Carrier Strike Strategy

Paul Sweeney Excerpts

Thursday 28th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Robert Courts]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and I could not agree more with him. If we look at the ratio of ships available in 1982 against the number deployed in the taskforce, we can see that the Navy was highly tasked as it was. There has been no downscaling in the amount of commitments that we have practically.

The Government are addressing that in many ways, and I entirely applaud the Type 31e concept, which would mean we can try to rebuild mass with a smaller, perhaps cheaper, modular type of ship that we can export. We can perhaps have some platforms so that a cutting-edge Type 45 is not needed to deal with anti-piracy operations, but instead a smaller corvette-type frigate could be used. I entirely agree with that. The hon. Gentleman’s essential point is right: there comes a point where mass is needed because no ship, however good it is, can be in more than one place at any one time. I could not agree more with him.

My point is that countermeasures are being developed for all the threats I have mentioned—drones, speedboats and so on—but as von Moltke said,

“no plan survives contact with the enemy”.

It is equally the case, as I have referred to in the case of the Type 42, that no platform’s wartime capability ever quite matches up to its paper peacetime capability, because no war ever takes place if the other guy does not think he also has a chance. As much as we think our platforms are great, others are looking at ways to undermine them. They only have to be right one time out of 100 and they will cause us damage. There is a time when mass is required.

I know the Government are thinking along those lines already, and I welcome the October announcement that the Royal Netherlands navy will send a warship to be part of the carrier battle group for the first operational tour. That is an important part of the strand of thinking that the warship will form part of a combined NATO battle group. However, I suggest that a broader strategy is required to involve other allies. It is easily foreseeable that allies may not wish to take part in all operations, such as when France—a very close ally—decided that it did not wish to be part of the action we undertook in 2003. That is perfectly understandable, but it should not mean that the UK’s carrier group is unable to put to sea because a certain ally does not wish to take part. The MOD has refused to be drawn thus far on exactly which vessels will deploy, but part of my ask for a strategy is for that thinking to be fleshed out to ensure we can go to sea in all circumstances in terms of numbers, capacity and national partners. We need to ensure we address all the different possibilities.

Those possibilities must also include potential operations. Because it is a fleet carrier and a return to the big carrier concept that we have lost in the past, I have tended to think in terms of fleet carrier and carrier strike operations, but I know the Government are thinking about the utilisation of the carrier in the littoral role. That will mean we have different troops and machines on board, and the support vessels required will be different, too. Coming back to the point made by hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson), in 1982 we had sufficient mass that we could put together a taskforce over a weekend and go to sea. That is not likely to be possible anymore, because we simply do not have the mass or the numbers. We will have to think in advance about how we will do that for each potential likely scenario.

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent and comprehensive speech. He will note that the carriers are being used in the littoral role, which they are not designed for. Does he lament the decommissioning without replacement of HMS Ocean, and note the excellent work that Intrepid and Fearless did in that role during the south Atlantic conflict?

[Robert Courts]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. The Secretary of State recently made an announcement regarding ships that will take on at least some of the capabilities of HMS Ocean, with the commercial vessels refitted to take helicopters in the littoral role. Essentially, yes—I do mourn the loss of HMS Ocean, although I note that she required a heavy refit at the time, and there was an economic case surrounding that. I could not agree more that we should have a proper littoral capability with a platform designed for it, which was the essence of the hon. Gentleman’s point. Although the carriers will have a littoral role, it is not something that they are really designed for, and it strikes me that we will keep them as far out to sea as possible if we are in any kind of near-peer environment.

Without the strategic thought and overarching strategy that I urge, we risk being faced with a wonderful carrier capability that simply cannot be used without running an unacceptable risk to the carriers, or to the Royal Navy’s overall capability. I do not know whether many hon. Members have read General Shirreff’s novel “War With Russia”. It is worth reading. General Shirreff describes a British Prime Minister who, desperate to make a strong political gesture, sent the new Queen Elizabeth carrier to sea without an adequate escort, with the result that she was sent to the bottom by a ruthless Russian regime, which had been listening for months to the carrier’s precise acoustic signature, as we can guarantee all our potential adversaries in the world will be doing at this very moment. The book is meant as a warning; it is one that we should all take seriously.

I will try to speed up, as I know that others wish to speak. I am not talking just about royal naval ships; the biggest change in British maritime strength post-Falklands lies in the drastic reduction of merchant vessels sailing under the British flag. In 1982, approximately half the taskforce was requisitioned—the Royal Navy merchant reserve. These days, for such a capacity, the Government would have to look at chartering foreign vessels, with everything that that would mean—although I accept, as my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) said, that that may not fully reflect what we are doing. Again, it is part of the strategy, and something that we should look at.

