Oral Answers to Questions

Michael Dugher Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Dugher (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State wrote to the Prime Minister on 27 September saying that scrapping Nimrod would

“limit our ability to deploy maritime forces rapidly…increase the risk to the Deterrent, compromise maritime counter terrorism, remove long range search and rescue, and delete one element of our Falklands reinforcement plan.”

Given the sight of Nimrod being broken up last week at Woodford, can he tell the House whether that decision was taken for defence reasons or because he lost his battle with the Prime Minister?

[Dr Fox]

Here is the extent of the humbug. The previous Government, in March 2010, actually took the Nimrod MR2 out of service, so there was already a capability gap by the time this Government came to office. First, we looked at the strategic environment, and the service chiefs and the intelligence services advised us that the gap that would be left could be managed with the assets that were already being used to fill the gap that the previous Government left when the MR2 was withdrawn. Secondly, the financial project itself was too long over time, and too far over budget—it was not able to fly and carry out the tasks that were asked of it. It should have been cancelled years ago. This Government had the nerve to do it; the previous Government did not.