Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts

Monday 8th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nick Harvey]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman to the Dispatch Box in his new role and congratulate him on his appointment. Work is in hand to start on a detailed rebasing plan. He is right to assume that moving troops back from Germany will involve an initial up-front cost, but it is important to stress that big savings will be made in the long term, because there are implicitly high costs involved in maintaining troops in Germany, and the operational rationale for their being there ceased long ago.

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

7. If he will assess the merits of putting to use the spare capacity at HMS Sultan in Gosport as part of his review of the defence training estate.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Nick Harvey)]

Following the announcement on 19 October of the decision to terminate the defence training rationalisation procurement, work has now begun on alternative options for the location or locations of future defence technical training. Changes to technical training and estate requirements arising from the strategic defence and security review will be taken into account and HMS Sultan will be considered as part of that process.

[Caroline Dinenage]

As the Minister knows, HMS Sultan already provides engineering training not just for the Navy and the Army, but for commercial organisations such as Network Rail. It recently had an excellent Ofsted report, and the good news is that it has spare capacity to do even more. Does the Minister agree, therefore, that in the spirit of good financial common sense, the Department should consider consolidating all existing military engineering training at that excellent site in my Gosport constituency?

[Nick Harvey]

I am happy to pay tribute to the work that goes on at HMS Sultan and congratulate everybody involved on the excellence of the training that is given. It would not be practical to bring all defence technical training together at that site but, as I stressed in my earlier answer, we are looking at location or locations, and HMS Sultan will be considered fully as part of that review.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

I declare an interest in this debate as the wife of a serving naval officer. It was in that capacity that I was in the arrivals lounge at RAF Brize Norton on Saturday. Today, we have addressed the technical side of the SDSR, but the human side of it was etched on the faces of the families waiting with me in that arrivals lounge and could be seen in the emotional scenes of reunion as the soldiers, sailors and airmen returned to the arms of their loving families. It was a powerful reminder to me of the responsibility and duty that we have as politicians to not only the men and women of the armed services, but their families back home.

In this time of deficit and defence reviews, it is vital that we in the Chamber are aware of a fundamentally important point. The armed forces are not just a homogenous mass of fighting machine; they are about people—soldiers, sailors, airmen, as well as their wives, children, partners and parents. We ask these people to lay their lives, or those of the people whom they love most in the world, on the line, so these people must be at the heart of any decisions we make about the armed forces. That means giving them enough manpower and the best equipment we can afford to enable them to do their jobs safely and properly, as well as respecting them enough to restore the military covenant and address the quality of life issues that can seriously affect morale.

All the UK armed forces have been operating at a sustained high tempo since the end of the cold war, which has meant that our armed forces have endured a near continuous cycle of deployed operations for well over 20 years. The effect on our servicemen and women is hard to quantify, and what is even more difficult to ascertain is the effect on those left behind. That is why rest and recuperation is such a vital part of the military covenant. It provides a useful period in which service personnel and their families can regroup and prepare for redeployment. It is essential, therefore, that the R and R clock starts when the person actually arrives back in the UK, to allow the maximum time for the unseen wounds of stress to be in some way healed, prior to returning to the front line.

Currently, R and R starts as soon as somebody leaves their front-line base, and in the case of Afghanistan, it can often take up to three days to get back. That has nothing to do with manpower. Operation Herrick manning within infantry battle groups allows for the extra personnel to cover those on R and R. The delays are actually due to the lack of capacity within the strategic air bridge between the operational theatre and the UK. If we are serious about looking after the continuing health of our forces, surely it is fairer that we adopt the American system, in which the leave period begins only when they touch down on US soil.

We also have an obligation to provide our servicemen and women with the equipment they need to do their jobs properly. There is a simple point here: fail to prepare, prepare to fail. It is clear that in years gone by, our armed forces have not been adequately equipped to deal with current and emerging threats. Equipment deficiencies have resulted in billions of pounds being spent under the urgent operational requirements process, and tales of equipment shortages during Operation Telic, in the second gulf war, were well documented and widely reported in the press. However unpalatable the cost of re-equipping our armed forces, it is a necessary process, and failure to invest in defence procurement allows the gap between current and required capability to widen more quickly.

