Oral Answers to Questions

Martin Docherty-Hughes Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mark Lancaster]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for his warm words. As his former Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Department for International Development, I know only too well of his contribution to the comprehensive approach during his tenure there. It is rare as a Minister to be appointed to a Department one actually knows something about. On that basis, I am delighted to be here. It is great to be in this position and I hope to use any experience I have.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

May I, too, congratulate the Minister on seemingly knowing what he is talking about?

In recent days I became aware, via the office of the deputy lord lieutenant of the county of Dunbartonshire that he had informed the provost of West Dunbartonshire, as the local government’s civic leader, that armed forces veterans’ day would not take place due to there being no capacity in the armed forces to deliver it. As the Member of Parliament for West Dunbartonshire, it gives me grave cause for concern that veterans in local families in West Dunbartonshire, including those in my own family who have served, will not be given the appropriate thanks by their local community. Will the Minister, on behalf of the Ministry of Defence, advise me and other Members of the House whose local communities may have been unable to hold veterans’ day that this will not happen again?

[Mark Lancaster]

Armed Forces Day has become quite a success, so I am disappointed to hear what the hon. Gentleman says. I visited Bangor in Northern Ireland and my colleagues have visited other places in the United Kingdom. The Armed Forces Day centring on Liverpool this year was a particular success. However, I am concerned by what he says and would like to think that all our units, whether Army Reserve units, Regular units or cadet forces, will do whatever they can to support Armed Forces Day. I will certainly look into what he has said.

National Shipbuilding Strategy

Martin Docherty-Hughes Excerpts

Wednesday 8th February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Douglas Chapman]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. We are constantly told that the Type 31s are also for the export market. I have asked parliamentary questions on whether the Government could provide details of their homework on what that export market might look like. I am afraid that, to date, there are no answers. We need to make progress with the information we have, which is why we are questioning the Minister today.

Anyone who has taken an interest in this matter will know that BAE Systems has two possible designs. It is important that we get on with picking one, so that we can ensure—to follow up on the hon. Gentleman’s point —that we have an exportable product that we can take to market. However, we are falling behind. The Franco-Italian Aquitaine class frigates are already in service with La Royale and have been exported to Egypt and Morocco, so we are already missing the export boat with regard to the Type 31s.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend should also note the Danish Absalon class frigates, which have proved to be very versatile, reliable and affordable ships for a valuable ally’s navy.

[Douglas Chapman]

Of course. That just makes the point that while the Government sit back, dither and try to work out what the strategy might be, we have great examples of other countries—small countries—that are able to export their own products into the markets that they want to serve.

Quite simply, we have been waiting for the future surface combatant, be it the Type 26 or the Type 31, since 1994. Sir John’s report may seek a “sea change” in naval procurement, but the fact is that we had a defence industry strategy in 2005, a 15-year terms of business agreement signed by BAE Systems in 2009 and a consolidated shipbuilding plan for the Clyde, with support from the Government and the trade unions, in 2013. How on earth has it taken the Government so long to get to a strategy? Why do they still not have one by 2017? Surely that is a damning indictment of their competence to run the country. Again, I plead with the Minister: let us get on with it.

My second question for the Minister is about ensuring that when HMS Queen Elizabeth enters service, it will do so with a carrier group worthy of a next-generation Navy. Those carriers—the largest ships ever built for the Royal Navy—are being built on time and on budget in my constituency by the superb workforce in Rosyth. It would be a great disappointment to those workers, those men and women—

[Douglas Chapman]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. That is a bit of a non-question for me, but I am sure the Minister will be happy to add it to her extensive list of questions already put.

The ships in Rosyth are the biggest that the Royal Navy has ever built, and various people have been involved in building them from day one and bringing the parts from all areas of the UK to Rosyth, but we must ensure that when those ships sail down the Forth, they are adequately protected. At the moment, I struggle to see how that battle group will fit together.

As I said, although 2017 may be the year of the Navy, 2023 will be far more significant, because in 2023 we will know whether the strategy has done what it set out to do in the first place. By 2023, the initial tranche of 24 F-35Bs should be in place to fly operations from the carriers, and the first Type 26 should be entering service to replace HMS Argyll, which will be the first Type 23 to leave service.

The Defence Committee highlighted the question of the carrier group in our November report and I hope we will press the Minister further on it, but quite simply the Government are running out of time to uphold their end of the bargain. Quite honestly, I am not holding my breath.

I expect many right hon. and hon. Members will talk today about the state of the Navy, but going over some of the history again might be worthwhile. At the time of the infamous Nott report, the Royal Navy had 60 frigates and destroyers, and even by the end of the Falklands conflict, it still had 50. In the 1998 strategic defence review, long after the cold war had ended, a floor of 32 ships was constructed. However, the Government now crow about their commitment to 19 frigates and destroyers.

Even as we move to an era of fewer and more powerful ships, 19 is still too low a number and has seen the UK fail in many of its commitments to its allies. I am not alone in finding it unacceptable that the UK has often been unable to provide a ship for NATO’s standing maritime groups; that we had to miss the recent anniversary celebrations of the New Zealand navy because a suitable ship was not available; and that offshore patrol vessels are having to fill in on tasks relating to the fleet ready escort and the Royal Navy’s presence in the Caribbean.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

My hon. Friend makes a good point about the 75th-anniversary celebrations for the royal navy of New Zealand. In November, our allies the United States, Canada and Australia sent ships to the international naval review—even Tonga and the Cook Islands sent ships to the naval review—but the United Kingdom Navy sent nothing. That is not exactly the best start to a brave Brexit diplomatic offensive, is it?

[Douglas Chapman]

Again, I cannot help but agree with my hon. Friend. He makes a very valid and good point, but if our backs were to the wall and we needed to provide ships for NATO, that would be a much more serious commitment that the UK would have to make. If we do not have enough ships to fulfil those commitments, that is even more concerning.

I said that the current fleet was 19 in number. Two ships, HMS Diamond and HMS Lancaster, are being used as training ships, so that reduces the number from 19 to 17 usable frigates and destroyers.

I hope that the Minister will break the habit of a lifetime today and actually give us the answers to the questions that we have asked. Quite simply, the Royal Navy and the carrier programme demand that. It starts with a contract for the Type 26 programme being signed, so let me reintroduce an old slogan: “We want eight and we won’t wait!” If we were to add anything to that, it would be that we cannot afford to wait any longer.

I hope that the Minister can also answer my last question. How can we ensure that surface shipbuilding does not suffer as a result of the proliferation of big-ticket items going through the order book over the next decade? The headline from Monday’s Financial Times says it all: “Spiralling cost of UK defence projects signals hard choices”. I raised this issue at the most recent Defence questions. With the years 2020 to 2023 being the most critical in the equipment procurement plan, I fear what Professor Malcolm Chalmers of the Royal United Services Institute highlighted in the FT article:

“the historic response at MoD has simply been to push programmes to the right and allow service dates to slip.”

That story followed last month’s excellent National Audit Office report, which highlighted, among other things, that the “headroom” used to account for any potential overspend had already been spent. The report stated that

“any further capability requirements during the lifetime of the Plan period will have to be met through a reprioritisation”.

I know that all those situations put the Minister in a really difficult position, but the clear questions that I must ask again are these. When will we see the national shipbuilding strategy? Can the Minister assure us that, by 2023, the Royal Navy will be able to form a fully functioning carrier group, with Type 26s, Type 45s and the requisite Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships? Finally, how will the shipbuilding strategy ensure that surface naval ships are prioritised in future procurement decisions? Let us hope that today we get some answers and that 2017 does become the year of the Navy, not the year that the Navy wants to forget.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point. The issue is not just about generating the skills in the first place—the key investment that companies need to make in apprenticeships and other things. This is now an international market. There are perhaps engineers working on the Clyde who, if there is no work, will move elsewhere in the world. In some cases, they will not come back to the industry. We found that with the Astute programme; nuclear engineers left and trying to get them back, or regenerating those skills and expertise, was very difficult.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent point. Critically, the Canadian suppliers were actually in Glasgow the other week looking for such people to take to north America.

