§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Tinn.]
§ 10.45 p.m.
§ Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson (Newbury)I am grateful for this chance to discuss the subject of the cost of aerial fishery protection. This is a new role, which was taken on by the Royal Air Force as recently as 1st January this year. It means that the RAF has the task of patrolling the new 200-mile exclusive economic zone which lies around our coasts. It is a very large area to patrol.
In terms of a patrol, I suppose that what these aircraft seek to do is not dissimilar from what the policeman on the beat seeks to do. By his presence he seeks to warn off likely law-breakers from carrying out any unlawful acts. The value of the fishery protection rôle lies in the presence of the aircraft, as with the policeman on the beat. Any trawlers intending to fish in an area in which they have no right to be must be made aware that they face the possibility of being spotted from the air. They must know 187 that if they are spotted from the air the aircraft that spots them will be able to call up the surface ships that are involved in fishery patrol work, and those surface ships in turn will come to the spot where the law-breaking trawler is to be found and take the necessary action.
Therefore, the aircraft used for this task must be properly equipped to carry out long patrols. The Minister said, in an answer only last week, that the aircraft at present carrying out these patrols are in the air for approximately 180 hours a month. When they see a ship breaking the law, as they think, they must be able to communicate with surface fishery patrol ships. An aircraft carrying out this task must have an all-weather capability. Clearly, as it is flying over sea, perhaps as far as 200 miles out from the coast, it must be able to fly on more than one engine. Therefore, a multi-engined aircraft is required.
The aircraft must carry cameras and radar and must obviously have high-powered radio communications equipment. Those who take part in the patrol must appreciate, as I am sure the RAF crews do, that theirs will be a long and patient task flying for many hours over large stretches of the ocean looking for the law-breaker but perhaps returning to their base having discovered nothing.
As we know from the Minister's statement, the RAF has at present four aircraft specially designated for the aerial fishery protection role. They are four Nimrod Mark Is. The last thing that I wish to do is to cast a slur on this superb aircraft, for no one I have met—and I have had the privilege of flying in a Nimrod—would say other than it is a remarkable aircraft in many ways. But its remarkability lies in the fact that it is a long-range maritime aircraft designed to search out submarines and to protect us against the attack of hostile surface ships. I think no one doubts that that is what it can do. So good is it that it is being earmarked as the British answer to the American AWAC system, which NATO is spending so much time considering.
By anybody's standards Nimrod is a superb aircraft, but I suggest to the Minister that simply to argue that there is a fishery protection role, that the aircraft that we use for maritime surveillance 188 is the Nimrod and that it therefore follows that that must be the aircraft we should use for the fishery protection role, is to get neither the best out of the Nimrod nor, in cost-effective terms, the best for the British taxpayer.
Those of us who take an interest in defence matters are aware of the great concern that has been caused to the Government over the need to curb defence expenditure and yet to maintain the effectiveness of our defence forces. In the 1977 Defence Estimates the Government spelled out a multiplicity of reasons for making defence cuts of £200 million in 1977–78 and £230 million in 1978–79. Making cuts of that sort in Defence Estimates that anyway were pared to the bone must have been extremely difficult. However, on page 15 of the Estimates for 1977, under the heading "Equipment procurement policy", the Government spelled out two of their considerations when procuring equipment:
The first is the continuing need to contain costs.Later they said:The prime objective of British procurement policy has always been to provide the Services, the right time and in an economical way, with the equipment they need…In aerial fishery protection, the Government are failing to live up to the two considerations that they put in their White Paper. Consequently, they are spending much more on the patrol mission than they need, simply because they have never issued an operational requirement for the sort of aircraft that they need to carry out the 200-mile fishery protection task, nor have they given much thought to other aircraft made in this country which might fulfil that role. They have simply said "We have maritime Nimrods in service. They carry out a long-range search and destroy mission. Let us divert them to the fishery protection role, thereby saving us from having to buy new aircraft." The Government wish to persuade us that that is the solution to the problem.It is high time, I suggest, that the Minister and his colleagues thought again, because I believe that although they have in the Nimrod a remarkable aircraft they also have a very expensive one. If I may go back to my analogy of the policeman on the beat, I suggest that by using the Nimrod the Ministry has its policeman 189 on the beat but it has chosen to put him in a Rolls-Royce. Were we to put all our policemen on the beat in Rolls-Royce we would be spending excess money, and I suggest that is what the Government are doing here.
