Oral Answers to Questions

Kevan Jones Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2020 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

Of course these assets of huge national importance must be properly protected. The Royal Navy will make sure that the required number of ships are available for exactly that purpose.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

The issue is not just about the number of ships that the Royal Navy possesses, but whether they are operationally effective or not. From July 2018 to July 2019, two of the six Type 45 destroyers did not put to sea, and a third spent fewer than 100 days at sea. What will the Minister be doing to ensure that the existing ships are operationally ready?

[James Heappey]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question and very much share the sentiment in it. Since being appointed in December, I have been more concerned by the number of ships tied up against walls in Plymouth and Portsmouth than by those at sea. The Secretary of State has made the delivery of more ships for the fleet his priority for the Navy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kevan Jones Excerpts

Monday 21st October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has been very clear about the need for a points-based system to enable us to secure the skills that we need, but, again, the long-term solution is investment in our skills base. I was pleased about the increase in further education funding that was announced in the recent spending review, which will be important to ensuring that that happens. In my constituency in Lancashire, investment in schools and higher and further education colleges is the bedrock of BAE’s capability.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I know that the Secretary of State is reluctant to talk about the fleet solid support ship contract, but may I ask him what percentage of the bid is being taken into consideration in terms of support for UK jobs and manufacturing? Will he really be content to be the Secretary of State who is willing to export jobs to Spain rather than investing in this country?

[Mr Wallace]

I think that the last part of the right hon. Gentleman’s question anticipated the result of any competition that will take place, and I am not going to comment on who or what is going to win if we progress to that stage with competent bids. It will be important for all the bids to include an element of UK capability, and we will ensure that we take that into consideration. It is important to us, and to the skills in this country, for the customer—the MOD, which is spending all that money—to secure not only an export market but a UK base.

Defence Spending

Kevan Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 16th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar) on the use of the word “efficiency”. It is a fact—there is no reason to hide from it—that the Conservatives in the coalition Government cut the defence budget by 16%.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments.

The challenge is that the premise of SDSR ’10 was not just financial; it was that there was no longer an existential threat to the UK. It said that Russia was no longer a nation that we had to watch and fear. That has turned out to be a false premise, if it was ever anything other than an excuse to reduce defence spending. We were told that, owing to the sudden outbreak of global neighbourliness, we could return our Army from Germany. The freedom to move safely around international waters was assured because the middle east had become stable and unthreatening to the 20% of the UK’s energy requirements that travels by sea through the strait of Hormuz, so a reduction in the size of the ageing fleet was a perfectly sensible idea. Global airspace was going to be full of fluffy clouds and rays of sunshine, so there would be less need to patrol the skies or deliver force from the air to those who wish our allies harm, and we could reduce the number of airframes we would need. All that has, perhaps not surprisingly, turned out to be a false premise.

The Government seemed to make a conscious choice conveniently to forget that new equipment, recruitment and high-tech training takes time and money if we are to maintain our military advantage by having the best and most advanced equipment with the best-trained men and women in the world. I am afraid that SDSR ’10 was allowed to set out that false premise due to financial pressures. There was a realignment, as those in post realised that the position that was set out was not right. The work done for SDSR ’15 started to assess more honestly the instabilities across the globe and their risks to UK safety and prosperity, but the cash needed did not follow that strategic assessment.

It is a pleasure to see the Minister for the Armed Forces in his place; it is not him whom I challenge, but our Treasury Ministers. The pertinent question is, after setting out what was eventually understood to be required to meet minimum security risks in SDSR ’15, why have we not funded it properly to get the outputs that we know we need? We must be able to look our constituents in the eye and promise them that we can defend them. This is about not just the level of GDP that we use to invest in a larger force, but whether we are meeting future need.

In SDSR ’10, the MOD declared that we should reduce RAF aircraft numbers substantially while pushing forward with the aircraft carrier class of warship, but by SDSR ’15, those decisions had evidently proved incompatible, given that we need to increase aircraft numbers once again. We need to think holistically about transformation—the time it takes, the training requirements to achieve it and the best value-for-money methodology for doing it. As the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) said, that is the invest-to-save model, and the Treasury needs to help the Department. Short-term decisions for annualised cash-flow rules simply do not work for our defence programme and produce an output that meets our defence needs or our value-for-money rules.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

The hon. Gentleman shakes his head violently. I have talked about the CASD repeatedly in the House since I was elected in 2015. It strikes me as bizarre that the long-term nature of that critical weapon of peace is stuck in a funding framework that stubbornly refuses to allow long-term planning and flexible funding. All credit to the former Secretary of State for Defence, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson), for persuading the Treasury last year to bring forward £600 million of funding—not additional funding but simply to reduce future financial risk—to assist in making efficient decisions to move the Dreadnought programme forward a little more effectively. Deferred cost is always increased cost. I speak as an accountant who has done this many times.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

The money the hon. Lady refers to was already in the contingency budget. Does she agree that the delay under the coalition Government in making a decision to build the Dreadnought class of submarines not only delayed the programme but added cost to it?

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I agree completely. Deferred cost will always be increased cost in such big projects. We need more financial flexibility to get better value for money. Why did we have to battle so hard last year to get the Treasury to move on that £600 million? Why is the Treasury not doing its long-term cash-flow thinking in a rational way? If we are going to keep the CASD—there is overwhelming support for that across the House and the nation—it would make financial sense to allow a multi-year rolling financial commitment so Ministers can make rational decisions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

There is one thing the Conservative party is, and that is consistent. Its Members call for more defence expenditure while in opposition, and when they come into power they cut defence expenditure. In 2010, defence was not immune from austerity and the budget was cut by 16%. The smokescreen the Government put up—that they had inherited a £38 billion black hole in the defence budget—was complete and utter nonsense.

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Jones]

No, I will let others make their speeches.

Ministers kept repeating that claim. I kept asking them about it, but never got an explanation. I think it came from a National Audit Office report from 2009 that said that if the equipment budget was flat over the next 10 years, that might get us to £36 billion; if it rose with inflation, it would be about £6 billion in the defence capital budget. The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) was talking about the two budgets conflated.

We then saw slash and burn, with stupid decisions such as the scrapping of Nimrod and the Harriers, vicious cuts made to people’s pay, and redundancies. That led us to a situation where we have an Army that, at 82,000 personnel, is the smallest it has ever been. No one has yet explained to me how that figure was set.

We are told that the defence budget is rising, but the foundations are shaky. If we look at the 2015 SDSR, we see a huge amount of it is based on billions of pounds of efficiencies that have not yet been and cannot be met. To return to the claim that Labour somehow left a £38 billion black hole, if the situation was so terrible, it is strange that two years in, the right hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr Hammond) eliminated it overnight.

In defence, we need honesty. There is a degree of consensus across the House on the support needed for members of our armed forces and for defence. What we need now is an honest stocktake, looking at our commitments and what we want to do in the world, and ensuring that, as the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan) said, we fund not just the capital side—equipment is important—but the people. I hear all the time that we can do more with more sophisticated equipment, but as any military technician will say, mass and people are still important. We must invest in them over the long term.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

The hon. Gentleman can have an extra minute, because the Front-Bench spokespeople have agreed to take only five minutes, so hon. Members have four minutes each.

[Mr Jones]

I always liked the Minister; he is very good.

Investment in people does not just mean balancing the in-year budget, which I suspect is what has happened. How was money taken straight out of the defence budget in 2010? It happened in two ways: by taking equipment out, as the Government did by putting a wrecking ball through the Nimrod and Harrier programmes; and by slowing the recruitment pipeline. That will lead to problems in future years as people develop and we find that we have capability gaps, not in equipment but in people’s skills, which are important.

Regarding the Conservative party’s commitment to defence expenditure, let us hope that the promises made by the two contenders to become the next Prime Minister hold water. I will support any Government who want to increase spending and, more important, invest in the people we rely on every single day for our peace and security.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mark Lancaster)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan) on introducing the debate. There can be few in Parliament so passionate about the armed forces and I am not surprised that it is she who called the debate. It has been highly constructive and has demonstrated a gratifying commitment to the defence sector on both sides of the House. We should start on a note of agreement: clearly everyone in the Chamber wants the defence budget to continue to rise, and that is gratifying. It is tempting to pick up on another point where we all agree—that it is the Treasury that is the enemy; but I cannot possibly say that. With a reshuffle coming next week, I do not want to limit my options too far. They are already pretty narrow, so let us not go further.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

DEFRA beckons.

[Mark Lancaster]

I doubt it.

As has been said, the first duty of any Government is the safety and security of the British people at home and abroad. I am proud that the Government have delivered on their NATO pledge to spend at least 2% of GDP on defence. They will be spending more than £186 billion on equipment and equipment support between 2018 and 2028. Aside from ensuring that our armed forces have the latest and best capability, our investment of around £19 billion a year underpins a world- class British industry, providing direct employment for 115,000 people and nearly 400,000 more across the wider supply chains. That substantial and sustained investment is not only vital to our national capability and prosperity and to supporting economic growth. It is also vital to our ability to counter the rising threats that menace us and all NATO members, including a resurgent and increasingly assertive Russia, and extremist terrorism across the world.

This year NATO celebrates 70 years as the foundation of our mutual security. The UK is one of very few NATO members that meet both their core spending guidelines by spending 2% of GDP on defence, of which 20% goes on major equipment and associated research and development. Defence spending in many NATO states is still too low, and although our allies are making progress on burden sharing, they must do more. The increase mirrors rising defence spending across the world, which makes it vital that the UK maintains its position as a leading player on the world stage.

The upcoming spending review is an opportunity to reprioritise our national investments across defence, ensuring that we can meet whatever the future may throw at us in an era of intensifying threats. The Department has done a great deal to drive out inefficiencies in defence, and there is more to be done, but we must also invest in new capabilities and in transforming the way defence operates, so that we can continue to defend the UK and project our influence.

First, we must mobilise defence to meet rising threats. The international situation is darkening. The rules-based order that has kept the peace for so long is under constant pressure and the external threats that confront us increasingly come from multiple directions. Despite the coalition’s success in degrading the power of Daesh, the threat of terrorism is still with us, while malign cyber-warfare and proxy warfare are rapidly changing the face of conflict. The nation’s approach to future spending decisions must reflect those new realities.

Secondly, we have to modernise and innovate—to embrace new technologies to ensure we have a competitive edge over our adversaries and to identify opportunities to sustainably reduce our cost base, which will require some up-front investment. The Department is investing about £800 million through the defence innovation fund to keep us ahead of the curve, and ring-fencing £160 million of its budget this year for the new transformation fund. Thirdly, on efficiencies, defence has to transform the way it does business by liberating new industry thinking and tackling the behaviours and practices that have racked up excessive costs in the past. That means tackling the mindset of short-term decision making that leads to poor value for money. We must invest in technology now for long-term savings.

I want to answer a couple of points raised in the debate. The MOD does not collate defence expenditure figures for regions, but the average spend per person in the UK was £290 in 2017-18, and the MOD spends some £19 billion a year supporting 115,000 jobs. That means that one in every 220 jobs in the UK is in defence. On the accusation that there have been cuts under the present Government, since 2014 defence spending has increased year on year and we now spend £39 billion—rising to £40 billion by 2020. [Interruption.] I would also say to the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), having served in Afghanistan in 2006, that the sort of commitment that we had, with so many of our troops serving on operations overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan, made for an environment very different from today’s. With the different threats we face at any one time, it is sometimes difficult to compare like with like. Our relationship with strategic suppliers in the UK defence and security sector is vital. The armed forces support an industrial base in the UK providing employment to about half a million people.

