Oral Answers to Questions

Fabian Hamilton Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Guto Bebb]

It is, undoubtedly, a fantastic good news story for the United Kingdom. As I have said, it is the first time that we have exported a warship design in more than 40 years, and great credit should be offered to the teams at BAE and across Government who have worked so hard to ensure that that happens. It is a great success story for our industry and for the United Kingdom.

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

Major defence companies are clearly deeply concerned about the effect of this Government’s Brexit policy on their operations in the UK. Rolls-Royce has started to move some functions to Germany while the chief executive of Airbus has said that the Government have

“no clue on how to execute Brexit without severe harm.”

Given that the man who was meant to be leading the UK’s approach to Brexit has now resigned because he has no confidence in his own Government’s approach, how on earth can business trust that this divided Government will deliver a Brexit deal that protects jobs and the economy?

[Guto Bebb]

The chief executive of Airbus made very similar comments back in January, but he would also be very pleased with the plans that were announced by the Prime Minister at the Chequers meeting. The key thing is that defence industries in the United Kingdom are confident—they have larger order books and they are winning contracts for the first time in generations in some countries. On top of that, I am also in regular discussions with defence companies in other parts of the world, which are very keen to invest in the United Kingdom.

Defence

Fabian Hamilton Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2018 Ministerial Corrections

The following is an extract from the urgent question on Defence Fire and Rescue Project: Capita on 21 June 2018.

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on the awarding of the defence fire and rescue contract to Capita.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Tobias Ellwood)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to put on record the justification for the awarding of the contract. The defence fire and rescue project has been examining potential improvements in how fire and rescue services are provided to the Ministry of Defence, both here in the United Kingdom and overseas. The total value of defence fire and rescue operations is around £1.3 billion. We intend to award a 12-year contract worth around £400 million to Capita Business Services Ltd. However, this is open to possible challenges—the normal process ensues—following the issuing of the contract award decision notice and possible parliamentary challenges to the contingent liability.

[Official Report, 21 June 2018, Vol. 643, c. 467.]

Letter of correction from Mr Tobias Ellwood.

An error has been identified in my answer to the urgent question on Defence Fire and Rescue Project: Capita.

The correct response should have been:

Defence Fire and Rescue Project: Capita

Fabian Hamilton Excerpts

Thursday 21st June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on the awarding of the defence fire and rescue contract to Capita.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Tobias Ellwood)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to put on record the justification for the awarding of the contract. The defence fire and rescue project has been examining potential improvements in how fire and rescue services are provided to the Ministry of Defence, both here in the United Kingdom and overseas. The total value of defence fire and rescue operations is around £1.3 billion. We intend to award a 12-year contract worth around £400 million to Capita Business Services Ltd. However, this is open to possible challenges—the normal process ensues—following the issuing of the contract award decision notice and possible parliamentary challenges to the contingent liability.[Official Report, 25 June 2018, Vol. 643, c. 4MC.]

The contract will deliver improvements in the safety of military and civilian firefighter personnel, and improvements in the equipment and training available to them. It will deliver savings that will be reinvested into the defence budget while sustaining our ability to support operations around the world and to support local authority fire services, should that be required at times of heightened national need. In doing so, it will ensure that our personnel, airfields and strategic assets worldwide continue to be protected from the risk of fire.

I assure Parliament that the proposed contractual arrangements have been subject to the fullest range of testing and scrutiny across Government to ensure that the services will be delivered in a sustainable and resilient manner. Safeguards are in place to ensure that there is no break in service provision. Capita is a strategic supplier to the Government, and the Cabinet Office maintains regular engagement with the company, as with all strategic suppliers.

Fire risk management will remain a defence responsibility after the award of the contract. In no circumstances will there be any compromise to our personnel’s safety. Over the course of the bidding for the contract, Capita’s financial status has been analysed by the MOD’s cost-assurance and analysis service, and we have in place the necessary contingency plans to ensure that the contract is managed accordingly. We will actively manage the contract to provide early warning of any performance concerns so that they can be addressed thoroughly.

Following a competitive bidding process, Capita’s bid was deemed to deliver the best technical solution and the best value for money for defence. Robust evaluation and modelling processes were undertaken to test the deliverability of the proposed contracts to ensure that all risks were identified. As well as the full assessment of the proposal, we have a contract that clearly defines the obligations for the contractor. A performance mechanism has been developed to make sure that Capita is incentivised to ensure that delivery targets are clearly defined.

