The Army and RAF Lyneham

Nick Harvey Excerpts

Wednesday 26th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Nick Harvey)]

It is a pleasure to have you presiding over our deliberations, Mr Betts. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) for initiating this important debate on RAF Lyneham and the effects on the surrounding community. Its importance is reflected in the fact that so many of my hon. Friends from the Wiltshire area have turned up to support him. I also thank him for the dossier that he has given me from local community leaders. I assure him that we will give full consideration to what it contains as we move forward with our decision making.

Hon. Members will know that my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire has been an assiduous and persistent advocate for RAF Lyneham. In fact, during the previous Parliament, he must have raised it with almost as great a regularity as the fondly remembered Tam Dalyell raised the sinking of the Belgrano. Nothing would provoke me to imagine that he will be dropping the subject any time soon. He has campaigned industriously against the closure of Lyneham on behalf of his constituents, and I recognise that a wide section of his constituency has a very great concern about the future of the base.

I join my hon. Friend and several other hon. Members in paying tribute to the people of Wootton Bassett, who have provided such a dignified and moving homecoming for the deceased. That has been appreciated by the whole nation. We shall shortly be moving the repatriations to Brize Norton, but this is a moment to pay tribute to the people of Wootton Bassett for what they have done.

I also pay tribute to all the personnel who have served at RAF Lyneham since it opened for active service in 1940. It is rather an important point that, as has been said, it was announced in July 2003—getting on for eight years ago—that the future air transport and air-to-air refuelling fleets would be co-located at RAF Brize Norton by 2012. It must be acknowledged that the savings from that co-location will be significant. It is not possible to reopen that debate—the co-location is going ahead—but that decision meant that Lyneham would no longer be required for its current purpose, with current units leaving the base by 2012.

The Department has examined several alternative uses for the site. As the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown), who speaks for the Opposition, has mentioned, it was considered as a consolidated support helicopter base under Project Belvedere, but for the reasons that he has outlined, that unfortunately did not work out.

[Mr Gray]

The Minister is, of course, right, and I would not seek to reopen that debate. We are none the less a little puzzled as to how it can be that we will save an enormous amount of money by co-locating the air transport fleet at RAF Brize Norton, but we would not save a similar amount by co-locating the helicopter fleet at Lyneham. There seems to be no logic in those two arguments: one co-location does not pay; the other does. However, that involved the previous Government, whom the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown) supported, so perhaps we need not reopen that argument.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Harvey]

The key point is that when we are considering value for money, we have to balance the scale of the investment to build the facility against the savings that we will make from having everything at one location. I was not party to that decision, but clearly when those numbers were ground through the computers at the time, the judgment was arrived at that the Project Belvedere option did not represent value for money.

Since then, it has seemed unlikely that another defence use will be found for RAF Lyneham. I listened to my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) talking about the need for an economic plan, and I could not agree with him more. I am just mildly mystified as to why, 14 months before the base closes, the local civil population is talking about the need for a plan when the announcement that the base would cease its current role came eight years ago. The point that I am making is simply this: if there is to be a civilian use for RAF Lyneham in the future, rather than a military one—I am not saying for one moment that that will be the case—it will be for the local civil community to decide what that future will be.

The hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway asked about transitional assistance. There is no precedent for that coming from defence funds in the cases of other base closures. It would certainly be something that other Departments and local authorities, particularly under the new localism agenda, would need to pick up. My hon. Friends are absolutely right, and the tone that has been struck—

[John Glen]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nick Harvey]

In a moment. The tone that has been struck by my hon. Friends thinking constructively and positively about what the alternative uses might be is exactly the right way forward from where we are now.

I have been asked about the timetable for a decision. I can only repeat that it is more important to get things right than to do them at breakneck speed. A detailed study is taking place of the entire defence estate and the ramifications of bringing nearly 20,000 personnel back from Germany. I reassure the Opposition spokesman that that is a comprehensive piece of work and that it will not be piecemeal. That work is going on at the moment, and it will take a few more months. In any event, we anticipate that decisions and announcements will be made before the summer recess, which is the approximate time frame for the decision. To that extent, my point about those in the local community knowing where they are will be resolved in the next few months, but it is wise for them to make contingency plans.

[John Glen]

The point that needs to be made is that local communities are being prevented from establishing a viable economic plan. They have done considerable work with Wiltshire council to establish an embryonic plan, but an MOD decision is required before that option can be fully explored. One cannot do the local plan before the MOD decision is known.

[Nick Harvey]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention, but, with respect, this bone of comfort—that the Army might come back from Germany—has been thrown only in the past couple of months, and I am still mystified why planning for a civilian future did not start long ago.

[Mr Gray]

The Minister must not be mystified. The explanation is that the Lyneham taskforce convened within weeks of the original announcement in 2003, and the civilian-military co-operation involving Wiltshire council has been constant since then. The local community has been fully engaged for the past seven years in looking for alternative uses, so the Minister is quite wrong to think that we have not been. As he has said, however, the Army is a useful bone to be thrown at this stage.

[Nick Harvey]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for clarifying that. Clearly, I had drawn the wrong implication from some of the other contributions, which suggested that we needed to form an economic plan now. My hon. Friend, in whose constituency Lyneham is based, has said that such plans exist, and it is useful to have that recorded and clarified, so I am grateful to him.