I was delighted that many Members raised the issue of mental health in the debate. In the autumn Budget the Chancellor announced £10 million to support veterans’ mental health and wellbeing needs, and in January the armed forces covenant fund opened a £3 million funding programme to fund innovations and improvements to veterans’ community centres. We are considering investing more in veterans’ mental health. Accommodation is another key issue for many service personnel. We are looking closely at the new accommodation model, which is aimed at giving choice to service personnel. Equally, on pay, the Armed Forces Pay Review Body has recently presented its latest findings, to which the Government will respond in due course.

I end on a note of consensus again. I am delighted that in this Chamber at least we are committed to armed forces personnel, and to a rising defence budget.

National Shipbuilding Strategy

Kevan Jones Excerpts

Thursday 11th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the National Shipbuilding Strategy.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. I declare an interest as a member of the GMB trade union, which I have been for the last 30 years.

I was trying to think when we last had a debate on shipbuilding in the House, and it is quite a while ago. Part of the reason for that is the impression people have that the UK no longer builds ships—that shipbuilding is a smokestack industry that is a ghost of the past. I hope to put that image to bed in my remarks and, along with right hon. and hon. Friends who will contribute to the debate, to show not only that shipbuilding is an important part of our industrial sector, but that it also has a good future if it is given the proper support.

I also have to declare another interest. I chair the all-party parliamentary group on shipbuilding and ship repair. We have just produced a report on the national shipbuilding strategy, and I thank my fellow members, the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan), who unfortunately has another commitment today and cannot be here, but who has been a strong supporter of the group; my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard), who was important in framing the report; my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Sweeney), who will be here later; and the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens), who I am sure will speak for himself, and who has been a key contributor to the work of the group.

We produced the report earlier this year, and I thank the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions, who supported the document and its launch. I also pay tribute to the industry, the trade union movement, academics and the Royal Navy, who gave evidence for our report. On a personal note, and on behalf of the group, I thank Richard Steadman, my former assistant, who helped draft the report, and who has now gone to pastures new as a civil servant in the Department for Transport—for his sins—and his replacement, Conor Bunting, who also helped draft the report.

The report was important, not just to review the national shipbuilding strategy, which the Government adopted more than a year ago, following the Parker review, but to advocate for the industry. As I said, people think we no longer build ships in this country. Is the industry a lot smaller than it was? Yes, it certainly is. Just after the second world war, we produced more than 50% of the world’s shipping. That went into steady decline, but the industry’s footprint is still there—in shipbuilding yards in places such as Glasgow and Birkenhead, or over at Harland and Wolff—and related industries still exist. In the area I represent—the north-east—Newcastle, Sunderland and the surrounding areas still have a lot of companies that are connected to the shipbuilding industry.

I thank the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), who unfortunately cannot be here, for supporting the application for this debate to the Backbench Business Committee and for being a strong advocate for the shipbuilding sector and its importance to his area, Birkenhead, on Merseyside.

The industry is now smaller and mainly reliant on Government naval procurement for its future. That is important, and there is a basic issue that we need to address: if we want the sovereign capability to build complex warships in this country, we have to invest in it.

It is important to highlight that the industry also has spin-offs into other sectors. When people see a ship being built, they concentrate on the hull and superstructure—what they can see—but the real value and expertise in a complex warship today are in not only what it is made of, but the through-life support. That creates jobs in a whole range of sectors and ensures that those jobs are maintained over the life of the ship.

We must protect skills; the sector cannot be successful, and we cannot keep our sovereign capability, without investment in skills. That is not just about skills such as welding, which are completely different to what they were 20 or 30 years ago—they are highly qualified, highly technical jobs. There are also skills in marine engineering, and that also has a spin-off, because that whole industry supports ships in this country and around the world. There is also project management. The two aircraft carriers that were built were a huge undertaking and could not have been done without very complex project management. We do that very well in this country, and we export that skill around the world.

Our skill in naval architecture is equally important, and has come to the fore with BAE Systems’ new Type 26 frigate. Because of the design, the company has now won export orders from both Australia and Canada. The actual vessels may not be being physically built in this country, but that does not really matter. What is important is that the skills that have gone into designing the vessels and the combat systems, and the research and development that lie behind that, are kept. We also have a leading edge in information technology, and a unique capability in this country, because of the nuclear deterrent, in nuclear marine engineering.

If we want an example of what happens when the pipeline of orders is turned off, we see it in Barrow in the 1990s, when the decision was taken not to continue investing in the skills needed for building submarines. When we tried to pick up those skills for the Astute class, there were problems. I often say—some people might have heard me say it before—that these are complex skills; they cannot just be turned on and off like a tap when we need them. They need constant investment.

The industry today employs 32,000 people directly, contributing more than £2 billion to the UK economy, and there are many knock-on jobs. Type 26 is a good example. I counted more than 65 companies in the BAE Systems supply chain, and a lot of those companies are not located anywhere near the sea. We have steel from Bradford, roller shutters from Bolton North East, fire and flood detection systems from Manchester Central, and plate from Wolverhampton South East. Although we traditionally consider communities such as Glasgow and, in the past, Tyneside and Merseyside as where the shipbuilding industry is, that is not the case. It is a national endeavour now.

The other important point is that programmes such as the Type 26—I give credit to BAE Systems for its work on this—are spreading work around the country, and also putting work into small and medium-sized businesses. That is not just giving them immediate work; in some cases, it is giving them work for a long time to come.

As I said, the industry now relies mainly on naval procurement. Following my involvement with Swan Hunter on Tyneside in my early days, I could write a book about the mistakes that were made as we down- sized the industry. We had competition rules that ensured that yards competed against each other, which ultimately led to yard closures and the consolidation, quite rightly, of complex warship building on the Clyde. That is one of the things in the naval shipbuilding strategy I have difficulty with: we have to ensure that we do not make the mistakes of the past by trying to reinvent those competition-type rules.

The Aircraft Carrier Alliance was a very good example of how we can have the final assembly at Rosyth, but spread that work around the country—to Tyneside, Falmouth and elsewhere—to ensure that those blocks are built. In terms of Sir John Parker’s reference to the new Type 31e frigate, I am not sure how that ship will be built in a block form, because it is quite small. However, the alliance shows that we can have a success story if we bring together people in the industry. Although the carriers were criticised for their cost, not only was the engineering undertaken remarkable, but the carriers were delivered on time and with techniques—if we look, for example, at the US’s new carriers—that are years ahead in terms of the innovation and technology. That was because we have the skills throughout the country needed by the industry.

As I say, the old shipyards might have gone from areas such as the north-east, but the skill levels are still there. One of the key messages I want to convey is that, if we are to keep the sovereign capability and, separately, ensure that we have the skill base, we must have that throughput of work through the yards. It is important not only for the companies on the Clyde, but for the SMEs in the supply chain, because they can ensure that there is long-term work and invest in the skills and innovation that are needed.

I have asked many parliamentary questions of the Minister, who has been very helpful in his replies, and I think he is sympathetic to the case. The throughput of work is important, not just for skills, but to ensure that we have follow-on and that we do not get the situation we had with the submarine-building programme, when we lost that capability. We need to give industry the certainty that it can invest. If it has work going on into the future, it can make the right investment decisions.

I turn now to the issue of the fleet solid support ship. I pay tribute to the trade unions and others that have been lobbying for these vessels, which will be used to support our carriers, to be built in the UK.

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a really good speech, and I congratulate him on securing this debate. I am sorry that duty calls for me to return to Cornwall and that I can only make this intervention and not a speech. I thoroughly agree with him. I am very proud that the Royal Fleet Auxiliary is based in Falmouth. As he says, we have a valuable through-life contract. I wholeheartedly agree that the ships should be built in the UK, and we are proud to have the opportunity to service them. It is vital to have such high-skilled, well-paid jobs in a peripheral area such as Cornwall, which has low wages. Those jobs are vital to our local economy. When decisions are made about procurement, they should be about not just the price tag on the vessel, but the contribution that those industries make to the regional economy.

[Mr Jones]

I am envious of the hon. Lady for going back to Cornwall. I spent my summer holidays there last year, and it is a wonderful part of the world.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

So is Durham!

[Mr Jones]

But Cornwall is, equally, very nice.

The hon. Lady makes an important point. It is about not just the build, but the through-life support. For a lot of the systems that we procure for the armed forces —certainly in shipbuilding—we look at the initial procurement, but we should also be looking at the through-life support. That is where the jobs are, and where the value is for the original, prime companies. As she rightly says, there is also value for smaller companies and others. If we are to spread prosperity around, we should see the contract as an investment in Britain. As she rightly argues, it is an investment in skills going forward. When looking at whether we can afford to make that investment, we should ask the Treasury, “What is the prosperity agenda?” The right hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne) did a very good report that tried to explain that the prosperity agenda should be linked to procurement in the Ministry of Defence. One of the GMB trade union’s reports argued that 20% of the value of the fleet solid support contract comes straight back to the Treasury anyway, through taxes and national insurance.

That has to be taken into account, but it is the throughput of work that will ensure that the shipyards and supply chain are maintained. We have a great opportunity to do that with the FSS contract. Unfortunately, for reasons that I am not sure even the Minister understands or privately supports, it has been put out to international competition. We will make the same mistakes that we made in the 1980s if we think this will somehow lower the price or get a better deal. I am sorry, but no other country in Europe does the same thing.

We can dance on the end of a pin over whether EU procurement rules apply to the FSS vessels—I have made it very clear that they do not. The French have just ordered four new Vulcan class support ships. Did they think about putting that out to international competition or asking British yards to tender? No, they did not; they ordered them directly. It is the same for Italian and Spanish ships. That is the difference.

The South Koreans and Daewoo have now pulled out of the competition for the FSS contract, but we are not dealing with a level playing field. Those companies have huge amounts of Government subsidy, which is not open to UK shipbuilders. If we are to procure the ships and build them abroad, it is quite clear that the Exchequer will not get back 20% straightaway in tax and national insurance. We will also lose the ability to support our shipbuilding and ship repair businesses.

Since 2010, the Government’s industrial strategy on defence has been disappointing. When I was a Defence Minister, I had the privilege of working with Lord Drayson, who understood this issue. As part of his wider industrial strategy on defence—I think it ran until 2010—he rightly argued that if we want to build complex warships in this country, we need to put in the investment, get the drumbeat of work going, and ensure there is certainty for industry.

Since 2010, we have been promised various defence strategies, but what we really need is an overarching defence industrial strategy. I know the Minister will say that the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy or other Departments are dealing with these things, but I am sorry: a particular strategy needs to be developed for defence industries, including the maritime sector.

Sir John Parker’s strategy was an attempt but, as I said, I think it misses the point. It tries to reinvent some of the wheels of competition that failed in the 1980s. There is a fixation in the Ministry of Defence—I cannot understand where it comes from—with the idea, “Isn’t it terrible to give the work to BAE Systems?” BAE Systems is the only company in the UK capable of building complex warships. There are ways of incentivising it, but also ensuring that we get value for money and that we have the necessary systems. The hulls are important and the steel is important, but being able to invest in combat systems, engine technology and other things related to shipbuilding is vital, because they are exportable.

The carriers were a good example of Babcock, Thales and BAE Systems coming together in an alliance that worked. I do not understand why that alliance should be broken up on completion of HMS Prince of Wales, which will happen soon. That alliance seems an obvious way forward in terms of skills for the FSS. I understand that the new Secretary of State wants competition to be reviewed, which is welcome. I hope we can get understanding of the points that I and a lot of other Members have made about the importance of shipbuilding in the UK.