I have spoken mostly about escort warships, and will now spend a little time talking about the aircraft. Each carrier can have up to 36 aircraft embarked, and we are expecting a first squadron of 12 for an initial operating capability to be ready shortly, with two by 2023. I welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement on 11 February that the US marines’ F-35Bs will be ready for the carrier’s first deployment cruise. That is good news, not just because it means that the carrier will be operational sooner than it otherwise would have been. It seems to provide a potential template for future operations, with embedded, close co-operation with allies to achieve our common military aims.

However, as central as our relationship with the Americans is and always should be to our defence and to NATO, I suggest that we look further. Italy, Japan and Turkey, all of which are scheduled to operate the F-35B, are all potential partners—I know that the decision has not been made—for Team Tempest, the next generation replacement for the Typhoon. If we are looking to co-operate on one programme, it seems a good idea for us to consider operating, as part of an overarching strategy, with other international partners in terms of carrier air groups. Italy, as I noted, has one of its own.

I am delighted that the Crowsnest platform to provide airborne early warning is being brought forward. Ever since the lack of one in the Falklands, it has been clear that there simply must be a carrier-borne, organic, airborne early warning capability. However, let us think about stores and supplies. We have talked about the littoral role. I suspect that it is likely that carriers will be kept out at sea, simply to reduce their vulnerability. In that case, lift capability will be required by helicopters, which have limited range, payload, speed and load-carrying capability. Otherwise, we are looking at ship-to- ship transfers at sea. I would merely observe that the V-22 Osprey, which is used by the US marines and navy, is very expensive and has been built to hold an F-35 engine. What is more, it can do so with speed, lift and range. We currently do not have that capability. I note that Lord West in the other place has made the same suggestion. It is something that we should consider.

Since 2010, as a country we have turned our back on the need for close air support operating from and within a naval task group. That is being put right, which I wholeheartedly welcome, but we need to ensure that we do not replace that issue with a strong core operating capability that lacks the support in terms of ships and supplies to sustain it. Before I let others have their say, I will make two other brief comments. The first is about foreign policy, and the second is about industry, which the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned.

Recently, there has been much talk of global Britain. Personally, I do not see that as a reaction to Brexit, or an attempt to find a role, but simply a reassertion of a natural British desire to act globally. As an island nation, we have always had very broad horizons. Much of the brilliance in our island history has been down to the way in which we have explored, found new cultures, adapted, assimilated, exported the best of our values and adopted the best of that we have met elsewhere. The sacrifice of this country in defending freedom and democracy through two world wars needs no explanation here.

Britain has always been a global nation, and we should view the carriers within that tradition. We should consider the ability to project world-leading global air power around the world as an opportunity to act as a force for good—to defend democracy and human rights, and to defend the weak and downtrodden. Clearly, there is a major foreign policy aspect that should be considered in partnership with the defence agenda that I have laid out. I ask for that strategy to be adopted across the Government, in the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence and BEIS.

I welcome the announcement that a deployment to the Pacific will be part of the first Queen Elizabeth deployment. A combined Defence and Foreign Office strategy should be worked up to address those circumstances—and I do not mean purely for warfare. Let us never forget the prestige of the Royal Navy. Its soft power, and by reflection that of Britain itself, is enormous. It demonstrates the very best of British skill and professionalism, and I am delighted to see from my time on the armed forces parliamentary scheme—I am on the Navy scheme this year—that the Royal Navy is once again utilising its enormous prestige to bring together parties abroad, who otherwise would not necessarily be able to come together, in a diplomatic capacity. How much more could be done with world-beating carrier capability as a showcase for British industrial and military prowess? Let us see a tie-up with the Foreign Office, DFID and the Department for International Trade.

My last few remarks will celebrate industry. As I have said, they are not just big grey ships that benefit the people of Portsmouth, although they unquestionably do. They also benefit the whole United Kingdom, because they have been built by our constituents in companies all across the country. UK industry is set to benefit from a 15% build share of the jets—£13 billion to British companies. UK shipbuilding employs 23,000 people and contributes £1.7 billion a year to the UK economy.