Tonight I want to draw the Minister's attention to another aircraft. I hold no special claim for it, except what I have heard from the manufacturers. But I believe that aircraft, and no doubt other aircraft, are worthy of the Minister's consideration, particularly if he is as concerned about keeping down costs and making practical savings that will not impair the ability of our defence forces as the White Paper would suggest. The aircraft that I want to draw his attention to is the Fairey Britten—Norman Maritime Defender. I am told each Nimrod Mark I costs approximately £7 million. That is in terms of the first version made. I am told that the later versions may cost double that sum. But let us assume that the figure of £7 million is not far off the mark. Four Nimrods, therefore, cost £28 million. By the Minister's own showing, to operate this aircraft for an hour in the fishery protection rôle costs £1,200. To carry out the 45-hour week patrol mission over the year costs about £2.7 million.
However, I was interested to see that David Fairhall of The Guardian, who has flown on a patrol mission, estimated that cost at nearer £5 million. Be that as it may for this particular mission the four Nimrods cost £28 million to buy and £2.7 million, at a conservative estimate, to operate. The Nimrod is a fast and large aircraft, and it is fully equipped, but it is a Rolls-Royce set to do the job of the policeman on the beat.
I want to put forward some points that make me believe that the Maritime Defender would be a better aircraft. I accept that we would need at least 12 such aircraft to do the job of four Nimrods, but I suggest that they would be a great deal cheaper than the four Nimrods and that together all 12 would cost only £3.6 million, with spares. Straight away the sum begins to look rather different. As the Minister knows, in operating terms the company estimates that carrying out an hour's patrol with the Maritime Defender would cost £64. To put £64 against £1,200 makes one ask "Can it really be so much cheaper?". The Minister will 190 say that we would need 12 Maritime Defenders against four Nimrods. I say "Maybe", but to carry out the same rôle the cost of the patrol mission will be £600,000 for the Maritime Defenders against £2.7 million for the Nimrods.
The Minister may introduce his own figures to the debate later on. If he shoots my figures into the ground, so be it. I am not here to make any party point but simply to talk about taxpayer's money and how it can more usefully be used. On the assumption that my figures are correct, with 12 Maritime Defenders in two years we should have got back the capital cost through the saving in operating the Nimrod.
I submit that the Maritime Defender would carry out the fishery protection role every bit as well as the Nimrod does. Indeed, 12 would give the RAF a flexibility in carrying out the patrol mission that it cannot have with four Nimrods. I acknowledge that the Maritime Defender is a slower and smaller aircraft, but that is not of particular importance. Indeed, the slowness may be a positive advantage when taking photographs of ships that should not be in our waters and sitting over a ship thought to be a law breaker.
The Minister must think again. How much maintenance is required to keep the Nimrods on patrol? The makers of the Maritime Defender tell me that for one hour's flying it needs one hour's maintenance. Can the hon. Gentleman say the same for the Nimrod? Would he argue that the figures I have quoted are not optimistically biased in favour of the Government? Can he say what refitting is to be done to the Nimrod, referred to in the White Paper, which talked about bringing them up to Mark II standards—or are these four not to be refitted? If the Nimrod were withdrawn from fishery protection and another aircraft brought in, would those same Nimrods not be refurbished for the AWACS role?
I suggest that we are spending far more on the task than we need, and that we have not the right aircraft or the right number to carry it out efficiently. The RAF needs not only a fishery protection aircraft but a communications aircraft. If the Minister bought some Maritime Defenders he might find that he had a very versatile little aeroplane that could 191 carry out that role. If he wonders whether the Maritime Defender has ever been used for coastal work, I remind him that it is used in that rôle in Africa, Latin America and Hong Kong.
Am I right in thinking that some words that the hon. Gentleman used at Question Time in March still hold good? He said then that the Department was considering the costs of fishery protection and that its mind was not completely closed. Will the Minister echo the words of the Secretary of State for Scotland, who said that he would not close his mind to the possibility of chartering commercial aircraft, as he put it, for the fishery protection role when he had had longer to assess the cost of the present aircraft used in that task? I hope that the hon. Gentleman's mind is as open as his right hon. Friend's, because the role will be long term in the RAF's work, and therefore it is one on which we can ill afford to spend more money than necessary.
