Dr Andrew Murrison
MP for South West Wiltshire · Conservative · United Kingdom
“It is good to hear that the Government plan to replenish the dwindling stocks of Patriot missiles in Ukraine, which I suspect it will need this winter. However, Patriot is low volume and high cost. What the Ukrainians need is high volume and low cost.”
“Currently, the Royal Navy has an offshore patrol vessel permanently stationed in the Falkland Islands, but given the threat that is being faced and our need to demonstrate resolve—the sort of thing that, sadly, we did not demonstrate in the early 1980s, which led to miscalculation—will the Minister consider speaking to her MOD colleagues…”
“Since the Foreign Secretary is not going to get the co-operation, fulsome or otherwise, of the Israeli state in differentiating goods and services made in the settlements from those that are assembled, repackaged, produced and grown in Israel itself, how is he going to distinguish the one from the other?”
“The Government insisted on applying the social time preference rate to the disastrous Chagos deal to make an appalling deal look slightly better.”
“Will the First Secretary of State’s exercise in delivering democracy and local accountability and empowering local people include a look at large organisations that cannot be described as governmental or as quangos but that nevertheless exist firmly within the public domain, are established by statute, serve the public and are big employe…”
“I congratulate the Government on the hiring of Alistair Burt—he is a good hire and will do great things for some of these most complex of cases—but does the Minister agree that many of these cases are extremely difficult and exceptionally traumatic, and that it is far better to prevent them happening in the first place?”
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“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I will deal with the question of specialist units versus district general hospitals in the remainder of my speech. However, his remarks spark me to reflect on the change in radiological protocols that has occurred in recent years. There has been a strong trend towards reducing the amount of elective work that is done out of hours. For example, it is now difficult to get a chest X-ray out of hours unless it is a real emergency, and very few are defined as emergencies requiring imaging. That is fine—it is absolutely right—but I sometimes wonder whether we have gone a little too far. I suspect that as part of the process, there is less willingness to do CT scans on stroke patients out of hours.”
“The investigation and treatment of stroke is not particularly complicated. In saying that, I do not underplay in any way the expertise of those who specialise in it. It relies upon a CT scanner—we are working towards a position where pretty well every hospital will have one—and access to telemedicine. In other words, a particular hospital does not necessarily need a specialist, because the information can be relayed and, crucially, a diagnosis made in that way. The treatment itself should not be beyond any acute unit in this country.”
“Stroke is not an obscure disease, it is a condition that strikes somebody in England every five minutes and the third most common cause of death in this country. The hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore), who is no longer in his place, talked about critical mass, which is important in the case of tertiary services. Nobody doubts that a patient should go to a tertiary unit for obscure conditions. Stroke is not unusual, it is bread and butter for district general hospitals. If it were removed from their responsibility, one would wonder about the foundations of the district hospital model. Quite honestly, a condition that causes the third most deaths in this country and sadly provides a patient every five minutes in England must be part of the underpinning of any acute service and part of its bread and butter.”
“I have some first-hand experience of that. Stroke services are somewhat patchy across the country. A postcode lottery applies, despite the fact that we have a national health service. The Stroke Association is concerned about that, as is the Royal College of Physicians, and the sentinel audit underscores that concern. In my own area, I find to my delight that according to the audit, the Royal United hospital and Salisbury hospital are reckoned to be good. However, my constituents go much further afield on occasion, and I find that Yeovil, Bristol, Weston and Gloucester are okay, but that Taunton and interestingly Swindon have much room for improvement. I caution against the evidence that has accrued about the use of specialist centres being used to favour large centres at the expense of district general hospitals.”
“Yes, and I understand that the Minister’s Department is doing that work at the moment. It is reviewing whether we should upgrade from category B from category A—from 18 minutes to nine minutes—the response time for stroke cases. It will be interesting to learn the outcome of that work. I suspect that part of the reason for the effectiveness of arriving by ambulance rather than under one’s own steam, and the likelihood of getting prompter treatment when arriving by ambulance, is that triages are undertaken by ambulance crews. They are therefore able to warn specialist stroke units that a patient will be arriving. Across a range of clinical areas we find that such warning expedites admission to specialist units, as patients do not have to go through the sieve of accident and emergency and the inevitable delay that is caused.”
