UK Defence Spending — House of Commons, 2021-06-24
Topic: Defense
David Michael Doogan (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): It is a pleasure to follow the Chair of the Defence Committee with the knowledgeable insight that he brings to these debates Defence expenditure brings with it an opportunity to extend fairness into every corner of the country. There is nothing quite like the ability to invest in manufacturers and contractors in all parts of the United Kingdom, and the Ministry of Defence should take this role and opportunity very seriously. However, it does not take it as seriously as it should. Scotland and the south-west of England have almost the same population, yet MOD statistics released in January this year show that, when compared with the south-west of England, Scotland receives only approximately one third of the MOD expenditure—one third of the spend per person and one third of the direct MOD jobs per 100,000. Actually, it is worse than that. When we add the MOD spending in Wales and Northern Ireland to Scotland’s, we still arrive at a figure that is below that of the south-west of England. I do not understand how the Government can justify a single region of England, with half the population, benefiting from receiving more MOD expenditure than three quarters of this so-called Union Defence expenditure can be a complex issue, and that is set out very clearly by the Public Accounts Committee, which deemed that the 2019 to 2029 equipment plan is too expensive by between an estimated £3 billion and £13 billion. Plans for efficiency remain rose-tinted and optimistic. For example, £4.7 billion of savings are assumed without the remotest indication of how they will be delivered. Of 32 of the top priority programmes,a third are at serious risk of not being delivered on time, with capabilities reaching full operational standards two years late. It is not too hard to see where the money is going: the money is going on waste, and, on that, I will touch on the Type 45 The oldest Type 45 in service has been in service since only 2011. The order was cut from 12 to six, with the price rocketing, like a sea-skimming missile, beyond the £1 billion per ship mark. There were more than 5,000 operational defects in five years, with a bill of more than £50 million to rectify them. They were brought into service too early, with untested propulsion systems and now have to be retrofitted with different engines at a very early stage in their lifecycle, costing £160 million that could have been invested elsewhere. It is just as well that the Type 45 is an exceptional fighting warship, given its propensity to find itself stuck. The MOD has a habit of hiding behind the complexity of that extremely advanced warship, but inconveniently for the MOD it is not the highly advanced air defence, anti-ship or anti-submarine systems that are falling over; it is the ship’s basic ability to move. Royal Navy sailors deserve far better than that On fleet solid support, the entirety of the order should be fulfilled in domestic yards in the UK. Does the MOD believe that by offshoring large elements of the manufacturing supply chain stimulus it is somehow teaching English and Scottish yards a lesson? If so, what is that lesson? I think it might be not to trust the MOD with future workstreams. The notion that a £1.6 billion order for defence equipment could be manufactured in foreign yards to the benefit of their apprentices, supply chain and steel industry shows a Department apparently all over the place in its procurement priorities. It demonstrates that the Government, as currently set up, are blind in many cases to the value of a potential tender, and fixated rather on the price.