UK Amphibious Capability

Paul Sweeney Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Smeeth]

I could not agree more. Having visited our Royal Marines in the Arctic to observe their training, I know how important that is for not only our own capabilities but the partnerships we build with other marines from our allies.

It has been suggested that the role of HMS Bulwark and Albion could be replaced by our two aircraft carriers or a cheaper Royal Fleet Auxiliary Service offering, but that is not what either is designed to do.

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

This comes after the loss of a landing ship dock auxiliary from the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Largs Bay to Australia in recent years and the pending decommissioning of HMS Ocean without any formal like-for-like replacement. The aircraft carriers are unsuitable for subsuming that role as a landing helicopter dock ship. Does my hon. Friend agree that that in itself—never mind the loss of the Albion and Bulwark LPDs—should be a matter of criticism and scrutiny in the House?

[Ruth Smeeth]

My hon. Friend has pre-empted the next paragraph of my speech. Why on earth, having spent £7 billion on new aircraft carriers, would we use them in this way? It is a waste of capability and an appalling use of the cutting-edge platform we have just built. As importantly, they do not have the capacity to carry or launch amphibious landing craft, and their holds are not designed to meet the specific requirements of the Royal Marines with regard to kit and platforms. They also cannot be used independently of the fleet and, as I think we are all aware, they cannot be deployed very quietly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) on securing this important debate and on her first-rate speech.

This is one of the few Westminster Hall debates I can recall in which there has been unanimity—well, virtual unanimity—among contributing Members, a point made well by my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon). Every Member who has spoken in this debate holds the firm view that the defence of this country requires an amphibious capability; if HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark are scrapped and 1,000 Royal Marines are lost, that capability will effectively come to an end. We have heard from right hon. and hon. Members with great knowledge and expertise, whose views largely echo those of leading figures in the armed forces, including the former First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir George Zambellas. His evidence to the Defence Committee last week has already been quoted, but I shall quote it again:

“Nobody in the world of complex warfare, especially for an island nation that delivers force from the sea, thinks that a reduction in the sophisticated end of amphibiosity is a good idea.”

General Sir Richard Barrons, former commander of the Joint Forces Command, said that we run

“the risk of a ridiculous zero-sum discussion...the nonsense of culling marines to buy more sailors”.

He also described

“the idea that if the Navy needs to…find more sailors, the… thing to do is to cull some of the finest infantry in the world—the Royal Marines”

as a “line of madness”. A number of hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson), have quoted those words, which I am sure we all agree were powerful and well considered.

Since the end of the second world war, our amphibious capability has been used more than 10 times in military action, from Korea and Suez to the Falklands and Sierra Leone. As my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) noted, it has also been used to great effect in humanitarian efforts, including recently in Operation Ruman in the Caribbean. The Royal Marines have been in almost continuous operation in 30 different campaigns. There were pressures to remove our amphibious capability after our withdrawal from east of Suez in the 1970s and early 1980s, but common sense has always prevailed.

Let us not forget that our amphibious shipping and the Royal Marine command brigade were crucial in liberating the Falkland Islands—a point made well by the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) and in the powerful speech of the hon. Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty). After the Falklands war, it was agreed that the UK needed to maintain a minimum amphibious force, but since the 2010 SDSR we have seen gradual reductions in capacity.

[Mr Sweeney]

Labour’s 1998 strategic defence review defined the optimum capability for amphibiosity in the UK as not just two Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers, but six Point-class sea-lift ships, one landing helicopter dock on HMS Ocean, two Albion-class landing platform docks and four Bay-class landing ship docks. That assumption should not have changed; why has it? Why has the capability been cut since then? We have had no explanation from the Minister.

[Wayne David]

My hon. Friend makes his point well; I agree absolutely. Let us also bear in mind that the marines have recently lost 400 personnel, and it is rumoured that the newly refitted HMS Ocean will be sold to Brazil for a very modest £80 million.

That brings us to where we are today. We learned from the press last week that the new Secretary of State for Defence did not believe that the cuts to Albion, Bulwark and the marines could be justified, and was asking the Treasury for an extra £2 billion to help to fill the gap in the MOD’s finances and ward off cuts to the Navy. However, we read this weekend that the Treasury had given him the cold shoulder, saying emphatically that no more money would be available. Some reports have even suggested that he did not even make such a request to the Treasury.

Will the Minister clarify exactly what is going on? Is it the MOD’s view that—as all hon. Members in this debate have argued and so many defence experts have stated— there is no rationale for effectively ending the Navy’s amphibious capability? If she is prepared to say that, she will have the support of all her party and the Opposition. Surely we all need to recognise that this issue is above crude party politics; it is about our country’s ability to defend itself effectively, which it cannot do without an amphibious capability.