We are lucky to see coming into service the finest ships of their type anywhere in the world, crewed by the most professional Navy. They are bringing the glory of the Royal Navy’s history together with the technological, industrial prowess that is our hallmark for the future. The carriers can help us to unite new friends around the world in times of peace, and to defend freedom in times of war. They are the very best of our country, and I wholeheartedly celebrate them, as I hope we all can.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate led by the hon. Member for Witney (Robert Courts), who gave an excellent introduction. He set out the history of carrier strike capability in the UK with aplomb, and spoke highly of our capability and future opportunity, which was fantastic.

[Sir Graham Brady in the Chair]

I share the sentiments of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth), who raised issues about industrial capability. I speak with a degree of interest: I think I am the only Member who was actually involved in the design and construction of the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers in Glasgow. Let me mention one of the most striking aspects of being involved in the project. When I first started as a graduate at BAE Systems, the chief engineer gave us a briefing on the Queen Elizabeth class and talked about the complexity of the project. One thing he said really struck home; he put up an aerial photograph of RAF Lossiemouth and said, “You’re looking at 5.6 million square metres of real estate. We have to condense the same number of aircraft movements into 0.3% of the space. That’s how we deliver the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier.”

That shows just how complex the delivery of an aircraft carrier is; an airfield is being compacted into 0.3% of the usual space, and we are trying to deliver the same intensity of operations at sea in all weather conditions. That is why, in a nutshell, an aircraft carrier is such a complex project. It is probably among the top five most complex engineering projects ever undertaken by mankind. It is a great testament to British engineering that we have been able to achieve this capability, despite the challenges posed by the inconsistent construction runs and feast-and-famine orders that have plagued our shipbuilding industry for decades. I think that is what my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North hinted at, as did the hon. Member for Witney. He talked about the bad decisions made in the 1960s. An example is the cancellation of the CVA-01 aircraft carrier project, which was intended to be called HMS Prince of Wales and Queen Elizabeth—we got there only 40 years later. The TSR2 strategic bomber was also cancelled at that time.

It seems that history has a habit of repeating itself. I lament the very poor decisions made in the 2010 strategic defence and security review, which destroyed the Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft. That is now recognised as a failure of judgment, and we are trying to replicate what we had, but with the loss of British sovereign capability to build large fixed-wing aircraft like the Nimrod. Looking at the failure to adapt our shipbuilding capabilities for the long term, I fear that the national shipbuilding strategy has a series of flaws that we have to be aware of.

On the construction of the aircraft carrier, there was real difficulty getting match-fit again in order to deal with the scale of the project. That is largely what I was concerned about in Govan. I have a photograph of me standing in bay 1 of the ship block and outfit hall at Govan as lower block 4 was being transferred out of that hall and on to a barge in order be taken to Rosyth. The size and beam of the aircraft carrier was dictated by the fact that the shipyard was built by a Norwegian company to build gas tankers in the late 1980s and 1990s. The width of the aircraft carrier was determined by the size of the hall. We were building it in a shipyard that was never designed or constructed to build an aircraft carrier—the whole structure of the carrier was designed around our industrial limitations.

It feels like we have not learned from the mistakes made and the constraints imposed by industry in this project, which is why we have not really looked at how the national shipbuilding strategy is getting us to upper-quartile performance in world shipbuilding. That is a glaring omission from the document. I hope that the work of the all-parliamentary group on shipbuilding and ship repair, which is bringing forward a review of the national shipbuilding strategy in the next few weeks, will offer constructive and positive suggestions of how we can improve that strategy. It is critical that we get this right.

Looking at the threat to the shipbuilding industry, in Glasgow, 2,723 people are supported on a full-time-equivalent basis by the shipbuilding industry. It supports an additional 3,220 jobs in Scotland, which speaks to the scale of the aircraft carrier project. It supported 8,000 shipyard workers in—I make a slight correction here—eight shipyards. If Scotstoun and Govan are included as separate, distinct shipyards, there are eight. Never confuse Govan and Scotstoun as a single shipyard—that is a fatal error in Glasgow.

[Ruth Smeeth]

I think my hon. Friend might want to raise this issue with the Minister, because that the data available on the Royal Navy website says otherwise.

[Mr Sweeney]

We must correct the Ministry of Defence; otherwise, some fairly indignant Glaswegians will be coming to bang on its door.

The issue goes back to the drumbeat of orders, and stability in the order book. I used to sit with colleagues in the shipyard and we would look at resource planning. We would plug in different projects and see the curve of labour demand over the next 10 to 15 years. We knew that redundancies or contractions would have to be made at some point, because the loading of the shipyard’s work programme was not smoothed; there was failure by the Ministry of Defence, the Treasury—in terms of financing projects—and the industry to co-ordinate properly to ensure as stable and smooth a curve as possible. That kind of curve would have delivered learning-curve benefits, industrial efficiency and the confidence to invest in world-class infrastructure and processes, and would create a virtuous cycle that delivers a world-class, competitive edge that would mean we could sell ships around the world at a competitive price, and deliver a sustainable and growing shipbuilding industry.

