[Mrs. Joan Humble in the Chair]
Westminster Hall debates, 27 October 2009, 11:41 am
The point that I want to make to my hon. Friend is that there is a vast amount of highly technical equipment in a Mastiff, including communications equipment, none of which comes cheap. There is the equipment for electronic counter-measures, which are one way of trying to deal with some IEDs. A lot of work has to go on ensuring that the latest iteration of the electronic counter-measures equipment does not interfere with the radio communications equipment. I hope that that thumbnail sketch shows the huge complexity of producing those vehicles to what is called theatre entry standard. It is very expensive.
My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton referred to the Ridgback. I have driven in a Ridgback at DVD, the defence vehicles display, which is a great exhibition. This year there was a self-contained area just parading the armoured vehicles so that one could see their range at a glance. It was truly impressive. We have certainly moved on in the past four years, since my hon. Friend and I first expressed our concerns. However, at £650,000 for four seats, one must ask how much value for money that is, to achieve the military effect. There is a further problem because from inside those vehicles it is pretty difficult to see outside. In a Warrior, of course, one cannot see anything. Situational awareness is very important to the soldier. That is why the Jackal is so popular. It is not an expensive toy. It is a very serious bit of kit, which has tremendous off-road capability—and off road one has less chance of giving the enemy the planned route, and in theory that extends the options. We now have a range of equipment, but we should keep costs constantly under review, because what matters is not the individual platforms but the capability, and capability can be delivered in different ways. I slightly resile from concentration on individual bits of kit, although of course that is the Minister's responsibility. As the shadow Minister, I have responsibility too, but I should want us to focus in our mind's eye on capability. What do we need to do to achieve the effect? We may do something in a Ridgback, but we may do it in a helicopter.
The scene is one of constant change; it is not static. It was very interesting to talk to a soldier at DVD. He had come back from Afghanistan earlier in the year. I asked him about the Viking. The only time I went out in the desert outside Camp Bastion I was in a Viking. I thought it was a horrible bit of kit—claustrophobic; I did not like it at all. However, when it was introduced about three years ago it was the bee's knees. Everyone thought the Viking was a superb bit of kit. The guy I spoke to said, "Our equipment only has to be out there for a couple of weeks and the enemy has ascertained exactly where its vulnerable points are." That makes the challenge to policy makers and procurers very demanding indeed. The enemy have a vote in this. It is easy to think of the enemy as primitive. Their attitudes are primitive, but their ability to use every bit of modern technology to advance their cause is not.
We, too, must adjust. Our procurement programme must be much more adaptable and agile than it is. The issues are highlighted in the Bernard Gray report, which we all regard as being in part the statement of the blindingly obvious, but also a good encapsulation of where the problems are. There is a need for agility in decision-making. The good news is that industry is responding. I do not know whether my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton was able to go to the defence equipment exhibition at London docklands last month. I know that the Minister was there. There was a fantastic array of the capabilities that are being produced by industry, which is really responding. My hon. Friend mentioned Ricardo and its kit. There are many others coming forward offering a plethora of vehicles, and my hon. Friend will be pleased that most have V-shaped hulls; people have been reading what she and others have said. Industry is responding. It is necessary to have a procurement system that can also respond quickly.
My hon. Friend has a point when she says that we need things cheap but cheerful. It is a rather inadequate expression, for me, but it encapsulates the things on which we need industry and the services to focus their mind: they should not over-specify. It is not relevant to this debate, but we shall have a new future surface combatant—a new ship. I and my colleagues keep telling the Royal Navy not to over-specify it. What the Royal Navy needs is ships, but we should not over-specify its equipment.
I repeat what I said earlier about Afghanistan. It is easy to say that the enemy is primitive and that we need only a few turboprops.
