Afghanistan

Tobias Ellwood Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

As the hon. Lady says, legal proceedings are about to be instigated—we understand—so obviously it would be improper for me to say anything about them. This is a big and complicated issue. A large number of people are involved and not all of them are interpreters, who usually are quite highly educated. There are also large numbers of locally employed staff in other capacities. As I said, we are very much focused on the problem and we must have a properly thought-through and coherent approach. I give the hon. Lady an undertaking on behalf of the Government that once we have a clear plan we will announce it to the House.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

This is a landmark statement, which signals the beginning of a long draw-down in a very difficult war. Difficult questions will need to be answered as to why it has taken us so long to get to where we are today. Peace is by no means guaranteed. Does the Secretary of State agree that the welcome advances in security must be matched by improvements to governance and economic development if Najibullah is not to be repeated?

[Mr Hammond]

Yes, I am happy to agree with my hon. Friend. In particular, progress has to be made on the endemic corruption that still exists in Afghan society and throughout the Afghan economy, if the progress already made is to be built on.

Perhaps I could take this opportunity to tell the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) that I have become aware—by magic—that the net additional cost of military operations since 2001 is estimated as £17.4 billion to date.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tobias Ellwood Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I am glad to say that relationships between Afghanistan and Pakistan are improving significantly. The recent visit of the High Peace Council to Islamabad marked an important step forward in building collaborative relationships in the region. Both countries understand the threat that the Taliban and other insurgent organisations pose to their security, as well as the benefits of collaboration in dealing with that threat. We are making significant progress, but the hon. Gentleman will know that Pakistan is not a simple country, that the situation is complex and that the issue will require a lot of effort for many years to come.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

The Secretary of State will be aware that British troops preparing for deployment to Afghanistan undertake important training at the British base in Laikipia in Kenya. Will he join me in paying tribute to those who make sure that those troops receive the necessary training for Afghanistan? Will he also look into the absence of navigation aids at Laikipia air base, which means that British troops are prevented from flying directly to the training area and instead have to travel the long route via Nairobi?

[Mr Hammond]

I will indeed join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to those who make possible that valuable training facility in Kenya. He has raised an issue that I was not previously aware of; I will look into it and write to him.

2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers

Tobias Ellwood Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jones]

Indeed, and the decision was budget-led, rather than being made in the best interests of the Army.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Jones]

I will not, because of the time limit.

The conclusions of any review should also take into account the long-term strategic objectives that will be in the interests of this country, but neither Army 2020 nor the strategic defence and security review did so. The SDSR was rendered out of date within weeks of being written by events in Libya, with equipment that had been scrapped weeks before being brought back into service. Army 2020 has got rid not only of some of the British Army’s best battalions, but of some of the bravest and most dedicated members of the armed forces. The Minister must explain what his criteria are, and how he is going to maintain the necessary skills, even though many have already been lost.

We are told that the numbers have to be cut, but I want to concentrate on the way in which that is being done. There was confusion this summer as the Government let the process linger on, allowing rumours and uncertainty to continue, mainly to save the Prime Minister the embarrassment of making this announcement before Armed Forces day. There have also been substantial cuts in the numbers of our armed forces personnel. Let us remember that, when in opposition in the last few years before the general election, the Conservatives were calling for a larger Army and a larger Navy with more personnel. They have achieved exactly the opposite since they have been in power. They are saying one thing and doing another. [Interruption.] I will come to the question of budgets in a minute, if the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) will just hold his water.

These decisions are resulting in the Government having a credibility deficit on defence matters, not only with the public but with our armed forces. It is no wonder that there is confusion. The planning assumptions in the SDSR were based on an Army whose manpower was 95,000. Will the Minister tell us whether those assumptions are still being achieved, now that the number has been reduced to 82,000? Will he also be precise about the time scale for the build-up of the reserves? It has already been pointed out that there could be a capability gap in that area. I pay tribute to the members of our reserve forces. It is not surprising to discover from the continuous attitude survey of the armed forces that morale is at an all-time low.

The hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay talked about the criteria that had been applied when making the decisions. Serious questions need to be asked about how and why they were made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be the tail-end Charlie in the debate, other than the Minister, of course.

