Photographic Reconnaissance Unit: National Memorial

Debate between Mark Francois and Andrew Bowie

Tuesday 9th November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Bowie]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I completely agree: all the air bases from which the PRU flew should be commemorated, and all the men who flew, from whatever airfield, should be commemorated if we are able to succeed in getting a memorial erected in a prominent position in the country in the coming years.

In 2019, Mr Tony Hoskins recovered Spitfire AA810—Sandy Gunn’s Spitfire—from the Norwegian mountainside where Sandy had ejected all those years ago. Tony Hoskins established the Spitfire AA810 Project to restore the plane to flight, which it is hoped will be completed by 2023. The project also established the Sandy Gunn Aerospace Careers Programme, which was launched at Cranfield University on 27 September 2019—what would have been Sandy Gunn’s 100th birthday.

In 2019, the Spitfire AA810 Project began its campaign to establish a national memorial to the PRU and the brave men who flew for it from wherever they were based. This year, the project established an advisory board, with representatives from industry, academia and both Houses of Parliament, to drive forward the establishment of a national memorial to the PRU. The young pilots who flew for the PRU performed their duty in highly dangerous conditions, without armour and alone. The work of the PRU and the intelligence it gathered were crucial to allied planning and strategy throughout the war. They were critical to the success of countless operations, saving the lives of thousands of servicemen in the process.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

I apologise to you, Mr Davies, and to the Minister that I cannot be here for the whole debate because I am about to attend a remembrance service in the Guards’ Chapel. No disrespect is intended.

May I pay a family tribute? My late father, Reginald Francois, was on a minesweeper on D-day. There were many reasons why Operation Overlord succeeded, but one undoubtedly was the ceaseless courage of the unarmed PRU pilots who flew multiple missions to successfully reconnoitre the Normandy coast so that the allied invasion could be best planned. From the son of a D-Day veteran, I offer my hon. Friend unstinting support for his campaign, and thank him and his predecessor for having the courage to raise it in this place. We wish him Godspeed.

[Andrew Bowie]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention, and that very personal family tribute. His father, like many, served in the second world war, and they were only able to do so and complete their missions because of the bravery of men like Sandy, George, and all the others who flew with the PRU, giving Allied Command the intelligence that they required to navigate their way through incredibly difficult situations. I thank my right hon. Friend very much for his tribute and his contribution, and for his support for the campaign to get a national memorial established.

The PRU’s pilots and the reconnaissance aircraft in which they flew are, sadly, largely unrecognised in history. Their story, their success, and their sacrifices are, as I have said, mostly untold. Furthermore, the highly dangerous conditions in which the pilots of the PRU served meant that it experienced a tragically high death rate. Although it was a relatively small unit, the PRU suffered horrendous losses from its inception in 1939 through to the end of hostilities in the far east in 1945, with records now showing that—as I have said—its survival rate was the second lowest of any allied aerial unit during the entire war.

Some 1,287 men have so far been identified as having flown operational photo reconnaissance sorties, but only 29% of them have been confirmed as having survived the war. Even more tragically, due to the solitary nature of their work, 12% of those who flew are still missing to this day, their final resting places unknown and unrecorded. A permanent national memorial to the Photographic Reconnaissance Unit would be a fitting tribute to those pilots, navigators and observers who undertook those dangerous missions in the service of our country, and would serve as a de facto headstone for those who served in the PRU but have, as yet, no known grave.

So, I come to the ask—except, exceptionally for Westminster and, I am sure, to the relief of the Minister, I make no financial ask of the Government. I simply request that the Minister meets with the campaign for the national memorial, and gives support to the efforts to establish a national memorial in an appropriate location in London: a memorial to the 1,287 men who flew for the PRU; to the 378 who did not return; to the 143 who lie with no grave; to Sandy and all those like him; and to George and the three others, the last of the few.

Defence

Debate between Mark Francois and Andrew Bowie

Thursday 11th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bowie]

Yes, I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. As I have said, we cannot underestimate the effect on the morale of people serving on bases such as Condor when every so often—every other month, it seems—we read in newspapers of ill-judged speculation about the future of bases by, in this case, Scottish Government Ministers. We cannot underestimate the effect that has on them, their families and the communities those bases serve.

[Mr Francois]

My hon. Friend mentioned accommodation a couple of minutes ago. Will he accept from me that the repairs and maintenance service provided by CarillionAmey is woeful and that many service personnel from across all three services are very upset about it? We need to honour our people and do better. Does he agree that the Minister, who I believe has sympathy with this point, should be encouraged to hold CarillionAmey more firmly to account?

[Andrew Bowie]

I could not agree more with my right hon. Friend. In fact, one thing that gets brought up time and again when I speak to friends still serving in the armed forces is the state of accommodation and the support they have received from that company. It would be very nice to see it held more firmly to account by the Ministry of Defence.

Since I came to the House, we have too often heard questions raised about whether the UK can afford to maintain its independent amphibious capability, seen key elements of Royal Marine training cut and even questioned the overall number of our Royal Marines. Over Christmas, we read about the selling of HMS Ocean for £85 million, barely two years after a £65 million refit, which would leave this country without a functioning helicopter carrier capability until the Queen Elizabeth comes into service in 2020.

Even more worrying, however, and something that has not been touched on in this debate yet, is the current level of troops medically fit to deploy today. The British Army today has an official full-time trained strength of 78,407, which is already below the target of 82,000. In answer to a written question of mine in November, however, it transpired that the number of medically unavailable troops stands at 18,000, meaning that the fit and trained strength of the Army is 60,500—just over 60,000 soldiers fit and able to deploy today. In the Navy, that figure is 24,893 out of 29,000. In the RAF, it is 25,000 out of 30,000. That means that as we debate this today the immediately deployable strength of our full-time armed forces sits at 111,026. To put that into context, it is three times less than the number of people employed in Britain by Tesco.

On Tuesday, in Foreign Office questions, I asked the Foreign Secretary about our pausing reluctance to intervene in Syria in 2013, which I believe prolonged the conflict and led to thousands more deaths. Whether someone was for or against intervention in 2013—I know that there are strongly held views on that, and I respect that—the fact is that we had that choice. We had, and still have, the ability to choose whether to intervene because of the size and capabilities of our armed forces. There is a genuine concern today, however, at the heart of the defence and diplomatic community and among our closest allies that in the not-too-distant future our ability to intervene for good, as we did in Kosovo and Sierra Leone, or to support our partners across eastern Europe, could disappear, and with it our standing on the world stage would be diminished, especially if we lose our amphibious capability or cut the number of troops even further.

I know that the Government support the armed forces. Ministers in the MOD are fighting daily battles to secure the budget and numbers, and the record on increased spending and procurement and the improvements in accommodation are a testament to this. Difficult questions must be asked, however, about recruitment and retention, about the size of our defence budget—is 2% of GDP enough? I do not think it is—and about whether the cost of funding our continuous at-sea deterrence should be met from an already-squeezed defence budget, or whether, as some believe, given that it is a continuing operation, it should come directly from the Treasury, as it did until 2010.

These are big and difficult questions, but they must be asked and answered, for we must maintain the trust of our armed forces and our allies. If we are serious—and I know we are—about being a truly global Britain, we must maintain our position on the world stage, leading the world in investment in and commitment to our responsibilities at home and abroad, and we must never lose the ability to intervene with moral purpose in defending the values that we cherish around the world when we choose to do so. Only when these questions are answered—and I know they will be by this Government—can we truly move forward with confidence that in this country we will continue to have the finest, most adaptable and best equipped armed forces in the world—armed forces that, as the hon. Member for Gedling said, we can all be truly proud of.