“Stroke is a good case in point, because there is no real reason why we cannot provide both diagnosis and treatment in a specialist context within district general hospitals. It would be a real pity if we were to rusticate stroke services to our great clinical cathedrals in our larger urban centres. London has been discussed at length today, and those services should not be restricted to a small number of hyper-acute units in the capital.”
“I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will have noted that with some pleasure. We need to be careful about using a Darzi extrapolation to the point where we lose immediacy and patient access. I speak as somebody who represents small towns and a rural area in Wiltshire. So far as I am able to gauge my constituents’ wishes—we have all had some opportunity to gauge interest on a range of subjects over the past few days—it seems to me that what they want is local services, locally provided, unless there is very good reason why not. Our national health service should be designed around their needs and wishes rather than necessarily the convenience of practitioners or how they want to operate.”
“There can be little doubt that, at the behest of Quayside and its expensively imposed but seemingly unsuccessful turnaround directors, many struggling companies were obliged to extend their loans, ultimately causing ruinous losses not just for them but for a bank that is now in receipt of a large sum of public money. What remains opaque is the extent to which those now liquidated companies were acquired by undertakings associated with Quayside. From his Keenets experience, my constituent suggests that the Quayside-associated companies Seoul Nassau and Speyside should be explored by the Financial Services Authority in that regard. Given the apparent murkiness of the situation, there is every reason for the FSA to undertake a comprehensive investigation, and I urge the Minister to use his good offices to ensure that that happens.”
“Lloyds Banking Group has pretty well dismissed all criticism and played lip service to cleaning up the act of its acquisition HBOS. That simply will not do. It is unedifying in the current climate of distrust in greedy, cynical bankers for Lloyds Banking Group to behave in that way. It is evident that Mr. Lynden Scourfield had a close relationship with Quayside’s Mr. Bancroft and Mr. Mills. One wonders at that and also at the tales of the high life apparently lived by key players in the tragedy that were revealed in last week’s “File on 4” documentary.”
“Thank you, Mr. Taylor. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) on the leadership that he has shown in this matter. My interest derives from my constituent Mr. Andrew Reade who has been discommoded in connection with his business Keenets by the gross failure in governance at HBOS and by its associate Quayside in the manner that has already been so well described. It is simply not credible to characterise Reading-based official Lynden Scourfield as some autonomous rogue banker and leave the matter at that. Loans of that order must have been sanctioned and remitted at a much higher level—in this case, at HBOS headquarters in Edinburgh by Mr. Scourfield’s immediate superior at least.”
“I would like to express the condolences of the Opposition to the family of Private Smith, and also to the families of those who have fallen since we last met. They gave their young lives in the service of our country, and their sacrifice must never be forgotten. The Minister of State has said that the Court of Appeal’s judgment of 19 May has serious implications for our ability to conduct military operations overseas. Given the Secretary of State’s belated fears for operational effectiveness, could he say what representations his predecessors made when his Government were falling over themselves to incorporate the European convention on human rights into the Human Rights Act?”
“In outlining his plans for barriers and chemoprophylaxis, the Secretary of State has rightly focused on health care staff. Were the situation to go to level 6, however, he would have to consider other infrastructure-critical workers. I wonder what thought he has given to that, and which workers he has identified as potentially being in need of prophylaxis to keep our infrastructure on an even keel.”
“I hope that nothing that the hon. Lady says will be taken as a vote of no confidence in the advent of the coronial service’s involvement in proceedings into the deaths of servicemen, and I am thinking particularly of deaths outwith the United Kingdom. The coronial service has done the armed forces community a great service in the way in which it has proceeded in recent years, and I am thinking particularly, in a partisan way, of the coroner who sits in Trowbridge. I have to say that I share the concerns that have been expressed about the confusion that the system advocated by the hon. Lady may introduce into the investigation of serious complaints about the treatment of people in the armed forces.”