Like others, I begin by paying tribute to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) for securing the debate. It has prompted a wonderful outburst of regimental ties, which cannot be a bad thing, and has resulted in probably the smartest turnout in the Public Gallery that we have seen for years. Although we are not allowed to mention the Public Gallery, the whole House pays tribute to the service and gallantry of those seated up there. [Hon. Members: “You’ve done it twice now!”] I mentioned it twice, but I think I got away with it.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman has got away with it twice, but he knows the rules, and I am sure he will not test the patience of the House any further but instead make his excellent contribution to the debate.

[Mr Ellwood]

I have been punished with time taken away from me as well.

This debate has been a healthy and valuable reminder of the important role that our armed forces play not only in meeting our national and international obligations but in maintaining links with society and community, which my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) also stressed. The armed forces are also the force of last resort to which we turn when there are problems with, for example, flooding, foot and mouth and, most recently, the Olympics—let us remember their last-minute contribution there.

Sadly, the Opposition did not recognise, register or apologise for the dire financial situation that led to these tough decisions having to be made and the fact that there was a specific funding gap of £38 billion.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Ellwood]

I am happy to show the hon. Gentleman the National Audit Office report specifying that exact figure and showing that the Opposition stole money from future budgets.

[Mr Jones]

The NAO report does not state that. It states that the only way to get to a £36 billion figure on the procurement budget is with flat cash. Without it, the figure would be about £6 billion. I suggest he read the report first.

[Mr Ellwood]

We have read the report carefully. It is true that the last Government took money from future budgets, and of course that money cannot be spent twice. It is also true that in the good times prior to 2007 the then Government cut the defence budget in real terms, while other budgets across the board went up.

[Mr Jones]

Yes, but I remember the hon. Gentleman and other Conservative Members at the general election calling for a larger Army and Navy, but what have they done in power? They have cut, cut, cut.

[Mr Ellwood]

We did not call for a larger armed forces at the election itself. It was our intention. It is where we would like to go. When we made these announcements, we were not expecting Labour to have ruined the Treasury numbers, as it did.

As has been repeated again and again, Labour made a mess of something else. I refer to the madness of its procurement strategy, which wasted billions of pounds in overruns. The worst of it was delaying the carrier build by one year, which cost £1 billion alone. Given that the capitation cost of a brigade is £100 million, let us think how many battalions we could have saved. To take an operational perspective, for years our troops in Afghanistan were forced to use Snatch Land Rovers, but suddenly the last Government woke up to the fact that they were not adequate and there was a flurry of buying off the shelf. The Cougar, the Mastiff, the Ridgback—all these vehicles were purchased off the shelf, wasting huge sums of money, while our armed forces suffered on the front line. All those funding issues had a knock-on effect on the decisions we are debating today and the decisions for the future, not only on battalion and brigades, but on the order of battle.

I am an infanteer—I served in the Royal Green Jackets, another regiment that disappeared under the last Government—but I am also a national politician. We are all national politicians, and we must consider the capability of our entire armed forces—the demand to save ships; the demand to save planes, such as the Harrier, which has been debated by this House many times; the demand to save intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance capability; and, of course, the demand to save regiments, not least my own. As we have heard, the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers has an amazingly proud history, dating back to James II —I am sorry that the Father of the House is not here to confirm that—and it has had an impact not just in its own area, but right across Britain as a whole. When the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers was formed, it was given the most up-to-date weapon of the day, the fusil, which gave it its name, and in the first world war it had a total of 196 battalions in operation. How different the picture is today.

We have heard some powerful arguments, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister says in response to the support we have heard for the Fusiliers. However, I would also say to him—I hope he listens carefully to this proposal—that if it is the Government’s intention to reconfigure the balance of our armed forces between regular forces and the Territorial Army more towards the Australian and American models and to increase the size of Territorial Army units, and if it is also the Minister’s intention to decide to disband the 2nd Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, then why not allow this fine battalion to configure immediately into a Territorial Army unit? I absolutely accept that that is not an ideal solution, but it would prevent that footprint in history and the contribution made by this amazing battalion from disappearing in their entirety.

[Mr Robathan]

My hon. Friend will know that the Territorial review is continuing. We have had the review and we are now looking at the details, but I assure him that we will look carefully at that proposal as we expand the Territorial Army, or the reserve.