Gerald Howarth (Shadow Minister, Defence; Aldershot, Conservative)
Defensive aid suites would have to be put on and would add weight. The Tucano has a payload of 1.5 tonnes, and I think that the Harrier's is about three times that. The defensive aid suite does not deliver payload, it is expensive and adds to the cost, and it renders aircraft more vulnerable as they are slower flying and so on. I have flown the Tucano and the PC-21. I commend the latter to the Minister as the best aeroplane for the future training of Royal Air Force pilots. As the first non-company man to fly it, I can say that it is a magnificent bit of kit. There is a real role for less sophisticated equipment, but we must be careful.
I turn to a point raised by the hon. Member for Teignbridge, which is that military planners have to plan for the worst. It is important that we are not seduced into saying that Afghanistan is "the" war not "a" war. Yes, there is an imperative to win in Afghanistan, but it is a seriously dangerous world out there. Not only do we have Iran, but Russia has invaded a sovereign country, laying claim to 450,000 miles of the Arctic seabed, and North Korea is developing and selling nuclear weapons. We live in a dangerous world, and the idea that we should surrender some of our capability at this time would, it seems to me, make it more dangerous.
General Richards is a superb chief of the general staff and a good man. I know him well and like him, and he makes many intelligent points, including about the range of capabilities, something that I shall touch on as I conclude. However, I believe that we must to try to adapt our equipment to whatever military operations are immediate. We have the Tornado and Harrier for close air support, which is vital, and both aircraft have performed well in that role, but they have a role also in the more strategic campaign, so adaptability will be an important factor. However, we cannot afford to make do without an air superiority fighter. We do not know what is around the corner. In recent conflicts, the air environment has been benign; there has been no serious air threat and our ground forces were therefore protected from air attack. If our ground forces are vulnerable to air attack—well, I need only mention the name of Simon Weston to make people realise what can happen if we do not have air superiority.
My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton did not, I think, touch on the subject of our continental partners. However, I can say that it is pretty reprehensible that our NATO partners in Europe have failed to come to our support. At a meeting with the German Defence Minister earlier this year, I asked, "Why didn't you send us some helicopters?" He said, "Oh, we have an election coming up, and in any case we need the approval of the German Parliament." Our European partners should understand the need to step up to the mark. They have helicopters, and they should make them available to support the campaign in Afghanistan, which is at the heart of military operations.
I have some criticism of the Government. They were slow to respond, as I said. In a spirit of reasonableness, I can say that they have now produced a range of vehicles. However, I do not like the way in which Ministers are lauding the fact that they have spent £3.6 billion on urgent operational requirements as if it were some kind of fantastic largesse. It was the very least they could have done for our armed forces, given the nature of the war that we are fighting. The idea that it should have come from the core Ministry of Defence budget is utterly perverse. That is exactly what urgent operational requirements are for, and that is what they should have delivered.
If we are at war, then of course we need the kit, but there is a price to be paid. There is no through-life capability management attached to urgent operational requirements. As we heard from the hon. Member for Teignbridge, the lack of fleet commonality is another problem, so kit does not fit into the core programme but stands alone. There is also a lack of spares, which was summarised by the Public Accounts Committee in its report earlier this year. That includes a shortage of spares for the Mastiff, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton said, is doing a fantastic job out there.
Finally—I wish to leave the Minister plenty of time to answer the many points that have been made—the defence review that the Government want to hold and which we will hold if we are returned to power next year must be based on foreign policy. However, it must take account of threats and potential threats in the wider world. My hon. Friend cited General Sir David Richards as saying that we could not afford the full range of capabilities. Yes, we know that the Government have destroyed our economy, but we are nevertheless one of the major economies in the world. Instead of asking whether we can afford to remain a major world power, we should ask whether we can afford not to. Serious consequences will flow if the nation should decide that it wants to concentrate on Afghanistan and retreat from the rest of the world. Given that the world is such a dangerous place, that is something that we cannot afford to do. We must resist it. Serious consequences would arise were we to retreat into our shell.