“Service families constitute one area where this particular officer will have a particular part to play.”
“We must be accountable for all money these days—at least, the Minister must—and it seems odd that things such as salaries should be cited but superannuation should not. Maybe we need to give that a bit of thought. In conclusion, I think that the commissioner will be of particular use to families. I know from my experience that they often find it extremely difficult to approach the chain of command and the usual channels. They feel that such an approach might have an adverse impact on their careers, and there are significant grounds for supposing so. I hope that Dr. Atkins will be able to provide an alternative conduit for many of those concerns and that, as a result, the satisfaction of service families—on whom we rely as well as servicemen themselves—will be enhanced and improved.”
“It is a pity that she has had to say that, as it is just good management practice to ensure that complaints, concerns and worries are sorted out quickly and at as low a level as possible. I would have thought that that was axiomatic. I hope that the armed forces will consider how current procedures lead to the escalation and formalisation of complaints, which is off-putting to many people, particularly those of relatively junior ranks. To be rather prosaic in the context of many of the remarks made today, the financial position is given briefly in annexe 4. It appears to be fairly summary. It would be nice, for future years, to have an account of superannuation, for example, in the breakdown of costs.”
“Still, a key index for the current year is that she will improve recognition of her office, and I look forward to seeing her achieve that target and reading her report on it in a year’s time. The commissioner mentions timeliness in the investigation of complaints, which is important. On a grander scale, we can consider the delayed inquiry into Iraq as evidence why we should conduct any inquiry or investigation in a timely fashion. As the months and years go by, unfortunately, memories fade and evidence is destroyed. I endorse wholeheartedly and with great feeling her concerns about the lack of timeliness in the investigation of some complaints within the armed forces. Dr. Atkins points out that the complaints should be sorted out at as low a level as possible.”
“Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood for securing this debate; otherwise, we would not have had a formal opportunity to discuss the report at all. Some might think that I am being a bit pedantic in making the distinction, but it is important that we consider it. The commissioner found that knowledge of her role was poor. She is being a little harsh on herself. In the evidence that she gives in the annexe, which touches on the most recent service continuous attitude survey, we find that knowledge of how to complain overall is pretty poor within the armed forces. It is not specifically about her role; it is simply that people do not know where to go.”
“We will have to keep it under review, of course—we keep everything under review in this place, do we not?—but it seems to be a pretty good starter for 10. I look forward to the commissioner’s contribution as the months and years roll by. Having been ever so nice, I think that it would be wrong of me not to raise one or two slight concerns. The report talks throughout of accountability. The Service Complaints Commissioner says that she accounts publicly to Ministers and Parliament; she says it on page 82 and again on page 15, and it is a thread throughout the whole publication. We could debate how she might be held to account, but it is important that we use language judiciously. I am not aware of any meaningful accounting to Parliament. We are indebted to the hon.”
“The Service Complaints Commissioner makes suggestions about how her role might be expanded, but they are pretty subtle. Although the hon. Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood eloquently described how the role might be developed over the years, that does not really come across in Dr. Atkins’s first report. We will have to see how it evolves as the years go by, but it would be premature at this stage—she has been doing the job for little more than 12 months—to suggest that it should be radically overhauled. That would be a little unfair. At this stage, the balance that has been struck is about right. I would like to see how the office copes during the next few years and its subsequent reports.”
“It is important that we have such people to examine organisations that could be called total or closed, or that have the attributes of such organisations. The armed forces certainly have those attributes, as a number of hon. Members have mentioned. According to the hon. Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey), the Service Complaints Commissioner had some concerns about how she was initially received. I must say that it does not come across that way in her report, although I can understand why an organisation such as the armed forces might resist somebody like Dr. Atkins: an inquisitorial new appointment meant to shine light on darkness. However, the more thoughtful elements of the chain of command will probably welcome the Service Complaints Commissioner. That is certainly what I am hearing from those to whom I talk in the armed forces.”