I should be clear that this is not the first time that contractors have been used in this way—several sites, including Porton Down, are already using contractor fire service capability. In addition to offering significant financial savings that can be reinvested in defence, the project aims for the delivery of sustainable and agile defence fire and rescue services that meet the requirement without compromise.

[Fabian Hamilton]

I am extremely grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question. I was very eager to hear the Minister’s justification for awarding such a crucial contract for the defence fire and rescue service to Capita.

I think that we would all agree that it would be extremely worrying if a situation were to arise whereby this contract could not be delivered or was not delivered to the standard required. The risks, I am sure the Minister agrees, are simply too great for that to be allowed to happen.

The Minister’s Department received advice as recently as 7 June that Capita represents a 10-out-of-10 risk, so how was the decision made to give the contract to Capita? The Minister has already touched on that. His Department has said that all its suppliers are

“subject to robust assessments ahead of any contract placement.”

What consideration, if any, was given to the advice that the Ministry of Defence has received on the financial health of the company?

We know that Capita has a record of poor performance for delivering Ministry of Defence contracts. It was stripped of the defence estate contract, and the less said about its Army recruitment contract the better. In spite of that, the Government have knowingly chosen to give Capita another contract. What specific measures has the Department put in place to monitor the delivery of the contract and to take penalty action for poor performance, if necessary?

The Government’s written statement told us that

“the contract duration is 12 years”,

which is a considerable amount of time for a company associated with extremely high risk. The fire service is vital to the safety of our armed forces, to their families and to key defence assets. Will the Minister tell us what arrangements will be in place if Capita is unable to deliver the contract for its full duration?

A number of defence fire workers will be very worried indeed about this news. The significance of the workforce, and their role in protecting MOD staff and families, and the Department’s infrastructure—both overseas and at home—cannot be overstated. What assurances can the Minister give us about the future of these workers and their pensions? What help will be provided for them if redundancies do occur?

Is it not time to accept that this Government’s ideologically driven approach to outsourcing public services at any cost has simply failed? We must end the racket of outsourcing and deliver solutions that benefit taxpayers and service users alike.

[Mr Ellwood]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his questions. I appreciate his interest in, and concern about, these important matters. If I may, I will probably write to him in more detail, because he set out a series of questions, but I will give him an overview now to reassure him that the bidding process was absolutely robust.

I did go to some length in my opening remarks to reassure the hon. Gentleman that we were looking at a number of companies—Serco, Babcock and QinetiQ, as well as an in-house offering—to ensure that we have a robust system that meets our responsibility to eliminate any problem related to fire. The actual bid process itself was competitive. There was robust evaluation modelling—it involved not just the MOD, but the Treasury, the Cabinet Office and indeed the three services—to make sure that we have the necessary processes in place to manage what will be an umbrella organisation.

As the hon. Gentleman knows, the way in which our fire service is conducted means that we have responsibility inside the wire. There is also civil capability, and RAF and naval personnel are cap badged to provide fire capability, too. We also lean occasionally, when required, on local authorities, and that relationship will continue, but overall control will come from Capita itself. Having said that, the actual responsibility will be managed by the Defence Fire Risk Management Organisation, which, as I have said, will continue to scrutinise the performance of Capita itself.

The hon. Gentleman is right to raise concerns about the workers themselves. Just under 600 civilian workers will be transferred across. I absolutely hope that this will not lead to any changes. If there are any, I hope that they will be done through redundancies. We are looking for investment in new machines, new technology, new capability and new safety measures, which will hopefully be welcomed by Members on both sides of the House.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fabian Hamilton Excerpts

Monday 11th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

The Shoreham disaster was an absolute tragedy, but we have to move forward from that. Just at the weekend I was at RAF Cosford and saw the amazing air display that took place there. It shows how such displays can inspire future generations to join the Royal Air Force and play a role in their country’s defence, and I will certainly take the point up with the Civil Aviation Authority.

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

The review of the defence fire and rescue service has been running in various forms for 10 years now. With neither of the final two bidders having exactly a glowing past record, does the Secretary of State share my concern that if the contract is outsourced and we see a repeat of the Carillion situation, the consequences could be disastrous?

Oral Answers to Questions

Fabian Hamilton Excerpts

Monday 5th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

As I say, we are waiting for the report to come through. It is unfortunate that we have had to introduce this pay restraint, but we should not lose sight of why pay restraint was introduced in the first place. It was because the previous Government were living beyond their means. [Interruption.] Only with the return to a strong economy can we responsibly increase public sector pay.

