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2.44 pm
Peter Bradley (The Wrekin): I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate and raise issues that are of pressing importance to my constituents. Notwithstanding what the Conservative spokesman, the hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth) said, the timing of this debate is appropriate given that decisions will be taken in the coming weeks about the future rapid effects system in particular.
First, I must emphasise how important defence industries are to my constituency. We have in it RAF Cosford, a major RAF training station, and DSDC Donnington, the defence storage and distribution centre. The Army Base Repair Organisation is on the same site at Donnington and Alvis Vickers is at Hadley. I shall focus principally on procurement—on Alvis and the work force there—but will first say a few words about the other defence establishments and their recent past.
We are extremely proud of RAF Cosford and the aerospace museum alongside it. We are proud of its contribution to the community, the local economy and the armed forces. It is worth bearing in mind that about 50 per cent. of ground support crews in the RAF have trained at one time or another there. Indeed, although it is a training establishment, it has sent a considerable number of personnel to the Gulf in recent months.
Cosford has grown in recent years and I am glad of that, but its growth has been at the expense of other establishments, notably RAF Locking at Weston-super-Mare. There have been substantial changes at Donnington too, but more in the nature of contraction than expansion. Within living memory about 8,000 men and women worked at Donnington. Six years ago, that figure was down to 3,000. It is now about 1,800, with 1,000 employed at ABRO and about 800 at DSDC. Every one of the seemingly endless programme of reviews and rationalisations not only reduces the work force at Donnington—it has certainly done so in the past—but creates massive uncertainty and anxiety among men and women who, frankly, devote their working lives to service and who have never failed our front-line troops when their support has been needed.
I am sure that the whole House will join me in paying tribute to the sustained effort that the staff there made not only from the onset of the military campaign in Iraq but long in advance—from the Christmas of last year. When I visited Donnington in March with my hon. Friends the Members for Telford (David Wright) and for Stafford (Mr. Kidney), they had already moved about 500,000 pieces of kit, from small batteries to tank engines and aircraft wings, out to the Gulf, and they were working around the clock, without the public recognition that they deserved, in an unsung but heroic effort. They now face yet another review. Having survived the strategic defence review and the depot rationalisation study as well as at least two major overseas military campaigns, they now face the future defence supply chain initiative. Their fear—it is a common fear—is privatisation, the loss of jobs and in particular the loss of the civil service ethos to which they attach great importance and which is the backbone of their commitment and achievement over many years.
I appeal to the Minister, in so far as it is within his power, to preside over a period of calm and consolidation and to take the opportunity to acknowledge the record of both the DSDC and ABRO at Donnington and to assure the security of their jobs and livelihoods in the future. That is important in my local community and the local economy because The Wrekin is traditionally an area of low unemployment but the price that we pay for that is low wages. The reason for those low wages is the low skill levels in Telford and The Wrekin. The Government rightly attach a great deal of importance to building on our
skills base. I suggest that it is important not only to build on that base, but to preserve what we already have. Alvis Vickers makes 90 per cent. of the British Army's vehicles, including Warrior and Challenger 2, so I was glad to hear my right hon. Friend the Minister's tribute to the performance of those vehicles during the recent campaign. Donnington and Alvis Vickers at Hadley are beacons in our local economy in my constituency, because they offer relatively decent rates of pay for high levels of skill. That is why it is essential that they should be protected at all costs.The recent history of the Hadley plant mirrors a trend in British defence manufacturing. I may seem like an old lag to Opposition Members, but, contrary to what the hon. Member for Aldershot suggested, I was not a Member of this place in 1992, and when I was elected in 1997—although it seems as though I have been here since 1982—the plant was GKN Defence. It was then taken over by Alvis, which was good news for the Hadley work force, but not for the work force at Coventry where Alvis closed its plant and transferred the work to Hadley. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) rightly pointed out, the company is now Alvis Vickers. It is crucial that there should be no further contraction in our capacity to manufacture armoured vehicles. If there is, the pips will have been squeezed for the last time: Alvis Vickers is the last company that remains capable of building high quality vehicles for the British Army and for export.
