Mortgage Prisoners

Debate between Philip Hollobone and Martin Docherty-Hughes

Wednesday 28th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. I will go on to the history of some of this. I hope that the APPG agrees not only about a cap on the standard variable rate, but about the other two issues I highlighted. I would be happy to work with the all-party group in future.

Let me turn to my constituent Chris Dorman. I have known Chris and his family over many years, especially his mum Rose, who was and remains to this day a legend in the history of my home town, Clydebank—a working-class history that is so seldom related or reflected in a place such as this. She was one of the founding members of the first credit union in Scotland, the Dalmuir Credit Union, helping countless families just like the one I grew up in. I was member 507; that takes me back some time.

That is relevant—and I hope the Minister will understand this—because we need to begin any discussion about mortgage prisoners with the firm rebuttal of any idea that these people are bad borrowers who are to blame for their own predicament. Chris comes from a family who know how mortgages work and how people should go about choosing a lender and a product that will not cause problems for them or their family in future scenarios. When he took out the mortgage with Northern Rock in 2003 to buy a flat, I do not doubt that he would have kicked the tyres of the agreement and known where to look for potential pitfalls. Of course, he would not have found any.

Northern Rock was a triple A lender, one of the largest lenders in the country and a fast-growing national presence that still had its roots in the north-east of England. I know about this because I got my first mortgage with Northern Rock at around the same time—and believe me, this is the point where I start to think, “There but for the grace of God go I.” I do not think it will be the last time in this debate when that is my overriding emotion.

In 2007, as Northern Rock crumbled in the bank run that heralded the next year’s financial crash, Chris was forced on to an interest-only plan. Although for many people switching to an interest-only payment is a stopgap because of short-term financial circumstances, for people in Chris’s position it has been the beginning of their problems. That entirely understandable decision has rendered them unable to change their lender, as many of us do these days, and move to a more attractive rate.

Instead, through the actions of the now nationalised Northern Rock, Chris was flung to the mercy of a standard variable rate that began to diverge significantly from the Bank of England’s average SVR. The decision was quite deliberate. During a period when we were all dealing with the most significant global recession for decades, people like Chris were having to come to terms with that extra dollop of uncertainty. They probably did not know it at the time, but what would initially have felt like a short-term inconvenience was turning into an actual prison, even if there were already some organisations sounding the alarm.

Like so many, and some of our own constituents, Chris was forced to persist with an entirely inconvenient and increasingly costly arrangement and unable to switch to a better deal, making a mockery of the idea of home ownership and the free market being liberating for individuals and families. Through the last decade he has been paying the 6% or 7% interest rates that many of us now complain of today.

This is where we begin to see a bit of the societal impact of the policy. The village of Duntocher, where Chris lives, is a fairly normal part of my constituency socioeconomically. It has poverty and wealth; it is not the wealthiest part of West Dunbartonshire. It is a community—it was an ancient Roman site and then a mill town that predates Clydebank itself—that has a lot of small locally owned businesses, which would have benefited from the thousands of pounds each year that Chris and his family were overpaying on their mortgage.

Let us not forget that for well over a decade the UK Government were the ultimate holders of that mortgage, through UK Asset Resolution. I can imagine myself thinking that the Government would not do anything so deliberately to harm the hundreds of thousands of UK residents in this position and that a sensible resolution would eventually be found. As we will see, there were numerous attempts to address the issue through the various Conservative Governments we have lived through so far. It was not a purgatory before things got better. They were about to get worse.

In 2019, UKAR sold a tranche of books, including Chris’s, to a company called Heliodor. He had never heard of it, and with good reason, because it is an entity that neither I nor any of us here could borrow from. It is a vehicle that exists solely to serve the existing Northern Rock mortgages. Although it operates in a regulated market, Heliodor’s ultimate owner, Topaz Finance Ltd, is not a regulated entity and relies on third-party administrators who are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority in order to comply with its regulations.

However, and significantly in Chris’s case, as Kath Scanlon et al’s report from the London School of Economics points out, the setting of SVRs is not a regulated activity, meaning that a business opportunity for morally ambivalent vulture funds such as Topaz has been created, and people—our constituents—are offered up as hosts for a parasite.