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

Last week, we saw how our armed forces stepped up to help with the chaos caused by the very challenging weather conditions. Does the Minister not agree that these brave men and women therefore deserve more than a 1% pay rise—it is, in fact, a real-terms pay cut—and will he make that clear to the pay review body?

[Mr Ellwood]

It actually works the other way around, but I agree with the hon. Gentleman in that I would like to see an increase of more than 1%. However, I go back to the rather delicate point, which was received with a bit of hostility by Opposition Members, that we cannot lose sight of the fact that they must have a sense of responsibility in making sure we have a strong economy, so that we can increase public sector pay across the board.

If I may, I will just underline the wider point I made last week that without strong defence in this fast-changing and, indeed, dangerous world, a strong economy cannot in fact be guaranteed. That is why I said that 2% of GDP on defence is not enough. Thanks to the efforts of this Defence Secretary, we now have an opportunity to make the case and to put the argument through the defence modernisation programme for the more robust defence posture that will ensure we retain access to the very vital international markets that will help our economy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fabian Hamilton Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

I am happy to look at the concerns the hon. Lady raises. The quinquennial review took place in 2016, and overall we were found to have remained on track and fit for purpose. We are making some changes, but they will be announced later in the year.

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

The Opposition strongly welcome reforms to the compensation scheme to make it fairer and easier to access, but we are concerned at Government proposals to prevent armed forces personnel and their families from seeking legal redress where there are failings that need to be highlighted. Not only would this remove an important legal right for injured service members, but it could prevent the MOD from learning lessons from past decisions. Will the Minister agree to think again and preserve the right of redress for personnel and their families?

[Mr Ellwood]

As I alluded to in my previous answer, no firm decisions have been made, but I will be presenting the results in due course, and I will bear in mind what the hon. Gentleman has said.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fabian Hamilton Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mark Lancaster]

I certainly agree that this is not a binary choice. Indeed, perhaps it is more of a digital choice, as we look further on in the 21st century. That is why it is absolutely right that we are carrying out the national security and capability review, because as the threats intensify across the spectrum, we have to invest in those things.

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

I wonder whether the Minister heard BBC Radio 4’s “Profile” yesterday on Yevgeny Prigozhin, otherwise known as Putin’s chef, and his so-called troll factory in St Petersburg. If the Minister heard it, he should be very concerned indeed about Russia’s increasing efforts at cyber-warfare and the threat of disruption it poses to our democracy and the defence of the realm. What steps are he and the Department trying to take to minimise that serious Russian threat?

[Mark Lancaster]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to say that I did not hear that profile yesterday because I was at the 100th anniversary of Cambrai—the first use of the tank—in France, and a marvellous event it was, too. He makes a reasonable point, and I can only refer him to some of the comments I have made during this question about investment and how seriously we take the threat.

Air Force (Constitution) Act 1917

Fabian Hamilton Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

I apologise once again for being a little late this afternoon, Sir Henry, thanks to the train service from Birmingham.

This has been an important and timely debate, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Witney (Robert Courts) for securing it when there is much to celebrate about the past 100 years of the Royal Air Force. He made an important contribution to the debate, reminding us of the importance of the RAF in winning the battle of Britain, about which I will say more in a minute. He also reminded us that by the end of the first world war —by 1918, the actual centenary of the formation of the Royal Air Force—there were 290,000 personnel and a staggering 23,000 aircraft in the RAF.

We then heard from the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster), who reminded us that the RAF is as relevant today as it was in 1917-18. Of course, he is absolutely right. The hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross) told us about the Lossiemouth base, which is one of the most important bases for the RAF, about the Scottish roots of the RAF—I am sure that whisky is important to the RAF—and the fact that the Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft are based at Lossiemouth. Then we heard from the hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), who spoke with great knowledge, representing a constituency that has huge roots and an important role in the RAF. He told us of the crews and personnel who live in his area and that the Red Arrows were just down the road. I remember those English Electric Lightning aircraft from my youth, in the 1960s. I think that RAF Coningsby is very nearby, and Newark is at the heart of the RAF’s story, he said. Many thousands of veterans live in his constituency.

Labour welcomes this debate and the chance to highlight the work of the RAF during its hundred-year history. We would like to thank all those who have served or are serving in the RAF for the sacrifice and contribution that they make and have made to the defence of our nation.