[Mr Jones]

Again, the hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. This is an international market and these skills are very sought after. This comes back to my point that if we want this capability in the UK, we have to nurture and protect it and the only way to do that is by having a throughput of work.

The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife raised the issue of the Type 26. The delay is adding to that uncertainty. The wider piece really concerns me. To give the impression that we are going to have that drumbeat of work, we have had the Type 31 inserted into the programme. I have studied in detail to try to find out what the Type 31 actually is; no one has been able to tell me yet. It is a bit like the mythical unicorn—everybody thinks it exists, but no one has ever seen one. If the MOD can say that there is a budget line for it, it should please identify that—in the current procurement there is no budget line for it at all in the programme.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and to have listened to his technical expertise in this area. I very much appreciated his speech and particularly his support for the Clyde shipyards. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Douglas Chapman) on securing the debate, and it is always a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Evans.

I shall start, as the hon. Member for North Durham did, with the extraordinary process regarding the strategy. He is not the only one who thought that Sir John Parker’s report would be the national shipbuilding strategy; I and other hon. Members of the House did too, as did trade unions and the defence industry.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

The Minister said that a signed copy would be sent to my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O'Hara), but we are still waiting for it. Clearly that means that the actual statement has not been produced.

[Chris Stephens]

I remember that exchange, and there was clearly confusion about the report. I also find it extraordinary that although Sir John Parker’s report was sent to the Ministry of Defence on 3 November 2016, this is the first opportunity that hon. Members have had to discuss it in detail. In November or December, there should have been a debate, or a series of debates, on the report, so that hon. Members could give their views on it and feed into the process. I shall come to that later.

I was very concerned when it was pointed out to me that on 2 January in The Daily Telegraph—not necessarily a newspaper that I subscribe to—MOD sources were not only saying that there is no budget for the Type 31, but that it will not happen and the plan will not be realised. We need to go back to the former Prime Minister’s announcement on the Clyde in my constituency in 2014, when he promised that 13 Type 26 frigates would be built on the Clyde. We were then told that there would be eight Type 26 frigates and five general-purpose frigates. As the hon. Member for North Durham outlined, we do not know exactly what that capability is, but we were told, “It’s okay; relax, because eight plus five equals 13.” We are still awaiting the final sign-off, not only for the eight Type 26 frigates but for the five general-purpose frigates. I hope that the Minister will tell us, if there is indeed a budget for Type 31 frigates, what it is and what the procurement timetable is for Type 26 and Type 31 frigates.

[Chris Stephens]

I would be very concerned about that, and I will come to the effects of that later. Sir John Parker’s report is an honest attempt to end the “feast and famine” procurement processes by the Ministry of Defence that have often plagued the shipbuilding industry. If any other public services carried out procurement processes in the way that the Ministry of Defence does, there would be uproar in the streets—imagine if it was equipment for the health service or education, and so on.

I am pleased that Sir John Parker’s report also recognises the capability and skills of shipyard workers on the Clyde—in my constituency, in the Govan shipyard, and in Scotstoun, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan)—working on digital technology adapted from the automotive sector and with new working practices that have increased productivity. It is an honour and a privilege to represent them in this Parliament. The shipyard workers are also supported by trade unions and are represented at shop-floor level by representatives who have campaigned tenaciously over the years to ensure that future work is secured. Any announcements that come from the Government are a victory for them more than anyone else. However, as someone who had family members in Yarrows who were made redundant under a Tory Government, I always view such commitments from this Government with suspicion when it comes to shipbuilding.

Sir John Parker’s report also recognises that the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships should be assembled in the UK. It really is a nonsense that that work has been farmed out elsewhere. I would hope that Rosyth, to cite one example, would have that opportunity. Failure to ensure that Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships are built in the UK will make the report fall at the first hurdle. An award to a UK yard for Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships would demonstrate that the Government are serious about ensuring that an export model can be achieved and that investment in technology can be kept.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

My hon. Friend is talking about Type 31s, but given the fact that the Secretary of State and also the leader of the Conservative party in the Scottish Parliament have said that there will be work on the 13 Type 26s, where is that guarantee from the Government?

[Chris Stephens]

I hope we will get that today. I hope the Minister will give us that commitment.

There is one fatal flaw, however, in Sir John Parker’s report, which needs to be tackled. His assumption that there is no precedent for building different first-class naval ships concurrently is wrong. In the 1990s, Yarrow shipyards were building and constructing Royal Navy ships as well as exporting ships to Malaysia. This precedent was envisaged by the Clyde shipyard taskforce in 2002, chaired by the then Scottish Executive Minister, Wendy Alexander, and the former Scottish Office Minister, Brian Wilson, which ensured that the Govan shipyard was responsible for the steelworks and that Scotstoun was to become the centre for excellence.

There is therefore reason to argue that Govan could construct the Type 26 frigates and Scotstoun could develop the new Type 31 frigate, using the specialist design capability to ensure that it could be exported to other countries. Such technical expertise to carry out the work is already there on the Clyde, but it will require investment. MOD pressure not to invest in the frigate factory—promises that led to the demolition of the covered berth and module hall at Scotstoun—has meant that we still have a constrained capacity and that the full potential for shipbuilding on the Clyde has not yet been realised. I want to hear from the Government about progressive plans with respect to shipyard reconstruction to unlock significant long-term advances and savings for the industry so that it can win more orders, not only here but from overseas.

Sacrifices have been made by shipyard workers on the Clyde. Let us not forget that to get to where we are now, workers on the Clyde took redundancy to ensure that the rest would be kept and that they would be match-fit to build the 13 Type 26 frigates. I hope that today the Minister will confirm procurement processes for the Type 26 and Type 31 frigates. The trade unions have said that failure to ensure that the Clyde leads on the general-purpose frigates would be a betrayal.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steven Paterson]

The hon. Gentleman must have read my mind, because I am coming on to say that point 18 of the NAO report summary states:

“Changes in foreign exchange rates, such as those that happened after the EU referendum, can pose a significant risk to the Plan’s affordability in the future. As at 10 January 2017, the pound was 21.4% below the exchange rate with the US dollar and 4.2% below the exchange rate for the euro used in the Department’s planning assumptions. Approximately £18.6 billion of the Plan is denominated in US dollars and £2.6 billion in euros over 10 years.”

That will have a major impact.

I understand that the Department has a certain amount of protection against foreign exchange rates in arranging its finances, but does it not worry the Minister that such a large amount of the plan is predicated on foreign exchange rates, with the Government appearing to be gambling that the rate will not go up further? Given the Government position that economists cannot be trusted, which is what many current Ministers said during the recent referendum—and going by even a cursory look at the financial predictions before Brexit—can we really have any confidence that the envisaged programme can be afforded? That is why we need reassurance today.

The shipbuilding strategy is long overdue and, given the current state of the Department’s books, it is badly needed to provide clarity for those working in shipbuilding and those monitoring our national defence readiness going forward.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

My hon. Friend will correct me if I am wrong but, to take F-35s as an example, they are 85% built in the United States, and therefore bought in dollars. That is critical when we reflect on the impact of the fall in the pound compared with the dollar.

[Steven Paterson]

Absolutely. That illustrates the point very well. I hope that the Minister will reassure us today about the Type 26 programme and the Type 31 programme, about the ships being built on the Clyde as promised, and on the affordability of the shipbuilding strategy that the Government will hopefully soon present. Finally, I hope that by the end of the debate we shall know with certainty when the overdue shipbuilding strategy will be published.