[Mr Ellwood]

I am grateful to the Minister. I appreciate that that is not the solution that many hon. Members, on both sides of the House, are looking for, but if it is the Government’s intention to reduce the size of our battalions, my proposal would seem to be one way of maintaining the future prosperity and history of this wonderful regiment.

[Bob Stewart]

That is a very good idea. The regiment can go into purdah—that is, it can go into the reserve Army for a while—and if we need it, it can come back. That has happened in the past and it can happen again, and it is an extremely good way to proceed.

[Mr Ellwood]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention; I am grateful. I now look forward, as we all do, to hearing what the Minister has to say about this important subject.

Afghanistan (Force Protection)

Tobias Ellwood Excerpts

Monday 17th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Of course. Our military commanders are absolutely clear that force protection is our No. 1 priority and that it will remain so during the draw-down. As the hon. Gentleman rightly suggests, during the draw-down of a force there is a very careful balance to be struck between the speed of extraction and maintaining adequate force protection. Much of the debate taking place inside the military about the trajectory of draw-down is about how to maintain adequate force protection during that period.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

Our military are doing an incredible job, which is being made all the more difficult by these insider attacks, which have increased from three ISAF deaths in 2008 to 51 this year. Will the Secretary of State comment on reports that suggest that the policeman who killed the two British soldiers was actually related to a Taliban leader? What is being done by the Afghan recruitment process to make sure that this does not happen in the future?

[Mr Hammond]

I have seen no intelligence myself to suggest that the policeman in question, who was killed, was related to a Taliban leader. I am afraid that the facts of life in Afghanistan, with its huge extended families, mean that we will often find that members of the security force are distantly related to people who are on the other side of this fight. That is just the nature of the country.

Defence Equipment and Support

Tobias Ellwood Excerpts

Tuesday 17th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nick Harvey]

Nobody would suggest that everything that occurred under previous systems was not good. Clearly, there are exemplars—some contracts worked well. I am sure the facility in the hon. Lady’s constituency will be a great success and that it will support employment for many years to come, but the fact that we will have a more private sector-rooted procurement body will not have any negative impact on such contracts.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

The shadow Minister spoke of the budgetary challenges facing all Governments, but was quick to gloss over her legacy—the budget was taken away from the MOD by Labour and given to the Treasury. Does the Minister share my surprise at Labour Members questioning the new avenues of efficiency when, if they looked at the National Audit Office major projects report 2010, they would see that the majority of major projects overran, including the A400M, the Astute and the Typhoon?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The question was simply far too long. I do not know why the hon. Gentleman is smirking about it—

[Mr Ellwood]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. He has abused his privilege and ought to learn from it.

Army 2020

Tobias Ellwood Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

It is no good the hon. Gentleman saying “without any obfuscation”. He is asking a ridiculous question. [Hon. Members: “Oh!] Yes, he is. With no obfuscation, the answer is: no one, as a result of today’s announcement. As a result of the announcement by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset on 18 July 2011, there will be further redundancies, as we reduce the numbers in the regular Army by 19,000 over time.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

I commend the Secretary of State for yet again coming to the House and taking the tough decisions, the need for which we inherited from the previous Labour Government. Will he join me in expressing disappointment at the cries of “Shame” that came across when the regimental names were read out? Under Labour’s watch, we lost four battalions. The Royal Green Jackets—the battalion I served with—the Light Infantry and the Devon and Dorsets all disappeared, and under its watch we also lost 18 TA infantry regiments. I am pleased to see those numbers now going up. Will he confirm that we might be able to learn lessons from the United States and Australia as we rebalance the ratio between the Regular Army and the TA?

[Mr Hammond]

And it was under Labour’s watch that the fiscal problem that underlies today’s announcement was allowed to build up. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: we can learn lessons from the United States and Australia, which are two examples that the Chief of the General Staff and his staff have looked at carefully in formulating today’s proposals.