“There is no question in my mind but that beasting, although it was certainly part of the service culture at the time, was not what might be called professional, if for no other reason than that it causes mortality and morbidity from time to time. That is in nobody’s interests, let alone those of the organisation concerned. Such things need to be addressed, and I believe that the Service Complaints Commissioner might be part of a preventive strategy to ensure that they are less likely to happen. Several hon. Members referred to the Service Complaints Commissioner as independent. We must accept that hers is a sort of independence—a semi-detached oversight—as she reports to Ministers and her budget comes from the Ministry of Defence, so we need to be slightly careful about the status that we accord to that office.”
“Somebody mentioned beasting earlier. I have not been beasted in my service career, but I was training to be a diver in Portsmouth at the time—many here will remember it—when an Army soldier died while being beasted on the mud at Portsmouth. Around that time, we started to wonder whether some aspects of the training of young people in our armed forces were appropriate. Since that time, I have been concerned about how professionally those people are managed. Professionalism comes in many guises. It involves the way in which we conduct ourselves on operations, of course, but it also involves things such as how people are trained and how they are looked after and stewarded during the training period.”
“May I start by declaring my interests in the Register? I congratulate the hon. Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble) on securing this debate and on the excellent way in which she presented it. The debate has been excellent, but slightly odd in that the meat of the Service Complaints Commissioner’s first report has been set to one side as we have debated wider issues relating to Deepcut. However, Deepcut is important, as it underpins the creation of the post. It seems to me that the investigation of Deepcut is not the function of the Service Complaints Commissioner as the post is constituted. However, the prevention of a future Deepcut most certainly is. I welcome the creation of the post, as it will give a level of transparency to our armed forces and assist in changing some unhelpful elements of the culture.”
“Although I want to be non-partisan, I fear that we need to point out some failings. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a scandal that we do not have a national programme for screening for abdominal aortic aneurism, for example, given that the national screening committee said years ago that that should happen? We continue to lose hundreds of men over 65 for want of a simple screening procedure that would probably save more lives than breast cancer or cervical cancer screening, yet Ministers continue to drag their heels.”
“The parsimony—rectified at the last minute—had all the hallmarks of a civil service briefing note untrammelled by the political savvy that is sometimes necessary to apply a human face to Government. Announcing that the Ministry does only 60th and 100th anniversaries is not helpful to octogenarians, because by 2044 not only they, but their grandchildren, are likely to have joined the choir celestial. The belated few thousand pounds from the lottery for its “Heroes Return 2” programme is nevertheless most welcome.”
“We might consider ex-soldiers in schools and colleges, for example. It might be helpful if the Minister considered the Troops to Teachers proposals. The Centre for Policy Studies and the charity Skill Force have done important work on the issue, and the American T3 programme points the way. We are looking for role models these days, particularly in schools, and ex-servicemen might provide helpful role models in some school settings. The Minister will have expected me to mention Normandy and D-day. I will say ever so gently that I do not think the Government have won many brownie points with their handling of the 65th anniversary D-day celebrations so far.”
“Member for Brecon and Radnorshire mentioned the prison population. Once again, we must be careful about the numbers involved, but if we are serious about the rehabilitative elements of the criminal justice system, it behoves us to determine whether there are common factors specifically related to veterans in prisons, such as those itemised by my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire, that could be amenable to more bespoke management to maximise such prisoners’ chances of making a proper return to society. On employment after leaving the armed forces, there was a time when certain occupations were reserved for veterans—usually low-paid, low-skill jobs, such as lift attendant, when we had lift attendants. Today’s veterans expect rather more. They are often highly skilled or looking for skilled opportunities.”