Armed Forces Covenant

Martin Docherty-Hughes Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Trevelyan]

I commend the Minister and his devoted team of civil servants in the MOD, who are working tirelessly to build on the original direction of the covenant that was set out in the Armed Forces Act 2011. That Act calls on the Secretary of State for Defence to publish an annual report setting out what has been done in the past year—not only by the MOD itself, but by other Government Departments, and wider business and community networks across our nation—to help to reduce disadvantage for our service families and veterans.

This year’s report highlights some of the great work done during 2016 in a number of areas, including: to build up the corporate covenant, and to encourage more private sector businesses to get involved in the practicalities of becoming corporate covenant signatories; to improve regional consistency in the levels of support received by the armed forces, especially through the community covenant; to improve on communicating what the covenant is, what it does and who it supports; and, most critically, to continue to prioritise issues that are known to be creating disadvantage for service families and veterans. I will take a few minutes to discuss each of those areas in the report, beginning with the corporate covenant.

The MOD team that is focused on building up the number of businesses and organisations that sign up to the corporate covenant has been working as hard as ever. More than 1,300 businesses have signed up to make their organisations more military-friendly and understanding, and able to benefit from the great skill sets that service leavers and reservists can bring to business. Last year, our all-party group on the armed forces covenant wrote to the then 850 organisations that had signed up to ask them what they were doing as part of their commitment. From the big boys such as BT, Google and Hewlett Packard, to small companies such as DJ Rees Services in Merthyr Tydfil, those that have signed up are changing the way they do business and seeking staff so that they support the covenant concept.

I mention DJ Rees because its reply was my favourite. This decorating, building and refurbishment business—an SME—decided that, having signed up to the corporate covenant, it would ask its whole supply chain to do so as well. It drafted a covenant on behalf of each supplier, encouraging them to sign up to the bronze employer recognition scheme—the first rung of the scheme’s ladder—and formally asking them to commit to provide one week’s work placement as part of the armed forces employability pathway scheme. In this way, DJ Rees was able to create, with its suppliers, many more work placements in its part of Wales. Just imagine the impact we could have if every large business that has signed up to the corporate covenant drove such a commitment through its supply chain.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that small and medium-sized businesses in other parts of the United Kingdom, such as European Circuits in my constituency, which has signed up to the corporate covenant, can also play a major part?

[Mrs Trevelyan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I am keen that MPs from both sides of the House become more involved in spreading the message about the benefits of businesses in their constituencies signing the corporate covenant.

As MPs, we are perhaps more connected than anyone to our local business community, so we have a great opportunity to evangelise about the importance of businesses committing to the covenant and the life-changing impact that that can have for military families. We have more than 5 million SMEs— businesses employing fewer than 250 people—which make up 99% of all businesses across the UK. We have a long way to go to make every business covenant-friendly. We have 1,300 signed up so far, and they are committed in their small or larger way to supporting our military families. We therefore look forward to working with the MOD and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to increase participation in the corporate covenant scheme exponentially in the year ahead.

A key way in which businesses can benefit themselves and help service families is employing military spouses, who have faced a long-standing challenge to find employment that matches their skills and qualifications because, too often, employers see a military address and decide that even though the potential employee might be the best candidate for the role, they will not be around for more than two years. However, a committed military spouse, who will certainly have a posting for two years, and often longer nowadays, should be as valued as any civilian candidate.

From my conversations with military wives, it seems that the key block to getting the right job is often that an employer sees that the applicant’s address is a military base. Will the Minister therefore consider working with me and his BEIS colleagues to remove the address requirement from job application forms, perhaps in favour of something such as a distance-from-work criterion, to ensure that there is no unconscious bias against military spouses?

Ongoing work at Stanford University shows clearly that gender-neutral applications alter employer choices by removing a marked bias towards male applicants. In the same way, it would be fantastic if, as part of our continuing real commitment to the covenant, BEIS led a trial on removing addresses from job applications to see whether that helps to increase successful employment opportunities for military spouses.

It is great news that every council in England and Scotland has now signed up to the community covenant and that colleagues in Northern Ireland continue to make progress on finding ways to build a framework through Stormont and local councils to improve the commitment to the covenant. The community covenant could have one of the greatest positive impacts for military families—serving and after service—because our local councils deal with housing allocation policy, brief GPs and health professionals about the needs of the armed forces community, set up webpages to help to join up local services, support local charities in the military space, and deal with school admissions policy.

Colleagues will no doubt share with the House more details of the excellent work in their areas, so I will raise just one key area with the Minister: school admissions policy. My ten-minute rule Bill, which is going through the House at the moment, calls on the Department for Education to change admissions policy so that military families moving at short notice can get the right school place at any time. I very much hope that the MOD will support the Bill.

This year’s report refers to the work done to identify educational disadvantage. My postbag led me to bring in my Bill because too many families moving at short notice could not access a school place without ending up in the appeals system, which creates even more stress for parents and children alike. Excellent work from the University of Winchester, which the MOD is supporting, shows a marked impact when it comes to higher education outputs for military children. We must at least reduce the stress of moving schools to help these kids to reach their potential.

Lastly—this is a key part of this year’s report—we must look at the prioritisation of key issues that create stress for serving families if we are to reduce the very real retention risk we are now experiencing. Having brought the numbers in our armed forces down for many years to create a leaner, peacetime force, this is an urgent challenge. We must always remember that, without the human capital, all the ships, submarines, jets, planes, helicopters and tanks in the world are no use to us.

Our people are the most important component of the triumvirate of equipment, estates and personnel that makes up our world-class military resource. We train them to the highest standards in the world, and we must ensure that we do all we can for them because, notwithstanding the moral component—I say this as an accountant—we want to make sure we get the best value for money for our investment. If we lose a pilot for lack of a decent house, or a nuclear engineer for lack of a school place, we have failed to assess the value-for-money implications to the taxpayer and the capability needs of our services, and we are failing to enact the spirit of the covenant in practice.

This year’s report highlights the excellent work done by the Department of Health, and internally by the MOD with Defence Medical Services, to build a more robust infrastructure framework. Substantial work has taken place to tackle hearing loss issues, and that will be an interesting area to follow in the year ahead, because the NHS hearing loss treatment guidelines have recently changed. For those whose hearing has been damaged as a result of service, it is to be hoped that they will get full treatment to restore their hearing.

The launch of the e-learning for healthcare programme to help GPs to gain greater understanding and awareness will be useful but, of course, ensuring that the transfer of all medical records works across the country will be key to helping GPs to know their patient’s history and to work with them when crises arise in the years after service.

The new veterans’ gateway is a great step forward in helping families and local service providers, as well as MPs. We have high hopes for it, although there are concerns that gaps in mental healthcare provision, in particular, will remain a stubborn block to providing real and needed support for military families who are, for instance, supporting post-traumatic stress disorder sufferers who are unable to access the long-term medical interventions that they need to help them recover and lead full lives once again. Perhaps the Minister could give us a little more detail about how suppliers at the other end of the gateway will be supported by relevant Government Departments so that there is capacity to meet this well-identified need.

The report also talks about developing an alternative approach to the provision of accommodation for service personnel and their families. I would be failing in my duty to all our military families if I did not mention the crisis in military housing, which is a real and present danger to the retention of large numbers of our highly trained personnel. I have tackled the problems with CarillionAmey’s maintenance contracts in a number of forums already, and the Minister has been enormously helpful in getting a trial MPs’ hotline set up to help us to sort out practical problems for families in service accommodation. However, the problems are extensive and cause enormous frustration to too many.