Carrier Strike Capability

Tobias Ellwood Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

The hon. Lady will remember that I spent three and a half years in a shadow Treasury brief, during which time I developed a healthily jaundiced view of the Ministry of Defence’s procurement process. Now that I am inside the Department and see the process from the other side, I understand that it is a little bit more complicated than nipping down to the local supermarket to buy a carton of eggs or a bottle of milk. These are immensely complex projects. The way they typically work is that they start with a high-level estimate, informed by the best information available. One then commits funds—this costs money—to do a more detailed appraisal that identifies the technical and financial challenges and risks around the project. That is precisely what we have done. In terms of the appropriate management of a large, complex project, the MOD has followed exactly the right process. It has delivered us the facts to which I referred, and we have drawn the appropriate conclusions from them.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

The Opposition should show a little more humility and gloat less on the subject of their responsibility towards the Royal Navy. It was Labour that quibbled over the design for 10 years, and Labour that told the workers to down tools, which cost £1.6 billion. It was Labour that sacked the Sea Harrier—and indeed the Ark Royal—and Labour that cut the number of Type 45s from 12 to six. That is the maritime legacy that this Government have inherited.

[Mr Hammond]

I agree.

Afghanistan (Civilian Killings)

Tobias Ellwood Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nick Harvey]

I do not think that the lesson to be drawn from this is that we should speed up a process which is moving as fast as it possibly can already. The hon. Gentleman should bear in mind that the Afghan national security forces are being grown from a cold start. I think that the progress they have made is remarkable: they have grown in number, but, far more impressively, they have grown in competence, in their quality of leadership, and in their ability to plan and execute operations. I think that hurrying the process at this stage, or passing the baton to them prematurely, would undermine all the progress that has been made. We are pushing the process of handover as fast as we possibly can, and if we were to cut and run now, we would risk undoing the progress that we have made.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

I echo what has been said about the improvements to the Afghan national army. We should not forget that that is due not just to British forces, but to the American forces who have trained them. We should also not forget that this was an isolated incident, and that more than 2,000 Americans have been killed. There will be some who call for urgent withdrawal, but I stress what has already been said by Members on both sides of the House. This is not just about security; it is also about governance, and I hope that that will be discussed at the forthcoming summit in Chicago.

[Nick Harvey]

The Chicago summit will provide an opportunity for the international community to make long-term commitments both to the future security of Afghanistan after the combat role has ended and to its future prosperity. We will look to countries around the world—countries that have been involved in ISAF, but also many others that have not—to come forward and make commitments to Afghanistan’s long-term future. We want all stakeholders in the equation to understand that the international community remain committed to the future of Afghanistan, and that simply ending a combat role at the end of 2014 does not mean in any sense that we are walking away or leaving them to it.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Tobias Ellwood Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Murphy]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that I said right at the beginning that I am keen to have a bipartisan approach in Afghanistan, and that will continue. There is sometimes a temptation with these very difficult, often impractical, problems to give in to the temptation to seek and find synthetic differences, but as I have said before at the Dispatch Box it is important that this year there should be a genuine political process to match the military might of the past decade. That did not happen last year, and it should be compulsory this year. The Bonn conference was a failure in that regard, but I did not attack our Government for that from the Dispatch Box because it was an international failure to formulate the political strategy that that country so badly needs.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

I appreciate that the right hon. Gentleman was not in post during the relevant period, but does he regret not conducting a defence review in the past decade? A review might have helped to identify the fact that Snatch Land Rovers were not appropriate in Afghanistan. We went through a period of bizarre procurement in which the Ridgback, the Cougar, the Vector, the Jackal and the Mastiff were produced one after another and bought off the shelf to try to identify something that would work in Afghanistan. If we had held a defence review, perhaps we would have seen that the conduct and style of war was changing before our eyes and we could then have ensured that we sent our armed forces to Afghanistan with the right equipment.

[Mr Murphy]

The hon. Gentleman has great and varied experience, but I think he will fairly accept that the urgent operational requirements worked well in Afghanistan, and after 9/11 we updated our defence review with a new chapter. In a debate that is intended to be relatively thoughtful rather than our traditional cut and thrust, it is fair to say that the nature of the conflict in Afghanistan changed and surprised many people, including those who were engaged in it day to day. As we reflect on what happened in Afghanistan, it is crucial that we learn deeply the lessons of the conflict, in the hope that we never have to deploy them, but in the fear that on occasion it might become necessary.