Despite never having fallen behind on his payments, Chris found himself subject to a host of fees and other spurious admin charges. Incredibly, the principal he owed rose by almost £10,000 in a few short years, with no additional lending being offered. That pushed Chris into negative equity, as the amount he owed Heliodor became greater than the value of the flat he shares with his wife.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his speech and on securing the debate. My constituent Valerie has written to me. She is a mortgage prisoner, one of 200,000 across the country. She says exactly what the hon. Gentleman has said about Chris:

“I have been a mortgage prisoner since the initial crash of the market and despite never having missed any payments or been in arrears I am unable to remortgage as I cannot meet the new current affordability rates due to the LTV ratio of my property. I am now paying an almost 8% variable rate.”

Is it not the key point here that mortgage prisoners such as Valerie have done nothing wrong? They have met all their payments and have never been in arrears, but they are trapped. They urgently need relief from the Government.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He is correct, and the Government need to listen and take immediate action not only for Chris, but for the hon. Gentleman’s constituent and the more than 200,000 others who I am sure are in the same predicament.

The cruellest part of this sorry tale of modern Britain is this: as Chris approaches the end of the 25-year term of his mortgage, having been forced into the interest-only plan just a few short years after he began to make repayments, he risks losing his family home of a quarter of a century unless he can come up with the full amount he owes to Heliodor. The aspect I find most galling is the inversion of the principle of home ownership, whereby people have ended up paying what is essentially rent to a vulture fund, which almost certainly knows it will be able to acquire the property at the end of the term.

Topaz Finance will have been licking its lips, I am sure, at a deal that is basically guaranteed to be paid twice: first, through the monthly payments that Chris and his wife have been making, and secondly when Topaz Finance sells their home from under them in 2029, at a healthy profit over what it picked the property up for in 2019.

As the House can imagine, the toll this has taken on Chris has been severe, as I am sure it has been for many of our constituents. Chris is unable to work, owing to the mental and psychological strain the situation has provoked, so it is down to his wife, a nurse, to work all the hours she can so they can stay in their home, although they understand the bitter irony that that is only a temporary respite until the hammer inevitably falls in 2029.

It is up to us as Members of Parliament to make sense of this personal calamity—not only for me and for Chris, but for the constituents of other Members—and to think of the consequences of Chris’s story, with hundreds of thousands of people across these islands potentially affected. It is unthinkable.

In such a situation, how do we even begin to ensure not only that our constituents are protected from the avarice of these vulture funds, but that, somehow, there is some sort of recognition of the years they have lived under ever-increasing pressure? How do we make up for the opportunities missed—holidays not booked, families unable to grow, dreams unrealised? As Chris has said to me, this is essentially a form of legalised loan sharking, although unlike illegal loan sharks, vulture funds such as Topaz Finance do not break your legs, Mr Robertson; they break your spirit.

A small gleam of light has been the dawning realisation among mortgage prisoners that they have been exploited by so many of the actors that we are going to hear about today, and I want to thank UK Mortgage Prisoners for the work it has done, including the group’s most recent report, “Setting the Record Straight”, which helped me to understand that, tragically, the experience of my constituent Chris is very much not unique.

In the second part of my speech, I want to explore the opportunities to avoid this disaster that were missed along the way, and to ensure that the possibility of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of mortgage prisoners being put out on the street and coming within the ambit of local councils and social services is very much acknowledged. It is important to cast our minds back to 2008, when Northern Rock was a prime lender and in the top five nationally. The LSE report I cited puts it very well:

“The problem of mortgage prisoners was largely created by the actions of successive UK governments in trying to address the excessively risky lending of the early 2000s. The prisoners…are a legacy of the rapid mortgage market expansion that took place prior to the Global Financial Crisis”.

By now we all know about the plethora of seemingly innovative mechanisms to enable wider home ownership, including high loan-to-value ratios. The banks that offered those novel products, such as Northern Rock or Bradford & Bingley, were household names—well-known brands that did not make people think twice about borrowing with them—and even the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, stated clearly in 2007:

“I can tell the House that Bank of England lending is secured against assets held by Northern Rock, which include high-quality mortgages with a significant protection margin built in and high-quality securities with the highest quality of credit rating.”—[Official Report, 19 November 2007; Vol. 467, c. 960.]