I have challenged the Minister on the combined accommodation assessment system rental changes, and not a single family I have spoken to minds that their rent is going up, but if the system is to reflect normal social housing rates under the decent homes plus standard, their homes really do need to be DH plus. Too many are not, and the challenge system has been weighted against families getting a fair and honest appraisal of their home’s categorisation. There is more to do to rebuild the loss of trust we really are facing.

However, the most challenging part of the housing debate is the future accommodation model, which the MOD is working on. According to the report, it is aimed at supporting families

“to live in the private rental market or enabling them to purchase their own home.”

I am grateful to the Minister for publishing the data sets from the survey this week, and we are looking at them closely. I ask him also to publish the additional notes that personnel wrote. He said he would do that, but they do not seem to be in the initial statistical data sets that are online.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan) on bringing this debate to the Floor of the House. She is to be commended for that and for her commitment to the armed forces.

I am a great believer in the idea that the armed forces must be rooted in, and reflect, the society they serve and defend. I commend the hon.—and gallant—Member for Canterbury (Sir Julian Brazier) for raising the issue of making sure that our armed forces reflect the society they serve by living in it and not just in bespoke military hubs.

In their domestic lives, service personnel have similar problems to the rest of society, but we must recognise that they also face unique challenges. The Minister will be aware that I have raised issues on the Floor of the House in relation to children, veterans and carers, as well as pre-deployment and the length of deployment.

However, that does not mean that challenges do not remain. In terms of the report and the general debate, I am astonished to see the difficulties that veterans still face in accessing medical care. While there have been obvious improvements, work remains to be done across the whole United Kingdom—for example, in ensuring a better transition into civilian life for veterans by ensuring that service GPs can share their expertise across the NHS, which we have discussed on the Floor of the House on many occasions. Critically, in Scotland and across the UK there are differing NHS structures. Local provision in Scotland is made through community planning partnerships, where a whole range of partners get around the table. The discussion of the impact of service life in community planning partnerships does not seem to be having any influence.

In housing, there are problems with CarillionAmey providing service accommodation that lives up to the understandably high standards of the Ministry of Defence. That fact has drawn the eye of the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee, which indicates that much work remains to be done in delivering an improvement in the living experiences of service families and providing value for public money, as most of that money goes to a private company.

I wonder whether the future accommodation model should learn from elements of the Scottish housing standard, on which the Ministry of Defence could at least reflect, in introducing a basic standard. The Ministry of Defence in Scotland is exempt from the national housing standard, which every social landlord had to meet by 2015.

That brings me to the hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth), who mentioned social housing. Rather than blaming pregnant women, perhaps the best way to give people access to social housing is not only to build more of it, but to stop selling it.

This week’s Combat Stress report highlights some of the fundamental problems faced by veterans and underlines the fact that much work remains to be done. The opportunities grasped by many who enlist in our armed forces are unfortunately not shared by nearly enough people. Those of us who take an interest in armed forces and veterans affairs will not be satisfied until that attainment gap is closed. I agree with the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed about the corporate covenant. I am seeing that in small and medium-sized businesses in my constituency. Last week, I attended a Burns celebration in which the chamber of commerce—it covers not only West Dunbartonshire, but the whole of the old county of Dunbartonshire—led the charge to get businesses involved in that corporate approach.

It is one of my great hopes that the idea of the covenant can become embedded in the culture of the armed forces. The service rendered by those who join must be returned many times by not only this Government, but Governments of the devolved Administrations—and by the society that those people have served. I welcomed the Scottish Government’s commitment, which some of my hon. Friends have mentioned. Last year, the Scottish Government set out their ambitious agenda for veterans with “Renewing our Commitments”, in order to make Scotland the go-to destination for those who leave the services.

In conclusion, I reiterate my welcome for the report and my satisfaction in the ongoing work of the armed forces covenant to ensure that those who have served are given the support and opportunities that they deserve. Like most people in this House and in the country, I know from my own family experience—members of my family have been on the front line—the unique challenges faced by those who serve in the armed forces, and by their families. I am happy to say that they deserve our respect, our thanks and our ongoing support. In doing so, I do not forget the work that we in this House and those in the Ministry of Defence must still do to ensure that veterans receive more support than we are giving them at the moment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Trevelyan]

I thank all colleagues who have spent their Thursday afternoon here in the Chamber rather than in Stoke-on-Trent or Copeland, and the Minister who has sat patiently listening to all of us as we share our praise and our criticism of the way in which the armed forces covenant is rolling out.

There must be something about Kent, because my hon. Friends the Members for Canterbury (Sir Julian Brazier) and for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) are both passionate about housing. The fact that it is not just about the bricks is the critical point. I hope very much that the Minister and the Ministry of Defence will hear that message, because that is the families’ message to them. The model needs to be good and it needs to be 21st century, but it is not just about the bricks.

Many colleagues talked about the statute of limitations. I know that the Minister is working on that. If the outstanding work on the Iraq Historic Allegations Team of the hon. and gallant Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), who could not be with us today, can change the Ministry’s mind and drive forward some really good improvements, I hope very much that colleagues who have spoken today can push forward that statute of limitations and find a legal framework that can work.

The key to all matters to do with the covenant—the work that has been done over the past few years is extensive and very positive—is that unless our attempts at recruitment and retention succeed, we will not have the armed forces we need to take up the challenges that the world around us demands. Every decision that the Ministry makes cannot only be on cost-savings grounds. Value for money is about not cost saving, but about getting the right investment for our armed forces to ensure that we look after them and their families as they serve, and then for the rest of their lives.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the Armed Forces Covenant Report 2016.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Earlier today, you may recall that the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union laid a copy of the White Paper before the House. I have my own copy with me. We have found that at least one chart in the document contains incorrect information. Chart 7.1 states that United Kingdom workers are entitled to 14 weeks of annual holiday, whereas the chart should state that they have 5.6 weeks paid holiday. The mistake has led to another error, as the chart claims that European Union minimum maternity leave entitlement is only 5.6 weeks, when it should be 14 weeks. The Scottish National party has corrected the chart for the United Kingdom Government. Perhaps the Minister would like a copy to save his blushes over what appears to have been only a desktop exercise today. Madam Deputy Speaker, would you please instruct me as to how this House can get the accurate, proper information to inform our already rushed debate on this rather important issue?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

I think the hon. Gentleman has quite successfully just done so himself. I am sure that the Treasury Benches will have heard what he said and will take action.

Oral Answers to Questions

Martin Docherty-Hughes Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his knighthood, as I should earlier have congratulated the hon. Member for Bolton North East (Sir David Crausby). My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we need to continue to improve the effectiveness of our work within the European Union and NATO.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

The 2015 strategic defence and security review considered the pressures on allies, and the undermining of our military and economic alliances and institutions, to be possible risks. With the United Kingdom leaving the European Union, what assurances can the Secretary of State give that we will mitigate the economic risk, especially given foreign currency fluctuations? The National Audit Office pointed out that the fluctuations pose a “significant risk” to the national equipment plan.

[Sir Michael Fallon]

I will not comment—the hon. Gentleman would not expect me to—on the current level of sterling vis-à-vis the dollar or the euro. Suffice it to say that the Ministry, like any other large organisation, takes precautions against fluctuations in currency rates. It is far too early to say—indeed, it is wrong to speculate—where those exchange rates will eventually settle down.

Trident: Test Firing

Martin Docherty-Hughes Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

Let me reassure my hon. Friend, who takes a close interest in these matters, that the Trident system certainly does work. We are in absolutely no doubt about its capability and effectiveness.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

It will come as no surprise to the Secretary of State that those of us who live within the blast zone of Faslane do not share his confidence. If he has absolute confidence in the capabilities of HMS Vengeance and of the system, what steps is his Department taking to rectify the errors in the aborted launch itself?