I conclude by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton for all that she has done in highlighting the importance of kit for our troops in the field. She has done the House, and those on the front line, a great service by doing so.
Quentin Davies (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Ministry of Defence; Grantham & Stamford, Labour)
I congratulate Ann Winterton on her success in securing this debate. It is not only right and natural but highly desirable at a time when our forces are fighting in a distant country in the interest of the security of this nation and given the tragic losses that have resulted, that Parliament should focus on that conflict and that Members of Parliament should probe the Government on matters such as our procurement policies and our choice of vehicles and helicopters. I congratulate her on doing so. As Mr. Howarth rightly said, the hon. Lady has a superb mastery of her brief. I am always amazed by the detail of her knowledge and the homework that she does on all kinds of equipment—not merely what equipment has been procured but what we might have procured. It is a complex and wide field, so I sincerely congratulate her.
The Government are, of course, 100 per cent. committed to and focused on doing the very best for our fighting men and women, but I sometimes think that we tell the enemy too much about what we are doing and about our capabilities and what we are planning. On certain subjects, such as counter-IEDs, I shall be discreet and cautious in what I say, but as the hon. Lady raised that important matter at the outset, I can say that not only are we focused on the subject—I meet the team who work on it systematically every two months to go through exactly what is being done—but we collaborate closely with our allies on the subject. Without going into detail, I can say that our relationship with the Americans on that subject is about as close as it possibly could be. I hope that we are not leaving any stone unturned. The hon. Lady sounded anxious about whether we had close co-operation with our allies, but I assure her that we most certainly do. It is essential to all of us because we all face the same threat, fighting as we are in the same cause.
Not entirely surprisingly, the hon. Lady dwelt at some length on the armoured and protected vehicles that we have in Afghanistan, and she mentioned the Snatch. I do not want to disagree with anything she said about Snatch, but it was not a vehicle that was conceived for the Afghan campaign. As I have said before in the House, it is inevitable in every war that we do not start off with exactly the kind of equipment that we would ideally like to have. We take into account the terrain, the threat and the enemy tactics, and improve things as we go.
My philosophy is that our procurement programme should be actively managed and that we should aim to secure a constant pipeline of improvement, whereby at any one time, we buy the best equipment that money can buy, we ship it to theatre as rapidly as we can—after we have trained people on it—and, while we are doing that, we plan for the next improved generation of equipment. When I say generation, I mean a cycle lasting one or two years.
During the time that I have had my responsibilities, our vehicles in theatre have been pretty much transformed. We are replacing Snatch with Snatch Vixen. Over the next year, we will bring in Snatch Vixen Plus, which is an important move. In 2011, we will replace the lighter vehicles with the new light protected patrol vehicle, to which the hon. Lady referred. At the moment, that is the subject of a competition. We have identified a small number of potential candidates, and we will take a decision in the next few months. We will sign a contract, get the vehicles manufactured, tested, adapted and integrated with communications and electronic counter-measures equipment, provide them as training vehicles to our troops who plan to go out to Afghanistan and deliver them to Afghanistan in the course of the next two years, so that they will be there some time in 2011. I am sure that the hon. Lady will agree that the timing is ambitious, but we will stick to it. If our commitment in Afghanistan continues longer, as it may sadly do—I have no idea and make no prediction on that—we will have a new generation after LPPV.
The same thing applies to the slightly heavier vehicles. The hon. Lady mentioned the Jackal—Jackal 1 and Jackal 2 are both in theatre—and it is very much improved in the protection that it offers. I will not go into any detail about the improvement. Some of it may have appeared in public—on the internet and so on. I am always slightly nervous about such things, because I do not want to make it any easier for our enemies. If the hon. Lady has been talking to manufacturers, as I think that she has, she will know about some of the improvements.
As the hon. Member for Aldershot has generously accepted, Vector was much welcomed by the armed forces at one time, as was Viking. We have improved vehicles now, and we plan to withdraw Vector during next year. We also plan to replace Viking with the new Warthog.