I was making the wider point that events in north Africa and the middle east continue to prove the uncertainty and unpredictability of the future shape of conflict. Coupled with the Arab spring, the growing global population, the threat of climate change, new information technology and biotechnologies, nuclear proliferation and cyber-attack, we live in what is, by consensus, an era of dramatic new global security challenges. All that means that it is sensible for the Government to invest the £650 million they have announced for cyber-security. The continuing emphasis on soft power and multilateralism to supplant the inevitable capability shortfalls resulting from spending constraint is vital. It was crucial in good times, but it is compulsory in these difficult times of budget cuts in a world of flux.

--- Later in debate ---

[Thomas Docherty]

I am most grateful to the Minister. He is obviously very clever, because he has led me straight on to my next point, which is about the replacement for the Invincible class, the Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carrier. He perhaps forgot to mention that, even some time after 2020, when we eventually get a functioning aircraft carrier, it will only be part-time. We will only be able to operate it for perhaps 150 days of the year, so we must be really hopeful that those who seek to attack us only do it on the five or six months a year when we are able to respond. It reminds me of Asterix the Gaul and the scene where he comes to Britain and the British have gone home at 5 o’clock to have their tea. That is pretty much the kind of part-time Navy that we will have if the Minister gets his way.

[Mr Ellwood]

I was hoping to resist the temptation to intervene, but I want to back up my hon. Friend the Minister and put in perspective the hon. Gentleman’s argument. He is trying to get into the tactics of how a battle is operated. What does he want to fly off these aircraft carriers? I am afraid his Government got rid of the Sea Harriers, so he would not be able to use the Storm Shadow, the Brimstone or any of the guns, because the Harriers did not exist—[Interruption.]

[Thomas Docherty]

I am going to continue with my speech, because it is my time that I am sacrificing. The hon. Gentleman tries to make it a false choice, as he always does, but he was at the heart of the decision making. Let us not forget that he was the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the former Secretary of State. It was his bright idea, I suspect, to get rid of the carrier, because the other Ministers are all far too clever to do that.

The choice between Typhoon, Tornado and Harrier is a false one. I have never accepted and the Defence Committee has never accepted the false choice made by the current Government, following the Treasury-driven cuts. We will see price gouging and there will be a significant rise in the cost of the Queen Elizabeth class carrier, not because of the Aircraft Carrier Alliance—I have some fantastic workers in my constituency, whom the Ministers and others have been to see, and they are delivering in Plymouth, in the north-east, on the Clyde and over at Birkenhead—but because of the rushed decision. We will have to buy cats and traps off-the-shelf from the Americans at a price-gouged cost of up to £2 billion because due diligence was not done on whether it would work. The prices are going up because of the short-term decisions. We have no idea how we will refuel the aircraft because of the decision to switch from the short take off, vertical landing—or STOVL—variant to carriers and that will also involve significant costs.

In the last minute of my time, I want briefly to talk about Scotland. The Scottish National party is not here today because its Members have gone into hiding. The SNP defence policy unravelled last week within hours of its being unveiled. Sheer anger was felt by communities around Scotland at the betrayal by that party, which, after years of claiming that Scotland did not receive what it called its fair share of spending, has admitted that it would spend even less on defence. After campaigning, as the SNP claimed, to save RAF Leuchars, it has announced that it would close RAF Leuchars and RAF Kinloss. In a separate Scotland, there would be no Rosyth dockyard and no Clyde shipbuilding. Companies would be pulling out of Scotland. There are also serious concerns for the rest of the United Kingdom. How would we deliver the deterrent? How would we secure the high north? How would the military be put together?

I hope that one of the Committees of the House will find an opportunity in the months ahead to scrutinise those very important issues.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

I am grateful to catch your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker. Like others, I declare my interest as a member of the Territorial Army. There seem to be enough of us here to form a small platoon, which would perhaps be interesting, although such a platoon would come only from this side of the Chamber. Indeed, there is a noticeable absence of support for today’s debate from the Opposition Benches—[Interruption]—other than from the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane), who has just walked into the Chamber.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), who, with his eloquent speech, raised the standard of this debate—we were getting into the weeds a little bit, talking about the tactics of the SDSR rather than the strategy. We were starting to talk about the individual bits of kit that we enjoy, like or are in love with—we are always quick to quote a retired general or admiral saying, “This is exactly what we need”—rather than stepping back and asking what the strategy is and where we fit in the bigger picture. Fundamentally, the SDSR is about how we protect our people, our allies, our economy and our infrastructure—indeed, our way of life—from the potential risks that we face. It is about how, on occasions working with our allies, we apply the instruments of power to influence and shape the global environment, and how potential tactical threats affect us.