Let me conclude where I started. This is a vital sector if we are going to keep sovereign capability for complex warship building in this country. It needs to be invested in. It is not a smokestack industry; properly invested in, it is an industry for the future. Off the back of contracts such as that for the fleet solid support vessels, I would like to see investment in not only technologies but skills. We need urgently to ensure that companies such as BAE Systems, which do a fantastic job of recruiting apprentices, have the certainty to invest in skills. If we do not, we will fall behind: even with the political will to build complex warships in this country, we will not have the skills to do so. As I said, we have only to look at Barrow and the submarine programme to see the problems with trying to regenerate skills from scratch.

I am pleased that we are having this debate and putting shipbuilding on the agenda. I hope that that incentivises the Government to make an early decision to award the FSS contract to British yards or a British consortium.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

As an old schoolmate of yours, Mr Evans, it is a particular pleasure for me to contribute to this debate under your able chairmanship. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) for continuing his relentless and entirely justified campaign to ensure that the defence footprint, particularly as regards naval shipbuilding, is not shrunk still further in this country.

Mr Evans, you will know, having been in the House even longer than me, that one of the few benefits of having spent more than two decades here is that we get to see trends over decades. What has happened with our naval shipbuilding does not make for a pretty picture. I remember the 1998 strategic defence review undertaken by the then new Labour Government of Tony Blair. It set out a policy for the Royal Navy that seemed to leave it in quite a winning position. Although the Royal Navy was asked to sacrifice three of its frigates or destroyers, thus reducing its total from 35 to 32, the review put forward the concept of carrier strike and amphibious strike, which meant that the two large aircraft carriers would be built.

Had it remained in that formulation, the Royal Navy would have had every reason to be satisfied. We all know, however, that that was not the case. Successive Governments reduced the total from 32 frigates and destroyers, first to 31, on the basis that these were much more capable ships and therefore 31 would be able to do the work of 32. When that little stratagem succeeded, the 31 were reduced to 25, and the 25 were then reduced to our present pathetic total of 19 destroyers and frigates—six destroyers and 13 frigates, to be precise. Before anybody starts lecturing us about the change in the nature of warfare, it is worth reflecting on the fact that one of those 13 frigates, HMS Montrose, is in the news today, having performed the very important function of protecting British shipping from Iranian attempts to respond to the impounding of a large vessel of theirs that was believed to be carrying contraband oil to Syria.

It is rather hard to have a strategy when we are dealing with only a relatively limited number of vessels, even though those vessels may well be much more potent, powerful and versatile than their predecessors. However powerful, versatile and potent they are, each can be in only one place at any one time, and that means that each can be built in only one place over a particular period. That makes it harder to have a versatile and flexible strategy to match those qualities in the ships that are being built.

One of the encouraging results of the publication of the national shipbuilding strategy was that, in identifying the general purpose frigate, the Type 31e—the cheap and cheerful version of the next generation of frigates—as one that should be designed for export, Sir John Parker, to whom we should again pay tribute for everything he did, also specified that, as a result of those vessels being built in modular fashion, they would be very flexible and adaptable over time to what is sometimes called incremental acquisition. In other words, we get the ship hulls built and get them out to sea, and then, over time, because we have built compartments in the vessels that can be used for a variety of purposes over a period of years, we sow the seeds of their future adaptability and additional potency.

We should remember that this was the first time there was talk of an increase in the total number of vessels. Instead of just being told, “We will be replacing 13 Type 23 frigates on a like-for-like basis,” we were told that there would definitely be eight of the Type 26, specialising in anti-submarine warfare, and at least five—not a limit of five—of the Type 31e general purpose vessels. It will be interesting to hear from the Minister whether there are plans to exceed the figure of five for the Type 31e.

Slightly less than a week away on Tuesday 16 July there will be another debate in this Chamber about defence expenditure. Of course, all these issues, including the important one about the fleet solid support ships raised by the right hon. Gentleman, generally come back to defence expenditure and—it must be said—the inadequacy of defence expenditure.

I regard it as one of the achievements of the Select Committee on Defence that, with members representing no fewer than four different parties, it has consistently come to the view, irrespective of party allegiance, that too little is spent on defence in the United Kingdom—far too little. Our expectations were managed downwards to such an extent that it was believed to be some sort of triumph when we did not dip below NATO’s basic recommended minimum guideline of 2% of GDP. To coincide with next Tuesday’s debate, the Committee will bring out an updated report, following on from our 2016 report in which we laid out the decline in defence expenditure as a proportion of GDP compared with rises in health, education and, above all, pensions and benefits, and how defence had declined in our scale of national priorities to such an extent that the size of the armed forces was becoming unsustainable.

The national shipbuilding strategy gives us an opportunity to reverse that decline, and I would be grateful to hear from the Minister what plans there are to do that. It will be no easy task, given that we will remove the Type 23 frigates from the fleet at the rate of one a year between 2023 and 2035. It will be no small task to replace each of those frigates at that sort of rate with a new, modern, complex warship.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

The right hon. Gentleman is talking about the number of ships. Does he agree that the crisis point in the Navy is also about people and not just in number? I referred to skills in the shipbuilding industry, but there is also a need for particular skills in the Royal Navy.

[Dr Lewis]

That is true, because if we fall below what one might call critical mass, we will not be able to maintain the necessary footprint to support the construction and manning of vessels on a consistent basis. That is why the question of the fleet solid support ships is so important. Those vessels can be classified as warships or, if we choose not to, simply as auxiliaries. We have that choice, and it is a choice that we feel, on a cross-party basis, it is necessary to exercise.

The trouble that the Ministry of Defence runs into is that every time a long-term strategic view suggests to it that we ought to make an investment of this sort, it runs up against the short-term imperative that the defence budget is so small that cuts must be made at every opportunity, even where, as in this case, they are short-sighted and storing up problems for the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Douglas Chapman (Dunfermline and West Fife) (SNP)]

Thank you very much, Mr Evans; it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I will try to maintain as best I can the level of optimism displayed by the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis). I congratulate the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) on securing the debate. I welcome the opportunity to talk about the great importance of this issue not only to the industry but to those who work in it and—from the perspective of a Scottish MP—to the Scottish economy.

As hon. Members will know, shipbuilding has been part of the industrial fabric of Scotland for most of the last three centuries. The world’s highest-quality ships were once built on the River Clyde, where around a fifth of the world’s ships were constructed in the early 1900s. As we all know, the industry’s decline has hit Scotland hard, but there is still a sense of pride among Scots about our shipbuilding heritage. There are plenty of reasons why shipbuilding can and should survive in Scotland today. We have the talent and the infrastructure to take on large shipbuilding contracts, as we have seen in the construction of both aircraft carriers, and it is imperative that we maintain that capability as part of a sensible industrial strategy and defence strategy for future years.

If the Government are serious about protecting the future of shipbuilding and about the delivery of the shipbuilding strategy, they must award the contract for the fleet solid support ships to the UK consortium’s bid. My views on the issue have been clear from the start: it was a huge mistake for the Ministry of Defence to tender the contract internationally. I maintain that position.

Francis Tusa, an expert from Defence Analysis, prepared a compelling report on behalf of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions last year, setting out the case for the fleet solid support ships to be built in domestic shipyards. The report notes that retaining the contract in the UK would result in serious returns to the Treasury of up to £415 million—even by Treasury standards, that is not small beer. The report also points out that a yard in Rosyth, which is in my constituency, is big enough to accommodate those ships. That yard is crying out for work to secure its future after the contract for the HMS Prince of Wales aircraft carrier comes to an end.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the fleet solid support vessels are big enough to be built in block form, as the carriers were, with the work spread around the UK?

[Douglas Chapman]

Absolutely; the right hon. Gentleman makes a valid and accurate point. The Minister has visited Rosyth and has seen for himself what we have to offer, but he is assiduous and visits areas across the UK, so I am sure that that point will not be lost on him when decisions have to made in future. The GMB estimates that if the support ships order were placed in UK yards, it would create up to 6,500 jobs. Not only would that help to protect the future of Rosyth but the benefits would be shared across the UK. A Government who say that they have a prosperity agenda at their heart must show that it is real and not just something that trips off their Ministers’ tongues. It must be made real and must have a real impact on our economy.

The Government continue to roll out their tired old party line: “These vessels are not warships and are therefore subject to international competition.” How can they peddle that myth when the Minister’s predecessor confirmed in an answer to a written question that he expects the support ships to be fitted with close-range guns, such as the Phalanx? The Phalanx is a 20mm Gatling gun designed to shoot down fast anti-ship missiles, aircraft and fast-attack craft. To argue that a vessel fitted with such weapons is not a warship is difficult for everybody to fathom.

Like many hon. Members, I have repeatedly raised this matter, whether at Defence questions, via written questions, during debates in the Commons Chamber and in Westminster Hall, and again today. The Government must look at this again to be absolutely sure that they are making the right decision, not just for the future of the shipbuilding industry but for the prosperity agenda that they say is so important. I have also raised the matter with the Prime Minister during Prime Minister’s questions, and followed up with a written invitation to her to visit Rosyth dockyard in my constituency, to see for herself the skills, talent and infrastructure that we have there to fulfil such a contract. To echo the right hon. Member for New Forest East, the new Prime Minister will receive an invitation as soon as he is appointed, and I hope it will be met with more optimism and will provoke a better response than last time.

My message has received cross-party support. I tabled an early-day motion calling on the Government to restrict the support ships tender to domestic competition, and it was signed by Labour, Conservative, DUP, Plaid Cymru and SNP Members. I would be grateful if the Minister gave some reassurance that our plea for those ships to be built on these islands was not falling on deaf ears.

Although it is an island, the UK’s ability to protect its own coastline is severely lacking. Scottish maritime territory accounts for 60% of UK waters, yet the UK Government have failed to maintain any surface vessel presence in Scotland. All Royal Navy vessels are based on England’s south coast, so it currently takes more than 24 hours for a ship to reach us. I visited Devonport on Tuesday, and it took me half a day to fly there by plane. A 24-hour delay by ship is too big a risk for us to take with our national security.

I am not privy to diplomatic cables—I know that some people are—but I have heard rumours that the US are looking at developing a naval base somewhere in Scotland. Imagine the US having a larger naval presence or footprint in Scotland than the Royal Navy. If there is any truth in that rumour, we live in very strange times indeed.

The RAF Nimrod maritime surveillance aircraft were scrapped in 2010, and we are told that we would need to wait until 2021 for the full P8 fleet to be delivered. That is outrageous when, in recent years, incursions into Scottish waters have increased to their highest level since the cold war. Incidents of Russian transgressions into Scottish waters were reported in 2011, 2014 and 2019. The previous Defence Secretary admitted to the Defence Committee that

“Russian submarine activity in the North Atlantic has increased tenfold in recent years.”

Despite that, the Tories have perpetuated a nosedive in the number of Royal Navy ships from 77 in 2010 to 66. Furthermore, during the Scottish independence referendum, we were promised that 13 Type 26 frigates would be built on the Clyde, but that figure has since been reduced to eight. The commitment to a frigate factory is another promise that was rolled back and has come to absolutely nothing.

When he was Defence Secretary, the right hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr Hammond) repeatedly told the people of Scotland that the only way to secure the future of Scottish shipbuilding was to remain part of the UK. Yet inside the UK, Scotland’s shipbuilding industry has been eroded. Shipbuilding in Scotland employed 15,700 workers in 1991. That figure has more than halved to just 7,000 in recent years. Compare that with independent Norway, a state of similar size to Scotland, where over 37,000 people were employed in that sector in 2008.