“There is, however, a sub-group within that population of which I hope the Minister will take particular note: non-UK nationals who have served in the armed forces. Service charities—particularly the estimable Veterans Aid, with which I know he has also been involved—say that there appears to be a particular problem with people who are not UK nationals but who have served in the armed forces, sometimes for very short periods, and have left or been slung out. The Army then considers its job done—at the gate, that is it, and they are on their own. Inevitably, they melt into society and contribute significantly to the homeless ex-service population. We need to be more imaginative in handling such people, for their good and the good of our general homelessness situation. The hon.”
“The issue will become more and more prominent, and we need to get to grips with it. We also need to discover cases proactively, and the official Opposition have made a number of proposals for doing so. Homelessness is an issue for veterans. Last month, I visited Veterans Aid in Limehouse and Alabaré Christian Care in Plymouth, which is setting up a project for homeless veterans. However, the streets are not lined with homeless veterans. That is almost a cliché. Veterans Aid is quite clear that it is not a massive problem in our capital city and other centres, but that is not to underplay its importance. We owe a duty of care to those who have served, particularly when their service may have contributed to the state in which they find themselves.”
“If he can share the contents of that meeting with us, it will be interesting to learn what it came up with. I congratulate him on taking that action. Mental health is the tip of the iceberg. We have a particular obligation to people with post-traumatic stress disorder. To be ever so slightly critical of the Minister, he has been guilty in the past of saying that the number of people with combat stress is small. Although he is technically—numerically—correct, none the less, we owe a particular duty of care to people who experience the condition. Post-traumatic stress disorder is an occupational illness, and we have a duty to make it right for sufferers if we can. We also know from experience of the Falklands, Vietnam and so on that we are probably experiencing the tip of the iceberg.”
“I accept the expediency of the current inclusive definition, but I do not think that it is helpful if we want to make veterans special and mark them out as such. I see the Minister nodding; perhaps he might like to comment on that later. I appreciate the difficulty, but we need to get to grips with it. During the Easter break, the Minister went head to head with the Minister for care services, the hon. Member for Corby (Phil Hope), about the “New Horizons” strategy, sans veterans. It is remarkable that such a document should include no reference to veterans, servicemen and their families. From the comments that I have read in the press, I know that the Minister feels strongly about it, and I have no doubt that he has had the meeting that he was reported to have demanded with his colleague.”
“I hope that the Government, in the spirit of consensuality that has characterised this debate, will consider some of those points as well, if they have not done so already. It is important that we consider the definition of “veteran”. If we really mean it when we say that we want to give veterans something tangible to mark their service and recognise the debt that we owe them, we need to separate the men from the boys, if I may put it that way. There is a big difference between those who have served for only a day, which enables them to be defined as veterans, and those who have served in the second world war or more recent conflicts, have done their 22 years and are veterans in the truest sense of the word.”
“That service would be sorely missed if the Minister were tempted to remove it. Among a number of points, the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Willie Rennie) mentioned ID cards for veterans. I support the idea, but with a couple of caveats: it must bring a tangible benefit, and the cost must be accommodated in some way. There has been a lot of tokenism, and we do not want an ID card that is simply a token. I do not think that veterans would welcome such a thing. I am grateful to Frederick Forsyth, Simon Weston, Sir John Keegan and the other members of the Military Covenant Commission set up by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition to look into some of the issues that we have debated today. The commission has made a number of important recommendations that we are working through.”
“It is questionable, however, whether the MOD should be using public funds to hire barristers in what are meant to be non-adversarial situations. The service families to whom I have spoken in that connection rather resent the resulting unequal playing field. I urge the Minister to minimise the use of barristers in that way, as it is regarded as unfair. My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) rightly mentioned Wootton Bassett and the tribute that it pays to deceased veterans. We hear a lot of bad things about our society sometimes, but it is a tribute to people that they are prepared to turn up and pay their respects in that way. That is a lesson for others to learn. I echo his words about the Cotswold family centre, which I know from my previous professional life does an extremely good job.”