At present, despite ever decreasing resources, we continue to play our full part on the world stage, but a review is needed of how operations are planned and how thinly we spread our resources. The Army currently operates in 80 countries worldwide, and the Royal Navy, the senior service, which has a long and distinguished history firmly rooted in my Gosport constituency, continues to operate all over the world, from anti-piracy missions of Somalia to the fight against drugs in the Caribbean, and of course supporting operations in Afghanistan. As 80% of the world’s population lives within 150 miles of the sea, aircraft carriers and the aircraft of the Fleet Air Arm have the ability to influence nations from international waters. That is the strategic effect that this nation has fought to maintain and that other nations, such as India and China, are so desperate to acquire.

Recent history shows how important those carriers are. I am talking about the Falklands conflict back in 1982, lest we forget that we could not have liberated those islands without two aircraft carriers, and had the taskforce lost one of those carriers, both military and political history would have been rewritten. The Falklands war also teaches us the importance of adaptability. If this country is to play a role in the world, we must be ready and able to react to any threat that arises, in any area of the world. In 1982, we had sufficient capacity to deal with the loss of ships we suffered, but today’s fleet has been cut to the bare bones and we are spread very thin.

In recent years, we have had a tendency to produce technically advanced warships in smaller and smaller numbers, evidenced by the new Type 45s. To paraphrase Stalin, however, quantity has a quality of its own. It does not take a genius to figure out that no matter how powerful a warship, it cannot be in two places at the same time. If we are to continue to send our brave soldiers, airmen and sailors out to meet our world commitment, it is our duty to do so only if we can ensure that they have sufficient manpower, ships, aircraft and equipment to get the job done and to bring them home safely.

Afghanistan

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

Good progress has been made on the number of Afghan national police, but to be frank with the hon. Lady, that is not really my concern. My concern is the quality of the recruits to the Afghan national police, and what we need to do is not to have them recruited and then trained, but trained and then put in place. That is a vital mission for the whole of the international coalition. The issue was widely discussed at the NATO ministerial meeting at a number of different levels, and I think there is growing acceptance that providing policing and law and order, not at a Supreme Court level but in terms of dispute resolution and effective policing at the very lowest level, is one of the ways to deny the political and social space that the Taliban will otherwise occupy.

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

From the British perspective, progress in Afghanistan is often measured through the lens of Helmand. Is that a fair reflection of the security situation across the whole country?

[Dr Fox]

All countries tend to see Afghanistan in different ways depending on the focus of their national media. There are countries that see Kandahar as being Afghanistan, and there are countries that see Kabul as being Afghanistan. We tend to see Helmand as being Afghanistan. It is useful if people understand that across the country as a whole, a lot of progress has been made on security. Those Members who have been travelling to Afghanistan over a period of time will have noticed that, for example, in Kabul there is a great difference in the security arrangements and how easy it is to move around the city. Clearly, that has not yet spread to enough parts of the country, but we are getting close to transition. While it is understandable that we and our media focus on our casualties and the fatalities that we, very sadly, have taken, we also need to show the other side of the ledger to the public—the successes being achieved in Afghanistan. That is vital if we are to maintain public support, which is a very important part of our resilience in a democracy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts

Monday 5th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robathan]

We are indeed proceeding with personal recovery units as part of the Army recovery capability. That was a legacy of the previous Administration, and one that I praise.

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

The Minister will be aware that under the previous Government the Haslar royal naval hospital was the last military hospital to be shut down. We are now at risk of losing another massive employer in Gosport in HMS Sultan, the Royal Navy engineering training school—recently graded outstanding by Ofsted—which could move to St Athan. Has the Minister considered the effect that any such move would have on the local community?

[Mr Robathan]

I have to confess to my hon. Friend that I have not been looking at that particular issue; however, I am sure that the closure—[Hon. Members: “Oh!”] Well, I am awfully sorry, but it is not part of my remit. However, I am sure that, as with everything else, we will be looking at that issue in the strategic defence and security review, and I hope that there will be no unfortunate implications for employment in the Portsmouth area.