During the Scottish independence referendum, we were also promised 12,500 full-time military personnel in Scotland, yet levels are now well below 10,000. In Norway, again, 20,000 people are employed in the armed forces—double the proportion of the population in Scotland.

It is safe to say that the Tories have broken their promise to Scottish shipbuilding and on many other fronts. They clearly cannot be trusted with the future of the industry—although I will be happy to hear more positive sounds from the Minister today. Plenty of small states such as Denmark manage to maintain their sovereign naval defence capability very successfully. With independence, I am sure that Scotland could do exactly the same.

Last year, as a member of the Public Accounts Committee, I led an evidence session on the defence equipment plan, which highlighted a £15 billion black hole in the MOD budget. Sufficient funds have not been made available to dispose of any of the 20 submarines that the MOD has decommissioned since 1980, seven of which lie in the dockyard in my constituency. All the while, the nuclear arsenal continues to burn a huge hole in the defence budget, to the tune of £2.2 billion per year. Continuing to spend such astronomical sums on nuclear weapons that will never be used while our coastal defences are compromised is simply unsustainable and unacceptable.

The Public Accounts Committee findings uncovered the fact that the Type 31 budget did not exist. It is a smaller frigate, but its exportable elements are important to the future surface ship business, in particular in yards such as Rosyth and others across the UK. All the skills and talents that we developed while building two of the largest ships that the Royal Navy has ever built— the QE class—will be lost unless we can maintain the shipbuilding industry through contracts for the support ships or, for example, the Type 31s. In terms of the numbers, the Type 31s could employ 2,000 people over the term of the contract, attracting 150 new apprentices into the industry. That is a price worth paying to ensure that we have a good industry into the future.

In conclusion, in the context of ever-tightening budgets, in the MOD in particular, the Government must reconsider their defence spending priorities and review their ship- building strategy. Shifting resources to shipbuilding would mean responding directly to 21st century security threats. The Government must also review their decision-making process for tendering shipbuilding contracts abroad to ensure that a vital industry is protected from further decline. We must also see fulfilment of the unmet promises that the Government made to the people of Scotland during the 2014 independence referendum.

There can be a bright future for shipbuilding in the UK and in Scotland, although the jury is still out on whether the Government can produce the prosperity agenda that we all look for. Agreeing to the contracts for the fleet solid support ships, the Type 31e frigates and the missing list of Type 26 frigates is paramount in the future of shipbuilding and in making the national shipbuilding strategy not just a document to lie on a shelf gathering dust in the Main Building but a real plan for action and prosperity.

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

It is, as always, a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Evans. It is also a pleasure to represent the Clyde shipyards and the shipyard workers of Govan in the Westminster Parliament. On Friday morning, I had the opportunity to see the work being carried out on the Type 26 frigate HMS Glasgow, which is being made in Govan. In a few weeks’ time, I look forward to going to the steel-cutting for the second Type 26, HMS Cardiff.

I thank my good friend, the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), for securing this debate and for his fantastic work as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on shipbuilding and ship repair. I am delighted to serve on that APPG, which reflects the public affection and support for the shipbuilding industry across the UK. That affection and support crosses political boundaries, as we have seen today. Whether someone is a supporter of the Union or independence for Scotland, or indeed of Brexit or remaining in the European Union, right across the range people care deeply about the shipbuilding industry in Scotland and the United Kingdom. As the right hon. Gentleman said—I was delighted that he highlighted it—the export success of the Type 26 frigate shows the world-class design capability in the workforce on the Clyde.

I was not the only visitor to the Govan shipyards on Friday. I was there in the morning, but on Friday afternoon there was another curious visitor to the Clyde shipyards—but I will return to the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) shortly. I will first say that I agree with the points made by all those who have spoken so far in paying tribute to the trade union movement. I am clear that were it not for the pressure that the movement has placed on all political parties, we would not have a shipyard industry at all and, indeed, the CSEU—the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions, which is having its conference today—has written to the two contenders to be the next Prime Minister. It did so because in a couple of weeks—I say this with great affection and respect to the Procurement Minister—he may not be the Procurement Minister; we do not know. There are rumours of shredders in the Departments working overtime in preparation for the new regime. It might even be you, Mr Evans, who is called to become the Defence Procurement Minister.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Scraping the barrel!

[Chris Stephens]

The right hon. Gentleman says that, but I can assure you, Mr Evans, that I could name a lot worse—but I will not.

The CSEU wrote to the two contenders asking them about support for the shipbuilding industry and specifically on the issue of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary fleet support ships. It has yet to receive a response from either contender. It was curious that the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip should appear in a shipyard in Scotland but not mention his support or the importance of the shipbuilding industry to the United Kingdom—curious indeed. Not only those who work in the shipyards but the general public are entitled to know what the direction of travel will be under the person with the sunny disposition referred to by the Chair of the Defence Committee, the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis).

The public are entitled to know what both of the two individuals contending to become Prime Minister will do for the shipbuilding industry, and in particular whether they believe that the Royal Fleet Auxiliary support ships should be built in the United Kingdom. As the CSEU clearly stated in the foreword to the all-party parliamentary group report on the importance of the Aircraft Carrier Alliance, which other hon. Members have mentioned,

“that work is now coming to an end and the CSEU believes that up to 20,000 skilled jobs in shipyards and 20,000 jobs in supply chains are now at risk. There is an urgent need for work to fill these yards.”

I totally agree with that proposition.

The excuses about fleet support ships not being warships are curious. We might think that they were some sort of cruise liner—that the next time we watched an episode of “The Love Boat”, we would see this fleet support ship that has been built and is somehow not a warship. I understand from parliamentary answers that those ships will take part in, for example, counter-piracy. I have never seen “The Love Boat” involved in counter-piracy, but I know that warships are involved in it. To suggest that ships that are armed with naval guns are not warships is curious.

[Mr Jones]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that a ship that is equipped with Phalanx guns is a warship? They are not there to keep the pigeons off the deck.

[Chris Stephens]

That is an excellent analogy, perhaps better than the one I used. The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct: these are warships. If it looks like a warship and acts like a warship, it is reasonable to assume that it is, in fact, a warship and not a civilian ship.

The criterion should be changed to designate fleet solid support ships as warships. If I understood correctly the answers the Minister gave the right hon. Member for North Durham and others in Monday’s Defence questions, that will be the direction of travel. It is all very well saying that will be the future direction of travel, but it should be the immediate one for those contracts. The GMB trade union has said—a point emphasised by my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Douglas Chapman)—that 6,500 jobs could be created by securing that; £285 million of the estimated cost of the order could be returned to taxpayers—money that would be lost should the order go overseas. That is an important criterion that the Ministry of Defence, and the Treasury, appear to overlook.

After four years in this place I am starting to believe that it is the Treasury that makes the defence decisions, not the Ministry of Defence.

[Chris Stephens]

Apparently the Chair of the Defence Committee agrees. If the Treasury is making those calls, surely it has to take account of the fact that the workers who would build those ships would pay income tax and national insurance that would go back into the Treasury coffers, but that will not happen if the contracts are sent to other places. Unite has estimated that the Treasury would receive 36p in every pound from those defence projects. This is an excellent opportunity for the Minister—in the next two weeks, before his elevation—to demonstrate the Government’s commitment to taxpayer value by making sure that the ships are built in the UK. I have other constituency demands, which I have lobbied the Minister about, and I hope he will take my advice on those in the next couple of weeks, too.

There are plenty of examples of other countries—normal-sized nations or larger ones such as the UK—that better plan their sovereign naval defence capability, build their warships and keep their drumbeat going. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife highlighted, and as shown in my exchange with the Chair of the Defence Committee, this issue is important in the context of current Russian activity. The excursions into Scottish waters are increasingly blatant but there are still no Navy surface vessels based in Scotland—they are all based on the southern coast of England. That seems a very curious way of organising defence when there is increased Russian submarine activity.

As others highlighted, promises have been made about the shipbuilding industry. We heard the classic one that there would be 13 Type 26 frigates; the Treasury then interfered and they became eight Type 26 frigates, and then five Type 31 frigates. Despite that announcement more than three years ago, I still do not know exactly where the Type 31 frigate sits within the Royal Navy and what its purpose will be. It may have a general purpose, but where does it fit in? It is just a smaller and cheaper ship, and that seems to be the only reason it exists. That ship was supposed to be exportable—one that would be easier for BAE Systems and others to sell abroad, so perhaps we might think about going back to 13 Type 26 frigates. In relation to the Type 31 frigate, the Minister should look at the benefits of the prosperity agenda across the UK; I hope he will give a commitment to that.

Now, there is the frigate factory. A former Defence Secretary still insists that the frigate factory exists in the Clyde, and has found himself arguing that twice in the House of Commons Chamber. On one occasion, the GMB trade union and a BBC journalist with a television camera went around the site of the proposed frigate factory and found ash. There is an important point here, which is contained in the all-party parliamentary group’s report, and I hope the Chair of the Defence Committee will pick it up: the Ministry of Defence needs to look at giving some support to shipyard investment. It is no use the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence insisting that they want the industry to build more efficiently and save costs if they do not help the industry to invest in its own shipyards. That shipyard investment can ensure that ships are built more efficiently and cheaper.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

It is about not just Government investment but private sector investment. Companies such as BAE Systems must make that private sector investment if there are long-term future orders for those yards. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that what we do in this country is in stark contrast to the Canadians’ investment in new shipyards at Halifax, and the Australians’ investment in Adelaide?

[Chris Stephens]

I absolutely agree. What Canada and Australia are doing seems light years ahead of what the current UK Government are doing. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will agree that, for far too long, the shipbuilding industry has been experiencing feast and famine—a stop-start period in which there is no continuous drumbeat to build. He is right that the Government have to make a continuous commitment, with the private sector, to look at shipyard investment.

The APPG report—the Minister has a copy—lists 10 reasonable and excellent recommendations. As a member of the APPG, I am very proud of the report, which is about ensuring that we have a thriving shipbuilding industry. One of my frustrations when shipyards are shown on television is that there is always a clip from the 1970s, with the welder wearing the welder’s helmet. I have some sympathy for that because I have family members who were welders, but the industry is far more highly skilled than that. The design is far better. I recommend anyone to visit the visualisation suite of BAE Systems—I know the Minister has been there, as have I. It shows the highly skilled way in which warships are built.

I fully support the all-party parliamentary group’s report, and it has been a pleasure, as always, to take part in this debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart Andrew]

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will come on to that point a little later, because I accept that it is an important element of where we need to get to to try to support our shipbuilding industries.

I was glad that the APPG’s report recognised the contribution from the UK’s shipbuilding and ship repair industry to the UK economy of over £2 billion; we should be mindful of that. I am fully cognisant of the need to obtain the right capability for our Royal Navy, at the same time as trying to ensure that we get good value for our taxpayers. That is why we are helping the industry to grow, compete and successfully win bids in the global market, as well as just in the UK market. That is part of our objective, and we will be looking at that more widely when we consider our approaches to a potential defence industrial strategy.

In my time in post, there has been a huge amount of focus on the fleet solid support ships, which I understand, but in terms of a successful UK shipbuilding industry, we should be looking much more widely, and the right hon. Member for North Durham made that point powerfully. All of our vision is for a shipbuilding sector that does not need a contract for a couple of non-complex warships; it could also work in the civil sector.[Official Report, 17 July 2019, Vol. 663, c. 10MC.] It is a globally competitive sector that is looking at how it can export high-value designs, systems, sub-systems, and integration work, so it can win commercial and defence contracts on its own merits.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I understand the point that the Minister is making, but it is important that investment in Ministry of Defence contracts for ships in this country has a spin-off into the civilian sector, in terms not just of producing complete ships, but supporting marine engineering, architects and everything else. If we are to keep that leading edge, which feeds into civilian work both in this country and abroad, including in ship repair and refurbishment, that steady drumbeat of work and investment is needed.