The shadow Secretary of State did not want to get partisan when I intervened on him, but it is important to reflect on what happened over the last decade. Not only did the previous Government not have an SDSR, which was bad time management, but not having one affected our military’s ability to perform. During that decade we saw the September 11 attacks, we were involved in enormous campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we had the July 2005 bombings. The type of threat changed, compared with the cold war stance that we were used to. There were huge changes in operational tactics too, with the introduction of drone warfare, advances in missile systems and stealth technology—ways to introduce force multipliers that did not exist before. The conduct of war also changed, with an emphasis on stabilisation operations as much as war fighting, as illustrated in Iraq and Afghanistan. The kinetic phases of those campaigns were over very quickly, but the lack of an unconditional surrender meant that we then got into protracted stabilisation and peacekeeping operations.

I was saddened to visit Sandhurst not long ago and find that it had only just introduced courses in CIMIC—civil-military co-operation—which are required to enable the military to liaise and work with civilian counterparts, NGOs and the Department for International Development in those other operations, which start in the aftermath of the war fighting. That is what we now need to get good at; that is what was missing in Afghanistan and Iraq. Had the Labour Government held a defence review, those issues would have been identified. However, they did not, and we failed to take the opportunity to fundamentally modernise our armed forces. I think the Chilcot inquiry will reflect that. It will show that our armed forces found themselves in two campaigns with the wrong numbers and the wrong equipment, and without a clear strategy.

I firmly agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border about our ability to work more cohesively with other Departments. We need to be able to work with DFID and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to ensure that our strategy—the purpose of sending our military into danger—is absolutely crystal clear. It is clear from General Petraeus’s book on counter-insurgency that it is not enough simply to defeat the enemy; we now have to win over the hearts and minds of the locals—the friends that we are trying to support.

The triangle consisting of security at the top, then governance, followed by development and reconstruction has still not been developed. In Afghanistan, the security aspects took far too long to get right. Huge questions still arise as to why we ended up in Helmand province anyway. Those of us who know the history of that country will be aware of the treaty of Gandamak and the battle of Kandahar. Events such as those tell us that we are not particularly welcome in that patch of Afghanistan, given the history there. There might have been other places in which we could have been more strategically helpful. Lessons have been learned from those engagements and put into practice in Libya, where there has been a far more coherent effort, not only within our own Departments but in regard to whom we work with, including our NATO allies.

Labour missed a massive opportunity to understand what exactly our military are expected to do. Our armed forces were placed in danger and given kit that was out of date. I mentioned Snatch Land Rovers in an intervention. Too often at that time, other bits of kit were thrown at the military for testing, to see whether they would work. They included vehicles such as the Jackal, the Cougar, the Vector and the Ridgback. Eventually, the Mastiff came along and proved to be the most suitable for use in those operations. Things should not have had to work in that way, however. A security strategy could have helped in that context.

Procurement errors have been made. The Nimrod has been mentioned many times in the debate. The contract for its development was signed in 1996, and it was due for delivery in 2003, yet not one aircraft ever received a certificate of airworthiness. The Sea Harriers have been cut, which means that there is now no chance of us ever putting a carrier in. The existing Harriers do not have guns; they do not have the Mauser weapon systems. They cannot carry the Brimstone or the Storm Shadow, yet those missiles were critical to the success of the action in Libya.

We get stuck with certain favourite bits of kit. The Apache is now in a new dimension. It travels at two thirds the speed of the Harrier and fires the Hellfire missile, which is just as potent as any of our other weapons. We hear that the Falklands are under threat. We have an aircraft carrier there, so the base already exists, and it has the Typhoon and the Tornado. The Argentines spend only £3 billion on their defence budget, compared with our £30 billion. I believe that we should place the question of Argentina in a separate context in relation to the SDSR. It is a distraction from where we are going.

Finally, I should like to congratulate the Defence team on what it is doing. I think that we are finally progressing—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order.