When those books were brought under the auspices of UKAR, borrowers could have been forgiven for thinking that all would be well: they were paying their mortgages, and the UK Government would ensure that they were not taken advantage of. However, even then there were warnings, inside and outside Government, about the potential risks of that approach. In 2009, the consumer group Which? told the Treasury Committee:

“Northern Rock’s mortgage business strategy seems to consist of telling many of its existing customers to go elsewhere and coming down hard on those who have got nowhere to go by having a relatively high standard variable rate and a ‘rapid’ move towards repossession.”

Even the Treasury, in the same year, was quite clear about the risks of allowing those unregulated firms to take over the Northern Rock book. It stated in a report that firms not engaging in regulated activity are not bound by the requirements of the FCA regulations, including, importantly, the requirement to treat customers fairly. It said:

“Non-regulated owners of regulated mortgage contracts may seek to maximise margins by raising interest rates and charges, potentially to levels that are unaffordable to borrowers.”

The same document stated, clear as day:

“Such activity clearly has the potential to cause severe harm to borrowers”.

Yet, incredibly, the UK Government carried on regardless.

Despite interest rates falling as the recession bit, that Government-owned bank settled on a margin of 4.29% over base for its SVR—an increase of 205% in its first year of operations. That is a scandal. In doing so, it made the prison absolutely complete, and hundreds of thousands of our constituents paid over the odds for a product they had bought in good faith, without being able to go anywhere else.

Why did that happen? The best explanation I can find is in the UK Mortgage Prisoners report, which says that the UK Government wanted to

“sell the books as soon as possible for as high a price as possible.”

The action group’s report is a damning indictment of the continued failures of Government policy, but it manages to keep the obvious emotional distress caused to its members just below the surface, to devastating effect. In meticulously researched tables, we see in black and white the money that has been lost to our economy from the detriment of keeping the SVR well above the base rate. From my calculations—I stand to be corrected by Chris—my constituent and his family have overpaid by at least £40,000.

If we cannot take away the pain and suffering this issue has caused over the years, we at least owe the victims an answer about why it happened. The LSE attributes it to the general climate created before the 2008 crash, but it is important to acknowledge how deep these roots are, because we are still dealing with so much of the fallout today.

The long tail of that era of neoliberal economics is still pernicious, because it confuses concepts such as taxpayer value with what any of us would normally take it to mean. Taxpayer value, to people like me, is not found in pauperising hundreds of thousands of households. It is not to be found in scraping back every single penny that taxpayers saw spent on ensuring that the economy did not collapse overnight.

Government is not a bank, with shareholders that need to see the principal of loans paid back in full. Government is an institution that is able to intervene in the economy at strategic moments. That is an idea that is slowly coming back into fashion, but I wonder how many of our national assets have found their way into the paws of this type of offshore capital in the intervening 40 years, leaving the taxpayer with all the costs, none of the benefits and absolutely hee-haw value.

The Government share much of the blame, and I am sure that we will hear from others of their myriad failings over the years, but we should take a moment to remember that the policy was conceived and established under a British Labour Government. Furthermore, that Government fully embraced the model of deregulated, neo-liberal economics; they continued the Thatcherite legacy of public assets being valued only where they were on the balance sheet, and taxpayers existed only in the abstract, not as individuals.

It was Gordon Brown—that saint who, we heard last week, could be elevated to the House of Lords—who set up the very FSA that allowed this tragedy to happen. The FSA, in his now infamous words, would herald

“not only light but limited regulation”

of financial markets. However, it will not do Chris or our constituents much good to dwell on the past. As I draw my remarks to a close, let us revisit my three questions for the Minister, which I think the shadow Minister should also reflect on. First, on evictions, as we begin to reach the end of the terms of those who took out 25 or 30-year mortgages at the beginning of the century, let us do what we can to lift the burden that they have carried over the years. I know, from reading briefings, that the Government are concerned about what they call the moral hazard of acting. If these people, in 2023, have not already had their houses repossessed, they must necessarily have kept up with repayments, so there is a strong case for saying that the moral hazard lies in the other direction: companies have been deliberately stringing them along.