[Stuart Andrew]

I said that I would come on to those issues a little later, and I promise I will—I will not hide from them.

The strategy is important for the Ministry of Defence, but I am keen that we look at this across Government too. For that reason, I have asked to meet the Minister for Business and Industry and the relevant Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Transport so that we can discuss how best to support UK shipyards, from the perspective of not only defence, but the opportunities that may exist for the commercial maritime sector and whether it is ready and prepared for them. I want this to be a cross-Government approach to securing the future of the industry.

The strategy sets out an ambitious plan to put the UK at the forefront of the technologies of the future. That is why investment in science, technology, and innovation is key, as they have the potential to drive improvements in productivity, to grow prosperity in the UK and to build an internationally competitive industry that is resilient to the peaks and troughs of both military and civil shipbuilding.

We have heard today about the success of the BAE Systems approach when it comes to the Australian and Canadian work; the company has also been successful in terms of the Royal Thai Navy’s offshore patrol vessel requirements. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has had conversations with both the previous and the current Secretary of Defence in the United States about whether the Type 26 and Type 31 might be appropriate and suitable for their requirements. That is something that she will continue to pursue, as will we all.

Of course, there are all sorts of other investments happening, such as the Royal Navy’s new autonomy and lethality accelerator. This £45 million programme will deliver rapid and ongoing transformational change across the maritime environment. The Royal Navy is also forging ahead with things such as the 3D printers that the right hon. Member for North Durham sent me a question about recently. There is a lot of work going on in that innovation area that will continue to support the wider supply chain to our industry.

A few hon. Members have mentioned the Type 31e programme, so I will give an update. It is, of course, a pathfinder for the delivery of the new shipbuilding and capability vision set out in the strategy. We announced the award of contracts for the competitive design phase in December. I am pleased to say that the competition is still on track, and it is our intention to announce the outcome of the competition for the design and build of the ships by the end of the year. It has been a vibrant and healthy competition.

I take the point that the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones) made regarding the value. I have been checking throughout the price we have, which is £250 million per ship. We made some initial adjustments to make it tie in with the way we have procured other warships in the past, so we have taken costs such as Government-furnished equipment out of that £250 million. The Royal Navy assures me—both I and the Secretary of State have been quite robust with it—that the capability we will receive will meet its requirements; it has given us that absolute reassurance, and it is looking forward to receiving the ships.

I will go over some of the other points that have been made. In opening the debate, the right hon. Member for North Durham rightly talked about the skills agenda—I will come on in a minute to the points about the supply chain. He is absolutely right that we must ensure that we learn the lessons from the submarine programme. It has been blindingly obvious to me, as I have been learning this job, that ensuring that Barrow is right up there again and capable of delivering our submarine programme has been a major challenge.

Coming on to the drumbeat, it is our intention to ensure that the industry has that 30-year plan of what the Royal Navy’s requirements will be, so that it can see where the opportunities will arise and where there may be potential gaps that it may need to fill. That said, we have of course provided 20 years’ worth of work on the Clyde. I will comment in a minute on what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is doing in this area, because it will be incredibly important.

[Steve McCabe in the Chair]

I have heard a number of people say that the FSS are warships, and that no other country in Europe buys its support ships or other ships from international orders. That is not quite true: for example, Germany had an international competition for its multi-purpose frigate, Norway has procured a support ship from South Korea and five frigates from Spain, Australia has had two support ships from Spain, and New Zealand has an auxiliary ship from South Korea. It is not true to say that all those countries always have their ships built in their home countries.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Lewis]

rose—

[Mr Kevan Jones]

rose—

[Stuart Andrew]

I will give way to my right hon. Friend, but there will be a fixed budget, and we must get the best we can out of that money.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart Andrew]

I had better give way to the right hon. Member for North Durham first, and then I will come back to my right hon. Friend.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

On the MARS tankers, when the Minister is asking for the costings, could he ensure that the costs of the assessment phase, which I think were nearly £100 million, are included? I am also led to believe by industry that some of the costs were incurred because of the poor workmanship and other issues that surrounded it, so what was seen, on ticket price, to be very competitive was overall quite expensive.

[Stuart Andrew]

I assure the right hon. Gentleman that the report we commissioned will look at every single aspect of that, including the benefit to the supply chain in the United Kingdom. There is some evidence that a number of UK supply chain companies have seen their international work increase as a result of being part of that. We are formulating our response to the review of the strategy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Welcome to the Chair, Mr McCabe. We have had a good debate, with contributions from my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones), the Chair of the Defence Committee, the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) and the hon. Members for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens), for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) and for Dunfermline and West Fife (Douglas Chapman). I agree that it has been a consensual debate, and it has been good to get this issue on the agenda and to make sure that we discuss shipbuilding in the House.

I was going to ask Mr Evans whether he would do me a favour. The hon. Member for Glasgow South West challenged the two Conservative leadership contenders on the letters they received from Mr Ian Waddell, general secretary of the CSEU, on their attitudes towards the fleet solid support vessels. I can hardly ask you to convey that to them, Mr McCabe, so I ask the Conservative Members here to tell those contenders that a reply to those letters would be helpful. It was especially remarkable that the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) visited a yard in Glasgow last week and was clearly not even briefed on the vessels.

It was a good debate, and we need to keep having these debates and talking about these issues because while shipbuilding in this country has a bright future, whether we like it or not that future depends on Government and private sector investment and on the throughput of work that those yards want. Without that, we will not retain skills and we will not have the bright future that the industry not only can have but rightly deserves.

I wish the Minister the best of luck in the next 14 days. To be fair to him, he is prepared to listen to different views and I give him credit for that. I am not sure that I have the same interest in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, so if he goes off there, or somewhere like that—I do not know. I put on the record my thanks for the work he has done in this sector. If he could sign the contract for the FSS in the next 14 days, that would certainly make a lot of people very happy.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the National Shipbuilding Strategy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kevan Jones Excerpts

Monday 8th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stuart Andrew]

I recognise the important role that my hon. Friend played in ensuring that the GE facilities were maintained in Rugby. I agree that it is absolutely vital to ensure that the defence sector has the right skills to meet all our needs. Many of our suppliers have well established programmes and schemes to ensure that that happens, and we continue to work through the Defence Suppliers Forum and the Defence Growth Partnership to ensure that those skills and training are maintained.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

rose—

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Ah! Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Or, as one might say, R2-D2 and C-3PO.

[Mr Jones]

The Secretary of State highlighted in an earlier answer the importance of the prosperity agenda for defence contracts. I know that the Minister has read the recent report on shipbuilding and ship procurement in the UK by the all-party parliamentary group on shipbuilding. Will he tell the House what weighting will be given to prosperity in awarding the fleet solid support contracts?

[Stuart Andrew]

I was looking at the two right hon. Gentlemen and wondering whether it was more like Waldorf and Statler, but I will not be so rude—although I have just have been. The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: when we look at the contracts, not just for the shipbuilding but for the content within, there are huge opportunities for the UK supply chain, where much more of the value exists. I recognised that in his all-party group’s recent report, and his and other right hon. and hon. Members’ work will inform much of the decision making on our future policy.

Christmas Island Nuclear Testing: Compensation

Kevan Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

William Caldwell was a 19-year-old merchant seaman when he was sent from Glasgow to Newcastle to join the crew of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Wave Sovereign. He thought he would be refuelling warships for the Pakistani and Indian navies, and in August 1957 he boarded, carrying his worldly possessions in a hold-all. He knew nothing of the Indian ocean, and far less of Christmas Island. However, William was about to find himself at the epicentre of Britain’s nuclear testing programme.

Operation Grapple was four series of British tests of atomic and hydrogen bombs carried out in 1957 and 1958 at Malden Island and Kiritimati—Christmas Island—in the Pacific ocean as part of the British hydrogen bomb programme. Nine nuclear explosions took place, culminating in the United Kingdom becoming the third recognised possessor of thermonuclear weapons and the restoration of the special relationship with the United States, with the 1958 US-UK mutual defence agreement.

I first heard William’s story when his son Robert visited my office in Glasgow. He told us of his father’s memories of the Grapple Y test on 28 April 1958. William was down below when they were ordered on to deck. He hurried up wearing only sandals and shorts. The crew were told that they were going to witness something special that nobody else had seen and that it was important to cover their eyes with their hands until after the flash. At that point, the Wave Sovereign was about 12 miles from the detonation site. William vividly remembered being both astounded and horrified when he saw the bones of his hands lit up in utter clarity, as though he was looking at an X-ray.

William remembered the cloud. The crew remained on deck to watch with dark fascination as the cloud formed and remained suspended in the sky above them. A particularly upsetting thing for William’s son Robert is how much the vision of this cloud haunted his father. Having and raising a family provided William with a distraction, but as his children grew up and he got older, this memory began to trouble him greatly, and he had many nightmares about the cloud.

Those on board the Wave Sovereign were exposed to gamma and beta radiation from the initial blast and then nuclear fallout, which included alpha particles. Alpha particles are the most ionising, and therefore most dangerous, of nuclear radiations, but they cannot penetrate far and can easily be stopped by a single sheet of paper, or indeed protective clothing. However, if they are ingested in water, food or air, they can wreak havoc on the body’s DNA. After the cloud went up, a black rain fell, followed by dead fish floating to the surface of the water. The crew netted those fish and ate them, delighted by the convenience of their bounty and unaware of the risks.

But Britain was aware of the risks before the tests began. Historical documents released from state archives show that in 1951, William Penney, the chief scientist at Aldermaston, demanded insurance for scientific staff in case any developed radiogenic diseases. Admiral Arthur Torlesse said that he would only order his men into danger

“in the knowledge that the Admiralty accept liability for those killed or injured on duty”.

On 20 May 1953, the Defence Research Policy Committee discussed how troops would be affected by the blasts. It said:

“The Army must discover the detailed effects of various types of explosion on equipment, stores and men with and without various types of protection.”

In 1955, Prime Minister Anthony Eden was warned that if scientists were to build an H-bomb, it could damage troops’ DNA. A letter headed “10 Downing Street” and dated 14 November says:

“The Prime Minister saw the report from Sir Harold Himsworth about the report of the Committee considering the genetic effects of Nuclear Radiation. His comment was: ‘A pity, but we cannot help it’.”

In a draft report ahead of Grapple Y, Air Commodore Denis Wilson, the senior medical officer on the taskforce, said that he expected servicemen to die. He wrote:

“It is emphasised that in the event of the expected yield being obtained or increased there will almost certainly be in addition to considerable material damage, casualties to individuals, and this should be taken into consideration.”

William’s health problems began shortly after. Following an unrelated accident on board the Wave Sovereign, he was taken to a military hospital, and from there had to pay to be transported home on board an RAF bomber. After four years of stomach problems, in 1962 he underwent an operation to remove an ulcer, but it was discovered that his stomach was so badly damaged that half of it would have to be removed. Coincidently—or, indeed, not—another test veteran, Ken McGinley, who went on to establish the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association, required the same operation in 1962. This is a pattern we do see repeated.

In response to the health concerns of some nuclear test veterans in the 1980s, the Ministry of Defence commissioned three studies of mortality and cancer among nuclear test personnel. These were conducted by the independent National Radiological Protection Board. Three analyses were carried out. The latest report, published in 2003, concluded that overall levels of mortality and cancer incidence in nuclear test veterans have continued to be like those in a matched service control group and lower than in the general population.