[Sir Michael Fallon]

As I have already said, HMS Vengeance completed its demonstration and shakedown operation successfully, otherwise it would not have been able to rejoin the four-boat operational cycle.

Oral Answers to Questions

Martin Docherty-Hughes Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

The whole success of NATO lies in the fact that countries join freely. The hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) is right that the countries he mentioned—Latvia, Estonia and so on—are particularly worried about their protection. It is not like the British Army of the Rhine, which I had the honour and privilege to serve with and which sat there, static, for long periods; what we and our allies in NATO are sending is a significant force to make sure the Russians know that we are serious.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

Part of the strength of any alliance is sometimes being a critical friend of other members of that alliance. Will the Minister, on behalf of the Secretary of State, assure me that the next time they speak to the future leader of the free world, they might request that he starts reading his CIA briefings daily and so does us all a favour?

[Mike Penning]

I am sure that the future President of the United States will read the CIA briefings when he becomes the President of the United States. I am sure the hon. Gentleman saw this morning’s press coverage showing that the future President of the United States does not believe everything that he is told by the press.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Michael Fallon]

I say to the Chairman of the Committee that we have some 29 ships serving on the seven seas around the world at the moment, and I am sure that that has his support. He makes a very good point about the exportability of the Type 31 frigate, and our ambition to raise the number of frigates and destroyers above the current 19.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

(West Dunbartonshire) (SNP): On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

Exceptionally, as I understand that it flows in some way legitimately from the exchanges that have already taken place, I will hear the point of order now. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will not abuse his privilege.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker. During Defence questions, the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), advised that the shipbuilding strategy had been published and said she would send a signed copy to my delighted friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O'Hara). Yet, when cross-examined by the shadow Defence Secretary, the Minister for the Armed Forces stated that publication would take place in spring 2017. Will the Secretary of State now answer the question: which one is it?

[Sir Michael Fallon]

rose—

Veterans and Service Personnel

Martin Docherty-Hughes Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Trevelyan]

I absolutely agree. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we are working hard to see whether we can get the Cabinet Office to ensure that we have the census marker, because that will give us a starting point from which we can tackle the question of how big our military family is and how we are making sure that we look after them.

We all want our armed forces to be there when we need them, but in—thank goodness—times of peace here at home, we do not think that much about them, as the statistics prove, horribly and truly. In reality, though, our armed forces are not sitting about in barracks with nothing to do, or on the dockside twiddling their thumbs. Our Navy is absolutely at full stretch across the oceans and under our seas, our Air Force is fully engaged in the fight against Daesh in Iraq and Syria, and our Army is going through an extensive re-basing programme as troops return from Germany and we prepare for ongoing NATO operations in the face of uncertain times ahead.

I have serious concerns about the impact of the current levels of undermanning on families and on the retention of our highly trained personnel whom we cannot easily replace once lost. I worry that we are putting too great a strain on the offer to our serving personnel. As one recent veteran said to me only last week, “Redundancies, pay restraint, pensions slashed, new pay model, CAAS, FAM, and now future base closures. What a way to boost morale!” With the impact on the next generation of personnel as we recruit and want to retain them, it is critical that we understand what it looks like from the inside and how we can support those who are serving now, because they will be our future veterans and we need to make sure that we surround them with the right package to ensure that they will be able to serve for as long as they choose and we can hope to keep them.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) on securing the debate. Along with the new generation of service personnel, there will be a new generation of children, young people and young carers of veterans who are profoundly impacted by pre-deployment, deployment and reintegration. Does the hon. Lady agree that in existing policy documents, particularly around health and social care, we need to revisit the idea of the broader family supporting the veteran back into community and civilian life?

[Mrs Trevelyan]

I agree. It is absolutely critical that we look at a whole-family approach to military family support, and there is a lot more work to do. We have a small charity in Northumberland that supports the children of military family carers. The charity is working, with some support from the Department, on how we can understand that better and provide support in a more holistic way, with the hope of achieving a more constructive outcome.

Although there was much in the statement yesterday from the Secretary of State about better use of MOD estate assets and the technical side of things, we must actively start to value in a financial way—I speak as a chartered accountant, and I apologise if that lowers the tone—our armed forces personnel. They are our human capital. Our armed forces are often thought of as big tanks, shiny ships and fast jets, but none of that works without the humans making it work. Human capital is a critical military asset. People are vital to the whole process, and without them we have no armed forces. We do not value our military personnel as an asset. They are listed in MOD accounts as an overhead, and that fundamental mindset is a huge challenge. I challenge the Department regularly, as the Minister knows, to think differently. To assess, for instance, retention risk—how to keep our finest when we really need them—we need to look holistically across the MOD, on a value-for-money basis, at how we value those individuals.

The Minister is a great advocate of our personnel and veterans at a personal level, but I urge him to encourage the Department to adopt a more holistic perspective on how we invest in our human capital: the men and women of our Army, our Navy, our Air Force and our Royal Marines. Those people have spouses and children, without whose silent commitment and loyalty to our nation’s protection we would not have the world-class armed forces that we are all so proud of and grateful for.

I had the unexpected privilege of attending the submariners’ remembrance parade last Sunday. I still do not know why it happens the weekend before Remembrance Day, rather than on the main weekend; that must be one of the mysteries of submariners. It was an extraordinary privilege to meet an enormous number of men who had served—they were all men, although there are a few women who are serving now—in what is known as the silent service. That remarkable group of people, with whom I have previously had very little to do, have spent decades under our seas quietly and continuously looking after us, protecting us and keeping an eye on our enemies. They continue to do so day in, day out.

It is so important that the nation understands that this is a continuum. People are putting their lives on the line for us every day and every night. People such as the Northumberland Fusiliers who died in the third-to-last week of the war in 1918, for whom I am going to lay a wreath this Friday in Tezze in northern Italy, and William Chapman, whose grandson still lives in Berwick-upon-Tweed and has asked me to lay a special wreath for his family, were extraordinary men whom we must always remember. But today there are people serving across the globe—British men and women who are putting their lives on the line, and whose families are quietly waiting at home, supporting them. As we remember those who serve today and those who have gone before, we must never forget.

Type 26 Frigates: Clyde

Martin Docherty-Hughes Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Before we move on to the important topic of Type 22 frigates on the Clyde, will Members who do not wish to attend the debate please leave quickly and quietly?

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the timetable for building Type 26 frigates on the Clyde.

It is always a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Hollobone, but for the record this debate is on Type 26 frigates.

Talk of defence platforms can often be a dry business, and it passes by most people in this House, never mind among the public. That is not true of the Type 26. The interest we see among Members today in the global combat ship reflects not only its strategic utility and world-class design; the farrago of delays and under-investment in the project and broken promises from the Ministry of Defence reveal the malaise at the heart of the United Kingdom’s strategic thinking, which sees preserving the shop window as more important than its most basic of roles: defending this political state adequately.

I would like the Minister to address with utmost sincerity—something that her Department has been unable to do up to this point—two principal points on the Type 26 project. First, in delaying the start of the project, the Minister and her Department are doing enormous damage to the defence of Scotland and the United Kingdom, which, as I mentioned, is one of the Government’s most solemn and fundamental tasks. Secondly, the failure to cut steel on the vessels, alongside an ongoing refusal to fulfil the promise of a frigate factory on the Clyde, is placing enormous pressure on the complex warship-building capacity that Government have unequivocally promised to protect, causing undeniable financial harm and insecurity to the thousands of skilled and dedicated workers from along the Clyde who are feeling increasingly let down.

In short, behind the broken promises and procrastination, the MOD has proven beyond doubt one maxim put forward by myself and Scottish National party colleagues time and again: every penny spent on the abomination that is Trident is a penny less spent on conventional defence.