BAE Systems

Tobias Ellwood Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right on both counts. It would suit the people whose minds we are trying to change very well if we fought against ourselves on party political or geographical grounds. Much as I look back with amusement and fondness on past cricketing experiences in the wars of the roses, those wars need not be repeated here and now.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend makes a powerful argument, much of which I agree with, but in the interests of balance, will he concede that there is another side to the coin? The Apache helicopter, which we purchased, made by Boeing, was built in the UK, not by the American work force. We also make kit that is exported: the empennage—the rear section—of the F-35, designed for an American market, is made here, and the M777 Howitzer is made in this country and exported. There is another side to the coin.

[Mr Davis]

There is another side to the coin, but since my hon. Friend draws me on that point, I am afraid that on one side there is a pound, and on the other there is a ha’penny. I was the Public Accounts Committee Chairman for five years, and I looked at the issue in close detail, and I have to tell him that the Americans are far more aggressive and effective than we are when it comes to protection of their intellectual property.

The proposals have all sorts of strategic implications. One of the things that we looked at 10 years ago—I am probably not breaking too many secrets—was the advanced medium-range air-to-air missile. We were not even allowed technological knowledge of AMRAAM because of the Americans’ defences, and that made it less effective for us. This is quite an area of battle. Indeed, the previous Defence Secretary made quite an issue of this, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) will know, and will understand only too well. We have not fought our corner very well, and I am afraid that BAE Systems is culpable, as part of that. It has been very poor in terms of its strategic decisions on civil and military aviation, and when it comes to protecting our intellectual property.

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[Alan Johnson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is precisely the point. We can compare those two British companies. Around 96% of GlaxoSmithKline’s sales are abroad, but it is making a decision as a British company to invest in Britain and open manufacturing plants at a difficult time, and it is of course helped by the patent box that was agreed by the Labour and Conservative parties. It is an example that BAE should follow.

As thousands of highly skilled BAE employees contemplate a miserable Christmas, it is time for the company to engage properly with its work force in order to ensure that their important skills are retained in aerospace manufacturing and that aerospace manufacturing is retained on the Humber. We are 58 days into the statutory 90-day process, but there is no sign whatsoever that BAE is doing anything other than going through the motions. Indeed, the site director at Brough told my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) only last week that nothing would change during this consultation process. He told her that they were going though the motions. When the 90 days end on Boxing day, it will still be 27 September as far as BAE’s plans are concerned.

The unions are working hard to hold the company to its statutory obligations. The union representatives involved are very good and need no advice from me, but if I was a union rep involved in the case, I would seriously consider seeking a protective order against BAE for its lack of engagement.

We believe that BAE’s three manufacturing sites should be retained. The company should stand by its loyal work force in difficult times, so that when the good times return it has sufficient manufacturing capacity in this country to deal with the extra work.

All the signs are that military aerospace will expand dramatically from about 2016. At the very least, BAE should adopt the intelligent proposals put forward by its own executive group at Brough in order to mitigate the significant risk inherent in the company’s plans by retaining crucial assembly and sub-assembly at Brough for the duration of the next Hawk acquisition contract, thereby saving about one third of the jobs until 2016.

[Mr Ellwood]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech, but will he elaborate on his statement that the defence industry expects to expand with orders in 2016? From the angle that I see the issue, the United States, NATO countries and so forth are doing exactly the opposite: this is the area in which budgets are being cut; defence is being affected.

[Alan Johnson]

That is true, and I will turn to civil aerospace in a moment, but all the experts in the area, including the unions handling the situation, expect that from 2016 there will be an increase, particularly in Hawk orders. We are looking at the home of Hawk in Brough, and it is going through a difficult time, but most expect that, if we can get to 2016 and through the next difficult period in this country and throughout the world, there will be significant opportunities in military engineering.

The executive group at Brough has put forward a proposal to safeguard what is probably the Saudi Arabia contract, to ensure that there are no dangers to it and, therefore, to save about one third of the work force until 2016. There is a desperate shortage of necessary skills to meet booming demand in the commercial aerospace sector by companies such as Rolls-Royce and EADS, so the retention of some Hawk work should be combined with facilitating and incentivising the transfer of packages of commercial aerospace work to Brough. It is an attractive site, with exceptional access by air, sea and land. It has the machinery, the layout and the work force that commercial aerospace companies need, and it can be utilised without causing job cuts elsewhere.

