the process? It would be helpful.

[Mike Penning]

I think that I have already said that. I am sure that there will be other debates on this subject—although I cannot predict what Mr Speaker will or will not select for debate—but we will do that in writing as things develop. I am conscious of two things. First, we have to make sure that we get it right. Secondly, at the end of the day, this was not the fault of the taxpayer so it is crucial that, wherever possible, the taxpayer will not pay for it. As we progress, I will be open and we will write, correspond and give as much information as possible. The MOD has a procurement skill that the DFT does not in this area, so we need to work closely together and we will continue to do so. It will be led by the Department for Transport.

[Sir Alan Beith]

That is a helpful intervention and I am grateful to the Minister for a number of points. Indeed, he said a number of things during that short intervention that had not been fully clear previously in the debate.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

Will the right hon. Gentleman allow me to ask the Minister indirectly to deposit the correspondence to him in the Library, or to issue a written ministerial statement, so that all hon. and right hon. Members can share the updated information?

[Sir Alan Beith]

I am sure that the Minister will do that. It was implicit in my request, and it is desirable and necessary. In conclusion, I say to the Minister that he should not—quite clearly, he is not now going to—wait until the two Departments come up with their final plan before he keeps us informed. We need to know soon about the processes and the decisions being made about continuity arrangements—in a way that is as helpful as possible to those who have to operate the system—as well as about the processes in relation to devising an effective longer-term solution.

To revert to a point I made earlier, I believe that when the Government decided to announce that they were going ahead with the contract, they must have concluded that a period of delay, even with a contract that was not entirely to their satisfaction, was too much of a price to pay. That price now has to be paid, because it is clear that the contract cannot go ahead due to some of the things that went on during the procurement process. We are, therefore, paying a price in terms of certainty and decisions that ought not to be further delayed. I want to make sure that we have a process capable of dealing with that.

[Mr Joe Benton (in the Chair)]

Before I call the debate to a close, may I take this opportunity to say that it is not normal in a debate such as this for people to respond after a Minister has spoken to conclude it? As there was time, I made due allowance for that, but I do not want a precedent to be set. I hope that hon. and right hon. Members will remember that.