In beginning to pick apart the sorry saga of the Type 26, one has to start somewhere, and I choose to start with the Royal Navy taskforce that sailed to recapture the Falkland Islands in 1982. That taskforce was composed of some 23 frigates and destroyers; today, the entire Royal Navy boasts only 19 frigates and destroyers, of which all are based between Her Majesty’s Naval Base Portsmouth and Her Majesty’s Naval Base Devonport. Paradoxically, that leaves the United Kingdom’s southern coast as its most northerly complex warship base.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

Is the hon. Gentleman not aware that the submarines are based up in Scotland? They are coming, in the main, away from Devonport, and we are still responsible for the refitting and refuelling of the nuclear submarines.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

The last time I looked we were discussing the construction of naval vessels, not the basing of weapons of mass destruction. Nevertheless, I am delighted that the Conservative party wants to engage in a strategic look at shipbuilding, because Conservative Members were recently in this very Chamber talking about rebuilding the royal yacht Britannia. While they are away and on into the distance with their pith helmets, the rest of us are left behind with the catastrophe that is Brexit, which I will pick up on later. They can go on to the distance in Britannia.

The capability gap is felt most keenly in Scotland. The northern third of this island, with a coastline longer than that of France and direct access to both the North sea and the Icelandic gap, is left dangerously under-defended at a time when Russian Federation incursions into our territorial waters are beginning to reach cold war levels. The perfect example came in January 2014, when the Russian carrier the Admiral Kuznetsov “took shelter” in the Moray firth. It took the United Kingdom’s fleet ready escort 24 hours to reach the carrier group before it went on its way—although not before dumping its waste in the firth.

The House may have read the recent reports of the Kuznetsov’s imminent return to the waters of the North sea. The carrier group left the port of Severomorsk on Sunday and is expected to make its way towards assisting Russia’s continuing destruction of Aleppo via the North sea and English channel.

[Steven Paterson (Stirling) (SNP)]

A headline in the Norwegian press this week says: “Russia’s biggest warships steam along coast of Norway towards Syria”, just as my hon. Friend has described. The related article says:

“Norway has a frigate, Coast Guard vessels and Orion surveillance aircrafts that have all followed the Russian navy group since it sailed out from the Kola Peninsula into the Barents Sea on Saturday.”

Does he agree that that is a substantial contribution from Norway, and one that the UK would struggle to match?

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

I certainly do agree with my hon. Friend. That small northern European nation seems far more capable of defending its territorial waters and meetings its obligations to NATO than the United Kingdom.

Amazingly, despite long-standing knowledge of the Kuznetsov’s deployment, and it coming as NATO’s largest annual exercise is taking place in Scotland, the Government have been able to rustle up only one Type 23 frigate and one Type 45 destroyer to escort the carrier group through the UK’s exclusive economic zone, meaning that were the group to split, there would be no way of keeping tabs on the largest ships in the Russian navy. Quite simply, the ageing Type 23 fleet cannot keep pace with the growing number of tasks put forward for it. The understandable challenges of dealing with a 35-year-old platform have led to worrying gaps in the Royal Navy’s most basic capabilities, whether that is the designated fleet ready escort being neither a frigate nor a destroyer, or the frequent and worrying absence of a UK vessel from the NATO standing maritime group in the north Atlantic.

The Government’s contention that a smaller fleet can be justified by increasing versatility can be met only by proceeding with the Type 26 programme. These are highly capable, versatile, multi-mission warships that would give the Royal Navy the capabilities it needs. Talk about the United Kingdom offering NATO a world-class anti-submarine warfare capability sounds hollow when we do not invest in the primary platform to undertake that, and when investment in other platforms—whether that is the carriers or the Poseidon P-8 maritime patrol aircraft—is called into question because a fundamental part of their support network has been put at risk.

When the Minister responds to the debate, I hope to hear a real commitment to a timetable for cutting steel on the ships, as well as their expected in-service dates.

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the delay in giving such a guarantee is an utter betrayal of the workers on the Clyde? It really calls into question both the UK Government’s commitment to conventional defence capability in Scotland and where their priorities truly lie.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

I certainly cannot disagree with my hon. Friend.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

To the hon. and gallant Gentleman, I certainly will.

[Bob Stewart]

Is it the Scottish National party’s policy to increase defence spending to something that in my view would be reasonable: 3% of gross national income? That way, we could provide more Type 26s, Type 23s and Type 45s.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

I have great respect for the hon. and gallant Gentleman, but if we get rid of Trident we might actually be able to cover that.

In introducing this debate, I not only raise to a wider audience my own concerns about the continuing delays to the project, but echo the concerns of the Defence Committee and many prominent former senior Royal Navy officers. When the former First Sea Lord, Admiral Lord West, appeared before the Defence Committee at the start of June, the response to my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Douglas Chapman) was that the Ministry of Defence had run out of money for these ships. We were never really given an acceptable answer from the Minister’s Department. Indeed, Admiral Lord West pre-empted the MOD response by expressing the opinion that any contention by the MOD that the problems were principally with the design would be “economical with the actualité”.

Today I will go even further than Lord West and ask the Minister specifically to address the concerns that have been put to me that the scandal of the lack of any timetable for construction of the Type 26 actually masks a wider problem of a continuing lack of investment in the Clyde yards, putting their long-term future at risk and jeopardising the jobs and skills of thousands of workers at Govan and Scotstoun.

In the lead-up to the announcement of the plans for the Type 26 programme, the workers at those two yards were offered a clear quid pro quo. There would be a significant restructuring in the workforce, including job losses, but that would be offset by investments that would guarantee jobs for a generation. At the height of the referendum on Scottish independence, the Minister’s Department explicitly tied that investment to the no vote. There would be 13 Type 26 frigates built on the Clyde, in a brand new “frigate factory”, to protect the workers from the west of Scotland’s rather inclement weather.

When we heard last November in the strategic defence and security review that the number of Type 26s being built would be reduced still further, trade unions told my Scottish National party colleagues—and others, I am sure—that that was not a huge concern, because the infrastructure investment for building the Type 26 would ensure that the new general-purpose frigate would also be built on the Clyde. So the Clyde waited—and waited, and waited—until the planned date for the cutting of steel came and went, until it emerged that there was a £750 million gap in infrastructure investment and until it became clear that the UK Government were rubber-earing our questions about the GPFF being built on the Clyde.

This is a tale of underinvestment and neglect, and I can relate to it. Perhaps—just perhaps—this is a deliberate Tory strategy, and one that has form on the Clyde. The Minister may not remember the names of former Ministers; on these Benches, we will not forget one: that of Nicholas Ridley. When Jimmy Reid, the late patriot, presented the Ridley letters, which were written in 1969, to the Scottish Trade Union Congress, they proved that the Tory Government had outrageously planned the closure of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders. By their inaction, this Government are following a well-trodden path in this regard. The Tories are making a political decision, rather than a strategic one.

In the context of current naval investment, the delay in building these vessels could be seen as excusable if there was an understanding that the ministerial promises to the highly skilled and dedicated workforce of these yards would be upheld. The fact is that these workers and my colleagues are all listening with increasing concern to the Government’s deafening silence on the subject of the GPFF, and although we appreciate that there is a shipbuilding strategy to come in November, the MOD must at least give reassurances before then.

However, even as workers on the Clyde work outside in all weathers, the Government have not been slow in coming through with investment elsewhere. In Barrow, those workers who are working on the multi-billion pound Successor programme to Trident are being kept dry by the Government investment there, which includes an indoor assembly hall. There could be no better illustration of my contention that every penny spent on Trident is a penny less spent on conventional defence. Trident costs have not always been part of the MOD budget, but now that they are, the Government’s intention to ring-fence the MOD budget and other budgets has led us to this inescapable conclusion.