It is time for fresh thinking. As the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden has pointed out, we are in the crazy position of using taxpayers’ money to destroy skilled jobs in an economy that is desperate for high-value manufacturing to expand. It is time for an ethical and, even, patriotic approach by big profitable international companies, such as BAE, to the problems that this country faces. The Government have an important role to play in such a strategy, but the prime responsibility rests with the company.

I have a final quotation from Andrew Witty. He says:

“I…believe one of the reasons we have seen an erosion of trust…in big companies is they’ve allowed themselves to be seen as detached from society…They’ve allowed it to be perceived that it’s all about money.”

BAE needs to avoid being a “mid-Atlantic floating entity” and to demonstrate that it is a British company that cares about British society and British jobs. The work force at Brough have been loyal to BAE in difficult times. BAE needs to reciprocate that loyalty now.

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[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be the final contributor to this important debate, and I begin, as others have done, by congratulating the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) on securing it. Some interesting messages have emerged from it, both for the Government and for BAE Systems.

My right hon. Friend began by highlighting the importance of these decisions and the impact they will have on families where redundancies are involved, not only in his constituency—in Brough, which I know well, as I was married just up the road in Kilnwick—but across the country, as 3,000 jobs are going. The defence manufacturing industry can be a ruthless and competitive business, and we must bear in mind the impact on individuals, families and communities. He also mentioned that Britain no longer makes jets. That is true, but we do make an awful lot of parts. We are part of various consortiums, and that is the way forward, as it is in the car manufacturing industry. It is difficult to think of aircraft that do not utilise engines from Rolls-Royce, wings from Airbus and so on. That is the way of the world and we can at least be proud of the extent to which we are part of the great defence consortiums.

The Minister was right to remind the House that this country still has the second largest defence industry in the world, and our share of exports has indeed increased in the past year. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden also mentioned the concern that jobs involved in putting together these products, particularly the Hawk, are going to India. He countered my intervention by saying that I was absolutely right and that although we do export the M-777 and the empennage—the rear end—of the F-35, perhaps BAE Systems could look more wisely at things, particularly future upstream developments such as the Mantis, the Taranis, the Type 26 and other intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance—ISTAR—assets which could be built in the UK rather than elsewhere. He also made an important point about executive pay, and restraint could be shown there.

We are being affected by an economic slow-down and that does cause a review of budgets, not least in the United States. That is why we are affected by what is happening with the F-35B, because it is American orders that are having an impact on us. That is not a decision made by our Government. However, this Government have had to make some very difficult decisions. Along with other Departments, the MOD received a cut of 7.5%. In addition, as confirmed by the Audit Commission’s report in 2009, there was a £38 billion overspend on procurement projects that had to be contained.

That raises the question about the involvement of the Government: how far do any Government get involved in the decision-making process of the defence industry, particularly in securing orders? As has been mentioned, there is a decision to be made about whether to buy off the shelf or have procurement processes. The first step is to have a strategic defence policy and a review to make sure that there is clarity about where we want to go. Let us consider what happened in Afghanistan. The replacement of the Snatch Land Rover took some time, and the Cougar, Vector, Jackal, Mastiff and Ridgback were procured off the shelf and then, in one way or another, got rid of. At the same time, BAE Systems made the RG31, a mine protected vehicle used in South Africa, and the MRAP—mine resistant ambush protected—vehicles, which were used by the Americans, but both those were ignored.

Mention has been made of the Nimrod, but that is a very sad tale indeed. The first contract was signed in 1996 for delivery in 2003, but by 2010, when the coalition Government were formed, not a single aircraft had been delivered. The cost of each aircraft had also jumped from £133 million to £455 million, which is a huge increase. This aircraft was of course based on the Comet design—it was a 1960s design. That was an appalling procurement project and eventually it had to come to an end.

I shall end my contribution by saying that I am very pleased that we are having this debate, as there are huge lessons to be learned in the procurement process. I am pleased that we have come forward with a defence industrial strategy. Redundancies are always regrettable and I hope that BAE Systems and the Government will take heed of the various messages that have come from hon. Members on both sides of the House in this debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House urges BAE Systems to act to preserve the UK’s defence production skills base and, as a recipient of enormous resources over many years from the UK taxpayer, to deploy those resources in such a way as to protect the nation’s manufacturing capability.