National Shipbuilding Strategy

Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

The light, general-purpose frigate is specifically designed to avoid that fault, which, as my right hon. Friend said, has plagued previous programmes.

My right hon. Friend took us back to the 1970s. Perhaps only he and I now remember them and what happened then. I note his comments about the number of ships. I gently say that today’s ships are of course much more powerful than those that were involved in, for example, the liberation of the Falklands, and that although they can be in only one place at once, they can fight conflicts at different ranges at the same time.

It is my ambition to grow the fleet. We are expanding the Royal Navy. If industry can rise to the challenge and deliver the frigates to time and in the price cap that we specify, it will enable us to expand the Royal Navy beyond the numbers set out in 2015.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

I thank the Secretary of State for the statement and for advance sight of it. I welcome—finally—the publication of the national shipbuilding strategy. I had started to think that we would never get there.

However, the Secretary of State did not get off to the best start this morning. What is it with his interviews with Scottish journalists? He came out with a howler on “Good Morning Scotland”, claiming that there was already a frigate factory on the Clyde. That is quite something, because only three weeks ago my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) and I met workers on the Clyde, who were asking for that very thing. Has not the Secretary of State reneged on his promise and should he not put that right at the Dispatch Box today?

Since 2005, we have had the defence industry strategy, the 15-year terms of business agreement with BAE, and a consolidated shipbuilding plan for the Clyde that led to many job losses. Workers there are asking whether the Ministry of Defence will see any of its promises through.

The Govan and Scotstoun yards were promised 12 Type 45 destroyers; we got six. They were promised 13 Type 26 frigates; so far, we have three. As for the world-class frigate factory which the Secretary of State seems to think exists, I can tell him right now that there are journalists in Scotstoun trying to find it. How can the workers in those yards believe the Secretary of State’s promise that there will be work for them until 2035?

More broadly, as was mentioned by the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith), behind the historically low level of the escort fleet lies a low-manning crisis. Will the Secretary of State say more about what he is going to do to resolve that issue?