If we can optimise that equation, we will be in a good place, but I fear that the national shipbuilding strategy will not address that issue. One of the symptoms is the Type 31e. It is a laudable aspiration, but the reality is that we are committing the same mistake time and again. We are going to year zero and designing and building a new platform from scratch every time. That is a total failure to understand how industry works. The Americans have been building the same class for the last 30 years, with incremental improvements to the same platform. We need to work to that sort of concept. There is no reason why we cannot adapt the Type 45 and Type 26 hulls for a number of different uses. Building the ship as a raw steel box is only about 8% of the overall capital cost; it is how it is fitted out that drives the cost into the platform. If we can get a standardised, basic ship type for each type of ship needed for the Royal Navy, we can drive efficiency into the programmes, get more hulls into the water, and build a rigorous, carrier strike battle group around the Queen Elizabeth class, which would allow us to get the bulk back into the Royal Navy.

I have spoken to the Royal Navy, which says it has 19 escorts, but it needs 24 to meet all its planning needs. The Navy needs to bridge that gap, but how will we do it? There is no explanation of how that is happening. I would say that we need another 24 plus. We had 32 escorts as recently as 20 years ago. How do we get back to that situation? I do not think that Type 31s will solve that problem. How do we fix that issue? It is not just about looking at the aircraft carriers, which is a fantastic class of ship in isolation; it is about how we build that resilience into the carrier strike battle group. If we do not get a correct and efficient escort proposition, we will not meet that need. That goes back to getting our industrial capability correct—something that is not being addressed by the national shipbuilding strategy.

Another symptom of the problem is the fleet solid support ships competition. If you ask me, it is absolutely insane even to entertain the idea of an international competition for this, because it belies any understanding of how to drive value into the project. Looking at the fleet solid support ships, 6,700 jobs will be created or secured, including 1,800 shipyard jobs and 450 apprenticeships. Some £272 million will be recycled back into the UK economy through wages and supply of payments to the Treasury. Those figures must be weighted in the judgment for the UK bid on fleet solid support ships, and they must be weighted into the need to sustain the critical mass of industrial capability that the aircraft carrier left as a legacy at Rosyth.

In the next few years, we are potentially looking at over 1,000 job losses across the Babcock group, and at the closure of Appledore, which built the bulbous bows for the aircraft carrier. There are huge industrial capabilities at risk. Look at the Rugby site, which builds electric motors for the integrated electric propulsion system for the Type 45 and the aircraft carrier—one of the most fantastic industrial achievements of the UK. That is at risk again; General Electric proposes closing that strategically important site. These things need to be gripped by the Ministry of Defence and the Treasury, because we are losing a war of attrition on our industrial capability in the shipbuilding industry.

[Ruth Smeeth]

I want to touch on the capability that we are losing from General Electric. We have already lost one of the capabilities, which was in Kidsgrove in my constituency. We were given assurances that the capability would be sustainable long term after its redeployment to Rugby and Stafford, yet we are losing it. Industry is just not supporting us in the right way if that is not part of the sovereign skills capability and it knows there is a steady drumbeat of orders.

[Mr Sweeney]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. It is critical that we look not just at the first-tier equipment manufacturers, such as BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce, in which the Government have golden shares and can direct operational decision making to an extent, but at the second and third-tier supply chains. After all, 3,000 people involved in the aircraft carrier project were in the supply chains. We need to look at the industrial capabilities that are critical to maintaining sovereign capability. It is clear that General Electric has made an operational decision to move that capability to France. That is not in the British national interest, so we need to make it clear that we will not accept that. It is as simple as that. It is the Government’s duty to make that case and use whatever leverage is required to make General Electric change its mind. The Government are there to correct negative market decisions, and that is what needs to happen to sustain our industrial capability.

My vision is of a better national shipbuilding strategy that looks to the future and the capabilities that we need to sustain, and ensures that we have a long-term capital investment proposition with the Treasury that reflects the complexity and long-term nature of shipbuilding programmes, finances them properly on a multi-year, generational basis, and invests in the capital infrastructure that is required to get our shipyards match-fit. It is a great tragedy that the world-class shipbuilding capability on the Clyde has not been realised, and that we are still building Type 26s in the same old hall built by a Norwegian company for gas tankers in the 1980s. It has served us well, but when the business case was made for building that hall in the 1980s, we sure as hell did not think we would be building aircraft carriers and Type 26 frigates in it.