It may not come as a surprise to hear that me say that, as I am a member of the Scottish National party, but I am echoing the assessment made by General Sir Richard Shirref in front of the Defence Committee last year, and the assessment of General Sir Richard Barrons, which was revealed in the Financial Times in September. Vital capabilities such as the Type 26 have been “withered by design”, as a result of the MOD priorities that place unusable weapons of mass destruction above the defence of the state. “Preserving the shop window” means workers on the Clyde worry about their job security as vital infrastructure investment is kept to a bare minimum.

I will end my opening speech by reiterating the two questions that I hope the Minister will address. First, how will the UK Government address the worrying gaps in national security caused by the ongoing failure of the MOD to build the Type 26 on time? Secondly, will the Minister give the workers of the Clyde a timetable for construction of the Type 26 and address their concerns about the total and complete lack of investment in infrastructure to support the GPFF, which would guarantee their job security beyond the medium term? I await the Minister’s answer; they await the Minister’s answer.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

The guideline for Front-Bench responses is five minutes for the Scottish National party, five minutes for Her Majesty’s Opposition and 10 minutes for the Minister. Therefore, I will call the Front-Bench spokespersons no later than 5.07 pm. Mr Docherty-Hughes will have three minutes to sum up the debate at the very end. The time between now and 5.07 pm is for Back Benchers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

I thank all hon. Members who spoke in this debate, and I thank the Minister and the shadow Minister for their participation.

The Minister talked about good news, but this is good news with no timeframe. It is just talk—a footnote in Hansard. It is of no use to the communities of Govan and Scotstoun and those on the Clyde, whose families rely on the cutting of steel. The Minister talked about Scotland’s place in the Union and said, critically, that no ships would have been built there if we had left the Union. At this rate, there will be no ships built anywhere in Britain, never mind in Scotland. We might just farm them out to South Korea—it would be a wee bit cheaper.

Yet again, there is grave concern across the Chamber. I accept the point of view of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). We may disagree on the constitution, but the history of shipbuilding in Belfast mirrors the history of shipbuilding on the Clyde. There is nothing about being better together, I am afraid. To those Members who look forward to HMNB Devonport housing the Type 26s, I say this: we need to get rid of the Type 45s first, and they are not working.

I again pressure the Minister, when the statement comes forward in November, to give us the date. Tell us when we are cutting steel. Let us get on with it.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the timetable for building Type 26 frigates on the Clyde.

Oral Answers to Questions

Martin Docherty-Hughes Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

I hope that the hon. Lady, who knows a lot about this, is not confusing number with quality or power. The ships we are now deploying—the aircraft carriers, the Type 45 destroyers and the forthcoming Type 26 frigates—are of course much more powerful than the ships that sailed to liberate the Falkland Islands. I know she will join me in welcoming the new missions of the two Type 45s, HMS Diamond and HMS Daring, which sailed in the past few weeks.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

A serious issue for recruitment policy is service family accommodation, and I am sure the Secretary of State and the Department agree with the recommendations of the Public Accounts Committee report on service family accommodation. Will he update the House on how they are dealing with CarillionAmey and its dubious failings for service personnel, and on how we make sure that this does not happen again?

[Mark Lancaster]

I am delighted to say that as a result of the recent “get well” plan, CarillionAmey is now meeting all but two of its key performance indicators. However, let me assure the House that I do not take this recent improvement for granted. I am utterly determined that the poor standard that our service personnel received in recent years will not be repeated.

Report of the Iraq Inquiry

Martin Docherty-Hughes Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

I begin with a declaration of interest: my brother served on the frontline in the Iraq war, so the decision taken on the Floor of the House that night had a direct impact on both my family and his wife and two children.

I get concerned when we discuss Islam in this House and equate it with fanaticism and fundamentalism. Many belief systems are prone to fanaticism, and I am mindful that, before 9/11, the greatest terrorist act that the US had ever suffered took place in 2005, when a Christian fanatic killed 168 people and injured nearly 1,000 over a 16-block radius in Oklahoma. If Members wish to debate fanaticism, I wish that they would bring it to the Floor of the House and debate it in detail.

Just under three months ago, I and many other colleagues participated in a debate—I was grateful to be able to sum up for my party—that called for publication of the Chilcot report. I am glad, therefore, that we are now debating its publication. Like others, I am grateful to Sir John and all those who participated in its construction for their diligent work and the manner in which they carried out their examinations. I believe that the report will go down as one of the most important documents debated on the Floor of the House and will have far-reaching consequences. I agree with the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess), however, that it has sadly been overshadowed by the political events of the last couple of weeks.

The publication and conclusion of the report will come as some comfort to the families of Army personnel such as my own and to casualties in the conflict who have been waiting for answers for far too long about why we were taken to war. I praise those families who, like their loved ones, fought the good fight and never allowed this issue to be forgotten in their quest for justice and truth. The House must note their courage in seeking answers to the conflict. The report should and must send reverberations through the whole British establishment, which has been undermined by the decision to go to war. It must, if anything, enhance the debate about the nature of our constitutional democracy and the duties of Government in their attitude to war and peace.

The words

“I will be with you, whatever”

will be forever associated with the former Member for Sedgefield and will be his political epitaph, yet the phrase is much more than that. It will forever live in and scar the hearts of those families whose relations were casualties of the war, whether as members of our armed services or Iraqi civilians. That is the true legacy of

“I will be with you, whatever.”

That must never be allowed to be forgotten. It is a reminder to all representatives that our actions have wide-ranging consequences beyond this place and our own lives.

[Bob Stewart]

For me, that phrase really blows apart my belief that Prime Ministers, regardless of political persuasion, always act in the best interests of our country. It is deeply upsetting to think that that phrase was used in a memo to the US President.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

I am grateful for the intervention from the hon. and gallant Member, whose opinion I often taken on board. I will come to his point further in my speech.

The actions in the lead-up to the invasion had a detrimental and fundamental impact on confidence in our democracy and parliamentary system. We must use the report to rebuild that confidence and trust, as we risk so much if we do not. That is particularly critical as parliamentary democracy is being attacked across the world as we speak. The report raises damning and fundamental issues about the role of the Government in the run-up to the invasion. The duty of the Government is to carry out their responsibilities in a responsible and transparent manner. In matters of war and peace, that is particularly vital, but it is now clear that, in 2003, the actions of the former Member for Sedgefield flew in the face of that.

We are told that collective responsibility has underpinned our democracy for centuries, but, as the report outlines, that system was abused and ignored by the former Member for Sedgefield. His actions are a warning to the current and future Governments that the mechanism of government itself must not be twisted and subverted by an individual to meet their own delusional, self-appointed, God-like views and that full transparency and accountability must be always ensured. To ensure accountability and transparency, and for justice to be done, those who made the decision to go to war must be brought to order.

That is why, like many other Members, I will be fully supporting the contempt motion against the former Member for Sedgefield that the general public expect and which the House needs to demand. The international community must see justice done. There will be those who question the motion, given the former premier’s public apology, but I draw this conclusion from that apology: an act of contrition requires a heartfelt, sincere and full intention not to recommit that sin. In the light of the apology given by the former Member for Sedgefield, I would advise him to seek a longer counsel with his confessor in order that he might understand the full concept of an act of contrition.

In conclusion, I wish to consider the words of the former Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament, George Reid, when a motion was placed before that place on this very matter:

“Above the doors of the Red Cross in Geneva, there is a phrase from Dostoevsky, which we should remember in time of war. It states that, in war, ‘Everyone is responsible to everyone for everything.’”

It reminds me of the journalist Michael Ware and his account of his time reporting the conflict: while we might wish to see peace and an end to war, only the dead see the end of war.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Moon]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that most helpful intervention, because it takes us back to the exact same issue that people faced when dealing with Saddam Hussein. He led people down a track that really made intervention almost inevitable. He ignored all the UN missions and he was obstructive many times to the people who went in to look for weapons.

