Defence Expenditure (NATO Target) Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-23
Topic: Defense
Philip Martin Dunne (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend has highlighted one of perhaps a number of apparent inconsistencies between certain leading members of the Opposition and those on their current Front Bench. I do not want to prey on the misery of the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell). I should have started by welcoming her to her position. [Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."] This is her second appearance in the Chamber this week in her new role as a Defence Minister. She is doing an admirable job, if I may say so, completely unsupported as she is in this debate by a single colleague. That speaks volumes for the interest the Opposition parties en bloc take in defence. I do not want to put her under any more pressure than my right hon. Friend has done. It is really for her to decide whether she wants to intervene to clarify the position. I would be very happy to take such an intervention, but I would not be surprised if she chose not to make one at this particular moment Moving beyond Russia, our friends from China are here in the UK today. They are already the world’s second-highest military spenders, with the world’s largest standing army. The Chinese are investing in high-tech equipment, such as submarines and stealth jets, and upgrading their naval forces, including their first aircraft carrier Russia and China are far from the last of the big spenders in defence around the world. India has announced a core defence budget of $41 billion for this fiscal year. Perhaps most understandably, South Korea plans to increase its defence budget sharply next year, with its ministry of national defence requesting a budget of $36 billion to bolster its combat power at the border with North Korea and to increase funding for anti-submarine warfare systems. Some of this increasing international commitment to defence spending brings with it opportunity. Where we can develop greater interoperability of equipment and capability with our partners and allies, we will seek to do so If we look at the emerging international picture, it helps to crystallise our need to stay competitive and keep ahead of the curve. That is why we have spent the past few years transforming defence, eliminating the black hole in our finances and turning our procurement arm, Defence Equipment and Support, into a bespoke trading organisation that is able to operate along more commercial lines with an agreed operating cost and more business-like relationship with industry. The reason we are doing this is to meet some of the challenges that have been posed by hon. Members in their remarks. If we are going to have a growing defence budget, we need to make sure we spend it wisely The reforms we have enacted so far have allowed us to put in place the £166 billion 10-year equipment plan I referenced earlier in my intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough. I commend it to the House. It was published yesterday and I have a copy here. It is a relatively easy read and has some helpful pictures to encourage hon. Members to get through the document readily. It provides us with a plan for the future to spend our growing budget, in particular our commitment on new equipment. We will do so meeting our NATO pledge throughout this Parliament This new financial rigour allows us to get far more bang for our buck by procuring more efficiently. Yesterday, alongside our equipment plan, the public spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, published its independent audit of our major projects and the equipment plan. It found that the cost of the Department’s 13 largest equipment programmes fell by £247 million last year. With the exception of one additional requirement to refuel a Vanguard class submarine, we brought the delivery-on-time performance for those 13 major projects down to an in-year increase of only eight months. If I may take a moment, I would like to contrast that with the performance highlighted by the NAO’s 2009 report, the last full year of the previous Labour Government, where the in-year delivery performance was on aggregate 93 months out of time. In real terms and in real English, that is around eight years. We have brought that down to eight months, which I think is the most graphic illustration I can provide of how we are transforming defence acquisition—an issue raised by several of my hon. Friends When we introduced the equipment plan, it was characterised as "hopeful" by the then shadow Defence team in that it was based on a number of assumptions. We have been publishing the plan and getting it reviewed by the National Audit Office each year, so the assumptions we have made each year are being assessed. I am pleased to say that in each of the four years, greater confidence has been gained in the assumptions being made. The proposals in this particular document have been described as more stable than in any of the previous years. The NAO believes that we are set to remain "affordable" for the rest of the Parliament under current conditions As my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough will appreciate as former Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee—he had some of the closest dealings with the NAO—it is rare to receive praise from the NAO. For that office to declare a programme as "stable" is about as close as one can get to a positive red star. We are very pleased with the report. Perhaps a gold star is more appropriate in the school context Let me now touch on the capability that we will be able to call on as a result of our reforms. Some programmes have already been referenced by hon. Members. Of course, one of the largest programmes currently in build is the construction of the two Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers, each 68,000 tonnes—the most powerful ships ever built in this country. Earlier this month, I was privileged to visit BAE Systems shipyard in Govan on the Clyde and see the latest blocks of HMS Prince of Wales before they were barged to Rosyth to be assembled. Shortly after I was there, the largest single block—over 11,000 tonnes—sent round to Rosyth was attached to the existing dry dock, and the process was described as "skidding", whereby a block on a barge is gently moved into place. This was the largest such move of a block of shipbuilding anywhere in Europe ever. It happened successfully and to within the tolerance of 3 mm that it was working towards, which is an astonishing feat of engineering by any standards While I was in Scotland, I had the distinct privilege of cutting steel for the first time on HMS Trent, the third of our offshore patrol vessels, the latest class that we are commissioning for the Royal Navy. These projects are, in turn, securing the skills required to build the Type 26 global combat ship, which is another example of our investment in the Royal Navy. It will be one of the most significant programmes undertaken during this Parliament.