Ann Winterton (Congleton, Conservative)
The Minister is absolutely correct about Vector being welcomed. I remember attending a briefing at the Ministry of Defence in which a young army officer—I cannot remember his name—recommended Vector. He and I had a slight clash of opinion. I said to him that having the driver's seat over the front wheel would be absolutely disastrous. I do not know about such things, but, as a rank outsider, that point seemed to be obvious. I cannot understand the mentality of those who brought the vehicle into existence.
Quentin Davies (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Ministry of Defence; Grantham & Stamford, Labour)
There will always be different views about any armoured vehicle. The hon. Lady will understand that I am not a technical expert; I do not present myself as one, but one hears different arguments from the experts and one has to try to take a view. I have no doubt that our current procurement programme reflects the consensus among professionals. I go to great lengths to ensure that the capability analysis that we undertake is very thoroughly conducted, that I talk not only to our capability people but to Permanent Joint Headquarters and those on the front line whom I visit every six months at least. So we do what we can to ensure that we make the right choices, but we have to make constant choices. We are in the business of making constant improvements. The hon. Lady mentioned the Mastiff, which is viewed as a well-conceived vehicle by everyone in theatre. She rightly said that it was quite large; if I remember it is about 28 tonnes. We have now delivered to theatre a smaller version called the Ridgback, which has been mentioned several times in this debate.
We are now bringing into theatre a whole range of new logistic vehicles, some of which are adaptations of the fighting vehicles or patrol vehicles that I have already mentioned. The Coyote, for example, which is being delivered, is a version of the Jackal. We have the Wolfhound, which is a logistic version of the Mastiff with a dump truck at the back, and another logistic support vehicle called the Husky. The hon. Lady expressed some scepticism about the Husky. We have to take advice from the best technical experts, and I can assure her that the Husky has been thoroughly tested; it has been blast tested. I am assured that it is the best choice of vehicle for that role, and I trust that that will be the case when it is deployed. The hon. Lady may be comparing the Husky with some other American vehicle, not entirely similar to the Husky, which did not do quite as well in blast tests on the other side of the Atlantic.
The hon. Lady also raised the issue of helicopters, which has been mentioned by all those who have participated in this debate. I will deal with that subject in a moment when I address the remarks of the hon. Member for Aldershot, who made particular reference to the subject, because I do not want to have to go over the same ground twice.
The hon. Lady also raised the idea, which she has put to me before, of using light aircraft—often single-engine, turboprop aircraft—in an intelligence scanning role or to weaponise those aircraft and deliver weapons from them. As the hon. Member for Aldershot said, the problem with doing the latter is that, because those aircraft are light they, do not carry a great payload, so they are not very efficient in that role. The problem of using them in an intelligence scanning role is that they are nothing like as versatile and as sustainable in the air as the unmanned aerial vehicles. UAVs can stay much longer and their endurance, to use the technical phrase, is much greater. What we essentially want with such vehicles is endurance. They have to be in the air for as long as possible, so that commanders can use them and direct them to some new objective. UAVs remain in the air for the whole time and do not have to come back and be refuelled. Incidentally, the Tucano cannot be refuelled in flight, so its endurance is pretty low; I think that it is about a maximum of seven hours. Therefore, that does not compete with the endurance of our UAVs, which I will not specify in the Chamber, because I do not wish to give the enemy information that they might not already have.
We are investing in a range of UAVs. Next year, we will replace the Hermes 450, which has done superb work, with the Watchkeeper, which has rather better all-weather capabilities, greater endurance and a number of other qualities such as improved sensors and so forth. We are in the process of purchasing more Reapers, which are a development of the American Predator. If we can avoid using a pilot and putting a human life at risk, that must be the desirable way in which to go.