Secondly, surely it is natural to put a cap on the SVRs being offered to mortgage prisoners, especially given the general climate of mortgage instability. Our constituents have been coping with high interest rates for a considerable time. We gain nothing from pushing them further into debt, and in the past couple of days, some interest rates have been around 12.6%. Of course, there will be a cost to the taxpayer in the abstract, but this move will be an investment that pays itself back through the cascade of money into our local economies, instead of into the pockets of offshore vulture funds. The day of balance-sheet economics needs to end.

I understand that an amendment to the Financial Services and Markets Bill was put forward in the other House by the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group. I would be interested to hear whether the promise that the Government made when that amendment was withdrawn, to meet mortgage prisoners, has been fulfilled. The Minister knows a lot about that Bill.

Finally, the Government owe it to mortgage prisoners to find a way for them to help themselves out of this mess. They should look into providing a vehicle that allows mortgage prisoners to pivot back into the mainstream market. The first suggestion of the LSE report is that there should be free, comprehensive financial advice for all victims; almost 200,000 people should be contacted individually to help them navigate their way out of the quagmire that they find themselves in. As I said, it gives me no pleasure to conclude that it appears that there is nothing that we can do to make up for what UK Mortgage Prisoners calls the

“extortionate interest rates, severe financial restrictions and mobility and mental & physical issues caused by this Government-made scandal.”

However, that does not mean that we should not try. I hope that the Minister and the Government can see from the interest in today’s debate that they now have a chance to do what they can to make things right.

Detention of Jagtar Singh Johal

Debate between Philip Hollobone and Martin Docherty-Hughes

Wednesday 30th June 2021 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the detention of Jagtar Singh Johal.

It is good to see you, Mr Hollobone, in the Chair and to see that so many Members have been able to join us, either physically or virtually. Members joining the debate today, either here in the Boothroyd Room or online, will be glad to hear first that I intend to keep my contribution relatively short today. I only really have one question to ask the Minister, and I think that Jagtar’s case will be best served by allowing other diverse voices from across these islands to speak on his behalf and to demonstrate to the UK Government that there will be no let-up until Jagtar is released.

Let us get to my question for the Minister, which I will ask again when I sum up: why have the UK Government deemed that Jagtar Singh Johal’s detention is not an arbitrary one? Of course, many other questions today will flow from this one and I am sure that we will hear it being asked in other guises over the next hour. But the Crown’s Minister must answer it.

I have raised the case of Jagtar Singh Johal with Ministers almost 20 times since my first point of order about it on 15 November 2017. The week after that, I first raised it at Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office questions, when the allegation of torture was still fresh. The House of Commons was told by the then Minister of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who was responsible for consular policy, that

“We will work very closely to investigate the matter and will, of course, take extreme action if a British citizen is being tortured.”—[Official Report, 21 November 2017; Vol. 631, c. 858.]

That Minister is no longer in the Government—indeed, he is no longer even a member of the Conservative party. Nevertheless, when a Minister speaks from the Dispatch Box, we should be assured that their words will be believed. I still remember my own surprise that day at hearing the use of the words “extreme action”, but both the Singh Johal family and I would be content right now with a simple ruling of arbitrary detention and for the concomitant obligations to kick in.

I have spoken at length about many aspects of this case on many occasions, most notably in an Adjournment debate on the first anniversary of Jagtar’s detention on 27 November 2018. I do not intend to go over too much of that material again, but it is worth remembering how this case began.

Jagtar was a young man from Dumbarton, fresh from his wedding that week, who was enjoying his time with his new bride in Jalandhar, until suddenly a group of unidentifiable men in plain clothes leapt from a van, hit him and took him away. I am sure that we can all appreciate the terror and helplessness that his wife must have experienced in that moment—it would be unimaginable. The next few days, as Jagtar was held incommunicado, must have seemed like an eternity. Allegations of torture—and more recently, the reality of covid in an overcrowded maximum security prison half a world away—have weighed heavily on the family. I must say that their resilience in the face of this ordeal has been extraordinary.

