Closures of RAF Scampton and RAF Linton-on-Ouse

Debate between Madeleine Moon and Kevin Hollinrake

Tuesday 16th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I thank the hon. Member for Lincoln (Karen Lee) for securing this very important debate.

In my constituency, I have the historic RAF base of Linton-on-Ouse, and I quite understand that the Minister has a difficult job. No one wants their local base to close. Bases are not just about bricks and mortar, tarmac and concrete. They are places of heroic deeds, great endeavours and often the ultimate sacrifice.

Linton-on-Ouse has a proud history. It was first formed in 1937, in the lead-up to the second world war. The No. 4 Group RAF was based there, and it undertook some heroic bombing raids on Norway, the Netherlands and into Germany. Linton-on-Ouse was also host to the No. 6 Group Royal Canadian Air Force. In some of the pubs in my area there are lots of photos of those days—of Canadian airmen and British aircrew together, looking valiant and invincible. Of course, many of those people never returned from their bombing raids. Indeed, in 1941, the base at Linton was bombed by the Luftwaffe, with a loss of 13 men, including the station commander. All my life, RAF Linton-on-Ouse has been part of the local community. I remember playing darts in the officers’ mess there as a young man, and I also went to a very extravagant, formal military wedding there. As a young boy, my son Charlie was first shown how to fly a plane on the flight simulator there by a very good friend of ours, Flight Lieutenant Rod Leigh—a great man who is sadly no longer with us.

The announcement that the base would close in 2020 has shocked the entire community because of the part that it has played in people’s lives. It employs many people—as the hon. Member for Lincoln said, these bases employ many people directly—and many people work in the base’s supply chain too. Many jobs will be at risk because of the closure and, of course, the local community is very proud of the base’s historic contribution to our previous fights against tyranny. The Minister has a very difficult job because he is responsible for taxpayer’s money—it is not Government money—and he has got to make sure that all the resources he has are used in the most cost-effective way possible. I understand that maintaining the military estate costs £2.5 billion per annum. The closure of the base at Linton will save £140 million by the end of the decade, and will contribute to a significant investment of £4 billion in our infrastructure and military bases going forward. It is hugely important that our military bases and forces are fit for purpose and can do us proud when they are needed in the future.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his speech, which is very effective. Does he agree that another of the problems that we face is the need to keep the capacity to flex and to expand our capability in the event of threat? With Russian submarines off our coast, Russian aircraft coming very close to our airspace and ships also coming into our waters, is this not a time when our capacity to expand is central to our defence not only in the future but now?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Lady makes some excellent points. The international threat that she outlines—particularly from Russia—is greater now than it was for many years, so it is absolutely right that we have a military that is fit for purpose.

The Minister will acknowledge that we have corresponded many times over this closure, including with senior officers from the RAF, to challenge them on whether closing the base is the right thing to do, or if it is a false economy. I understand that it makes sense to aggregate all training needs in a single place—they are being moved to RAF Valley on Anglesey—but I have written to the Minister on a number of occasions about some concerns we have, which were first raised by the Public Accounts Committee during a session on military flying training in October 2015. The Committee raised concerns about the prospect of all training being moved from Linton to RAF Valley, and it noted in its December 2015 report that the full implementation of the new training system for military air crew had been delayed by a number of years and that only 151 students had graduated, at a cost of £143 million to the taxpayer—that shows how expensive it is to train pilots—when we were aiming for an annual figure of around 320 students.

On top of this, part of our capacity will be used to train other nations. The RAF is a world leader in its field, so many nations come to it for training, which we should be very proud of. However, there are concerns about how those providing the training will manage with only one simulator when there are currently three at Linton-on-Ouse. It is calculated that the number of flying hours required to make sure that we have the extra capacity has increased by 20 to 25%.

I have a number of concerns—I know the Minister has addressed them before and given me every assurance—along the same lines as those expressed by the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon). Is this going to mean that we have the capacity when needed in the future, particularly in extra training needs both for our nation and for services that we provide to other nations?