Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nick Harvey and Graham P Jones(13 years, 1 month ago)
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The Minister for the Armed Forces (Nick Harvey)
At the time of the SDSR, there were eight qualified Harrier pilots trained to operate off an aircraft carrier, only one of whom was trained to do so under night-flying conditions. The previous Government envisaged that the Harrier force would be worked up to support a small-scale contingent operation by the end of 2011. The Harrier force did not have the ability to have conducted both the Afghanistan and the Libya commitments at the same time. Indeed, my advice is that it would have taken 18 months to regenerate the Harrier force to support operations in Afghanistan alone.
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
In recent weeks, BAE Systems has made it absolutely clear that the reason that there are 3,000 job losses is the slow-down in the Eurofighter order. In the light of that, can the Secretary of State clarify the Chancellor’s comments to the House on 1 November? When asked about job losses by the hon. Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies), who is in his place, he replied that the job losses reflect the fact that
“the US defence budget had an impact on BAE Systems.”—[Official Report, 1 November 2011; Vol. 534, c. 758.]
Will the Secretary of State clarify which UK-US defence cuts the Chancellor was referring to?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nick Harvey and Graham P Jones(14 years ago)
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Nick Harvey
I entirely agree, as do all Ministers, with the discomfort that the First Sea Lord feels about this; the decision not to bring the Nimrod MRA4 into service was very difficult. We will have to bear some risk—it would be wrong to claim otherwise—but we will mitigate that risk by using other assets in the meantime, just as the previous Government had embarked on doing.
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
22. What recent discussions his Department has had with representatives of the defence industry on the effects of the reductions in expenditure proposed in the strategic defence and security review.