Since the announcement in October, work has been under way to look at the basing requirements of not only the Army, but the RAF and the Navy. As I said in previous debates, including the one about Marham and the one about Leuchars last night, that is a big piece of work; we must get it right, and we will take our time to do that. I hope that we will be in a position to put all these local communities out of their agony as soon as possible, and I readily acknowledge that uncertainty is being caused in every community.

We have received many representations from hon. Members, local authorities, local groups and the devolved Administrations, and we will do what we can to take them all on board. Of course, there will be socio-economic impacts, but that will be true at any of those bases. We recognise those impacts, but they must be balanced against each other. Our overriding consideration, at the Ministry of Defence, is the military arguments. Bringing the Army back from Germany is something that we will do only once, and it is important that we get it right and put the Army in the right place for the next several decades. I must stress that we cannot really have a beauty contest between different parts of the country to secure the prize of a base in their locality.

Whatever the outcome of the review, it must be about what is best for the armed forces. Bringing back the Army units stationed in Germany is not an easy job. Once it has been decided which units we are bringing back to which locations, detailed work will have to take place to plan those moves. As the Opposition spokesman has said, investments will have to be put in place to prepare the bases that will receive those Army units. The work going on to bring the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps back to Innsworth, near Gloucester, has taken years. I am sorry to disappoint my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire, who painted a rosy picture of the Army marching in as the RAF marched out, but the likelihood of that happening is infinitesimally small. The programme to bring the Army back from Germany will happen over 10 years, and in almost no imaginable case will we see the Army march in as those vacating bases in the next year or two march out.

I implore Members to reflect on what was said in the strategic defence and security review about the Army’s intention to organise itself into multi-role brigades. Although we would not necessarily seek to accommodate an entire multi-role brigade on a single site, we will nevertheless want units to be located near enough to each other to use common training grounds and make formations as a brigade for training purposes. There is, therefore, a wide range of considerations. Is the new base big enough to accommodate the units? Does it have the right accommodation? How much would it cost to upgrade? How much new building will there have to be? What is access to training facilities like? Are the training facilities of the right type? How long will travelling distances to those facilities be? Where will the other units involved in training be? All those questions need addressing, and it will take time to balance them all and ensure that we get things right.

The hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway asked about schools, and we will, of course, give every consideration to the education requirements of future military communities. He also asked about accommodation, and I acknowledge that there is a lot more work to be done on improving service family accommodation. However, I urge hon. Members to recognise our desire in the SDSR to build a new employment model for members of the Army. We want more super garrisons, so that people who progress through the Army will be able to spend more of their career in one place, which would be more like the Navy and the RAF, and therefore to put down roots and find houses among the local population. As we go forward into future years, more of the Government’s effort will focus on ensuring that members of the armed forces can buy their own homes and settle in communities. Although I do not rule out building further family accommodation, we view that as the second-best option. The desire will be to help people settle into communities.

The hon. Gentleman also asked about the scrutiny process and how we will let communities know about decisions. It would be desirable to let some community leaders know before official announcements are made, but the only way to inform whole communities is through the media, so the hon. Gentleman’s argument becomes slightly circular.

On the economic impact being £90 million, I agree with the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire, who said that replacing like with like has a neutral effect on the economy. I saw that in my own constituency, where the Marines replaced the RAF at Chivenor. The economy recovered fairly quickly, as did local services, schools and so on.

My hon. Friend has made a strong case on why Lyneham would be a good base for the Army. Many of his arguments have a great deal of merit. He mentioned the proximity to other Army units in Wiltshire and to Salisbury plain, and those are good arguments, as well as reasons why Lyneham is in quite a strong position as we look at the different bases.

The Opposition spokesman asked for guidance on how the Government’s thinking is going. My point about multi-role brigades and the need for units that will make formations together to be within easy reach of each other is one of the factors, and the military’s footprint across the different parts of the UK will be the other. One point that I would make about Salisbury plain, however, is that we must be realistic about its capacity to absorb a huge increase in the amount of Army training that goes on there.

The House has had debates about various other RAF bases. Obviously, every community is inclined to look at the worst-case scenario, but I reassure hon. Members that no decisions have been made yet, and we will continue to look at the whole issue with an open mind. Today has been a useful opportunity for the Wiltshire community to make particular local points. It has been useful to hear from the neighbours of my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire about the impact on the wider Wiltshire economy, which I am well aware of. One way or the other, I travel through Wiltshire twice a week. My wife’s family are from North Wiltshire and are still there, so I am familiar with the locality, and I can see the advantages of RAF Lyneham and the impact that it has on the community.

We must look beyond the local considerations, base by base, to the wider defence picture. We need to make the best use of our existing assets in the UK. I do not want to mislead Wiltshire Members into thinking that there is necessarily a future defence use for Lyneham at the moment—it is too soon to say that, because there is still a lot of work to do. In the mean time, we continue to make plans for the disposal of Lyneham. We shall, however, as I have said, try to put all the local communities out of their agony as soon as we can. We shall work with other Departments, devolved Administrations—where appropriate—and local authorities to ensure that our plans can be implemented with the least possible disruption for the communities affected.

As they were in the SDSR, our decisions must be objective, unsentimental and based on the military advice that we receive about what is best for the armed forces. We shall also have to look at what provides the best value for the taxpayer, and we shall, of course, consider the impact on communities and regional economies as we balance those factors. We must limit our resources to where they are most needed.