Ajax Programme

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin]

I am absolutely delighted to. There are some 230 companies, all in all, as part of the supply chain. A lot of them had a tough time during covid; I mentioned Merthyr, where General Dynamics is based, in particular. I am very grateful for the work that has continued on the project throughout. I had the opportunity to visit one of the track manufacturers up in north-west Durham, and there are many others around the UK; the hon. Member for Angus (Dave Doogan) referred to Thales in Glasgow, and my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan) rightly referred to components of the electronics from Wales, so there are companies around the UK that benefit. We need to learn lessons from Ajax, but we also need to recognise that there are so many great skills and fine companies across the UK that we need to ensure are properly embedded into the land industrial strategy that we will publish in due course.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Defence equipment is traditionally procured to do damage to our adversary, but I understand that the Ajax vehicle has been giving soldiers a risk of tinnitus and swollen joints if they were driven at speeds above 20 mph. In addition, it is unable to fire while moving. The Minister has just described it as a first-class piece of equipment; the men and women of our Army had better hope that he never procures something that he considers substandard.

In his answers so far, the Minister has told us that he is aware of the problems, but he has not given us any real sense of where the solution is or when it will be coming. Can he tell us any more about when we expect the Ajax to be fully operational? What progress has actually been made, as well as identifying the problems that we are all aware of?

[Jeremy Quin]

The hon. Gentleman asks serious questions. I just reiterate that there is a difference between what a vehicle can do and what it is certified to do. With things like fire or manoeuvre and the speed limitation, we should not read into them that the vehicle is incapable either of firing on the move or of going above 20 mph. That is not the case; it is simply that that is not what it is certified to do at the moment.

The hon. Gentleman also highlights, perfectly reasonably, the issues that I touched on about noise and vibration. On noise, there are mitigations in place at the moment, and there are further mitigations in terms of the headsets. When we introduced Ajax, the problems occurred in using the standard British Army headset for use in armoured vehicles; the concern that we came across in testing the inner ear was that that was not adequate for the task.

There are two issues that we are therefore looking at: the headset and the noise of the vehicle itself. The noise can have two components; it can be mechanical, but it can also be the electronic noise generated by the aircraft that is communicating with the headsets. I wish that I could tell the hon. Gentleman that a week on Tuesday it will all be resolved. I cannot, but I can tell him that there are issues that we are seriously working through with the suppliers to ensure that we get there.

With vibration, General Dynamics has not had the same experience that we have had, apparently: over many thousands of miles of driving, it has not seen the same issues. That is why we are going to Millbrook, which will have sensors all over the vehicles to test where the vibration is happening and whether we can isolate it. It may be resolvable quickly; it may not be. I can commit only to telling the hon. Gentleman that we will do the work and that I will ensure that people are aware of how it progresses.