I am sure that the Minister will agree that there is no good reason to use such a complicated, if superb, aircraft as the Nimrod for such a humdrum job if there is available a rugged, simple, cheap alternative. I suggest that the Fairy Britten-Norman Maritime Defender, assembled in the Isle of Wight, is just such an aeroplane.
§ 11.4 p.m.
§ The Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Air Force (Mr. James Wellbeloved)I am glad that through the good fortune of the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. McNair-Wilson) in winning a place in the Adjournment debate ballot there is an opportunity to report to the House the important work of the Royal Air Force units involved in early surveillance of our exclusive fishery zone.
I very much appreciate the close interest in the operations that many hon. Members on both sides of the House have taken. I am delighted that many of them have been able to fly on operational sorties with one of our RAF crews. The first hon. Members to take part in such flights, in January this year were, appropriately, members of the Trade and Industry Sub-Committee of the Expenditure Committee, who are engaged in an inquiry into the fishing industry. I shall 192 refer to this inquiry again, but I say now that we welcome the close interest that is being taken in the subject of aerial surveillance and the healthy discussion to which this has given rise.
Another advantage of tonight's debate is that it gives me an opportunity to put on record information about the requirement that the Royal Air Force has to meet for the fisheries departments, the reasons for the choice of aircraft for this role, and what is involved in a fishery surveillance sortie.
First, however, I shall put the fishery protection role into the wider context of what has come to be called the "Offshore Tapestry". Contrary to what the hon. Gentleman has inferred, there are many other tasks that the Nimrod undertakes. The "Offshore Tapestry" is a term coined some years ago to describe the interlinked network of offshore activities round the United Kingdom, in many of which the Armed Forces of the Crown have become involved in one way or another. The metaphor is helpful in that there are several threads to the Government's responsibilities, which interweave with each other. These range from search and rescue in the United Kingdom's flight information region to the treatment of oil pollution round our shores, and from the forecasting of weather to the protection of our oil and gas installations. Some of these interests are traditional.
The House heard last week of a new aspect when, in his statement on the Ekofisk blow-out, the Secretary of State for Energy explained that the Government had offered assistance to Norway, possibly in the form of air surveillance of oil slicks from the Norwegian installation. Although it is now the major thread in the tapestry, fishery protection has to be seen together with the other responsibilities. Furthermore, aerial surveillance for fishery protection is only one strand of the tapestry.
Not only is the range of activities wide; there are many Government Departments, statutory bodies, and private concerns which have needles in this tapestry. I do not want to take this further, but merely to illustrate the complex nature of the whole subject of offshore tapestry, its organisation and management, and the need for careful and maximum co-operation between the many United Kingdom 193 agencies involved as well as the integrated use of the resources available to carry out the policies of the British Government.
Focusing on the fishery protection rôle and aerial surveillance in particular, the requirement placed on the Ministry of Defence is to help provide the fisheries departments of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland, with a detailed and continuous picture of the whereabouts of United Kingdom and foreign vessels, both designated and non-designated, within the United Kingdom's expanded fishery limits. This picture is obtained initially by radar sighting from the air, confirmed by visual sightings in each case, information being passed immediately to the fisheries departments, followed-up by photographs of each vessel sighted. This information will form the basis of enforcement action, possibly involving the support of action in the courts in due course.
The area of the United Kingdom's expanded fishery limits is enormous, taking in about 270,000 square miles round our shores. At its farthest point it extends 400 miles west of the Outer Hebrides. Weather conditions may often be savage, both over the Atlantic and in the North Sea. Visibility may be poor and the seas fierce, with the wind at gale force strength. Icing conditions may be critical. To search regularly and rapidly through this area we need a fairly remarkable and robust aricraft, with range and endurance, equipped with reliable communications, radar designed to detect small vessels scattered over a wide area of sea by day and night and in all weathers.
