Foreign Affairs and Defence

Thomas Docherty Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

I very much welcome the opportunity to make my maiden speech in this debate about the future of our armed forces. It is somewhat daunting to follow such excellent contributions, particularly from my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) and the hon. Members for Burnley (Gordon Birtwistle) and for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy). Given that they have set the bar so high for others to follow, I hope that the House will forgive me if I do not quite reach their standard at this, my first attempt.

My predecessor as Member for Dunfermline and West Fife was Mr Willie Rennie, who enjoyed a relatively short parliamentary career, having been elected in a by-election in February 2006. However, during his brief tenure he certainly made a very large contribution to the fortunes of the Lib Dems in Fife. Mr Rennie almost single-handedly ran their successful Scottish Parliament and council election campaigns in 2007, and I know that his zeal for campaigning will be missed by Liberal Democrats both locally and nationally. We should also congratulate him on his appointment as a special adviser to the Secretary of State for Scotland. I wish him all the best in his new role.

Mr Rennie’s predecessor was, of course, Rachel Squire, who enjoyed a much longer period in the House, having been first elected in 1992 as the Member for Dunfermline, West. Throughout her 14 years, she worked tirelessly to represent her constituents. She established a reputation as a fierce defender of local industries, particularly the dockyard. I have been advised by hon. Friends who served as Defence Ministers that they developed an almost Pavlovian reaction of trepidation when they saw her approaching them in the Lobby and in the corridors, such was her dogged commitment to safeguarding the dockyard’s future. I hope that perhaps in time I might come to cause the same Pavlovian reaction in some of the Members sitting opposite.

Dunfermline is Scotland’s ancient capital city, having served this role for some 500 years. It is the final resting place of Robert the Bruce and the birthplace of Charles I, who was perhaps not the most successful of Scottish expatriates. I hope that the Defence Secretary, who is just the latest Scottish expat, fares better in his dealings with this Parliament.

My constituency contains Longannet power station, which has been providing power to homes and businesses in east and central Scotland for some 40 years, and is now a centre of research for carbon capture and storage. The previous Government demonstrated their commitment to the future of Longannet by funding design and development studies as part of the competition to build one of the world’s first commercial-scale carbon capture facilities. The final decision on this competition lies, of course, with the new Government, and I will be pressing the case for Longannet in the months ahead.

My constituency is home to one of Scotland’s oldest professional football teams, Dunfermline Athletic. I should perhaps declare an interest here, as I am a tenant of the club from the start of next month. The club celebrates its 125th anniversary next week and was one of the very first British teams to play in Europe, participating in the Cup Winners cup in 1961-62. West Fife has also produced some fine individual international footballers over the years, particularly Hill of Beath’s Jim Baxter, who led Scotland to the crown of real world champions in 1967, and Townhill’s Billy Liddell, who played almost 500 times for Liverpool, scoring 215 goals. Only last week, I was present at the unveiling of a memorial to Billy in his home village, which I would commend to any Liverpool fans who happen to visit the kingdom of Fife.

West Fifers are very well read, and we are ably served by two newspapers. The Courier was established in 1801 and serves the Fife and Tayside region, with some 80,000 readers a day. It is a fine example of what a quality regional newspaper should offer, balancing national, international and defence coverage with a keen interest in stories that affect readers closer to home. Our constituency newspaper is the Dunfermline Press, which was founded in 1859 and has more than 20,000 readers. It has a passion for our community and has been at the forefront of many local campaigns in recent years, such as the future of the hospital and the dockyard.

The dockyard is the largest single private sector employer in my constituency and not only provides vital refit and refurbishment services to the Royal Navy surface fleet but sustains hundreds of local manufacturing and engineering jobs. It has a long and proud tradition of sending warships back to the Navy in prime condition for service, and I invite the Minister to visit it with me to see at first hand the excellent work carried out there and to meet the trade unions and management to discuss the future order book.

Of course, people in West Fife are very concerned about the defence review that the Ministry will undertake shortly. As the House will recall, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) gave a clear commitment in the last Parliament that the construction of the two new supercarriers would not be reviewed as part of the strategic defence review. We on the Opposition side of the House recognise the crucial role that the new carriers will play in our nation’s defence. Without the two carriers, the Queen Elizabeth and the Prince of Wales, our nation’s armed forces would rely wholly on the good will of foreign nations to carry out air operations in any future conflict.

If the Prince of Wales were to be cancelled, delayed or downgraded, as many Liberal Democrats, including the new Business Secretary, have suggested, we would have to rethink the very fundamentals of our defence policy. There would also be a wider economic impact. Not only would it threaten hundreds of new jobs and apprenticeships at our dockyard, it would have a devastating impact on many companies across Fife, Scotland and the rest of the UK. Companies such as Brand-Rex, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes (Lindsay Roy), and MacTaggart Scott, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr Hamilton), have multi-million-pound contracts lined up for the new carriers. The Ministry of Defence itself estimates that some 10,000 British jobs will be sustained by the project. Those are highly skilled, highly prized jobs in science, technology and engineering, and I hope that the Secretary of State for Defence, who has now joined us in the Chamber, will recognise that if those jobs were lost, they could not be replaced quickly or easily. I therefore urge him to give a clear undertaking that the construction of the two new supercarriers will not be subject to review.

As the Secretary of State has joined us, I congratulate him on his new role. He probably does not remember this, but when he was a Minister in the previous Conservative Government and I was a fresh-faced young researcher for my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham), he was kind enough to take some small interest in my progress. I hope that with his new, greater role, he will take some interest in a not so fresh-faced, but certainly very keen, new Member.

It would be remiss of me not to mention one other organisation in my constituency, the Round Table, of which I am an active member. I am sure that many in the House are familiar with the work of the Round Table in their own constituencies. My local Round Table organises the annual beer festival, which last year raised more than £25,000 for good causes and charities. The Round Table’s motto is “To adopt, to adapt, to improve”, and I commend that motto to the Secretary of State and ask him to make it the perfect mission statement for the SDR.