On 29th November 1917, the Air Force Constitution Act received its Royal Assent. Today is the 24th, I think, so in just a few days we have the hundredth anniversary of Royal Assent.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Tobias Ellwood)]

Today is the 23rd.

[Fabian Hamilton]

My apologies; it is the 23rd—so in just six days’ time. I do not even know what day of the week it is.

[Mr Ellwood]

It was a long train journey.

[Fabian Hamilton]

That’s Virgin Trains for you. But I should not advertise.

On 1 April next year, we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Royal Air Force actually coming into existence. It was the threat of war with Germany in the 1930s that resulted in the rapid expansion of the RAF. New stations were built, new aircraft were ordered and the strength of the RAF increased from 31,275 personnel in 1933 to 264,346 by 1939. At the end of the second world war, the strength of the RAF stood at more than one million. By 1948, of course, that had dropped to less than 250,000, and two years later it was less than 200,000. By 1979, the strength of the RAF was just over 86,000 personnel. The end of the cold war and the reconfiguring of the RAF for expeditionary warfare saw a further reduction in manpower.

I will turn to one of the most important points that the hon. Member for Witney made in his opening remarks, which is the battle of Britain. As I said earlier, I am a child of the ’50s and ’60s—and probably one of the older Members in this room—and I remember many of the films of the period, such as “366 Squadron”. We were brought up on those movies. “The Dam Busters” was slightly before my time, being born in ’55, which was the year it was made, so I do not remember it opening.

Sir Henry, if you will permit me for one minute, I will share a couple of personal recollections. “The Dam Busters” was about Operation Chastise, on 16 to 17 May 1943. We all remember that it was Sir Barnes Wallis who invented the bouncing bomb, but how many of us remember some of the other people involved? I am very privileged to have as one of my closest friends the grandson of Sir Benjamin Lockspeiser, who was the co-inventor of the bouncing bomb, and who died just months before his 100th birthday in 1990. He was one of the most influential inventors of the time, and with Barnes Wallis he invented a weapon that brought the war to an earlier close than it might have had. These are the people who are often forgotten.

Benjamin Lockspeiser was honoured after the war for his role, but there are many like him who worked hard to ensure that we could win the war and stop Hitler’s Operation Sealion, which started in July 1940, from invading Britain and therefore removing the last democratic obstacle to his domination of Europe. In order to do that, he had to destroy the RAF’s ability to attack his forces. We should never forget that the RAF was outnumbered 5:1 by the Luftwaffe in both machines and men. It was the first significant strategic defeat suffered by the Nazis during the second world war. Of course, the war was to last another five years.

My late father was at that time a pupil at Brentwood School, in Essex. It was a boarding school; he had come to the country as a 12-year-old from continental Europe to escape the fascist persecution of the Jews. He was on fire duty one night in 1940 as the battle of Britain was taking place over Brentwood. Hon. Members present probably do not know that area of Essex; Brentwood School is on hill, and Warley barracks is on the next hill. The Luftwaffe used to bomb Warley barracks regularly, but sometimes it got confused and bombed the school instead. When they dropped a bomb on the cricket pavilion, the deputy headmaster said to my father, who was on duty at the time, “Let it burn; we need a new pavilion.” That was one of the stories I best remember from my father’s wartime exploits. He ended up in the RAF himself in 1945. He never told me exactly what his duties were, but I know that at one stage, after having volunteered, he was parachuted into occupied France. That is a direct, personal connection.

Many of us who are children of that era remember building the Airfix kits. I do not know how many hon. Members in this room remember those Airfix kits— I am looking round to the boys.

[Mrs Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

Sexism, sir!

[Fabian Hamilton]

And the girls. Surely, the hon. Lady is not old enough to remember such things. I remember building the kits of Spitfires, Hurricanes and Mosquitos out of balsa wood. I think the real aircraft were built out of balsa wood as well—those Mosquitos were very flammable, but they were extremely fast. The technologies of that time enabled the RAF to be so superior, in spite of the fact that it had fewer personnel and fewer machines —the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine was the engine that powered the Spitfire. Indeed, when the film the “Battle of Britain” was made in 1968, I think, they re-enacted with original Spitfires and Hurricanes the battle over Brentwood School, which I was a pupil at, too, during that period.

