Defence Estate — House of Lords, 2016-11-07
Topic: Defense
Frederick Richard Penn Curzon (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, with the leave of the House I shall now repeat a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence, "A Better Defence Estate". The Statement is as follows: "With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a Statement on our strategy for a better defence estate. Our defence estate is where our people work, live and train, where advanced equipment is maintained and where cutting-edge research is undertaken. It is the place where major exercises are conducted and major operations launched Our estate is vital, but it is also vast. We control almost 2% of the United Kingdom’s land mass, an area almost three times the size of Greater London. Yet bigger does not mean better. While the size and structure of our forces have changed to meet different threats, our estate has failed to adapt. It is too inefficient. It costs £2.5 billion a year to maintain, with 40% of our built assets more than 50 years old. And it often fails to meet the needs of our Armed Forces and their families, with capabilities spread across old, small, remote sites, often removed from population centres and job opportunities Last year’s strategic defence and security review committed to increase the defence budget in real terms every year of this Parliament, with a £178 billion equipment plan to create a world-class Joint Force 2025, but an ambitious joint force needs an estate to match, so today I set out a long-term strategy to achieve that ambition First, we will transform an estate built for previous generations of war-fighting into one that better supports military capability and the needs of our Armed Forces. It will help deliver Joint Force 2025 by bringing people and capabilities into new centres of specialism and clustering units closer to their training estates. Since the beginning of this year, I have announced plans to dispose of 35 of our most costly sites. Today, based on advice from the Chiefs of Staff, we are going further by freeing up a further 56 sites by 2040 and bringing the total of sites released to 91 I now turn to what this means in practice. It means that the Royal Navy will continue focusing on operating bases and training establishments around port areas and naval stations, with surface ships in Portsmouth and Devonport; all the UK’s submarines on the Clyde; an amphibious centre of specialisation in the south-west, based around Devonport; and helicopters based at Yeovilton and Culdrose. It means the Army having specialised infantry in Aldershot; mechanised, wheeled capability, including two of our new strike brigades, in Catterick; air assault forces in Colchester; armoured and tracked capability around Salisbury Plain; medical services in the West Midlands; and hubs of light infantry battalions in London, Edinburgh, Lisburn, St Athan, Blackpool and Cottesmore. It means the RAF building on its centres of specialism with combat air in Coningsby, Marham and Lossiemouth; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance at Waddington; air transport at Brize Norton; force protection at Honington; and support enablers at Wittering and Leeming. Fuller details are published in the strategy, which will be available in the Vote Office Secondly, this strategy will deliver a better estate for service families. Over the next decade, we will invest £4 billion in improving our infrastructure and modernising our accommodation, including funding from disposable receipts and the £1 billion secured at the spending review. All savings from running costs will be recycled back into defence. By consolidating our estate and locating our service men and women together with capability, we will provide better employment opportunities for their partners, provide more stable schooling for their families and increase their ability to buy their own home. We have purposely focused on sites that will support recruitment and retention, giving our personnel and their partners greater certainty and confidence to put down roots in local communities Finally, a better defence estate will deliver better value for money for taxpayers. By releasing sites we no longer need, we can help build the houses that we do need. I can confirm the MoD has firm plans to achieve its target to release sufficient land to build up to 55,000 houses in this Parliament. My department will now work with industry, local authorities and devolved Administrations, as well as with our personnel, to deliver this—supporting construction and infrastructure jobs and boosting local economies This is a strategy that looks ahead to 2040 to provide the defence estate we need to keep Britain safe and promote our prosperity. As we implement it, we will seek to minimise any disruption to the Armed Forces as well as to service personnel, civilians and their families. We will give our people as much notice as possible over planned redeployments, ensuring all are well provided for. As well as the built estate, I am determined to widen our focus and seek better value from our training and reserve establishments as well. We will update Parliament on our progress in our first annual report next October These reforms provide a vision of a better defence estate: an estate that supports a more efficient and effective military capability; an estate that gives our Armed Forces a world-class base from which to work; and an estate that helps defence play its part in securing our security and prosperity. I commend it to the House" My Lords, that concludes the Statement.