This is about not just the narrow business case of one programme and the investment for building Type 26s in the shipyard, but all the other ships that will follow in its wake. This is a 50 to 60-year capital investment programme. The industrial benefit of doing that is enormous, and the Ministry of Defence has not addressed it. I hope the Minister will address that point, because it is crucial that we start to think about this in those terms. The silo mentality about projects does not serve our defence industrial capability. We need a much broader view and much more integration to secure our skills base. We must infuse our ageing shipbuilding workforce with more apprentices. We need sustainable training programmes and a stable demand pipeline through programmes such as the fleet solid support ships, which should be plugged in to take up the slack that has come from the downscaling of the aircraft carrier programme.

Similarly, why are we not planning for a proper replacement for HMC Ocean, rather than retrofitting merchant vessels? That is a rather foolish and superficial way of doing it. Let us build a new helicopter landing platform, a replacement for the Albion class and a world-class shipyard that is able to deliver them. That is what we need to do to pull all this together and realise the industrial legacy of the Queen Elizabeth-class programme, which was an exemplar of British engineering. It was a truly world-class, world-leading programme. We talk about building the space shuttle and the international space station, but the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier is up there with the most complex engineering projects ever undertaken by the human race. We should have a great national celebration of that achievement. Let us make the most of the legacy.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I congratulate all four Members who have spoken so far. Only one of them is a member of the Defence Committee, which I have the honour to chair. Given their depth of knowledge and enormous enthusiasm, the Defence Committee will not be short of worthy members in the future. I encourage those who are not yet on it to redouble their efforts to be so at the first opportunity. The beneficiaries of their enthusiasm and breadth of knowledge will be the House and the country as a whole.

The previous speeches have not left me with as much to say as I might otherwise have said. That is an additional benefit to anybody watching the debate. I will pick and choose a few points here and there from what has been said already, and try to develop them into a theme of strategy and adversaries. When I talk about adversaries, I am really talking about one overwhelming adversary: the Treasury. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan) that, after bringing in one of the two largest vessels ever built for the Royal Navy, the Treasury might be thinking of mothballing it. I suppose that is a little better than the proposal that I heard from one George Osborne in the run-up to the 2010 election, which was to scrap the project for building the carriers completely. It is amazing how many times we have almost lost the ability to project air power from the sea. In one case, we did lose it. We lost it when we lost the Invincible class of carriers.

My hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts), in his magisterial opening speech, referred to the fact that those carriers were termed through-deck cruisers, and he was rather critical of that. This is the only minor point of correction I would make to his exemplary exposition. Those ships were from the outset aircraft carriers capable of enabling the Harrier still to offer fixed-wing coverage from the sea to the land. They were called through-deck cruisers to defeat the adversary—the Treasury. If they had been called carriers from the outset, they would never have been built. [Interruption.] I am glad to see that my hon. Friend accepts that. Once they were safely in commission, and after a respectable number of years, it became possible to reclassify them as aircraft carriers, which is what they were always intended to be.

Of course, we very nearly had no carriers for the Falklands conflict. We only had them, as I say, because of a bit of subterfuge on the part of the admiralty. When it came to the Libya conflict—a disastrously misconceived conflict, as it happens—we had no carrier capability at all. I recall that when the decision was taken to have a gap between the phasing out of the Invincible-class carriers and HMS Queen Elizabeth’s coming into service, we did not anticipate any role for a carrier for 10 years or so. I believe that the Libyan scenario arose after something like 10 months, rather than 10 years. Guess which warship our French allies in that conflict immediately moved to the theatre? It was their one and only aircraft carrier.

[Mr Sweeney]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a very important point about euphemisms. Another favourite of mine is “capability holiday”, and “fitted for but not with” was a common theme on the Type 45 destroyer. Does he agree that the issue of capability holidays needs to be properly scrutinised? I do not think the Ministry of Defence has recognised the damage that the 2010 SDSR caused, in terms of the loss of maritime patrol capability and carrier capability.

[Dr Lewis]

The trouble with 2010 was that it was a funded defence review that was totally unstrategic. People say that the 1998 defence review was the reverse: it was very strategic, but almost totally unfunded. Our problem is that we are unable in times of peace to persuade the people in charge of the national purse strings that the best investment they can make in the long term is to have strong armed forces. If our armed forces are strong enough, we will not have to spend all that treasure, let alone all those lives, in fighting conflicts that arise as a result of our perceived weakness.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Lewis]

I will go some way towards acknowledging that, with this one caveat: our strategic goals cannot be defined more tightly than the ability to have a full range of military capability to meet whatever threats may reasonably be regarded as likely to arise. I am afraid that all speeches that I make about defence policy and military strategy come back to the same three basic concepts: deterrence, containment and the unpredictability of future conflict. Libya and the Falklands were unpredictable.