The RAF is an important strand in the lives of all of us who grew up after the war in the ’50s and ’60s, and subsequently. The cost of the battle of Britain was very high. Of the nearly 3,000 air crew who fought, 544 lost their lives and of the remainder, a further 814 died before the end of the war. We should remember that not all those fighters were British. Fighter Command was a cosmopolitan mix, and some reference has been made to that this afternoon. There were 141 Poles, 87 Czechs, 24 Belgians and 13 Free French killed, who swelled the ranks of those who died fighting in the RAF as pilots and other crew in the battle of Britain and throughout the second world war.

As of October 2017, the RAF consists of 30,560 full-time, trained personnel, against a 2020 target of 31,750. The RAF as we know it today—reference has been made to this already—is at the centre of the UK’s fight against Daesh. In fact, in March this year I was privileged to visit RAF Akrotiri and Dhekelia in Cyprus with the shadow Defence Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith). Akrotiri was the staging point for Operation Shader, the UK’s military campaign against Daesh. We saw just how brilliantly well the RAF works today in spite of the many pressures on it.

Another point I want to make is about equality, which other hon. Members have referred to. The Women’s Royal Air Force was formed in 1918. Although the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force was disbanded in the 1920s, it was reformed in June 1939 as a result of the outbreak of the second world war. On 1 February 1949, the permanent service came into being, under its old name of the Women’s Royal Air Force. The RAF has been at the very forefront, integrating its women’s service in a meaningful way. In 1994, the WRAF ceased to exist as a women’s service when it merged with the RAF and female personnel were fully integrated on the same rates of pay and subject to the same regulations as their male counterparts.

The RAF has been consistently praised as an excellent employer for women and has been named in The Times top 50 list of employers for women on more than one occasion. Not only that, but the RAF has the largest proportion of female officers: 16.9% of regular officers and 22.7% of reserve officers are women. The current target for women in the armed forces is 15% by 2020, but the RAF plans to raise its target to 20% by 2020. The RAF also created the first female two-star military officer. Air Vice-Marshal Elaine West was the first woman since the second world war to become a non-honorary air vice-marshal or equivalent in the British armed forces, and the first to achieve that rank in the regular forces. The RAF currently has three female officers of two-star rank, compared with one in the Army and none in the Royal Navy. In September, the RAF became the first service to accept women in all roles, including close combat roles.

We have had a very good debate, and I wait to hear what the Minister has to say in conclusion. I thank the hon. Member for Witney once again for bringing this important anniversary to public attention. I hope that this is the first of many celebrations.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fabian Hamilton Excerpts

Monday 23rd October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

Brexit, of course, gives us the opportunity to look again at our global role. We currently contribute to more than a dozen common security and defence policy missions and operations organised by the European Union, and it is important that from outside the European Union we continue, where we can, to consider how we can further contribute to European security, as well as to the global role about which my hon. Friend and I agree.

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

I am sure that the Secretary of State agrees that our defence industry needs certainty and stability from the Government so that it can plan its operations appropriately, but the Opposition believe that the Government’s dogged insistence on dragging us out of the customs union and the single market during the transition period is having the opposite effect. Is it not time that we put the interests of our economy first, including the defence sector, rather than the interests of a minority of Tory Back Benchers, by retaining our membership of the single market and customs union for a time-limited period as we leave the EU?

[Sir Michael Fallon]

As we leave the European Union, we have to leave the single market and the customs union. Our paper on the foreign policy and defence partnership we seek after we leave the European Union makes it clear that we continue to seek the closest possible co-operation between our defence industry and the defence industries of the continent.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fabian Hamilton Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

We all agreed—it was not just Britain—at the time of the Warsaw summit that the European Union and NATO needed to work together to avoid unnecessary duplication. We agreed to co-operate in areas where both could add value but to avoid the need to set up fancy new headquarters and duplicate what was already being done in NATO.

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

The European Defence Agency supports the improvement of defence capabilities and provides a forum for European co-operation on research and development. Will the Secretary of State be recommending that we remain a member of the EDA? If not, will he explain what our relationship with it will be, post-Brexit?

[Sir Michael Fallon]

The European Defence Agency is an important forum, but it is not the only forum in which collaboration takes place. Some of that collaboration is outside the treaty, including some of the work that we have done together on Typhoon and on other major equipment projects. Obviously we expect to have some kind of relationship with the European Defence Agency after Brexit, and that will be discussed in the negotiating process that awaits us.