“I draw the House’s attention to my interests as a member of the reserve forces and a service veteran. I congratulate the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams) on securing this timely and extremely important debate. We all have constituents who are veterans and, particularly at this time, it behoves us to look closely at their interests and the obligations that we as a society owe them. The hon. Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble) talked about coroners, to pick out one item from her speech. That issue interests me, because the Wiltshire coroner is in my constituency, in Trowbridge. I visited his court when he was sitting on matters dealing with deceased servicemen, and he runs an exceptionally good service.”
“Finally, in his written ministerial statement of 11 December, the Secretary of State said quite specifically that at the end of the MOD planning round in March, we would have a proper and comprehensive announcement on the future of the equipment programme. March has been and gone, but there has been no announcement. Why not?”
“However, procurement inevitably crosses departmental boundaries. In the current climate, it beggars belief that a Government who truly prioritised the welfare of our servicemen could produce something that they are pleased to call the “new horizons” strategy for improving mental health that does not carry any mention at all of servicemen, service charities or veterans. I hope very much that that situation will be remedied as soon as possible. We have heard today that Bernard Gray will report early, having curtailed his consultation. Why is that and why was that issue not covered in the opening remarks of the Minister for the Armed Forces?”
“Will he ditch the fig leaf of “commercial in confidence” and say what cuts to training deliverables we can expect as a result of rising project costs? Can we assume that the DTR second package is now dead in the water? What does the Minister say to the main trade union involved, which has pointed out that large numbers of civilian trainers, who are already in short supply, will not relocate to south Wales and that that will impact on the quality of training produced at St. Athan, at least in the short to medium term? Although he is not here, I commend the Veterans Minister, who I know takes a close interest in mental health, for his bravery in taking on his opposite number at Richmond House over the Easter break. It would be wrong of me to trespass too much into that territory, because this is a debate about procurement.”
“As the National Audit Office reported last month, this spectacular has tipped £134 million down the drain with very little to show for it. In relation to the DTR, Land Securities Trillium walked away from the Metrix consortium in December, when the bottom dropped out of the property market on which the financial case for the St. Athan project depends. I find that deeply worrying and I am not reassured by the replacement partner, the French catering firm Sodexo. The MOD’s website says that contracts will be signed with the newly constituted Metrix for the DTR phase 1 in the summer. Is that the case? Will the Minister let us in on the DTR contingency plan that the MOD commissioned last year for use in the event of Metrix disintegrating?”
“He asked rhetorically what alternatives to his aircraft exist, while Boeing prepares to step in with C-17s that are already under active consideration as replacements for the A400M in France and South Africa. Perhaps the Minister might like to comment on that in his winding-up speech and outline his criteria for any new deal that the Government might be hatching with EADS or Boeing. I am very sorry that the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (John Smith) is not here, because we have to cover the defence training review. It is one of the biggest items of defence procurement before us, but it is limping towards main gate. Before covering that, however, perhaps we should pause to draw a discreet veil over project Red Dragon and the so-called super hangar.”
“The full experience involves a trooping flight out of Brize Norton, knowing full well that departure and arrival times are purely aspirational. My flight did not happen. Nobody will shed any tears over a politician being messed about, but when that becomes the common experience among men and women who are forced to kip down on the floors of airport terminals for days on end waiting for return flights, it behoves those who represent them to ask what is going on. My letter to the Secretary of State for Defence seeking clarification on that point remains unanswered, but a better solution than the RAF’s fleet of flying antiques struggling to operate from an airbridge that has become notorious must be found. Last week, the chief executive of Airbus made an impassioned plea to save the A400M, citing the jobs under threat.”
“Like him, I am worried about the eventual redeeming of mortgages. I appreciated his references to dealing with worn-out troops as well as worn-out kit. My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) followed my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre, so they could agree about the A400M. My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire said that we should attempt not to argue from a narrow constituency perspective and we all try to do that in such debates. However, it would be wrong not to mark his tireless advocacy for RAF Lyneham, which has been most effective, and appreciated by people in Wiltshire. The hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) spoke. In February, Ministers kindly arranged for me to visit Afghanistan.”