Gerald Howarth (Shadow Minister, Defence; Aldershot, Conservative)
May I put it on the record that QinetiQ is producing the Zephyr, which is an amazing UAV. It holds the world record both for altitude and endurance. To the uninitiated, it looks like a huge Keil Kraft kit, and it is solely powered by solar power. It is a British innovation, and I hope that the Ministry of Defence will continue to back it. I have a vested interest because some of my friends in Farnborough are responsible for developing the excellent programme.
Quentin Davies (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Ministry of Defence; Grantham & Stamford, Labour)
I am sure that hon. Members will be grateful for that plug for the Zephyr. It is a vehicle I know about. We have a great many vehicles that are presented to us and the points made by the hon. Gentleman in favour of the Zephyr will be noted, not least by QinetiQ.
Richard Younger-Ross wisely said that it is impossible to know what threats one will face in the future. I agree with him. He implied something that I strongly believe in and have often said explicitly, which is that it is important that someone in my position is not entirely focused on the current campaign. It would be a great mistake and, in my view, would be in breach of my responsibilities if I were to do that, however tempting it might be given the enormous public pressure—quite rightly so—regarding our performance in Afghanistan. All of us are equally affected by the thought of those brave men and women, who are not only risking their lives, but all too often losing them in this terrible, but I am afraid unavoidable, conflict.
That is why the Government have continued with some of the mainstream programmes, including the naval programmes and the decision last year to build the carriers and to go ahead with the escorts necessary for those carriers, both the Type 45 destroyer and the future surface combatant mentioned by the hon. Member for Aldershot. There is also the Astute class submarine programme and investment in combat aircraft, fast jet aircraft, the Typhoon and the joint strike fighter. None of those are directly related to Afghanistan, although the Typhoon would be suitable for a ground-support role and might be deployed there in that role. However, we are going ahead with a range of capabilities, because we cannot predict exactly what the future threats will be.
If ever we deploy troops on the ground in the future, we will certainly need air support and air superiority. I believe that it is humanly and politically impossible for us to deploy troops on the ground without air superiority, so we must invest in efficient combat aircraft. We must invest in ISTAR—intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance—assets. It is inconceivable that we would have a campaign that did not require good intelligence gathering and surveillance capability. We are investing in those things as part of the core programme, and we will continue to do so. We live in a world in which we do not know where the threat is coming from. We must be prepared to deploy in different areas, and we might need to carry our airfields with us. That is why we need carriers, and support and escorts for those carriers. That is the essential logic, and I assure the hon. Member for Teignbridge that we are not neglecting it.
The hon. Gentleman also said that in times of financial stringency, we need to look carefully at where we can make savings through collaboration with our partners in the EU. I thoroughly agree with him, and we are trying to do that. I am in a high-level working group, which I co-chair along with my opposite number from France. At the moment, we are focused on a number of concrete possibilities for collaboration, and we are looking for synergies where we find that we have the same requirements. We are facing the same threats, so it makes sense to find mechanisms to procure things jointly, to get the benefits from economies of scale and share the risks in research and development. That is what we are trying to do.
There was a characteristic outburst from the hon. Member for Aldershot, but I think he is quite wrong in his ideological hatred of all things European. I think that he blinds himself to a lot of important facts, one of which is that there are certain programmes that we could not possibly conceive of undertaking on our own. It would be utterly ridiculous to suppose that we would ever have had a Typhoon aircraft, which the hon. Gentleman believes in, if this country had had to bear the full costs and risks of the development programme. It is the same for the A400M and, in its day, was true for the Tornado, the Jaguar and other historic programmes.
Ann Winterton (Congleton, Conservative)
I would like to say, quite frankly, that other European countries have made a great deal of money out of those contracts. Most ordinary men and women in the United Kingdom would like to see more people—not just a few more—present on the front line. We very much resent the fact that it is British, Canadian, Estonian, Dutch and Danish troops who have paid the price in Afghanistan, and we do not see any of the other major European countries participating at all.
