Royal Navy Ships

Debate between Oliver Colvile and Alison Seabeck

Tuesday 3rd December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Alison Seabeck]

The hon. Gentleman raises a different point, which almost requires a different debate, but it is perfectly valid. It is about how people progress and how we keep that expertise and the interest of people coming in at the lower ranks—how do they go through the system? However, I will say to him that last week I was with the First Sea Lord in Plymouth when he gave a very robust defence of the Navy’s future configuration, with the QE class sitting at its centre. He was very careful, as we would expect, not to specify the number of carriers with which his successors will be working. Given that we are approaching a further SDSR, I feel that he was correct not to make assumptions. We need to understand what our defence and foreign policies need to deliver and what we want them to deliver, and clearly we also need to ensure within that that our shores are fully and properly protected.

However, the First Sea Lord was genuinely excited about the capability that the new carriers—I use the plural with some care, for reasons that I have alluded to—will bring. There is no doubt that their ability to deploy the full spectrum of diplomatic, political and military options, to stand off and deliver hard and soft power, will be a major addition to the fleet and our ability to defend our realm should we need to do so.

The global combat ship adds a further part to the picture. It will be very interesting to watch the design as it develops. It needs to be able to fulfil many roles—it needs to be flexible, to facilitate a full range of operations, to allow deployment of uninhabited or unmanned surface and subsea vessels, towed sonar arrays and inflatables, as well as to have the capacity to take something as large potentially as a Chinook and to be used with unmanned aerial vehicles doing airborne surveillance; it will give them additional range. The new ships will not just be single task-specific but must be designed with flexible capability, and that is what I understand is happening with the Type 26s.

The hon. Member for Bournemouth East was also right to highlight the benefits of modularisation. I am sure that the Minister heard his comments about additional helicopter bays in the new design. The hon. Member for Bournemouth East also suggested a downgrade in design for a proportion of the new Type 26s and was challenged by my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, about the ability of a limited number of full-strength Type 26s, with full capability, to protect carriers if the numbers were reduced. That was a perfectly sensible question, and it will be interesting to see what the Minister says in response.

[Oliver Colvile]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Alison Seabeck]

Of course I will give way to my constituency neighbour—as long as he is quick!

[Oliver Colvile]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful speech, but one of the things that is incredibly important as well is to ensure that some of the Type 26s will be base-ported in Devonport. I would be grateful if the Minister could answer that as an issue, too.

[Alison Seabeck]

The hon. Gentleman is prescient beyond belief, because my next paragraph says that there of course needs to be a discussion about where the Type 26s are base-ported. Sadly, the hon. Member for Gosport has been called away and is not in her place. That decision needs to be taken on strategic grounds. We need to consider how we protect our skills base and we need to ensure that we do not have all our eggs in one basket. I listened with interest to the hon. Lady, who made a plea for base-porting—all base-porting in effect—to be in Portsmouth. As I have said, that, in my view, is a sentimental, not a strategic, view. We need to protect skills across all our bases. Clearly, I have a strong view about Plymouth and ensuring that we have a drumbeat that works for our work force as well.

Of course, the new vessel will be designed with stealth and unobservability in mind and will need to be acoustically quiet. It will be interesting to see whether she resembles in any way the futuristically designed Sea Shadow or USS Zumwalt. The latter has an outline that is not too dissimilar from the very early iron-clad battleships, so this is quite an exciting time in ship design. I am sure that those involved are extremely stimulated by the challenge that the Type 26 offers.

Equally, the launch of the new QE class will be a milestone in naval history. That programme has been through the wringer in terms of procurement, under the last Government and certainly under this one. We do need to know, as the hon. Member for Bournemouth East pointed out, whether there is an intention to mothball the second boat and perhaps keep HMS Ocean going for longer. What is Ocean’s future? Plymouthians will certainly have a view about that and would welcome an answer.

On procurement, we do need to do much better. I put my hands up, in terms of some of the problems that we had under the last Government, on this. We need to be clearer through the SDSR about our future needs—the type of wars we need and want to fight, as well as how those demands play into our industrial strategy and industrial base. That said, we also have to have a vehicle that can deliver our new ships on time and on budget. Two weeks ago, we saw the collapse of one of the two remaining consortiums bidding for the GoCo model for future procurement, which was bad news for the Government. It is difficult to see how the Government can continue to pursue that option when their own report stated that the competition would still be possible with two bidders, but that a further withdrawal should initiate a formal reconsideration of whether a GoCo was viable.

The Minister needs to make his mind up, and fast, ideally before the Defence Reform Bill is considered in the other place. What is it to be? Will it be new ships and weapons systems procured through a GoCo, or will it be a DE&S-plus model that oversees the delivery of the Type 26 and the successor programme?

Property Market

Debate between Oliver Colvile and Alison Seabeck

Tuesday 25th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Turner, for inviting me to speak in this Westminster Hall debate and for giving me the opportunity to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Richard Harrington) on successfully securing this very important debate. I need to declare an interest. Before I was elected to this House, I ran and was a director of a communications company, which specifically dealt with issues of public consultation. I no longer have an executive role in that company. I hope that over the course of the past 20 years, I have gained some understanding of the market.

The ability to deliver development hinges on the cost of land—how much it costs a developer to buy so that they can develop it. Last week, we debated the Localism Bill. I was delighted to be able to support it because it is exactly the right road for us to go down. I tried, unsuccessfully, to speak in that debate. Had I done so, I would have reminded the House that when it comes to reforming planning legislation, every Government have always thought that they could speed up the process. Unfortunately, that never seems to have happened, and the process has got progressively slower. If we monitor the whole process now and find that it is slower, will the Minister ensure that we can revisit it and try to reform it?