These findings form the basis of the war pension scheme policy on nuclear test veteran claims. However, there are three glaring problems: this takes no account of non-cancerous health problems, and in fact William’s stomach problem was not considered under that scheme; it does not consider the health conditions of the offspring of test veterans; and it does not include RFA personnel who were present in a support capacity. Currently, there is no specific compensation fund for this group of veterans, whose numbers are dwindling.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady is making a very good speech. When I was the Under-Secretary of State for Defence in 2009, a settlement proposal was made to the test veterans’ lawyers. Having reviewed the file recently, I can confirm that the barrister did pass that over, but for some reason the very generous settlement offer was refused.

[Carol Monaghan]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I am happy to look into that and ask questions about it.

Veterans’ numbers are dwindling, but there are thought to be about 130,000 descendants, who report 10 times the normal level of birth defects, organ malformations and leukaemia. William’s children all suffer from bone or spinal problems, and his granddaughter’s hips were back to front when she was born. However, the MOD continues to deny liability. In 2007, research from New Zealand proved that genetic damage in veterans was three times worse than in survivors of the Chernobyl disaster. Despite Britain agreeing to pay Australia £20 million to settle claims arising from nuclear contamination, the Government fight such compensation claims at home.

In response to a parliamentary question from the hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) last year, the Minister set out the eligibility for claims. He said:

“Any veteran who believes they have suffered ill health due to Service is eligible to claim no-fault compensation under the War Pensions Scheme. War Pensions are payable in respect of illness or injury due to Service in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces before 6 April 2005, with the benefit of reasonable doubt always given to the claimant. Decisions are medically certified and follow consideration of Service and medical evidence and carry full rights of appeal to an independent tribunal. Where the evidence supports a causal link to Service, entitlement will be given.”

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[Mr Ellwood]

Because it is an independent study, I do not have the details of the fourth report, but I will write to the hon. Lady to confirm whether the offspring are included. I hope that they are. It would make sense, because often these things can get passed down, as we saw with the tests after Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

On the family risk, as part of the compensation that was offered and never taken forward, a study was done in, I think, 2009 of family members. The Minister may well want to look at that study. If he wants access to that file, it is under my papers and I am quite happy to give him the authorisation.

[Mr Ellwood]

The fact that the right hon. Gentleman had to deal with this when he was a Defence Minister reflects how long this issue has been alive. I would be grateful for any further information that helped us. Ultimately, we want to do the best we can for those who are serving and who have served.

On the pension and compensation issues that are involved, the Government’s policy on claims arising from nuclear test programmes is based on detailed and impartial analysis of world literature, including the National Radiological Protection Board reports. A revised MOD policy statement for armed forces personnel was published in December 2017, and it takes into account scientific studies that have been published since 2003. It is important to make it clear that the Government do not accept in general that those present at sites were exposed to harmful levels of ionising radiation. RFA personnel are covered by the mercantile marine scheme, based on the personal injury civilian scheme, which was extant during world war two. Like the scheme, the MMS applies only in wartime to war injuries and is enacted specifically for such events. Most recently, that was relevant in the 1990-91 Gulf war. The UK atmospheric tests were a peacetime operation, as the hon. Member for Glasgow North West mentioned.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kevan Jones Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stuart Andrew]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. She will be aware that Sir John Parker is currently doing a review of his initial report. International competition is also about encouraging UK industry and UK shipyards to be as competitive as possible, so that they can not only maximise the opportunities that UK defence offers, but take advantage of competition around the globe, too.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

The Minister said that this is to make UK yards more efficient, but what they need is throughput of work. His Department has chosen to put the contract for the fleet solid support vessel into international competition. What weight was given in that decision to his Government’s prosperity agenda, our sovereign capability and the need to protect UK shipbuilding?

[Stuart Andrew]

That is precisely why the Type 26s, Type 31s and aircraft carriers were built in the UK, so that we could maintain that capability here in the United Kingdom. The right hon. Gentleman might be aware of the speech that the Secretary of State recently made, and part of what she is doing is a review into the MARS—military afloat reach and sustainability—tankers, to ensure that we look at the exact experiences with that and take lessons from it.

Continuous At-Sea Deterrent

Kevan Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

Simply, BAE Systems decided that that level of investment in the Govan shipyard was not required. But we are making a multi-year investment in Type 26s, providing an order book for the Govan shipyard into the 2030s. That is something that most shipyards would look at enviously.

The investments we have made and the decisions that we have taken on extra investment on Dreadnought mean that the new submarines will be delivered on time. To guarantee that delivery, we have modernised our entire nuclear enterprise. We have established the Defence Nuclear Organisation to manage our portfolio of nuclear programmes. We have created the Submarine Delivery Agency, which with our industry partners has made real progress on the ground in building our future submarines and ensuring that our current boats are able to fulfil their missions. We have established the new Dreadnought Alliance, which through a coalition of the MOD, BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce combines the skills of the large players in industry with the talents of the public sector to deliver the best for defence and the best for the nation

Meanwhile, we are continuing to refine the options and technical solutions that will inform our decisions on replacing the warhead.  Next year, over half a century on since HMS Resolution’s historic voyage, Her Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde will become home to all our submarines. One of the largest employment sites in Scotland, the base provides for the livelihoods of around 6,800 military and civilians, and brings significant wider benefits to the local economy and the whole of Scotland. It is a salutary reminder, not just of the enormous role that Scotland, as the home of our deterrent, plays in protecting the UK and our NATO allies, but of its role in sustaining hundreds of businesses, as well as thousands of jobs, across the length and breadth of our Union.

The Barrow-in-Furness shipyard gives a sense of the sheer scale of the enterprise. The construction hall alone, where Dreadnought is being built, is the size of 21 Olympic swimming pools. The deterrent does not just provide jobs: it is helping to train thousands of apprentices in engineering, design, software development, naval architecture and combat systems. Many of those apprentices are following in the footsteps not just of their parents, but of their grandparents, and they are learning the sorts of advanced manufacturing techniques that will keep their descendants and Britain at the cutting edge of technology for years and generations to come.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State is making an important point about the importance of skills. We learned the costs when we stopped submarine building in the 1990s and the knock-on effects that had on Astute. Can he emphasise to his officials the importance of those skills now, and the need to ensure a continuation of work after Dreadnought, so that we do not get the gap we had before?

[John Woodcock]

Get on with it!

[Gavin Williamson]

I hear what the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) says. We are building a lot more submarines in Barrow than the last Labour Government ever did, so I was hoping that he would shout, “Thank you.”

I want to underline the important point made by the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), because it is about investing in those skills continuously. Barrow has one of the healthiest order books that it has seen for a long time, and the sense is that that includes a whole generation not just of Astute but of the Dreadnought class submarines. That is why we are looking at how best to take advantage of how we conduct warfare sub-surface at the moment, making sure that we invest in the right type of technology to keep a competitive advantage over our opponents, and keeping the skills here in the United Kingdom.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I agree with everything that the Secretary of State has just said. A lot of the work on the naval design of the early stages of Dreadnought is being carried out now, but it will come to an end quite quickly. It is important that we have follow-on work for those designers, otherwise we will get a gap and those people will be employed in other nuclear sector industries. When we come to the next generation of submarines, therefore, they will not be there.

[Gavin Williamson]

We saw that difficult problem occur after the sustained gap in Barrow when work was not undertaken on submarines over a period of almost 10 years, so we are very aware of that. We are currently doing a study on how we develop the next generation. If the investment in the Dreadnought programme were to come to an end, the skills that are being developed in Barrow—and in Derby with Rolls-Royce and in hundreds of businesses across the country—would be lost. We would lose that national capability. That is why we are doing what the right hon. Gentleman suggests, because those skills are almost impossible to replace. We recognise that the investment in the deterrent is an investment in our future in more ways than one.

Nineteen sixty-nine will always be remembered as an iconic year: it was the year an astronaut first set foot on the moon. From a UK perspective, however, an event far less heralded has proved to be far more enduring, for the unsung heroes who began their undersea vigil that year have guaranteed our peace and prosperity for decades. Our nuclear deterrence posture is only possible thanks to their commitment. Out of sight they may be, but they are never out of mind. We can never fully repay them for what they have given our nation, but in a more uncertain world we are ensuring that they will have the means to perform their outstanding and vital service to our nation, safeguarding our way of life relentlessly for another 50 years.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), the Chair of the Defence Committee, despite agreeing with almost none of what he had to say. He is always unfailingly courteous to my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) on that Committee, and it is always a pleasure to hear what he has to say.

I will start, as the Secretary of State did, by sending our best wishes to those based at Barrow, given this afternoon’s bomb scare. Despite our disagreement, which I am sure we will get into, the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) should be under no illusion that folk there have the best wishes of the Scottish National party. The same is true of all those who serve in the armed forces, including on the frontline and in the Royal Navy. The Secretary of State mentioned the submariners, and I will mention one former submariner by name. Feargal Dalton is, of course, the husband of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) and an Irishman who now serves as a Scottish National party councillor in Glasgow. We send our best wishes to all those who serve, including civilian staff and the Ministry of Defence police.

Our disagreement and quarrel is not with them, but with the political decisions taken in this Chamber. Only in this House of Commons, at this time, against the backdrop of a major constitutional crisis, where each day is worse than the last, could it be thought of as a good use of our time to backslap each other on the UK being 50 years as a marine nuclear power. Anyone who thinks that is a good use of our time right now is, frankly, off their head. But it should come as no surprise, as the Prime Minister is out in Brussels with the begging bowl right now, that those on the Benches that represent this crumbling relic of a Government—there is no doubt more to come from the Labour Benches as well—want to hark back to the symbols of power, stature and glory as they diminish Britain’s standing in the world. Indeed, Max Hastings, the military historian, put it best in The Times last year when he said that Trident renewal was a “big willy gesture” of a small willy nation. I could not have put it better had I tried. The Scottish National party’s opposition to the nuclear project is well known and well documented, but given the opportunity this afternoon—

[Mr Kevan Jones]

rose—

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

I will give way in time.

Given the opportunity that we have to discuss the matter this afternoon, we will take the unusual step of dividing the House this evening to show our opposition to the Trident renewal programme.

I intend to set out three clear arguments as succinctly as possible for why there is no military case for the continuous at-sea deterrent—there is certainly no economic case for it—and indeed how we can come to the conclusion, given last week’s National Audit Office report on the failure of this Government and former Labour Governments properly to decommission nuclear submarines, that the United Kingdom is now an irresponsible nuclear power.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

I should just point out to the hon. Lady, for whom I have bucketloads of respect as she does a fine job in her position, that most members of NATO are not nuclear-armed countries.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

rose—

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman in time.

In opposing the renewal programme this afternoon, we intend to give voice to the millions outside this Chamber who do not back the iron-clad consensus that exists between the Conservative and Labour parties on wasting billions of pounds on nuclear weapons.

On the fact that there is no military case, I want to turn to the recent modernising defence programme, which represents a missed opportunity to do things a bit differently. I had hopes that the much vaunted reforming zeal of the Secretary of State when he first came to office would actually be shown to be true, but those hopes were sadly misplaced on my part. Indeed, the MDP, which represented an opportunity to do things differently, has, rather perversely, actually contributed to the miasma of despair and chaos that hangs over the Department over which he now presides. The armed forces remain as small as they were when Napoleon was on his horse. The Government are woefully off target—the target that was set in their own manifesto for the size of the armed forces. Furthermore, the promises that were made to the people of Scotland in 2014 on the size of the armed forces are going one way, and it is not north. Staggeringly, this Government continue to employ Capita—

[Mr Jones]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman in time. He does not need to keep shouting at me. I know he is there—I will give way to him, as I always do, and he knows that.

