UK Sovereign Capability

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Sweeney) on his superb oratory.

We are back here again: the same people are largely in the same chairs making the same arguments, although we have a different person in the Chair—you are very welcome, Mr Hollobone—and a different Defence Procurement Minister. I think he is the third since I was elected. We made effectively the same speeches to the previous Ministers, but he should not worry: these are good speeches with good arguments, and I am sure he will enjoy hearing them.

I think that we have a good Minister now. His freshness to defence means that he will bring a new approach to procurement decisions, and I hope that that will yield different results. We need different results, because our sovereign defence capability is at risk. I do not say that lightly, because I know that people who wish our country ill listen to these debates. We must present a strong and forthright position, and we must ensure that our military has the best equipment, the best training and, importantly, a supply chain and support structure that enables it to continue to operate at a high level. Russia is on the rise—it is increasing its threat to our country and making incursions into our airspace and waters—and China is growing its ambitions in the far east. The risk of state and non-state actors threatening the UK’s interests and those of our allies is high.

I will focus my remarks on the Royal Navy, about which much has been said. As the MP for Devonport, I would perhaps be expected to do that. The Royal Navy has suffered the greatest ill done to our sovereign defence capability. It could be said that that is also true of fixed and rotary-wing aircraft, and to Army equipment, but the Royal Navy has suffered the biggest impact. The shipyards that support our Royal Navy are not just about concrete, steel, bricks and mortar; they are about the people and skills, which must be invested in and grown over time. We have had holes in our procurement exercises in the past because there has not been a constant stream of investment in our shipyards. Although we do not build ships in Devonport, we refit them, and we need a constant stream of ships to be refitted to ensure we keep up our skills. That is why it is so important to get the Type 26 and Type 31 right.

I congratulate the Government on what they have done in supporting the industry to sell the Type 26 overseas. I hope the Americans adopt the Type 26 as a platform for their future frigate procurement, which they are struggling with at the moment. The Type 31 is an example of what we need to get better at. There was great potential for it in the national shipbuilding strategy. We need more hulls that can do defence engagement work, station keeping, and the forward deployment roles that are so important in our Royal Navy, while maintaining the high-end capability of the Type 26.

As hon. Members know, I have a problem with calling a Type 31 a frigate. I would much prefer it to be a world-class corvette, rather than a rather poor frigate. I normally use more colourful language, but I will mind my p’s and q’s in this Chamber. We need to sell the Type 31 as the best in class. That would make our international allies want to buy it, rather than one of the plentiful array of small frigates and corvettes that are on the market. The Type 26 shows that people want to buy high-end British technology. The procurement delays and the disruption in the procurement process over the summer do not give us much confidence in the procurement of the Type 31s.

We also need to look ahead. Over the past year, since I and many others in this House were elected, we have been fighting to save HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark. Other Members who would have been here if they had turned up might have claimed the success of the campaign to save those vital capabilities from being cut. Now that we have done that, we must ensure that we plan for suitable replacements for them. If Albion and Bulwark will go out of service in 2033 and 2034 respectively, we need a plan to build their replacements in UK shipyards. That is important, because it builds on the battle to ensure our Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships are built in UK shipyards, too.

We must maintain our sovereign defence capability to build such complex warships. I regard an RFA fleet solid support ship as a complex warship—the Government may stick it in a different column of their spreadsheet, but given that it has the roles and the capability of the RFA, I think it is a complex warship, and it should be built exclusively in UK shipyards.

[Mr Sweeney]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Order. I cannot stop the hon. Gentleman intervening, but, including his summary at the end, he will have had 26 minutes of a 60-minute debate. I have to call the Front Benchers at 5.7 pm.

[Luke Pollard]

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East is very enthusiastic, Mr Hollobone, and I know that he will make a speedy reply in his two minutes at the end.

We must support the trade unions. I am a proud GMB member, and it is important that its “Making It” campaign is heard loud and clear, not only by Labour Members but by Conservatives. Building the RFAs in UK shipyards is good for British business. It is good for those regions’ economies, the cities in which the shipyards are based, the supply chain and, perhaps most importantly of all, the Exchequer. Why are we exporting that money? If we do not invest in our shipyards, what happened to Appledore will happen again. Appledore is not in my constituency, but workers that came from it are working in Devonport now because Appledore ran out of orders. Without orders, shipyards cannot stay open, which means they cannot hire new apprentices and support the local supply chain. Ultimately, we lose that capability.

We need to talk louder about sovereign defence capability, because we need to preserve it. We need a discrete strategy to preserve our sovereign defence capability. I encourage the new Minister, for whom I have high hopes, to ensure sovereign defence capability runs like a golden thread through all the procurement decisions he and his Department take. It needs to be there if we are to secure jobs and our future capabilities.