National Shipbuilding Strategy

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

I cannot confirm the exact details of the armaments and weapons systems on the frigate. We think that £250 million per ship is the right kind of cap to aim for, and we will now go into intensive discussions with the industry, but yes this is a challenge to our yards—particularly to the English yards, as well as to BAE Systems and Ferguson’s on the Clyde and Babcock on the Forth—to meet for the first time a cap per ship. That is extremely important. We have seen far too many programmes where the cost has escalated year after year, to the detriment of the other parts of defence.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I commend my right hon. Friend for his statement and invite him to describe to the House the minimum armament of the vessel, the minimum capability requirement and the minimum size of ship’s complement.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

We all want to see people in public service, including in the armed forces, properly remunerated for what they do, but any pay settlement must obviously take account of taxpayers’ interests and be fair to our need to get our deficit under control. We are advised by an independent pay review body that, unlike some other pay review bodies, it is specifically required to look at comparability with the civilian sector and to take account of any evidence regarding recruitment and retention.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

At times when general employment levels rise and unemployment levels fall, and with the continued strength of our economy, it gets more and more difficult to recruit and retain armed forces personnel. Will those be key factors in the consideration of this issue?

[Sir Michael Fallon]

My hon. Friend is right. We are competing for the best of every generation against other sectors of the economy, which of course are growing. The Armed Forces Pay Review Body, in recommending a 1% pay rise in its last report, said:

“We believe that…an increase of one per cent in base pay…will broadly maintain pay comparability with the civilian sector.”

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Monday 13th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mark Lancaster]

Then here it is—so come rather than sitting on the green Benches and constantly carping.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

When service personnel are on active service abroad, the last thing they need is problems with their domestic arrangements and accommodation at home, so will the Minister ensure that, when service personnel are on active deployment, the accommodation helpline works absolutely perfectly for their partners at home?

[Mark Lancaster]

My hon. Friend makes a valuable point. The point at which spouses are overseas on deployment is absolutely the time when we must focus on offering support to their families. I will look very carefully at what he says.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mark Lancaster]

It must be said that female representation in the Sea Cadets is actually higher than it is in the armed forces, but it is a matter that the Government take very seriously. We have set several targets to ensure that our armed forces are viewed as being open to both men and women, and we will continue to pursue that over the coming years.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

23. You cannot get much further from the sea than Kettering, yet the Kettering Sea Cadets are an example that other Sea Cadet organisations should follow. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Sea Cadets, the Air Squadrons and the Army Cadets provide our young people with some of the best examples in life that they could follow?

[Mark Lancaster]

I think Milton Keynes may actually be further from the sea than Kettering, and we also have a thriving Sea Cadet unit. I am a great fan of the cadets. I started my military life in the Air Cadets some 32 years ago. It is something that I valued enormously. That is why I like to think that I am one of the greatest champions for the cadet forces.

Trident: Test Firing

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

The decision on what publicity to give to any particular test—these tests take place every four or five years—is taken by the Government of the day in the light of the circumstances of each test and the national security considerations applying at the time. Of course those matters influenced the decision taken last June.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Since we have to notify other nuclear powers every time a missile test takes place, the number will not be unknown to them, so can the Secretary of State confirm to the House that there have been 160 tests of the Trident missile system? If he can, will that not give our constituents full confidence that the system provides us with the deterrent that we need?

[Sir Michael Fallon]

I think that my hon. Friend is broadly correct about the number, but if I am wrong, I hope that he will allow me to write to him with the correct figure. The Government have every confidence in the Trident deterrent system. As I have said, we would not have brought the motion before the House if we had had any doubt about it.

Yemen

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

No, as I made clear, that was his view at the time, based on the only information that we had available. That was long before the investigation that has concluded today had properly started. That was the best information he had at the time.

On the hon. Gentleman’s first point, yes, the purpose of international humanitarian law is to recognise that states do have the right to defend themselves, but they have to do so in a way that is necessary and proportionate, that avoids hitting the sick or the wounded and that properly distinguishes between combatants and non-combatants. That is the basis of international humanitarian law. Now, the Saudis believe—he may not accept this—that, in this particular instance, they did respect international humanitarian law.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

How many BL755 cluster munitions were exported from this country to Saudi Arabia before 1989, what is their shelf life and how many were used in this particular incident?

[Sir Michael Fallon]

I do not have to hand—and I am not sure, indeed, that we still have—the records from right back to the 1980s as to exactly how many cluster munitions were exported. I am sorry to tell my hon. Friend that I am not so much of an expert as to know the precise obsolescence of this particular weapon. I am told it would have been getting pretty obsolete now, but if he will allow me, I will write to him on both those technical points.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

Yes, I think it is fair to say that we learn the lessons from each of these successive campaigns. This is a campaign being helped by the international coalition and led by Iraqi forces, but yes, we have made our contribution to the United Nations effort to ensure that there are sufficient tents, food aid and medical supplies for those towns that are liberated. I hope the hon. Lady supports the overall aim of the campaign, which is to allow the Yazidi people to return to their homes and to live in peace.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Given the complex ethnic make-up of Mosul and the split between Sunnis and Shi’as, what plans are there for some kind of international observer force to be on the ground in the city once it is liberated?