The only thing we can predict is that the vast majority of conflicts in which we will be engaged in in the future, as in the vast majority of conflicts in the past, will arise with little or no warning significantly in advance, and that is why we have to have a comprehensive range of military capabilities. It is very difficult to persuade budget-conscious Treasury officials not to take a chance with the nation’s security. That is why the Defence Select Committee comes back time and again to the same point, which is that defence has fallen too far down our scale of national priorities. When we compare it with other high spending Departments we can see that because in the 1980s, at the stage when we faced an aggressive Soviet Union and a major terrorist threat in the form of Northern Ireland and the IRA insurgency, we spent approximately the same on defence as we spent on health and education. Now we spend four times on health and two and a half times on education as we spend on defence. We can get away with that as long as things do not go wrong, but if they do we live to regret it bitterly.

[Mr Sweeney]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his indulgence in giving way. Although I do not think the decisions on spending are mutually exclusive—I think we have sufficient capacity in the state to fund all these things adequately—he makes an important point about thinking we can get away with not properly investing. I think of the predecessor of the new Prince of Wales, which was sunk by the Japanese in 1941 because there were fatal weaknesses in the battleship’s design. Its air defence systems had been scrapped because of cost-saving measures in the 1930s. Does he not agree that that is a lesson of history that we ought to probably learn if unpredictable conflicts are to emerge in future?

[Dr Lewis]

I wondered whether I should make a reference to that terrible event in December 1941 when the Prince of Wales and the Repulse were sunk by Japanese air power. One of the main problems was that they were sent out with inadequate protection and inadequate escorts, and, as I recall from my history books, no air cover whatever. Having said that, we can say that HMS Queen Elizabeth has already claimed one victory. Given that, as I said earlier, the Treasury can be regarded as the main adversary, I think the Treasury has probably sunk more ships in the Royal Navy than any other enemy we have faced. It was gratifying to see a bit of advance retaliation in that HMS Queen Elizabeth appears to have sunk the Chancellor’s visit to the Communist Chinese without even having embarked on its first operational voyage. [Laughter.] I hoped to get a laugh at that point, but behind that is a serious point that relates to what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Witney a moment ago in an intervention: the Government need to have an overall strategy. All too often they look both ways with regard to countries that do not mean us a lot of good.

Let us take the example of China. Before I come to the more recent issue of its behaviour in the South China sea, let us go back to 2013 when I served on the Intelligence and Security Committee, which devoted a great deal of time to a study of foreign penetration of British critical national infrastructure. That was the overall title of the report that we produced, but in reality it was all about Huawei and the way in which that giant Chinese Communist telecommunications firm had penetrated British telecom and been brought into the system without Ministers having even been alerted until it had happened. I remember being somewhat fazed when, within a matter of a few weeks of the publication of that report, with all its dire warnings about the need for it to never happen again, I saw a picture of the then Prime Minster David Cameron shaking hands with the chief executive of Huawei on the doorstep of No. 10 on the basis of some great new deal that was being proposed.

We need to understand that if there is something so sensitive about the idea that a ship of the Royal Navy could even dream of going into the Pacific ocean that a major trade trip from the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom to China has to be called off, there is something terribly wrong both with the attitude of the Communist Chinese in calling off the trip, as it were, and the attitude of the Treasury in wanting the Chancellor to undertake it. I will leave the point at that at the moment, unless I get some in-flight refuelling from the hon. Gentleman.

[Mr Sweeney]

Does the right hon. Gentleman think that the concept of ITAR—international traffic in arms regulations—which is a NATO standard, should be extended to such spheres to address the insidiousness of the new penetration by foreign powers?

[Dr Lewis]

I think that is a very perceptive suggestion. When it comes to the issue of keeping the country safe from threats to our way of life, which now take on new forms that are much more difficult to recognise because they do not operate at a level that would automatically trigger the same sort of alarm bells as traditional military threats, the support that I find as chairman of the Defence Committee from Members of all four parties represented on it is absolutely outstanding. The House should acknowledge more than it does the high degree of consensus among defence-minded people in all the major parties, irrespective of occasional disagreements on specific aspects of defence now and again.