Staggeringly, despite the recruitment problems, this Government continue to spend millions of pounds on Capita and its deeply flawed recruitment programme.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

If a motion came to the House today to sack Capita, I would be in the Lobby with the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois), who I know has a track record of opposing Capita.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

rose—

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

I will give way to the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), then I will come back to the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford.

[Mr Jones]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He says that he will divide the House today to vote against this motion. I understand that it is the SNP’s policy to be a member of NATO. He is right when he says that there are many nations that do not possess nuclear weapons, but as a member of NATO, a country has to agree to the nuclear doctrine and the nuclear strategy and sit on the nuclear planning group. Is he saying that if an independent Scotland joined NATO it would sometimes want to abrogate its duties, or is he advocating to vote against nuclear weapons today, but actually join a nuclear alliance?

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

The right hon. Gentleman does not need to explain Scottish National party policy to me. Perhaps if he listens, I can educate him. Scottish National party policy is for an independent Scotland to join NATO—everyone, including him, knows that that would be accepted, by the way—but on the contingency that Trident will be removed from Scotland’s waters. That does not prevent the United Kingdom from continuing to have a nuclear at-sea deterrent, although we think it should not and almost certainly would not.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

Hon. Members are coming at me from all sides.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

No, no—the right hon. Gentleman asked me a question and I have not finished explaining myself to him. Even if the UK gave up its nuclear weapons tonight, there would still be other nuclear states in the NATO alliance.

[Mr Jones]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

No, I am not going to get into this with the right hon. Gentleman.

We are very clear in our belief that the United Kingdom should give up its nuclear weapons, because there is no economic or military case for them, and this country now behaves like an irresponsible nuclear power.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I welcome this debate. Reference has already been made to the men and women of our submarine service who have been part of Operation Relentless over the past 50 years, and I add my tribute to them. The Secretary of State rightly mentioned a group who are not remembered very often: the families of those servicemen and women, who make a great contribution in their own way to our defence. I will not name all the sites because most of them, including Barrow, have been mentioned already. I pay tribute to the industry and the men and women who work in it, not only in the supply chain but directly in maintaining our nuclear deterrent. The issues relating to our nuclear deterrent are rightly secret and do not get a great deal of attention. Today is an opportunity to say thank you, to those individuals. I accept that a level of secrecy is needed, but for anyone who wants a good tribute to that, I recommend James Jinks’s and Peter Hennessy’s book “The Silent Deep”, which gives a fascinating insight into not only the history of our nuclear deterrent but the present-day operations.

I have always had the utmost respect for those who hold the view that Britain should not have nuclear weapons. I disagree with them, but I respect their position. What I cannot respect is the dishonest and unprincipled position of SNP Members, who argue that Britain should give up its nuclear weapons but at the same time want us to be part of a nuclear alliance—NATO. They accept that they would hide under the umbrella of NATO, but they say they have a principled objection to nuclear weapons. They cannot have both.

The post-war Attlee Government decided that Britain would become a nuclear power because they saw the rise of the threat from the Soviet Union to the post-war order that they and the west were trying to put together. It was a rules-based system, and we rightly pay tribute to the founders of NATO and other international organisations after the second world war. People such as Attlee, who lived through the second war but also saw action at Gallipoli during the first world war, were determined that this country, in the new nuclear age, would not be vulnerable to harm from those who threatened its security. That has always been a long tradition in my party. I know that recently there has been much veneration on the left of the 1945 Labour Government, but that part of the story is always conveniently airbrushed out. The formation of NATO and the beginning of our nuclear deterrent set the course of our security and has dictated it over subsequent generations. Some of the principles that were underlined then, such as mutual destruction and deterrence, have been borne out by the fact that we have not had a nuclear conflict throughout the subsequent period.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) outlined the nature of the threats that face us today. Are they different to 1945? Yes, they are. Certainly the technology is very different, but so are the threats. At the end of the cold war, there was the possibility of making more reductions in nuclear weapons, but that has been snatched away from us by the current state of the Russian Government, who clearly do not respect the international rules-based order that our forefathers in post-war Britain helped to develop. The Russian Government wish to have their own order, which does not respect international law or nation states. Clearly, they also do not accept that nations should be able to live peacefully alongside one another.

I am clear about the need to retain our nuclear deterrent. It keeps us safe. If we could uninvent nuclear weapons tomorrow, I think most people would, but as a nation we have a proud record—and we should not forget this—of commitment to disarmament. The Secretary of State pointed out the steps that we have already taken, unilaterally, to reduce stockpiles to the minimum that is required, for example removing the WE177 nuclear bomb. It is also right for us to take an active part in moves to stop nuclear proliferation and to achieve arms reduction. That is not easy in the present climate, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend outlined, but that does not mean that we should not try. That has to be part of our overall policy. While maintaining CASD and our nuclear deterrent, we should have a strong commitment to a nuclear-free world. We can work harder at that, although it will not be easy, given the present state of the world, which looks a lot darker than it has for many years.

One threat that I do see to CASD—the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) and I are at one on this—is the decision in 2010 to delay the replacement of the nuclear deterrent. That has had huge issues for the maintenance of CASD. It means that the life of our present Vanguard submarines will be extended way beyond what was designed. I pay tribute to the industry and others who are trying to do the refits, but I ask the Secretary of State to ensure that the Treasury realises that those refits, and the money available for them, are vital. We will not meet the deadlines for the Dreadnought coming on stream, but if we are not to put CASD at risk it is important that the money is made available. I accept that recently some money has come forward, but it has to be available continually over the next few years. I have no wish to be disrespectful to the Secretary of State, but in the words of Robin Day, he is—like us all—a “here today, gone tomorrow” politician. It is important to have consistency in that investment for the life extension and for Dreadnought.

It is also important not to have a repeat of what happened with the Astute submarines, when we turned off the supply tap and the skills base, later having to work to play catch-up, which led to the problems we have now. We need to think about putting investment in now, certainly on the design side, for the generation that comes after Astute or Dreadnought, for example. That is how we keep the capability, because such skills are fragile if we do not invest in them.

To finish where I started, I pay tribute to all those involved in this endeavour. It is a complex one, ensuring not just that we have CASD but that the enterprise works. That it has done so over 50 years is a remarkable feat.

--- Later in debate ---

[Brendan O’Hara]

I will let the Leader of the Opposition speak for himself, but I find it astonishing. As a unilateralist, I could never imagine myself suddenly becoming a multilateralist.

This whole debate about the UK’s desire to be a nuclear power, come what may and regardless of cost, has striking similarities to the debate we have been having on Brexit. In both cases, we are seeing a post-imperial power struggling to come to terms with, and find its place in, a changing world. Rather than accepting and being part of that new world, the UK has decided to embark on a desperate search for a better yesterday. The result is that it is almost impossible to have a reasoned debate on nuclear weapons because, for so many in this House, possession of nuclear weapons, weapons of mass destruction, has become nothing more than a national virility symbol.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I have always respected people who argue on the principle that we should not have nuclear weapons, but that is not what the SNP is doing. The SNP is arguing that we should give up our weapons, but that it wants to be part of the NATO nuclear alliance, in which it would have to sit on the NATO nuclear planning group and accept the nuclear umbrella of the United States and France. Is that not a rather unprincipled position?

[Brendan O’Hara]

I do not think it is at all. Last time I looked, the last two Secretaries-General of NATO were from Denmark and Norway, both non-nuclear members of the NATO alliance. The logical extension of the right hon. Gentleman’s argument is that NATO would somehow shun an independent Scotland due to the stance we have taken. Given the strategic importance of Scotland to the high north and the Arctic, it is inconceivable that NATO would shun an independent Scotland.

[Mr Jones]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Brendan O’Hara]

No, I will move on.

It remains the case that an astronomical financial commitment is required to pay for these weapons, and the detrimental effect that is having on the UK’s conventional capability is being overlooked. The UK is choosing to pour billions of pounds into having nuclear weapons, which is akin to a mad dad selling off the family silverware and remortgaging the family home so that he can have the Aston Martin he has always fantasised about when all the family needs is a Ford Mondeo. That is the situation we are in.

We are here today to mark 50 years of the United Kingdom’s continuous at-sea deterrent. The world has changed beyond recognition over those 50 years, and all the old certainties of the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s have moved on. The threats we face today are more complex and far more nuanced than they have ever been, yet we are being asked to believe that the solution remains the same: a nuclear-armed submarine patrolling the seas 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year. It is not the case.

Finally, this is one issue on which the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament, the SNP, the Labour party in Scotland, the Greens, the TUC, the Church of Scotland and the Roman Catholic Church are all agreed. We oppose nuclear weapons and having them foisted upon us, because Scotland knows that there is absolutely no moral, economic or military case for the United Kingdom possessing nuclear weapons.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Woodcock]

Okay—well, let us move on.

I want to ensure that this House gives proper thanks to all the workers involved, including shipwrights and engineers. Sometimes manufacturers and engineers in all parts of the United Kingdom—including many hundreds in jobs in Scotland—have no idea that they are contributing to the submarine programme. These are the most cutting-edge, advanced engineering and manufacturing jobs in the world, producing not only the Dreadnought-class submarines that are being developed now, but all the nuclear patrol submarines. These vessels have been built principally at Barrow, but the project has been made possible by what the Secretary of State rightly described as a national endeavour.

Although I recognise that it is difficult, I hope that the Government and the bodies responsible for awarding new medals listen to the campaign that we have launched today for a new service medal for submariners who have been on bomber patrols. We have heard about the service of this group of people, but because of the necessarily secret nature of their work—and because of their achievement in the fact that this operation has been continuous, relentless and ongoing—they have not had the opportunity to be awarded a service medal as many of their colleagues in different parts of the armed forces have for serving in particular conflicts. It would surely be fitting to advance that case as part of these 50th anniversary commemorations—celebrations, if you will. I am grateful to many in this Chamber who have already added their support to the early-day motion that I am tabling today.

Deterrence is not a perfect science. It is impossible to prove categorically what works and what does not when acting in the negative to prevent something else from happening. But I hope that even those who say that it is too expensive for the UK to maintain its submarine fleet would accept that it is no accident that the only time that the horror of nuclear war has been inflicted on the world—in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—was in a world with only one nuclear power, meaning that that nuclear power could unleash that devastation without fear of retribution.

We have to make the case time and again that the reason why the UK continues to invest in its deterrent capability is to make the horror of a nuclear war less likely, not more likely—not simply for ourselves, but for all our NATO allies. Apparently, an independent Scotland would want to remain part of NATO, under the protective umbrella of what would become an English, Welsh and Northern Irish deterrent, while casting aspersions from over the border about how morally repugnant it is that we are maintaining this service and keeping Scotland safe. I think that is the SNP’s policy, but it is still quite hard to ascertain. It is possible, perhaps, that it believes that no one should have nuclear weapons—that America should take them away as well, and that we should leave ourselves at the mercy of nuclear blackmail from Russia.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Was it not a misunderstanding when the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara) said in response to my earlier intervention that the last two Secretaries-General of NATO came from non-nuclear nations? They do not possess nuclear weapons themselves, but they are part of a nuclear alliance. Also, if an independent Scotland was to join NATO, it would have to sit on the NATO nuclear planning group, which determines NATO nuclear policy.

