Army Basing Plan

Penny Mordaunt Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

We have already discussed the story in The Courier today, “Tank regiment rolls into Leuchars base”, and the story in The Scotsman, “Scotland to keep Royal Marines base at Arbroath”. One would think that the hon. Gentleman might have something positive to say about that. When my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) made his statement in July 2011, the hon. Gentleman, as he might remember, accused the Government of planning to remove the Royal Marines from Scotland completely and close Fort George, neither of which has happened. It is true that the decision has been taken not to develop Kirknewton, but the balancing factor is the retention of Dreghorn as an Army barracks. The hon. Gentleman’s assertion about personnel numbers in Scotland is incorrect. My right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset made his statement on 18 July 2011, and I have checked the numbers against that baseline. The total number of armed forces personnel in Scotland will be just over 600 higher than the baseline. I have also made a little calculation of the proportion of our armed forces personnel who will be based in Scotland, compared with the proportion of the population of the United Kingdom in Scotland. By my calculation, 8.39% of the UK population is in Scotland and 8.65% of our armed forces will be in Scotland by the end of this programme.

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

I welcome the certainty that the statement will give regular Army personnel and their families. I hope that the Secretary of State will further enhance his reputation as the champion of good return on investment for the defence budget by confirming that any new building will be good quality and built to provide comfortable homes for decades to come. Historically that has not always been the case.

[Mr Hammond]

Of course, new build and refurbished accommodation will be to the highest grade 1 standard of military accommodation. With respect to my hon. Friend, I suspect that part of our problem with accommodation is that some of it was originally built to last rather too long, so we are struggling to refurbish and patch up old buildings, some of which are around 100 or 150 years old. Building new building to modern standards is the way forward to provide the kind of accommodation that our troops deserve and that our covenant promises them.