Vote a. Numbers

Part of Orders of the Day — Defence (Navy) Estimates, 1964–65 – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 2 March 1964.

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Photo of Captain John Litchfield Captain John Litchfield , Chelsea 12:00, 2 March 1964

How many hon. Members remember that we had a Danube flotilla, quite apart from the Rhine flotilla, and that a British naval officer, the senior naval officer in Budapest, was for many months the de facto ruler of Hungary, being in charge of the only source of law and order?

In the 1930s, we had the Abyssinian emergency. We had the Spanish Civil War and the Nyon Patrols, which are fresh in our memories. We had the Arab revolt in Palestine, in which the Royal Navy not only took over responsibility for the port of Haifa, but also operated far and wide in Palestine and Transjordan in armoured trains and in armoured lorries on the roads in support of the Army. All through that period, we had a flotilla on the Yangtse River, in China, and since the last war we have had, first, Korea, and since then, Kuwait and situations such as we see today.

Never before has this thin blue line been quite so stretched as it is today. The Navy does not complain about this. It is proud to be called upon and to do its best to serve. But there are certain implications which this Committee would do well to ponder when we are considering naval affairs. First, it is right to remember that the greater the effort which is called for in these distant theatres in relation to the resources that the House of Commons provides for the Navy, the greater the separation and the disturbance and disruption of family life at the receiving end.

We cannot have this both ways. The Royal Navy will always meet every call upon it, but if we in Parliament do not ensure than the strength of the fleet in men and ships is adequate, it is Jolly Jack—that is, the men who man the ships at the other end—who will have to take the strain, and not those who control the purse strings at this end.

There are also, of course, other serious implications of over-stretching our resources unduly, the effect upon efficiency and the no less important human problem of the effect upon morale. It is not a simple matter of dividing the number of ships by the number of emergencies and saying that we have X number of ships to deal with each emergency. There are many factors which only the Admiralty can be fully aware of in such commitments as training, exercises, reliefs, leave, refits, modernisation and the rest.

This second problem created by overstretching and over-working ships and material applies particularly to the aircraft carrier. Only those who have knowledge of carrier operations can fully understand the extreme strain involved in these operations if one is working to a very tight programme. A very high standard of training and organisation is vital in operating modern aircraft from a naval carrier. Men's lives depend on it. Once the ship, flight, and maintenance teams in a carrier are trained, it is important that they should remain as a single unit as long as possible and not be broken up too soon.

The casualty rate in naval flying is invariably higher early in a commission than it is later. Yet this is what happens if we have not quite got enough naval air resources to meet all our commitments. Ships have to refit. Instead of enjoying, perhaps, a quieter period of relaxation in shore flying, the air squadrons have to leave the ship they worked up in and to be transferred to another carrier, and the whole process starts again.

I ask the Committee to spare a thought for the captains who have great responsibilities in these ships, operating as they do day and night, often at full speed, five or more days a week, with responsibility for the lives of their air crews as well as their ships on their shoulders. I ask the Committee to spare a thought also for the air crews themselves and the maintenance crews. We must see to it that the crews and the carriers get the best possible tools and enough of them.

I support wholeheartedly what my hon. Friend the Civil Lord had said about the decision to buy the Phantom aircraft. This decision, and the decision to build the new carrier and make it a big ship, are right decisions, but I must say that, I consider that my right hon. Friends have been an unconscionably long time in coming to them. We have been too long in getting the 1957 Defence White Paper and doctrine out of our system. Who knows?—if the decision to build a new aircraft carrier had been taken two years ago, when it ought to have been taken, and the design for the replacement of the Sea Vixen had been started three years ago, we might now have British aircraft coming along instead of having to go to the United States. Treasury resistance to defence projects may save pennies today but it often wastes pounds—and in this case dollars—later on.

I ask my hon. Friend to say something more precise about the state of play regarding the new aircraft carrier than either he today or his right hon. Friend last week has told us so far. The decision was taken last summer. It was a Cabinet decision, after who knows how great a wrangle. Then began the Treasury's rearguard action. It is not enough to say that design and planning are going ahead actively, because this is exactly what we have been told for the past two years. The only difference this year is that, instead of this statement being in the White Paper, it is not mentioned at at all.

I heard with surprise my hon. Friend say this afternoon that he expects that the new ship will go out to contract in 1966. If my arithmetic is right, that is more than two years ahead. I do not know how long it takes before a new ship is actually laid down after it goes out to contract. These contracts are quite a big business, with many dozens of millions of £s involved. It is not something one can lightly toss off in putting forward a contract. I imagine that it may be some time after we go out to contract before the ship is laid down. I do not know how long it will take to build the ship. When we pile year upon year and decade upon decade, it seems that we may well be into the 1970s before we have the new ship afloat.

I put to my hon. Friend this precise question. Can he tell us today when this ship will actually be laid down? If he can say how long it will take to build, the Committee will, I am sure, regard this as most valuable information. It is information which we really ought to have. I am very much behind my hon. Friend and his right hon. Friends in building the ship, but we are being asked to spend quite a lot of pocket money on it and I think that we should have all the information which, within the limits of security, we can be given.

This is also the time to ask whether one new carrier will be enough. We threw this thought out in expressing our gratification to my hon. Friend last July, but I think that we wish to press it a little more strongly now. We are told that we are to have a carrier force of three fine ships in the 1970s, one new ship and two modernised old ships.

I am not sure whether I have my figures right, but, if I am right, one of these ships would normally be refitting and another might be working up. By simple subtraction, this might leave only one ship afloat to meet all our commitments. I do not know whether my right hon. Friends expect a marked emelioration in the world situation in six or seven years—I hope that they do, though I do not know what evidence they have for it—but I do not think that we shall be very well situated if we do not have more than one new ship.

I have already referred to the problems—my hon. Friend understands them perfectly well, as everyone does—created by over-stretching our resources, the effect on men, materials, efficiency and the rest. In view of all this, I hope that the Government will think of two, or possibly three, new ships instead of only one.

This reinforcement of our carrier strength in the future is all the more important in view of the great changes which have come about in our strategic situation and military capability in recent years. I do not think that we always fully appreciate this. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence has done his very best, not altogether unsuccessfully, to instruct his colleagues in the facts of defence life, but I sometimes wonder whether he gets all the support I should like him to have from his colleagues in these matters.

When I was a joint planner, our defence policy was founded on what were then known as the three pillars of strategy. These three pillars were said to be the integrity of the United Kingdom base, the security of sea communications and the security of the Suez Canal—and that was not very long ago. Alas, these props begin to look a little shaky now. We have moved a long way from the planner's paradise which we enjoyed in those days.

I remember coming into the Strangers' Gallery in the House to hear the debate on the impending transfer of the Middle East base from Egypt to Cyprus. I have a vivid recollection of hearing the then Foreign Secretary, my noble Friend Lord Avon, and the then Secretary of State for War, my noble Friend Viscount Head, telling the House how much better Cyprus would be as a base than Egypt.