[Sir Michael Fallon]

It is for the Iraqi Government in the first instance to determine the future local government of Mosul. It is, as my hon. Friend says, a very complex city and not entirely a Sunni city, and it is important that the administration there after liberation can command the confidence of all groups represented in that city. We have made our views on this known to the Government and military commanders of the operation.

Type 26 Frigates: Clyde

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Before we move on to the important topic of Type 22 frigates on the Clyde, will Members who do not wish to attend the debate please leave quickly and quietly?

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the timetable for building Type 26 frigates on the Clyde.

It is always a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Hollobone, but for the record this debate is on Type 26 frigates.

Talk of defence platforms can often be a dry business, and it passes by most people in this House, never mind among the public. That is not true of the Type 26. The interest we see among Members today in the global combat ship reflects not only its strategic utility and world-class design; the farrago of delays and under-investment in the project and broken promises from the Ministry of Defence reveal the malaise at the heart of the United Kingdom’s strategic thinking, which sees preserving the shop window as more important than its most basic of roles: defending this political state adequately.

I would like the Minister to address with utmost sincerity—something that her Department has been unable to do up to this point—two principal points on the Type 26 project. First, in delaying the start of the project, the Minister and her Department are doing enormous damage to the defence of Scotland and the United Kingdom, which, as I mentioned, is one of the Government’s most solemn and fundamental tasks. Secondly, the failure to cut steel on the vessels, alongside an ongoing refusal to fulfil the promise of a frigate factory on the Clyde, is placing enormous pressure on the complex warship-building capacity that Government have unequivocally promised to protect, causing undeniable financial harm and insecurity to the thousands of skilled and dedicated workers from along the Clyde who are feeling increasingly let down.

In short, behind the broken promises and procrastination, the MOD has proven beyond doubt one maxim put forward by myself and Scottish National party colleagues time and again: every penny spent on the abomination that is Trident is a penny less spent on conventional defence.

In beginning to pick apart the sorry saga of the Type 26, one has to start somewhere, and I choose to start with the Royal Navy taskforce that sailed to recapture the Falkland Islands in 1982. That taskforce was composed of some 23 frigates and destroyers; today, the entire Royal Navy boasts only 19 frigates and destroyers, of which all are based between Her Majesty’s Naval Base Portsmouth and Her Majesty’s Naval Base Devonport. Paradoxically, that leaves the United Kingdom’s southern coast as its most northerly complex warship base.

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[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

I have great respect for the hon. and gallant Gentleman, but if we get rid of Trident we might actually be able to cover that.

In introducing this debate, I not only raise to a wider audience my own concerns about the continuing delays to the project, but echo the concerns of the Defence Committee and many prominent former senior Royal Navy officers. When the former First Sea Lord, Admiral Lord West, appeared before the Defence Committee at the start of June, the response to my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Douglas Chapman) was that the Ministry of Defence had run out of money for these ships. We were never really given an acceptable answer from the Minister’s Department. Indeed, Admiral Lord West pre-empted the MOD response by expressing the opinion that any contention by the MOD that the problems were principally with the design would be “economical with the actualité”.

Today I will go even further than Lord West and ask the Minister specifically to address the concerns that have been put to me that the scandal of the lack of any timetable for construction of the Type 26 actually masks a wider problem of a continuing lack of investment in the Clyde yards, putting their long-term future at risk and jeopardising the jobs and skills of thousands of workers at Govan and Scotstoun.

In the lead-up to the announcement of the plans for the Type 26 programme, the workers at those two yards were offered a clear quid pro quo. There would be a significant restructuring in the workforce, including job losses, but that would be offset by investments that would guarantee jobs for a generation. At the height of the referendum on Scottish independence, the Minister’s Department explicitly tied that investment to the no vote. There would be 13 Type 26 frigates built on the Clyde, in a brand new “frigate factory”, to protect the workers from the west of Scotland’s rather inclement weather.

When we heard last November in the strategic defence and security review that the number of Type 26s being built would be reduced still further, trade unions told my Scottish National party colleagues—and others, I am sure—that that was not a huge concern, because the infrastructure investment for building the Type 26 would ensure that the new general-purpose frigate would also be built on the Clyde. So the Clyde waited—and waited, and waited—until the planned date for the cutting of steel came and went, until it emerged that there was a £750 million gap in infrastructure investment and until it became clear that the UK Government were rubber-earing our questions about the GPFF being built on the Clyde.

This is a tale of underinvestment and neglect, and I can relate to it. Perhaps—just perhaps—this is a deliberate Tory strategy, and one that has form on the Clyde. The Minister may not remember the names of former Ministers; on these Benches, we will not forget one: that of Nicholas Ridley. When Jimmy Reid, the late patriot, presented the Ridley letters, which were written in 1969, to the Scottish Trade Union Congress, they proved that the Tory Government had outrageously planned the closure of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders. By their inaction, this Government are following a well-trodden path in this regard. The Tories are making a political decision, rather than a strategic one.