I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman was with us on the visit, but when we met a group of tribal elders in a room in Iraq, they told us that the last time they had been in it, they had been called there by Saddam to hear a report about the changes he was introducing to the health service in Iraq. Someone had stood up at that meeting and said not that he disagreed with it, not that he thought Saddam was wrong, but that a small change might make it slightly better. The man was marched out of the room and shot at the front door of the building. That is the world that we were trying to understand.

On that occasion, too, I asked why on earth Saddam did not simply say, “I have given up the weapons of mass destruction; I do not have any. I got rid of the chemical weapons; I do not have any.” I asked why he did not just step forward and say that. I was told, “Because he was more afraid of his own people than he was of you, so he had to convince not you but his own people that he had those weapons.” That, I was told, was why he kept that myth going—not for us, not because he was afraid of our invasion, but because he was afraid of his own people if they thought he showed any weakness.

The situation was exactly the same in Libya. Gaddafi made it impossible for hon. Members to feel that we could sit back and let him say, “I am going to slaughter those people in Benghazi,” which is what he said he was going to do. We acted, but look at the consequences. In seven years’ time, are people going to stand up and criticise us for that vote? Are they going to say self-righteously, “How dare you? You did not do enough on post-conflict reconstruction.” No, we did not; and, yes, it is a mess. There are so many lessons that we have to learn.

I have been to Iraq and to Afghanistan. As a member of the Defence Committee, I believe that if we send our personnel there, we have a responsibility to go ourselves, to see for ourselves and to talk to people on the frontline and ask them, “Have you got the right kit? Have you got the right equipment? Are you being looked after all right? What do we in Parliament need to change? Tell us and we will be your voice.” Those are the lessons we have to learn.

We need to be more robust in our understanding of defence. We have to be more responsible in understanding the tasks and the responsibilities we place in front of our armed forces. We do not want to be sitting here pontificating about whether Tony Blair was a liar, or whether a jolly big “but” continued underneath the sentence when he said:

“I will be with you, whatever.”

I want us to look much more at what we have learned and what we are going to do in the future. I doubt whether many Members have read it, but the Defence Committee recently put out a report about Russia—be afraid, be very afraid, because that is coming down the track.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

I may disagree with certain elements of the hon. Lady’s speech, but does she agree that one of the problems during the period was that many of the major partners of the United Nations, including the Russian Federation, did not want to play their part?

[Mrs Moon]

I look at the Russians in Syria. I look at what the Russians did in Afghanistan. Do I want to stand alongside them? I have my standards. The hon. Gentleman may have different standards, but I am not for the barrel bombing of civilians, which the Russians think perfectly acceptable.

I am not someone who will be happy about coming to the House and just saying, “We made mistakes in Iraq.” We made mistakes in Libya. In fact, we have made mistakes in every war in which this country has been involved. What I would like to know—I am glad that the Secretary of State is present—is whether the historical analysis team that used to be in the Ministry of Defence and that analysed and taught the lessons learnt to military personnel will be reinstated, because that would have more impact than anything else that we are discussing here. That is what we need: we need our personnel to know the lessons that will be learned.

What about the South China sea? We have 19 ships. Those who are worried about Iraq should worry about the South China sea. Please let us be realistic, because the world is looking and laughing at our tearing ourselves apart. I want a confident Britain. I want a secure Britain. I want a Britain that is not afraid of making difficult decisions, a Britain that is not afraid of sticking its hand into a wasps’ nest and a Britain that is well equipped and well trained but will take on its responsibilities in the world. We will look at our mistakes and we will learn, but we will not waste our time casting rude and offensive remarks at people who lead us.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Fallon]

Members and Ministers should speak the truth in this particular House, but whether the Prime Minister of the day deliberately misled the House was investigated exhaustively by Sir John Chilcot in the report and I do not want to add any more to what he said.

I turn now to the issue raised by the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) about stabilisation. Since the Iraq war, the Government have increasingly focused first on prevention rather than intervention. We have been helping to build capability with partners and tackling the problems of fragile states at source, which has been possible only because we are now spending 0.7% of our GDP on international development. By helping fragile states to promote good governance, tackle corruption, and build capacity in defence and security forces, we can stop crises turning to the chaos that we have seen. That requires insight and understanding, often into complex situations. We have set up the cross-Government conflict stability and security fund, building on the conflict pool that had been in place for some time and supporting delivery of country or regional NSC strategies.

All that promotes a much stronger culture of cross-Government working on strategy, policy and delivery in fragile and conflict-affected countries. An example of our success in that so far was the recent deployment to Sierra Leone to combat Ebola, where diplomats, the military and officials from the Department for International Development worked alongside each other. The stabilisation unit that we set up has continued to develop, so we now have experts on hand to deploy in post-conflict situations anywhere in the world, at short notice. I have seen for myself how civilian advisers are now routinely part of military exercises, ensuring that military and civilian staff gain experience of working together before they are deployed, so that development and humanitarian needs get the consideration and attention they need, alongside the military planning.

We are now trying to make sure our armed forces are properly equipped and resourced. Not only are we meeting the NATO commitment to spend 2% of our GDP on defence, but our defence budget is growing for the first time in six years. That is on the back of the successful efforts we have been making since 2010 to return financial discipline to the Ministry of Defence and balance the defence budget. That is the foundation for the strong focus now on delivering an affordable 10-year equipment programme, allowing us to invest in the right equipment for our armed forces. That programme will total at least £178 billion on new military equipment over the next decade.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

I am glad that the Secretary of State has come to this point about members of the armed forces and their equipment. Will he expand on how this learning opportunity will support those who come back from conflict—crucially, the reservists, who take up much of that challenge and who fell off the radar after Iraq?

[Michael Fallon]

We have taken a lot of measures to involve the reserves more closely with the regulars now. After Iraq, we have been learning more rapidly the lessons from each deployment, particularly those from Afghanistan, to ensure that in future we do not have to wait for the kind of report that Sir John Chilcot has produced, and we are able to learn the lessons as we go and as units return, so that they can be applied to the next units taking up those roles.

Strategic defence reviews take the balance of investment decisions, including where our main equipment priorities lie. Routinely, decisions on how that money will then be invested rest with the service chiefs, giving them the freedom, and the responsibility, to make decisions on how best to apply their resources, and obliging them to be very clear about where they are carrying risk in respect of potential equipment failures or shortfall. Where changing circumstances or unexpected threats lead to shortfalls, we should be ready and able, quickly and effectively, to make good any shortcomings.

The Chilcot report recognises that the MOD and the Treasury, between them, worked hard to develop and refine the urgent operational requirements process. As the former Prime Minister told this House, that process did deliver results and new, improved equipment into theatre quickly in the Afghanistan campaign, responding immediately to the needs of our armed forces there. One of Chilcot’s most troubling observations is the lack back then of a clear focus of responsibility for identifying capability gaps during enduring operations. The new post of Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff for Military Capability that has since been established fulfils that role.

As well as properly equipping and resourcing our people, the Government have a duty to ensure the welfare of our armed forces and their families, and then to ensure that they suffer no disadvantage when they return to civilian life. By putting the armed forces covenant into law and committing resources to it, we are making sure that all those who put their lives on the line for this country get the help and support they need.

But however much we have done, and however much things have changed and improved since the Iraq campaign, the question for this House is to judge whether or not we have done enough. My answer is: no, of course we have not yet done enough. It is evident that the Chilcot report contains many harsh lessons still for us to learn. Given its length and forensic detail, it will take us some more time to analyse and to do it full justice. What is clear to me is that we now need to take a long, hard look at our decision-making processes and our culture to satisfy ourselves that misjudgments similar to those made at the time could not recur.