I want to bring my remarks to a conclusion by talking about the 1998 Labour Government strategic defence review, which I described as unfunded but highly strategic. It was a very good review. If the funds had been made available for it, it would have been an outstanding success. At that time in 1998 the threat from the Soviet Union had gone away and it was hoped that we would not have to consider a major confrontation in Europe. So the thinking behind that review went something like this: given that we do not anticipate our armed forces having to be engaged in the European theatre in future, it follows that if they are to be engaged on a significant scale anywhere, it will be at some considerable distance from Europe. Given that we no longer are a global imperial power with a network of strategic bases around the world from which to intervene, it follows that we need a concept that enables us to have a movable strategic base. At the heart of that strategic defence review of 1998 was the concept of the sea base, which had two central pillars. One was carrier strike and the other was the amphibious taskforce.

Carrier strike was to enable us to exert air power to the land from the sea, and the amphibious taskforce was to enable us to insert land forces on to territory likewise from the sea, taking the whole strategic concept into a way in which we could travel to the theatre where the need to intervene militarily applied.

Only a year ago we faced yet another major potential crisis. It was widely reported in January last year that the core ships—HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark of the amphibious taskforce—were going to be pensioned off 15 years before their due date. I can honestly say that the most influential report of the 27 so far produced by the Defence Committee since I have been chairing it was the one that we brought out in February 2018, which described the proposal to lose our ability to exert land power from the sea as militarily illiterate. I absolutely welcome the intervention of the Secretary of State for Defence, who could see the risk and what was going to happen. Some people have criticised the modernising defence programme for not being been quite as substantial as they expected. However, that is to miss the point, because although I welcome the concept of the fusion doctrine, which my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed referred to, there was a way in which it posed a risk to the future of our armed forces. The way in which the defence theory for the future was being amalgamated in the national security capability review with newer threats, such as those from cyberspace and disinformation, was conceptually sound but economically dangerous. I shall explain after taking an intervention from my hon. Friend.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

I commend the hon. Member for Witney (Robert Courts) on an impassioned opening speech. I also associate myself fully with the words of the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan) about my colleague on the Defence Committee, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth), because what she and many of her colleagues face is an affront to parliamentary democracy. They should have the full support of the entire House.

I agree with a lot of what has been said in the debate. We on the Defence Committee often find that we agree on quite a lot—apart from one glaring, obvious thing. The hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Sweeney) pointed out some of the issues faced in Govan to do with the structure of the yard, which was formerly Norwegian owned and was built specifically for oil rigs. That legacy has impacted the shipping industry across the whole of these islands; I will go into that at some point, as the son of a shipyard worker outside the city of Glasgow. I also agreed with the hon. Gentleman about incremental changes to structures. That links to affordability and capability. Capability is worth nothing if we cannot afford it in the long term.

The right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), the Chair of the Defence Committee, is eloquent on the political dimensions. I might say more about that. His chairmanship of the Select Committee is second to none, and he is welcoming to all Members, no matter if we have slight disagreements on the odd occasion. The hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) talked about support. I could not agree with him more. Another element of that support, apart from the construction of vessels of any type, is the naval personnel. I am sure that he recognises, as Committee members do, some of the profound challenges we face in recruitment, not just to the Army but to the entire armed forces. The hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) mentioned the connection between local industry and the industrial complex. He will find no disagreement here. He is correct that those are essential elements to consider.

A few anniversaries were mentioned at the beginning of speeches; it would be remiss of me as a Bankie not to mention that today is the anniversary of the launching of the Duke of York from the John Brown shipbuilding company, the greatest shipyard that ever existed on the Clyde, in the burgh of Clydebank, West Dunbartonshire. My grandfather worked as a riveter in the yard. The shipyard also gave birth to the mighty Hood and to aircraft carriers, the Nairana class—a strike force of some sort—and HMS Indefatigable, which was launched in December 1942. The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed, who is just leaving the Chamber, also mentioned the Britannia. The sad thing about the Britannia’s retirement was that she ended up on the east coast of Scotland, rather than where she should be, back in the burgh of Clydebank. My father worked on that ship as well.

