Strategic Defence and Security Review

Debate between Alec Shelbrooke and Bob Ainsworth

Thursday 16th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ainsworth]

I would say to my hon. Friend that the people in our armed forces are pretty robust and they can put up with an awful lot. I do not overly worry, having got to know them over a three-year period, about their morale. However, they are worried and they do not believe that they are consulted, and that goes for every rank and for every level of the armed forces. They do not believe that this process is being carried out in anything like a reasonable way. They do not believe that they are having an input, and that goes for industry too. Anyone who talks to the defence industry will know that it is worried about the sequential way in which the Government are going about this, instead of the holistic way that is necessary if they are going to take the right decisions and to capture all the complexity of the process.

On our nuclear deterrent and the latest piece of spin, I do not believe that the BBC is wrong. I do not believe, either, that some special adviser is responsible. I believe that somebody high up in the Government is casting the bread on the water and is thinking about delaying the replacement in the way that is being reported.

Let us be clear about the consequences, which were so well laid out by the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) on the radio this morning: short-term savings, massive long-term costs—one might ask what the Conservatives have been complaining about, yet here they are talking and thinking about such things—industrial interruption, safety risks and a very real risk to our ability to maintain a continuous at-sea deterrent. In short, it makes no sense operationally, industrially or financially. As the hon. Gentleman said, one can decide to have a deterrent and one can decide not to, but delay makes absolutely no sense at all.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

I very much support the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex on the radio this morning, but I feel that the shadow Secretary of State’s comments would have far more gravity if he had pushed forward with the review of Trident rather than waiting until after the election.

[Mr Ainsworth]

The hon. Gentleman was not here in the last Parliament. He will know if he looks at the record that we took decisions on Trident in a timely way in 2006 and that we put work strands in place. Those work strands cannot be significantly disrupted without massive industrial consequences. We have a skill base that is pretty unique and capable of building those submarines. We lost it before and we had to rebuild it. If we lose it again, we will have to rebuild it again, but perhaps the Government do not want to do that. Perhaps they are seriously trying to get rid of our nuclear deterrent without a debate. I do not know, but all I would say to the hon. Gentleman is that the person who cast the bread on the water this morning is either a total fool for proposing the delay in the way that they are, or there is some other agenda. The other agenda must be either to get rid of or to reduce massively our deterrent. Perhaps that is a debate that we should have, but I do not understand the common sense—neither does anybody else who knows anything about it—behind the trailing, spinning and leaking that has gone on.