Quentin Davies (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Ministry of Defence; Grantham & Stamford, Labour)
That is not entirely fair. The French, for example, have doubled their commitment to 4,000 troops over the past year. We welcome the German commitment, although I agree that we would like them to remove the caveats. We have discussions with the Germans about those matters, but we have to respect other people's constitutional issues. However, we believe that any contribution is better than none, and the contributions that Germany has been able to make to our deployments since Bosnia have been very positive. Before that, there was a total ban on all foreign deployments, which was a worrying situation.
The hon. Member for Aldershot has an obsession with attacking the Prime Minister. Obviously, there are always financial constraints, and always will be—Chancellors have to be good housekeepers of the nation's resources. However, it is up to the Ministry of Defence to decide how to arbitrate between its various programmes and where the priorities should lie. It is not for the Chancellor to intervene—he did not intervene in the cases that were referred to—and direct the Ministry to spend more money on one programme, or less money on another.
Hon. Members across different parties—except perhaps the party of the hon. Member for Aldershot—and people throughout the country are becoming increasingly cynical about the Conservative party criticising the Government for not spending enough money on defence, when it has not committed to spending one more penny on defence than the Government. I will give way for the last time, as time is running out.
Gerald Howarth (Shadow Minister, Defence; Aldershot, Conservative)
If the Minister reads Bernard Gray's report, which the Government suppressed when it was made available in June, he will find that Mr. Gray concluded that about £2 billion could be made available if the Minister ran the Department more efficiently.
Quentin Davies (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Ministry of Defence; Grantham & Stamford, Labour)
There are many aspects to Mr. Gray's report. Some give an interesting and valuable insight, and some are more controversial statements. Some statements are not backed up by any evidence at all. Such reports are extremely useful, and we are grateful for them. However, they do not necessarily represent the end of wisdom.
The hon. Gentleman completely failed—perhaps he has not noticed—to pay tribute to the immense investment that we are currently making in helicopters for Afghanistan. There is already something like an 80 per cent. increase in the number of helicopter hours available now, compared with 2006 when we entered Helmand, and that is before the deployment of new helicopters that is about to take place. Before the end of the year, we will deliver the first Chinook Mark 3 to the RAF, and others will be delivered over the course of next year. Next month, I trust that we will deliver the first Danish Merlin—which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Congleton—to Afghanistan, and the others will follow before too long.
We are engaging in the Puma upgrade, which the hon. Member for Aldershot did not approve of, and I will give him an explanation for that. I looked carefully at various alternatives over the summer and decided that the best value for money solution for getting the maximum helicopter lift capability out to theatre as rapidly as possible was to go through with the Puma upgrade, so that is what we are doing. Far from being a bad aircraft, Puma has a good performance record and is particularly good in the hot and high conditions of Afghanistan. That is not the end of the story, and I continue to look at the Sea King upgrade, and at whether we should spend that money on other existing platforms and deliver them to theatre as soon as possible.
Several hon. Members mentioned the need for greater speed and agility in defence procurement. I entirely agree, and I have tried to ensure that we draw conclusions and lessons from the urgent operational requirements programme for use in the core procurement programme. In the time available, I will give one or two examples. For armoured vehicles, for example, we are procuring the Warrior upgrade and the new reconnaissance vehicle using a different time scale from usual. We decided what we wanted to do in February or March this year, and we went out to industry in June with an invitation to tender. We expect those tenders to be in rapidly, and we intend to take a decision by the end of the year and to sign the contracts early next year. To return to the point made by the hon. Member for Teignbridge, that is an area where we are collaborating with the French. We are procuring the same cannon for those vehicles as the French are obtaining for some of their vehicles—the 40mm CTAI cannon. It is produced in France through a joint venture between BAE Systems and Nexter, and it is a good example of European collaboration.
The whole House will be deeply grateful to the hon. Lady for giving us the opportunity to go into these matters in greater detail than we usually have time for. I pay tribute to her once again both for her knowledge and for her persistence and energy in bringing these important matters before the nation.