By my reckoning, Jagtar has now been detained for 1,335 days without any substantial charges being brought in the case—that is coming up to four years. We know that the FCDO had been looking at a designation of arbitrary detention and, from conversations with Ministers of all levels, we know that they have been thinking about this for some time. This issue must surely have grown more recently. In January, we were glad of the estimation made by the charity Redress that Jagtar’s detention was an arbitrary one, and even more so when a cross-party group of 140 MPs signed a letter to the Foreign Secretary asking him to ensure that the FCDO intervenes to secure Jagtar’s release, as he himself is on record restating the policy quite recently.

Given that it is the opinion of Reprieve and Redress and their legal counsel that Jagtar’s detention is a clear breach of categories 1 to 4 of the United Nations working group on arbitrary detention’s definition, I again ask the Minister why the UK Government do not share that view. I expect the Minister to speak about many of the things that the UK Government have been doing for Jagtar, so please let me put on the record—I also do so on behalf of the family—that the work of the FCDO staff, both in post and in the prisoner policy and human rights team of the consular directorate here in London, has been immense. There has been immense support for the family and myself. They have diligently undertaken all that has been asked of them—and gone above and beyond on occasion, as I am sure they will know. I am only sorry that convention does not allow me to thank them by name.

However, these are civil servants who pursue their work through a framework established by their political masters. It would be remiss of me not to mention some of the issues that FCDO Ministers have either allowed to pass by or should immediately seek to remedy, beginning with the failure to ensure that an independent medical examination was undertaken to establish the facts around the allegations of torture made by Jagtar against the Punjabi police. There is the continuing lack of private consular visits, and the continuing reluctance of the Secretary of State specifically to meet with Jagtar’s family and myself, as his predecessor did. Finally, there is the decision of the Prime Minister not to raise Jagtar’s case with Prime Minister Modi when they last spoke virtually in April.

Taken together, these issues tell me that we have a group of FCDO civil servants who are ready and able to implement Government policy, but senior Ministers who are reluctant to escalate representations beyond simply raising them with the Indian Government officials. If they can do so with Governments of other countries where UK nationals are arbitrarily detained, why can they not do so with the Republic of India? Doing so would not be intervening in the internal affairs of the Republic of India unnecessarily. I have been clear from the start of this case that all we ask for is transparent due process and rule of law. When at least two of these elements are missing, as was so clearly demonstrated at Jagtar’s 161st pre-trial hearing today, it is my responsibility as his local MP to ask why. Neither the Singh Johal family nor myself is asking for the “extreme action” that, as I mentioned, we were promised by the UK Government at the start of this process: we are asking them only to recognise an obvious fact.

This week, Jagtar was able to speak by video call with his brother for the first time since his incarceration. He was as good as could be expected under the circumstances, but most of all he wondered when he would get to see his family again in the flesh. That was a sobering moment for me. Jagtar Singh Johal is a husband, a son, a grandson, a brother, an uncle, and a son of the Rock of Dumbarton. He is arbitrarily detained in India. Why can the United Kingdom Government not recognise that? Let us get Jaggi released: let us bring him back to Scotland and let him see his family.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

The debate will last until 5.50. I am obliged to call the Front Benchers no later than 5.27, and the guideline limits are five minutes for the Scottish National party, five minutes for Her Majesty’s Opposition, and 10 minutes for the Minister, after which the Member in charge will have three minutes to sum up the debate at the end. There are nine Back-Bench contributors. If there are no interventions during Back-Bench speeches, we can have a three-minute time limit.

Type 26 Frigates: Clyde

Debate between Philip Hollobone and Martin Docherty-Hughes

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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

Reserve Forces

Debate between Philip Hollobone and Martin Docherty-Hughes

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hollobone]

My right hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. He represents the City of London, and we need to tap into the pool of talent that exists in our capital city in insurance and IT. We need to do whatever it takes to get the computer experts from the big international banks in the City of London, if necessary, to work in the interests of Britain’s defence. I know my right hon. Friend will be leading the charge to make sure that the Government are aware not only of the threat of cyber-warfare, but of the opportunities offered by the pool of talent in our great city to meet that challenge.

Some 330 reservists are currently mobilised around the world. They can be found in Afghanistan and Cyprus and in global counter-terrorism and counter-piracy operations. Reservists formed the core of the infantry training team recently sent to Ukraine. We also have reservists deployed in Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar, as part of the counter-ISIS effort.