“Jenkin) reiterated the central point that, since 2001, the armed forces have been operating well beyond defence assumptions. In the light of that, he was right to say that there has been no fiscal stimulus for defence. I recently had the pleasure of sharing a parliamentary trip to Iraq with the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson), who spoke today about his party’s attitude to defence. I learned many of the points that he made in the debate during that visit in September, and they have not changed much since then. I hope that he will not mind if I disagree with most of them. It is always a great pleasure to listen to my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Wallace), who spoke with much authority about the highly technical subject of defence economics. I share his concerns about and analysis of PFIs.”
“What happened to the future integrated soldier technology—FIST—that was meant to network fire teams with the command? The US is to operate in that way, but we learn that we are not. The hon. Member for Crosby (Mrs. Curtis-Thomas) spoke expertly about OCCAR and commonality with the European Union on kit. We must be careful not to reinvent the wheel, since NATO stock numbers already exist in the common NATO stock catalogue, which was hard won. I am not sure that we need a duplicate parallel system, which can lead only to confusion. My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Ann Winterton) has been described as a military vehicle anorak, in the nicest possible way. She demonstrated her mastery of the subject today. My hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr.”
“If the Minister is worried about the impact of heavy vehicles on the mission, he must tackle his Administration’s attitude to in-theatre air transport. I know that Ministers feel each loss as keenly as any of us, but what are we to make of Chinooks mothballed in Wiltshire for years, while commanders grit their teeth and muddle through with what their men call “coffins on wheels”? What is going on when the traffic collision avoidance system—TCAS—anti-collision technology on the Merlin helicopters belatedly leased from the Danes—I raised the matter in June—is considered an optional extra? What are we to make of the continued intransigence about Snatch and the demise of FRES, which was meant to deliver the best in force protection?”
“We have heard much today about force protection—as well we might, because maintaining public support for distant conflicts, which appear to deliver body bags and little else, will be a challenge for any Administration. History tells us that wars are lost when the home front loses heart. For that reason, if for no other, as we face the long haul in Afghanistan, it behoves us to review our position and bear down further on force attrition. To do that, we must reconsider kit. The Minister is right to point out, as he did on 19 June, that vehicles such as the Mastiff tear up the tarmac and alienate the locals. It is right to say that 6x6 wheeled and tracked vehicles look belligerent to a host population. However, the British public expect us to minimise casualties, and those of us who represent large numbers of servicemen demand it.”
“Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin made it clear that JSF could be available, if we wanted it, as early as 2014. In the midst of all that confusion, we were denied the opportunity to debate the aircraft carrier programme in a timely fashion. The House needs to know definitively why the programme has shifted right, and why, especially towards the end of their lifespan, six Type 45s, three deployable at any one time, are now reckoned to be enough for the safe deployment of high-value assets, contrary to the strategic defence review. The most important bit of kit is, of course, the men and women who serve in our armed forces. Their procurement and the promotion of their through-life capabilities must be our first consideration.”
“To the bewilderment of European Committee B and the press, who sadly do not normally take an interest in what happens on the Committee corridor, the Under-Secretary, who is apparently a historian, offered in support of the EU’s defence ambitions the assertion that it had put a stop to bloodshed in Transylvania. Why he chose Transylvania I will have to leave to the imagination of others, but there is more than a touch of the Bram Stokers in the horror story of this Administration’s stewardship of the equipment programme. On 23 February the Under-Secretary told us that the delay in the carrier programme was not the result of the non-availability of the joint strike fighter, which by any reasonable interpretation contradicted his boss’s written statement of 11 December.”
“We had another look through the looking glass on 24 November in European Committee B, when the Under-Secretary sought to downplay the threat from the European Union to the doctrine of appropriate sovereignty given in the defence industrial strategy and implicit in EC article 296. European security and defence policy and the Lisbon treaty will, of course, degrade our ability to operate autonomously in the national interest by promoting supranational decision making, the European Defence Agency and the scope of qualified majority voting.”