In 1997, there were four factories in the UK: GKN Defence at Hadley, Alvis Vehicles at Coventry and Vickers Defence Systems at Leeds and Newcastle. Just six years later, only two factories are left: Alvis Vickers at Hadley and at Newcastle. During the same period, the number of people employed has been reduced from about 3,000 to just over 1,000, 470 of whom work at Hadley. The work force and unions at Hadley fear that if they do not win significant business in the near future, probably by the end of this year, compulsory redundancies will follow by next spring, as surely as night follows day. We cannot afford to let that happen. The local economy and the local work force and local community whom I represent cannot afford it; nor can our defence industry and the MOD, and it would certainly not be in the national interest. Unless we take a big-picture, strategic view of defence procurement we could lose not only jobs at Hadley and elsewhere, but an entire defence manufacturing sector with all the industrial and security implications that would involve.
Earlier, in response to my intervention, my right hon. Friend the Minister said that the Government had made a commitment to procuring its naval vessels from British shipyards because without those procurement contracts those shipyards would close. The same principle applies in my constituency. If the Government make a commitment to protect jobs on the British coastline, they should also be looking to the protection of jobs inland.
I understand the MOD's difficulties in matching the needs of the armed services to British industry's capacity to fulfil them. I understand that the MOD cannot commission what is not needed and that it must constantly reinterpret the needs of our armed forces in the light of global politics, technological advances, battleground experience and, not least, costs. No one is suggesting that we must procure British kit and
equipment irrespective of cost, but the needs of industry must also be recognised, taken into account and addressed. The defence industrial policy that was published a year ago explicitly recognises the need to retain industrial capacity in this country, to preserve security of supply and to maintain our export potential.I am sure that British business is happy to compete. I take the point that the hon. Member for Aldershot made about the fairness of competition. It is important that if overseas companies are to compete or to enter into partnership with British companies we must have the same privilege in their markets. I am sure that British companies, including Alvis Vickers, are prepared to compete, but they cannot survive simply on hopes and expectations. They cannot keep production lines running and skilled men and women employed without copper-bottomed contracts.
In his opening remarks, my right hon. Friend the Minister said that he is keen to see that the British Army, the Royal Navy and the RAF get the best kit to do the best job. That is important. He said that in ensuring that our procurement policy follows that principle he cannot have regard only for the interests of industry. I agree, but there is no point in the MOD trying to place contracts with British suppliers when those suppliers have been obliged to make their skilled work forces redundant for lack of contracts. Those skills will walk away; they will not come back and we shall no longer have the industrial capacity to respond to demand.
I am saying not that we must buy only British—I am certainly not saying that we should buy British at any cost—but that we should buy British where we can, and that where there is the capacity to produce tested, high quality equipment, such as Warrior, Challenger and other kit, we should seek to procure it. I mentioned earlier the importance of security of supply. If we lose that important sector of our defence industry, who will carry out the kind of emergency work to which I referred in my intervention and which Alvis Vickers personnel undertook in upgrading Challenger 2 in the Gulf and in Kuwait during the weeks and months leading up to the hostilities in Iraq and during those hostilities? Who can we look to if we no longer have the defence capacity to meet that need? On which foreign powers will we have to depend to meet our defence needs? Furthermore, how will we compensate for the loss of export earnings from Alvis and others—companies that research and develop their equipment in this country for the MOD?
I was pleased to receive the Minister's reply to my recent question about the future rapid effects system, which is due to produce the medium-weight armoured vehicle by 2009. He said:
- "The Department is considering procurement options and will have regard to all relevant factors, including industrial issues, in determining the way forward."—[Official Report, 6 October 2003; Vol. 410, c. 1160W.]
I hope, too, that not only MOD Ministers but, crucially, Treasury Ministers adopt the same approach to FRES as they did in making their decision—albeit a belated one—about the Hawk jet trainer. I remind the
House that, when making her announcement about the Hawk jet trainer, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry said that the decision
- "underlines our commitment as Government to the new defence industrial policy and manufacturing strategy".
- "major economic benefits to Humberside and wider to the UK through key suppliers".
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