In the context of current naval investment, the delay in building these vessels could be seen as excusable if there was an understanding that the ministerial promises to the highly skilled and dedicated workforce of these yards would be upheld. The fact is that these workers and my colleagues are all listening with increasing concern to the Government’s deafening silence on the subject of the GPFF, and although we appreciate that there is a shipbuilding strategy to come in November, the MOD must at least give reassurances before then.

However, even as workers on the Clyde work outside in all weathers, the Government have not been slow in coming through with investment elsewhere. In Barrow, those workers who are working on the multi-billion pound Successor programme to Trident are being kept dry by the Government investment there, which includes an indoor assembly hall. There could be no better illustration of my contention that every penny spent on Trident is a penny less spent on conventional defence. Trident costs have not always been part of the MOD budget, but now that they are, the Government’s intention to ring-fence the MOD budget and other budgets has led us to this inescapable conclusion.

It may not come as a surprise to hear that me say that, as I am a member of the Scottish National party, but I am echoing the assessment made by General Sir Richard Shirref in front of the Defence Committee last year, and the assessment of General Sir Richard Barrons, which was revealed in the Financial Times in September. Vital capabilities such as the Type 26 have been “withered by design”, as a result of the MOD priorities that place unusable weapons of mass destruction above the defence of the state. “Preserving the shop window” means workers on the Clyde worry about their job security as vital infrastructure investment is kept to a bare minimum.

I will end my opening speech by reiterating the two questions that I hope the Minister will address. First, how will the UK Government address the worrying gaps in national security caused by the ongoing failure of the MOD to build the Type 26 on time? Secondly, will the Minister give the workers of the Clyde a timetable for construction of the Type 26 and address their concerns about the total and complete lack of investment in infrastructure to support the GPFF, which would guarantee their job security beyond the medium term? I await the Minister’s answer; they await the Minister’s answer.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

The guideline for Front-Bench responses is five minutes for the Scottish National party, five minutes for Her Majesty’s Opposition and 10 minutes for the Minister. Therefore, I will call the Front-Bench spokespersons no later than 5.07 pm. Mr Docherty-Hughes will have three minutes to sum up the debate at the very end. The time between now and 5.07 pm is for Back Benchers.

Liberation of Mosul

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

It is already quite difficult for the civilian population to get out of Mosul. They are being restricted, in the first place, by Daesh, which does not want them to leave Mosul, but the city is now, of course, being increasingly encircled by the forces that are there to liberate it. I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that the Iraqi Government are ready to help civilians who can get out of Mosul by getting them easily to much safer areas well away from the frontline. As he suggests, the United Nations will be working with its agencies to make sure that help is brought forward as quickly as possible to those civilians who do escape.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Television news coverage yesterday seemed to suggest, first, that the balance of forces between the Iraqi army and the peshmerga and Daesh was about 10:1; and secondly, that the Iraqi army had access to very heavy armour whereas the peshmerga did not. Are both those things correct, or was I not paying enough attention?

[Sir Michael Fallon]

I think my hon. Friend pays quite a lot of attention to most things, and I would not want to accuse him of inattention. I am not sure about the exact percentage that he quotes, but having visited Erbil recently and been out with the peshmerga and seen the training they receive, it is clear that they have sufficient equipment to participate in this operation, and have a well-defined role within it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Harriett Baldwin]

The hon. Lady will be aware that that is an ongoing subject of discussion, and of the commitment that General Dynamics has made in Wales in the part of the world she represents to create 250 jobs in the supply chain for the Ajax vehicles.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Whether contracts are derived from single source or open competition, unnecessary costs can be incurred when design specifications are changed after the contract has started, for example with the Type 45s. What steps is the Minister taking to ensure that late changes after contracts have started no longer occur?

[Harriett Baldwin]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight one of the major themes that came out of the review into how we can improve defence procurement. As he rightly points out, there were problems with the design of the Type 45, which was ordered at the beginning of the previous decade, that have subsequently been costly to rectify. That is why we now take such care on design: to prevent such things from happening in future.

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[Michael Fallon]

I certainly can. Scotland is getting additional investment at Faslane, and Lossiemouth will be the home of the new Typhoon squadron. Faslane will continue to be the base for all the Royal Navy’s submarines. Scotland is playing a key part in the construction of our new Navy with the new aircraft carriers, the Type 26 global combat ship, and the offshore patrol vessels, all of which will contribute to more jobs in Scotland.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

T10. Kurdish fighters, in part supplied with small arms from this country, have been among the most effective ground forces against Daesh, yet they find themselves under attack from our NATO ally Turkey. How can that circle be squared?

[Michael Fallon]

My hon. Friend is right that the situation is complicated, in particular in north Syria. We continue to urge the opposition groups in Syria to combat Daesh—although they are of course also under pressure from the regime. As a result of the ceasefire coming into force tonight, I hope that all the moderate armed groups in Syria can now concentrate their fire against the murderous ideology that is Daesh and allow humanitarian aid into the towns and cities that have been so long denied it.