[Mr Sweeney]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very good speech about Clydebank’s shipbuilding pedigree. He might also want to note, for the record, that the world’s first aircraft carrier, HMS Argus—a converted ocean liner—was built just downstream at Beardmore’s in Dalmuir. That gave birth to the whole concept of the modern through-deck aircraft carrier, and it is a great tribute to the pedigree of Clyde shipbuilding. I would perhaps dispute his claim that Clydebank is the greatest shipyard on the Clyde; Fairfield has a good claim to that title, too.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

No Glaswegian is ever going to win that argument with me. On Beardmore’s, the hon. Gentleman steals my thunder and my speech—perhaps he saw it earlier. Beardmore’s was one of the greatest shipyards. It ran from Dalmuir, where I am from, all the way into the borough itself. Its demise was the result of bad planning and ineffectual ministerial planning of the budget between the two great wars—but enough of the history. Well, perhaps I will mention one more thing. As the son of an 85-year-old coppersmith who still has his equipment in the garden hut, I fundamentally recognise the blood, sweat and tears of those who build the carrier force, even in the 21st century. They are to be commended for their sterling work, which they are committed to in Rosyth.

I am sure the Minister recognises that there are three members of the Defence Committee here. The role of the carrier force is well understood, not just by the Committee but in the House, and I hope he recognises some of the concerns that have been highlighted to us as the carriers head into service. A former Chief of the Defence Staff said of the carriers:

“The navy says that in a ‘high-threat environment’ they will be protected by two destroyers, two anti-submarine frigates, a submarine, a tanker and a supply ship. That is a huge commitment for a navy that has just 19 destroyers and frigates and six available subs.”

I hope the Minister takes that on board and considers how we will rectify a situation in which we think we are unable to deliver that for two carriers. In addition, Professor Peter Roberts of the Royal United Services Institute stated:

“it’s clear that the decision to pursue two carriers at the expense of everything else in defence has weakened the defence posture of the UK as a whole.”

How do we reconcile that with the contribution of those two carriers to the UK’s defence?

Following on from what the Chair of the Select Committee and the hon. Member for Gedling said, will the Minister say more about the impact on post-Brexit trade talks with the People’s Republic of China of the Secretary of State’s first foray—I suppose in some technical manner—into the carrier strike strategy with his recent statement about using “lethal force” in the South China sea? Indeed, the Chancellor said that the UK’s relationship with China

“has not been made simpler”

by that. Can the Minister tell us whether that first foray was a success?

The hon. Member for Witney correctly mentioned some of the Government decisions made. Since 1997, we have seen an overall decrease of around 39% in the number of ships in the Royal Navy, with a 46% decrease in the number of destroyers and frigates.

The Chair of the Select Committee and I fundamentally agree about the north Atlantic. I think some of our colleagues are getting a bit sick of me banging the drum about the north Atlantic, but I think he appreciates it. There is growing concern that, given the Russian Federation’s refresh of the bastion theory, we must fundamentally shift our approach to defence of the north Atlantic to maintain sea lines of communication, which the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed mentioned, and—we never talk about this—the transatlantic cable network between Canada and the United States, and the UK and the rest of the European continent. Will the Minister advise us how the strategy will enhance capability in the north Atlantic and the High North?

On capability, the Select Committee has consistently raised concerns about issues with the F-35 programme and the impact of expenditure, including about our ability to deliver on the expected expenditure in the equipment plan, given that the Public Accounts Committee stated in January that the Department

“lacks the capability to accurately cost programmes within its Equipment Plan”.

I recognise what other Members said about the F-35s from the United States. That is a great commitment by the United States, but there are concerns about our ability to follow up on it.

On foreign policy, the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed reminded us that we are an island. It is a pity that that was missed out of the 2015 strategic defence and security review. The Secretary of State, although he was not in that role at the time, was questioned about that by the Select Committee and said he would ensure that it was corrected. The hon. Lady mentioned the battle for the north Atlantic, which is a stark reminder of the strategic importance of the north Atlantic. As I keep saying, it is in the name—NATO is the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. The Chair of the Select Committee mentioned the issues with the Prince of Wales, which perhaps should have been called the Duke of Rothesay. I hope the MOD can provide real clarification about its future. If it is sold, will that money be spent on a fleet and continued investment in the north Atlantic?

Essential elements of this discussion are sometimes hindered by short-term political planning. Will the Minister advise us on whether there have been any discussions in the Department about approaching our Scandinavian allies? I have raised that in the Select Committee. From my party’s perspective, adopting the Scandinavian model of having SDSRs that cover whole Parliaments would be an appropriate way to approach the planning of defence policy. Although there may not be consensus across the House on one or two elements of defence, I think we could coalesce around the vast majority of defence issues and gain support for them for a whole five-year Parliament. That would give consistency to those working in the field in industry, to the Department, and, essentially, to those in the armed forces who we ask to go on to the frontline. Finally, will the Minister commit to Rosyth being the long-term refitting home of the carrier force?