[John Woodcock]

Absolutely. Is the SNP’s position that NATO should cease to be a nuclear alliance? If so, how would that make us safer from Russia given what we know about its aggressive stance under President Putin and the way that it is proliferating, in contravention of the non-proliferation treaty, in a way that UK is not? Or is the SNP’s position actually that we should leave it all to the Americans and that although we do not accept the hegemony of American global power in any other form, we are fine just to sit underneath their nuclear umbrella here? That is not a responsible position, but unfortunately it is one that we hear far too often.

I am a great admirer of the shadow Defence team for the way that they have battled to try to keep Labour’s policy, on the face of it, sensible. They have been huge allies over the years. However, we cannot escape the fact that the Leader of the Opposition remains implacably opposed to the use of the deterrent, which renders it, at a stroke—

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[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

I am very grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker, to have caught your eye in this important debate, first as a member of the Defence Committee, but also, more importantly in this context, because my father, Reginald Francois, was a naval veteran, although he served on minesweepers—as did the Chairman of the Defence Committee, incidentally—rather than as a submariner.

The silent service, or the men who wear dolphins, as they are sometimes referred to, are part of the elite of the Royal Navy—itself the senior service—and have played a fundamental part in the defence of this country for over 100 years, since submarines first went into action in the first world war. The history of the Royal Navy submarine service since the end of the second world war was brilliantly summarised by Lord Peter Hennessy and James Jinks in their recent book, “The Silent Deep”, which tells a story of immense professionalism, bravery and courage, not least during the difficult and tense periods of the cold war when submarines regularly travelled up “around the corner”, as it was known in the submarine service, to conduct surveillance on their Soviet counterparts based on the Kola peninsula. As a senior naval officer reminded me recently, President Putin’s father was a submariner, and that is one of the reasons why the Russian submarine service now benefits from such massive reinvestment. The book is an inspiring tale of men—and now, rightly, women, too—who have given unstinting service to their country down the decades and have helped to keep us free.

An epitome of this is the crews of our deterrent submarines: first, the Resolution class armed with the Polaris missile and then its later Chevaline upgrade; and then the Vanguard class armed with the Trident D5 missile. Because of the delays in the decision to proceed with the Dreadnought class, which many have referred to, those vessels are now likely to serve for up to 37 years— 13 years longer than their original design life—to maintain CASD. [Interruption.] Forgive me, gentlemen, but take it into the Tea Room next door if you do not want to listen.

While I was Minster for the Armed Forces a few years ago, I had the privilege of visiting one of the submarines based at Faslane. I remember being taken aboard by the submarine’s commander and walking across the missile casings while boarding the boat. I was very conscious of the massive destructive power sitting beneath my feet. It was fascinating to be taken on a tour of one of these boats and to have the opportunity to meet members of the highly specialised and extremely dedicated crew who are part of Operation Relentless.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan) pointed out so well, these sailors have been prepared to be parted from their families for months at a time, maintaining a lonely but vital vigil in the ocean depths, ready to unleash, if ultimately necessary, unacceptable levels of destruction on any potential enemy, and in so doing helping to deter them and to keep us free. We must never take those very special people or their stoic families for granted, and we should remember that there are retention issues in the service. Ministers must be mindful of that if we are to maintain CASD in the future.

Some members of CND have, in the past, argued that we have spent a great deal of money on something we will never use. Like others, including the previous Secretary of State, I believe that the reverse is true: we use this system every single day to provide the ultimate guarantee of our national security. Therefore, it is only right, and it is not backslapping, that on the 50th anniversary of these vital patrols, we in the House of Commons have an opportunity to pay heartfelt thanks to and admire the dedication of those who have manned these boats so professionally on our behalf down the years.

Part of the continuous at-sea deterrent programme involves having nuclear attack boats, on occasion, to protect the deterrent submarines. That duty will increasingly fall to the Astute class of SSNs. The Astutes are incredibly capable boats, at least on a par with the new Virginia class in the United States and arguably even better, thus making them the most effective attack submarines in the world. However, that capability does not come cheap, with a current price of around £1.25 billion per boat.

Unfortunately, the history of the Astute programme has been a chequered one, with both cost escalation and chronic delays in the production of the boats. Sadly, it is true to say that BAE Systems—I am not looking to enrage the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock)—has not covered itself in glory on the Astute class. Unfortunately, neither has Rolls-Royce, whose transfer of the production of the nuclear steam raising plant across Derby to its Raynesway facility cost some two years’ delay in delivering the reactors, which had a major knock-on effect on the timeliness of the whole programme.

As a result of the delays to the Astute, there have been serious issues with the availability of British SSNs over the past five to 10 years. I reassure the Secretary of State that I will not discuss classified matters on the Floor of the House, but suffice it to say that when our friends from the north have come visiting, we have not always been prepared to welcome them in the way that we should.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Francois]

Very briefly, because I am tight on time.

[Mr Jones]

The right hon. Gentleman was here when I spoke, and one of the issues was that the Conservative Government in the 1990s did not order submarines and turned off the skill base and investment that were needed. Is that not a lesson we should learn for the future, rather than just blaming BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce?

[Mr Francois]

I will meet the right hon. Gentleman halfway. It is true that the delay in orders had an effect—I am not denying that—but there were also management issues.

The delays to the Astute have had the unfortunate effect that the venerable Trafalgar class of SSNs has had to be run on at considerable cost. The final Trafalgar is due to leave service in around 2022 and the seventh Astute boat is not due to enter service until 2024. In fairness, to respond to the right hon. Gentleman’s point, I know that the senior management of BAE, right up to and including the chief executive, are fully aware of the problems with the programme and have taken executive action to try to address them. I hope they will continue to apply pressure to bring the boats into service as soon as possible. It is vital that we learn the hard lessons from the Astute programme to make sure that the Dreadnought programme runs effectively to both time and cost; the defence of the realm demands no less.

I wish to pay full tribute to the men and women of the Royal Navy who have selflessly carried out their vital task for 50 years so that those of us in the United Kingdom can sleep safely in our beds at night. We owe a great debt to those who wear dolphins, and it is appropriate that we salute them in the House of Commons this afternoon. We are not backslapping; we stand here in admiration.

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[Mr Clarke]

I am absolutely delighted that the right hon. Gentleman regards this as an item of faith and that it will be pursued. However, the Leader of the Opposition, the shadow Chancellor, the shadow Home Secretary and indeed, the shadow Defence Secretary voted against the motion of 18 July 2016 in which this House pledged to renew the deterrent, so there is a question over this. Anyone who has seen—certainly in my part of the world—the actions of Labour activists and the noises they make will know that they do not suggest that this is in any way a question settled beyond doubt. That is important and I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Warley for making that case. This should come from both traditions.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I know that it has become Tory party policy for there to be a pick and mix on which policy Members support, but one thing I would say about the Leader of the Opposition is that he has made it very clear since becoming leader that he sees the primacy of Labour party conference policy.

[Mr Clarke]

On that note of great unity, let us resolve the matter there. I very much hope that the Leader of the Opposition is listening to this debate and that he heeds the wise words of the right hon. Gentleman.

Quite simply, there is no value to someone being morally pure if they are dead. That is something that we need to underscore time and again in this debate. Our way of life in the west—compassionate, sometimes chaotic, but above all, free—is underpinned only by the security of our defences. That is the ultimate litmus test of our ability to continue to live our lives free in the way that we want to. We owe a debt to those people, who are, frankly, unheralded and very often forgotten about, including by me—I cannot be alone in taking it totally for granted that we have that deterrent ability. When we think about what it requires of the sailors involved and their families to live that life day in, day out, for years, it brings home how much they have contributed. The fact that we have not had another nuclear weapon deployed since 1945 is not an accident; it is precisely because of the principle of deterrence. I think that principle will endure, because I can see no way in which these weapons can be uninvented, and therefore, I see no realistic situation in which we will ever be able to totally disarm.

To answer the Scottish nationalists’ point, the United Kingdom does maintain the minimum possible deterrent consistent with being able to deploy it as required. We are not in any way reckless about it. I absolutely pray that we never have to use it, but the point stands that we must make the message very clear to the rest of the world that we would use it if this country or our allies were attacked in such a barbarous fashion. That applies not only to direct nuclear attack, but to biological and chemical weapons, because those are weapons that need to be understood to be abhorrent and we must have the ability to counteract them if required.

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[Wayne David]

Because we take it for granted that we are all against nuclear weapons. None of us wants to see nuclear weapons being used. The most effective way to preserve peace, however, is the concept of deterrence.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

The alternative position is that of the SNP, which wants the UK to give up its nuclear weapons, but is quite happy to be secure under NATO’s European umbrella.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kevan Jones Excerpts

Monday 18th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the experience that he brings to the Chamber. My hon. Friend makes an interesting point, and I would like to pursue these conversations—perhaps with the Prisons Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart)—to see what more can be done.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

What?

[Mr Speaker]

Well, the Minister is going to pursue it with the Prisons Minister.

[Mr Jones]

It is stupid.

[Mr Speaker]

Well, the right hon. Gentleman can make his own assessment.

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[Gavin Williamson]

We will always co-operate with all organisations right around the world, but my hon. Friend is so right: NATO is what delivers security in Europe. That is where our focus will be; that is what we will be focusing our time and resources on in delivering our security with our NATO allies.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

15. What steps he has taken to promote UK prosperity in his Department’s procurement decisions.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mark Lancaster)]

Since 2015, we have published a national shipbuilding strategy, refreshed defence industrial policy to help strengthen UK competitiveness and launched the future combat air strategy. We engage with global primes to create opportunities for all tiers of the UK supply chain.

[Mr Jones]

In the light of the Ministry of Defence decision to open up the procurement process for the fleet solid support ships to international competition, will the Minister explain what weighting will be placed on national prosperity in awarding those contracts?

[Mark Lancaster]

The one thing we are clear about is that we are constrained in that process because the fleet solid support ships are not warships; they are not frigates, destroyers or indeed aircraft carriers. However, I can reassure the right hon. Gentleman that that competition will be judged not solely on price but also on various other factors, and I am delighted that a UK consortium will be bidding.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kevan Jones Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2019 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

1. What recent assessment he has made of the financial sustainability of the Vanguard-class life extension programme.

[The Secretary of State for Defence (Gavin Williamson)]

The Vanguard-class life extension and availability sustainment programmes are essential to maintaining the United Kingdom’s continuous at-sea deterrence and are prioritised accordingly. The programmes are managed using established Ministry of Defence processes and, as such, are routinely reviewed.

[Mr Jones]

April this year marks the 50th anniversary of continuous at-sea deterrence, and I pay tribute to the men and women of the submarine service for their dedication over those 50 years. Given the reported delays in the refurbishment programme of the Vanguard class, can the Secretary of State assure the House that CASD will be maintained into the future?

[Gavin Williamson]

The right hon. Gentleman is right to pay tribute to the men and women, both past and present, who have done so much to maintain that at-sea nuclear deterrence. I can give him an absolute assurance that the investment and resources that are needed are being made available to maintain this important deterrence, which has always had a lot of cross-party support.

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[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

T7. Tomorrow afternoon, the funeral takes place of Acting Corporal Iain Dodds, formerly of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. His family are obviously grieving. He died, very tragically, before Christmas, at the age of 39, following years of adjusting having left the service after serving in both Iraq and Afghanistan. May I put on the record my thanks to the Minister for the Armed Forces for helping the family with the funeral arrangements?

[Mark Lancaster]

I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his acknowledgment. In cases like this, it is absolutely right that collectively across the House we should act in the way we have. I am delighted that we have managed to put things in place to help the family.