UK Defence Spending

Marcus Fysh Excerpts

Thursday 24th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con) [V]]

It is a great pleasure to take part in this fascinating debate and a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who made a very eloquent plea for his version of what peace looks like around the world. I would not disagree with him at all, in that I think the UK does have a big role to play in trying to establish it and maintain it. I think we may disagree on some of the particular details on how to get there, but I think the whole House could agree that that is what we are trying to do.

I have always thought that a proper commitment to defence and defence spending is an essential part of that. I have been a champion of the Government’s commitment to the 2% minimum of GDP spending on defence, but I also agree with Members who made the point that that has to be the minimum and, in fact, we could do with spending more. The fact is that we face many threats around the world. There are lots of nations with lots of nuclear weapons and designs on their neighbour’s territory. We have a role to play—absolutely not as an imperial power, but as a concerned global citizen—in trying to make sure those strategies and weapons are never used. That means we have to be part of the balance in the world that others respect.

When it comes to world security and the ability to work with partners and insert ourselves into places to help with humanitarian missions for example, many people are rightly very proud of the great role our armed forces play in disaster situations around the world. These are things we simply cannot do to the extent we do now unless we have a fully functional and capable armed forces that is able to be flexible and have the capacity to act in multiple areas at the same time. That is how we can help our partners in need, whether it is with their security or with their response. I would love to see us spending 3% of GDP on defence—maybe that is something to work on for the future.

I want to talk about a couple of ways in which our defence spending is integral to our strategy for shared prosperity, both in the UK and abroad, and about how the budget needs to be used wisely. We have heard about the problems in procurement that have existed over many years, with budgets moving to the right and being delayed, which can end up costing more. I agree that we need to focus much more on how we get the best bang for our buck out of procurement spending. Some very big procurement items are moving through the budget at the moment, such as the nuclear deterrent. How they are paid for is a massively important part of the overall picture, but we need to make sure that procurement focuses properly on prosperity for British industry and British jobs here in the UK and that it helps to develop skills and opportunities for young people and support the technologies of the future. With reference to my constituency of Yeovil, there are two critical things that illustrate that very well.

The first is the unmanned aerial vehicle programme that Leonardo has been working on in conjunction with the MOD. It is very important that that goes to the next stage, because the military very much see it as the medium to longer-term replacement for existing vertical lift programmes such as the Wildcat and the AW101 Merlin, which our commandos operate out of. However, my understanding is that the MOD does not yet have the next stage of the programme budgeted and funded. I would like Ministers to please look at that, because it is also essential to the perpetuation of engineering skills in the UK for vertical lift, which Leonardo really embodies—a key sovereign capability that we should preserve and enhance.

The second big opportunity, as the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) mentioned, is the potential identified in the integrated review for a medium-lift helicopter to be built in the UK. There is a Leonardo product called the AW149, which is an extremely capable vehicle. I must briefly correct the hon. Member for Angus (Dave Doogan): he said that it was not a British design, but actually it was originally. The helicopter was designed in Yeovil, but as it was not being used militarily, it was given as a civil idea to the Italians, who have been making it as the AW189.

The AW149 could deliver our capability in a very cost-effective manner, because it is off-the-shelf—it is an existing civil product. It can be made very cost-effectively and can deliver a very manpower-centric type of capability. It has all of the automation suite that is so well loved on the AW101 and that makes that product such a success in search and rescue, because it gives the pilots much more ability to focus on the mission and on supporting the men under their charge without having to fly the aircraft. That makes it a very modern capability, which I believe is much better than anything else potentially on the market. Also, from an industrial point of view, it would unlock a big opportunity for foreign direct investment from the Italian parent, to invest in the UK, to really make Yeovil and Leonardo the centre of its military excellence when it comes to vertical lift. That is a real prize worth having. It can also make an important contribution to the UK’s export performance, because medium-lift helicopter requirements around the world could amount to as many as 500 aircraft of that type. That is a massive opportunity for the south-west and the entire supply chain in the south-west to participate in economic recovery and exports for the whole of the UK and really sustain the prosperity.

The hon. Member for Angus mentioned a disparity in his mind between Scotland and the south-west, but actually Leonardo is a living example of a Scotland and south-west co-operation, because Leonardo has massive operations in Edinburgh and is very proud of them, so it is an ideal example of how these slightly parochial, shall we say, interests can be bridged and are not what they might first seem.

These are crucial programmes to the sustainability of the workforce and the sovereign capability in vertical lift in the UK, and it would be a huge missed opportunity not to take advantage of that for recovery and exports. I consider that in the UK we suffer from not having direct Government involvement in export, as the US does, for example, through its foreign military sales programme. I agree with the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) that companies such as Boeing have done very well out of the UK in recent years. They have just had a massive procurement of Chinook to add to the Wedgetail, the P-8 and so on. Chinook was done on a sole-source basis, so there was not a competition. Leonardo could not bid for any of that work—not even any of the maintenance.

Given that the medium-lift requirement for the MOD is for 2024 and 2025, there is a very strong case for saying that, as that is such a short timeframe, it makes eminent sense for that to be a sole-source procurement process, and for Leonardo to be chosen to work with the Government on that. Those machines will need to be in the factory in 2022 and 2023 to make the timetable, so the decision must be made pretty much immediately. I hope that Ministers will look at that.

To conclude, defence spending is admirably supported by this Government and is a key pillar of the outward-looking global Britain that we seek to build, but we need to ensure that it delivers for hard-working people at home. We need to buy British and support our industries and their world-leading products.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I know it seems like we have a lot of time for this debate, but I need colleagues to speak for about 10 minutes maximum to get everybody in without a time limit.