The key issue for developers is the land and the ability to put together land sites and attract political commitment for development so that regeneration and investment can come forward. The previous Labour Government started off on the right foot. They talked about how important it was to encourage both commercial and housing development. Unfortunately, during the course of their 13 years in power, the process got slower and slower to the point that we were literally looking at only one issue, which was making sure that housing development came forward. In any approach that the Government may take, it is important that they include not only housing but commercial development.

As has been said, we are now building fewer homes than we were in the 1920s and 1930s. The previous Government’s top-down approach has not been as successful as we would have liked it to have been. That is why I feel that the coalition Government’s proposals to introduce incentives so that local authorities can encourage development are incredibly important. I firmly support a carrot approach rather than the stick. It will encourage local authorities such as mine and that of the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) to bring brownfield sites back into use and fulfil their full economic potential.

In Plymouth, 38% of the local employed population works in the public sector. Although they do a good job, we have failed to ensure that we rebalance the economy, and we must try to do so. The largest private-sector employer is Babcock, at the dockyard, but that is of course public-sector employment by proxy. I am therefore keen to encourage more private investment in Plymouth. Just yesterday, the deputy leader of my council reminded me that Plymouth is open for business and can deliver. That is good news, but to achieve it in our part of the south-west, we must not only ensure that we have good transport and infrastructure, as my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) mentioned; we must ensure that we have a good skills base. If we are to attract inward investment, we need good infrastructure, a good skills base—people move where the jobs are—and the right general design for the area. Plymouth has a low-skills and low-wage economy. To rebalance it, we must ensure that we have the right conditions to attract inward investment.

Last Friday, Plymouth city council organised an event at which I spoke, as did the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View and, I am delighted to say, my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry). We considered the whole business of how to attract investment and so on, and we discussed affordable housing. My hon. Friend did an excellent job and spoke incredibly well. All the reports that I heard said that he certainly hit the issue. It was an opportunity to consider the regeneration that has taken place in Devonport, which we all found interesting and worthwhile.

[Alison Seabeck]

Will the hon. Gentleman at least acknowledge that the development in Devonport, which has been fantastic in turning that community around, was the result of investment by the last Labour Government?

[Oliver Colvile]

Yes. I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. That investment has continued, and it is impressive how the scheme is progressing. It is developing mixed communities with not only housing but business and commercial opportunities.

Plymouth has about 12,000 people, mainly single, sitting on the city council’s housing waiting list. It has a significant population and a chronic shortage of affordable housing, and we must rebalance our public finances. Registered social landlords and housing associations will not necessarily have as much money available as they do at the moment, so we must consider other ways to develop an affordable housing market.

Many rural communities have decided to go down the route of creating community land trusts, and we should consider that for conurbations. I was elected on a campaign of saying to Ministers that Plymouth is not Portsmouth. We are not 20 minutes away from Bristol, and we should not be ignored. We have a good story to tell. We would welcome a visit by the Minister to Plymouth, which is a happening place, as they say.

Armed Forces Bill

Debate between Oliver Colvile and Alison Seabeck

Monday 10th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Colvile]

My hon. Friend makes a fair and timely point. Shortly before Christmas, I attended a Christmas party for the families of serving personnel with the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck). Those families were apprehensive about the departure of their partners and family members to Afghanistan and prayed that they would come back without physical or mental injury.

That brings me to the crux of what I wanted to say: mental health among veterans is a growing problem. This weekend, I was told by Combat Stress that the King’s Centre for Military Health Research published a report recently that warned that almost a quarter of Iraq veterans admitted to suffering from mental ill health. Many have depression and turn to alcohol and drugs. In my city of Plymouth, we have to come to terms with that issue.

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman, from my neighbouring seat in Plymouth, join me in commending Hasler Company at HMS Drake, which I was fortunate enough to visit again last Friday, for the excellent work that it does for people with complex problems, particularly mental health problems? Will he join me in encouraging it to keep doing what it is doing? Sadly it needs some additional funding. It is getting some from the Royal British Legion, I believe, and certainly from Help for Heroes, and I hope that the Government will consider supporting it as well.

[Oliver Colvile]

I most certainly join the hon. Lady in that, and I thank her for her intervention—I must say that I have some trepidation when Members decide to intervene on me, for obvious reasons.

The King’s Centre found that nearly 5% of Iraq veterans display symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. It believes, having projected its statistics on to the 180,000 servicemen and women who have been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, that as many as 48,000 veterans could suffer from some form of mental health problem, and that 9,000 could potentially develop PTSD.

Last October, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced that the Government would implement the recommendations of the excellent “Fighting Fit” report written by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), who sadly is not in his place at the moment. I pay tribute to him for the hard work that he undertook. The report contains 13 action points, including funding for an additional 30 mental health nurses and a dedicated 24-hour helpline for veterans.

The 2011 to 2015 Ministry of Defence business plan outlines a number of deadlines, including for drawing up a detailed plan to implement the recommendations of my hon. Friend’s report. I understand that that plan was completed in December. I would be grateful if my right hon. Friend the Minister could confirm when and if it will be published and put into the public domain. I would be grateful also if he could explain why the MOD’s structural reform plan monthly implementation update is still not complete, despite the deadline having been in November. I am happy for him to write to me about that, so I am not asking for a result this evening. Perhaps he could tell me when the production of the update might be achieved.

I know that there is a March deadline in the MOD’s business plan for the introduction of 30 mental health nurses, and it would be helpful if we could be told whether that is still on track and what measures the Government are undertaking to deliver greater co-ordination between the charitable sector, Plymouth city council and other organisations.