Military Aviation Industry

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) on securing this debate. Unlike the hon. Member for Preston (Mark Hendrick), I do not intend to tempt the Minister to prejudge the outcome of the strategic defence review, nor will I engage in self-indulgent scaremongering about possible outcomes. There are more than enough armchair generals, bath-tub admirals and heaven knows who else opining in the letters columns of the national press about what form the future force configuration should take, and we do not need to debate that tonight.

[Mark Hendrick]

I do not want to hog the debate, as I have already spoken at length but the hon. Gentleman will recognise that before the general election we made it plain that we would cut the deficit by 50% over four years. With a party now in government saying it will attempt to cut the deficit totally in five years, hon. Members can draw their own conclusions.

[Paul Maynard]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but people’s jobs depend on decisions being made now, and I do not intend to engage in self-indulgent scaremongering. He may wish to do so on behalf of his constituents, to whom he is responsible, but I do not intend to adopt a similar position.

[John Woodcock]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Paul Maynard]

No, because I have a number of things I want to say.

We are here to discuss the UK military aviation industry, not the outcomes of the strategic defence review. There are two important aspects to consider. First, there are the potential changes to UK Government orders that we do not know about, and which we will not find out about tonight, however much Opposition Members may wish otherwise. I do not expect that, and I am sure that many other Conservative Members do not expect it either. However, we can discuss the important steps taken by the Government to promote exports. I was interested to hear the hon. Member for Preston (Mark Hendrick) discuss the need to improve exports. The hon. Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) said it was no substitute for investment by the UK Government. We had 13 years of a Labour Government who failed to take seriously the promotion of UK exports. I heard it time and time again, even from active trade unionists, that BAE Systems—

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend think that the absence of the Opposition Front-Bench team is a further sign of the importance they place on this matter?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. This is an Adjournment debate, so the hon. Gentleman’s point is not relevant. I hope that Members will return to the aviation industry.

[Paul Maynard]

Export industry is crucial, and improved Government support for it—

[John Woodcock]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Paul Maynard]

No, I am not prepared to give way.

[John Woodcock]

The hon. Gentleman gave way to his hon. Friend just now.

[Paul Maynard]

No, I am sorry. I am not prepared to give way.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde said, a recent trip to India resulted in a much improved Hawk order. However, I would like to make one observation to the Minister that I hope he will bear in mind. There is no finer advertisement for the British military aviation industry than the Red Arrows. I hope that he will bear that in mind when he is considering the wider issues of the strategic defence review.

Tonight’s debate should not be about BAE Systems only. I realise it is a major player in the UK military aviation industry, but it is not the sole player. In the north-west, we have the North West Aerospace Alliance, which has made an enormous effort to develop a world-class supply chain that includes not just BAE Systems—

[Graham Jones]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Paul Maynard]

If I must.

[Graham Jones]

Put simply, if the RAF or the British Government will not buy Typhoons, why should any other country? It is a really poor advert. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the strength of our exports will come from our confidence in our own products and UK manufacturing base? He seems to be arguing the opposite, which I do not fully understand. That is an important point that he needs to focus on—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. This is an Adjournment debate, which is going a little longer tonight because of the time. The debate is in the name of the hon. Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies). [Interruption.] Will the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) please resume his seat while I am on my feet? Thank you. Interventions are to be brief. It is a Back-Bench debate and should refer to the title and subject of the debate. If Members want to speak, they should stand and hope they get in.

[Paul Maynard]

I appreciate your guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I want to talk about the importance of sovereign capability in terms of our military aviation industry. Many people might regard the notion of sovereign capability as something nostalgic. At the moment, we are celebrating the 70th anniversary of the battle of Britain, and many people are saying how fortunate we were in those days to be able to generate our own aircraft, make them within our own shores and defend our shores against our enemies, and that we should continue that in the future. I would be cautious, however, about basing any arguments for sovereign capability on nostalgia, tempting as that might be, but sovereign capability matters. It is an important concept that the Government have to buy into, because we do not know what is around the corner or what the future holds. We do not know whether we can rely on those on whom we have relied in the past. The world is full of unknowns, and sovereign capability is our sole protection from them.

I therefore ask the Government to consider carefully the ways in which they can support sovereign capability, and to look beyond defining it simply in terms of whether shipyard X or aircraft factory Y remains open. With regard to military aviation, I ask the Minister to consider how the Government can use some of the things that they are already doing to protect sovereign capability, in particular through the important changes being made with the introduction of local enterprise partnerships. It is important that the Ministry of Defence speak to other Departments to consider how the newly emerging LEPs can best be allocated to strategic areas, which can then underpin particular subsections of the defence industry. A good example would be the application by Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre to have a local enterprise partnership focusing on the aeronautical supply chain, which I discussed earlier. That is one way in which Government innovation can help to support sovereign capability without having to invest just to keep things open.

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

One thing that must also be considered when talking about the area of north-west England for which my hon. Friend is a Member—quite a few Members are from there—is that places such as Samlesbury and Warton form an area of excellence that is the silicon valley, as it were, of the defence aviation industry. We have only to look back at what happened in the 1960s when the Wilson Government cut the TSR2. We had a world-beating product, but it was shredded because of what was happening at the time in the political framework. My hon. Friend is correct about the allocation of funding. We have to preserve not just the jobs, but the scientific—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I said just a moment ago that interventions needed to be brief. That is a general rule of the House. The hon. Gentleman should not use the opportunity of an intervention to make a speech. I am sure that his hon. Friend has got the gist of his point now.

[Paul Maynard]

I agree with it fully, so I thank my hon. Friend for his comments.

The other Department that I would like the Minister to talk to is the Department for Education. It is a common complaint across Government as a whole that science education is somehow in decline. When I was fortunate enough to tour BAE Systems in Warton, I saw many highly skilled people who had engaged in scientific educational training. They had their physics and their chemistry: they knew what they were doing when it came to science. That is one important reason for ensuring that we emphasise why more students should get science-based qualifications that lead to careers in important defence-based industries—in particular military aviation—and underpin the protection of our sovereign capability.

I hope that the Minister will take both those ideas away and do something with them. Sovereign capability matters. It needs to be more than just a phrase that gets deployed in debates such as this, and we need to do more than depend on nostalgia to underpin it. I hope that he will consider that. We have something that we can be enormously proud of in the UK military aviation industry but, like anything, it must be constantly burnished and kept up to scratch. I hope that the Minister will tell us how he intends to do that when he responds to this debate.