I am pleased that many reservists also serve as part of formed bodies and teams, not just as individuals. A platoon from 6 SCOTS, which is based in Glasgow, is in Afghanistan. The 2nd Battalion the Royal Irish Regiment, based in Lisburn, has two platoons deployed to Cyprus. I understand that a reserve unit will be the Cyprus lead from April 2018, that formed reserve bodies will also be deploying in some 23 overseas exercises this year and that the 4th Battalion Parachute Regiment will mobilise and deploy as a formed sub-unit to the Falklands in June next year.

When I was involved, in a humble way, during the cold war, my understanding was that we could not be deployed under Queen’s regulations. There would have to be an extreme national emergency for that to happen. I understand that Queen’s regulations were changed in the mid-1980s, and there is now more flexibility about how reservists can be deployed, and I think that is a good thing. Of course, reservists engaged in hot contact with the enemy are serving with distinction. A serving reservist in the Artists Rifles was recently awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross for his endeavours on the front line. Reservists are serving with distinction and doing the country proud. Everyone present for the debate would, I think, agree that Her Majesty’s armed forces represent Britain at its best. They are the best individuals, serving with the best of motives in the very best way.

As well as the front-line soldiers who have been awarded gallantry decorations, I want to mention youngsters in cadet forces. I was proud to see at Remembrance Day services in the borough of Kettering how smart and proud the Army, RAF and Royal Navy cadets were on parade. A lot of effort had gone into displaying the pride of their units and representing their areas. If we can instil such a sense of loyalty to the Crown, self-respect, discipline and motivation into youngsters in the cadet forces, that must be a good thing.

I have drawn for inspiration for my brief remarks from an interesting document entitled “The United Kingdom Reserve Forces External Scrutiny Team Annual Report”. The team is looking at the way in which Her Majesty’s Government are developing the concept of Future Reserves 2020. I am sure that the Minister will have gone through all its recommendations and that it is required reading for anyone with an interest in how our reserve forces are to develop. It is worth emphasising some of the key recommendations, one of which is:

“The success of FR20 depends first…upon increasing the size of the Reserve. Each Service has challenging manning targets to meet, with heavy emphasis on recruiting and initial training. This year the Services appear to have turned the corner on growing numbers, after poor achievement over the first two years.”

However:

“Notwithstanding some excellent workarounds on in-flow, we are not convinced that they are sustainable into the medium term, suggesting that systemic problems with the recruitment process still need to be rooted out. Medical screening sits prominently as an area of concern.”

The report goes on:

“The sustained health of the Reserves is highly dependent upon the quality and quantity of officers available at unit level, in order to plan and lead the challenging training on which the Reserves thrive. Progress in attracting and recruiting young volunteer Reserve officers needs attention.”

The Minister will be acutely aware of those recommendations and will have been working hard to address those concerns. The good news is that the current recruitment marketing campaign has resulted in higher levels of advertising recall than UK recognition norms, and that resonance is increasing among 18 to 35-year-olds. However, understanding of the Army Reserve especially remains low and messaging needs to be adjusted to reinforce some key things: adventure, excitement and personal development. Potential recruits are worried about the possible extent of the commitment, and there is also fear of injury.

[Martin John Docherty (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

This is an important debate. Since the last strategic defence and security review, there have been personnel reductions of 5,000 in the Royal Navy, 5,000 in the RAF and 7,000 in the Army, followed by an additional 12,000 reduction to the Army. What is proposed for the forces 2020 vision is that part of the recruitment process will involve those leaving the services—regulars who are leaving. Given that they have been made redundant, does the hon. Gentleman agree that it will be extremely problematic to fill that gap?

[Mr Hollobone]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who has identified a real issue, and hope that the Minister will respond to those figures. We want to ensure that ex-regulars join the reserves. We also need to retain the reservists who are recruited. Retention is a key issue. All too often we focus on how well recruitment is going, and do not spend enough time on retaining reservists.

I am pleased that the Government have an employer recognition scheme. It was launched by the Prime Minister in July 2014 and is intended to recognise employers through a scheme with bronze, silver and gold tiers. I understand that 10 employers received gold awards last year.