Defence — House of Commons, 2018-01-11
Topic: Defense
Susan Elan Jones (Labour, Centre-left): It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) and to take part in this debate. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) for his outstanding, wide-ranging introductory speech, which set the tone for the debate—or at least most of it—that we have had so far. The comment that struck me most was by my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), who spoke of the armed forces as being fundamentally about skilled individuals. I think the phrase she used was, "the people with the expertise". In seven years in this place, I am not surprised, given the history of north-east Wales, by the number of current members of the armed forces whom I have met, but I am surprised by the number of former members of the armed forces whom I have met. Their reasons for no longer being in the armed forces are quite diverse. I hope that, as we have this debate, we listen to their voices My constituent, Alex, is a former member of the armed forces with years of experience serving in the Royal Navy. As I prepared for this debate, Alex did rather a lot of work with me, having spoken to a number of his colleagues who still serve in the Royal Navy. I would like to share the points that Alex raised with me directly with this House and with the Minister. He says this: "HMS Northumberland is currently in the final stages of a multimillion pound service. As is typical of our refits, headline upgrades to weapons systems use the bulk of the available budget. The budgets are so constrained that a lot of engineering defects are largely ignored purely due to a lack of funding. The 4 main Diesel engines (used to power and drive the ships) have major issues remaining extant and the switchboards used for main power distribution also have major issues. Due to a lack of funding there is no repair plan in place for these problems. Issues are also going on with the chilled water plants which are used for air conditioning and to cool the weapons control systems. These engineering issues in Northumberland were typical of Type 23 frigates throughout my career in the Navy and a situation arose where despite my warnings, when serving as the diesel maintainer on Monmouth back in 2011, we suffered simultaneous and catastrophic failures on two of our Diesel engines leaving our ship stranded alongside awaiting a double engine change, at huge cost." Moving on to manpower issues, my constituent writes: "The Navy haemorrhaged personnel between 2010 and 2013 with the redundancy tranches. Marine Engineers in particular were hit quite hard. One of the main draw backs was a lack of ability to compete with a higher paying private sector. This loss in engineers left others over worked, and feeling underpaid compared to their civilian counterparts. This was a key reason for me leaving ultimately, I had over 5 months of leave to take that had accumulated over several years of cancelled leave periods due to engineering defects and trials. This lack of man power has now spread to Weapons Engineers and communications ratings. These people are amongst the most capable and highly trained engineers on the planet and the MoD has no real plan for retention and no ability to compete with private employers. I also know that due to staff shortages, people who are just not ready for promotion are being promoted to fill gaps in senior positions. These positions come with great responsibility and it is unfair on the promotee to be put in to that position without sufficient experience. Speaking of manning shortages, HMS Portland has been sat alongside in Devonport since March with a locked gate on her gangway, as they cannot staff the ship. It is occasionally being used for minor training exercises. Then will be going in to refit early next year. If manning is not sorted, when she comes back in to service personnel may need to be passed from other ships causing shortages elsewhere and further compounding the effect of engineers et al missing out on leave." My constituent also writes: "These issues are causing other issues, as more ships are now due to be cut. There are rumours of 2 Type 23s and both LPDs being scrapped and the fabled Type 26 may not see service for another decade. Of the 13 Type 23s currently in service, there are 4 in refit and HMS Portland locked up alongside. Of the remaining 8, at least 2 are running around the UK on reduced man power. That leaves 6 destroyers and 6 frigates out to meet our standing NATO commitments across the globe, providing no destroyers are currently in refit. It’ll be no surprise that we don’t have a UK presence on a few standing NATO deployments as we have a fleet of maybe 12 active surface warships. I was wryly chuckling with my friends that fleet is the wrong word and in reality the Royal Navy makes up barely a squadron." I was struck by these comments at the end of what Alex writes: "This is not a concise appraisal of the struggles of the Royal Navy and certainly more issues are ongoing but these are things I know quite confidently. I have worked across the globe as an engineer since leaving the service and I can say quite categorically that our service men and women are amongst the most capable and expertly skilled engineers on the planet. This means they are sadly being let down by ever tightening shoe string budgets and face annual below inflation pay increases. Though this year they won’t have a below inflation increase as they have been told to expect no increase at all." My constituent goes on: "I know tabloids have said this sensationally before but I don’t feel it has ever been truer than today. Our Armed Forces are at absolute crisis point! Our equipment is over used and under maintained and so are our servicemen and women. The Government needs pressing on this and holding to account for the 7 years of decay they have inflicted." I very much hope that the Government will be held to account today, and that the Minister will respond to the points made.