Specifically, we need on board a sophisticated radar with a wide area of sweep for detection and an ability to investigate individual contacts in detail. Furthermore, we need an exceptionally accurate navigation system and an automatic data store and display to hold during the sortie the whereabouts of vessels in the area under surveillance. We need good look-out places for observation and photography, by both day and night, since in winter the northern areas have few hours of daylight. Sorties are long and tiring, so conditions in the aircraft must not be too cramped for the crew. There must be provision for life rafts and 194 for catering. To avoid wasting time in moving out to areas to be surveyed, and to have the maximum time on task, a high transit speed is necesary.
Back at base—these are facts that the hon. Gentleman does not seem to have taken fully into account—and beyond, we need a fully comprehensive national command and control system for this and other tapestry operations, together with engineering support and facilities for briefing, de-briefing, and training. There must also be secure means for details of the day-to-day needs to be passed on from the Civil Departments and to pass back quickly the intelligence gathered. The whole organisation must be flexible enough to take into account the changing needs of the Civil Departments, which may mean changing plans while the aircraft are in the air, and which may at one time require particular attention to the North Sea, at another to the South Western Approaches, and another the seas round Rockall and the Scottish islands. Yet the fishery task as a whole must be kept broadly under review, and integrated with the other main offshore task—surveillance of the oil and gas rigs—carried out for the Department of Energy.
Consideration of which aircraft to use for this exacting work obviously had to be taken well in advance of the starting date of operations. Several different types of aircraft were reviewed, particularly those in the RAF's inventory at the time, as this would minimise additional cost. RAF aircraft examined included the Argosy, the Andover, and the Hercules. The latter two aircraft would have needed very extensive and expensive modifications to airframe and equipment. The Jetstream was also considered, but its design, endurance, and equipment were considered unsuitable for this particular task. The Nimrod aircraft was chosen for these maritime operations. It was already well equipped for the new task, which is similar to the aircraft's military surface surveillance role. Its radar was designed to detect small targets. It could operate in all weathers, and both by day and by night. The aircraft's communications equipment enables the crews to talk to their shore authorities and ships of the Royal Navy and fishery protection fleet, helicopters, 195 and other fixed-wing aircraft. We are currently looking to see how we can put in trawler-band radio.
Flying at over 400 knots, the Nimrod quickly reaches its search area, so that, on average, 90 per cent. of its flying time is spent on task. It can change its search area rapidly if needed and surprise trawlers fishing illegally, photographing their activities before they can haul in their nets. In a month, with 180 hours of flying time, about half a million square miles are being surveyed. This means that on a typical sortie the aircraft can locate and identify all fishing vessels within an area of about 25,000 square miles. For an emergency, including search and rescue, all the crew would be needed. That is why we take the view that the already skilled crews should be retained in the Nimrod on these duties. We are most grateful to the fisheries inspectors for the help that they have given us in training and in other respects.
As for capital expenditure, the Nimrod aircraft were available without further cost. And because the same type of aircraft was used for the military maritime rôle, the provision for support, training, and overall control could be met at very little extra cost and complication. Eight aircraft had been ordered as a measure to help employment at the makers at Woodford. It was decided to take four of these and add one to each of the Nimrod operational squadrons, to train all crews in their new duties, and use the Nimrods for the total number of flying hours required of 45 hours a week. In looking at their likely needs in 1974, the fisheries departments concluded that a pattern of five nine-hour sorties a week would enable the surveillance to be carried out.
196 I want to turn quickly now to the hon. Gentleman's point about the Britten-Norman Maritime Defender. We have not closed our minds to this option or to any other. I can well understand the hon. Member's enthusiasm for this little aircraft. Many of us saw the Defender at the Farnborough Air Show, and I must admit that it has an impressive specification at an appealing price for these days. The firm has done exceedingly well with exports. However, I do not see the Defender as a competitor to Nimrod in the arduous and demanding task that I have described and a cost comparison is not therefore relevant. But there is a range of duties for aircraft that arise from the concept of the "Offshore Tapestry". The fact that the Nimrod is particularly versatile does not rule out the probability that there is a selection of these duties that a small fixed-wing twin-engined aircraft could perform well and economically. It is too early to say what type of air support our fisheries policies will require in the much longer term. The customer Departments have a substantial overall interest in the costs involved, and I am sure that they, too, will be keeping the matter under review.
For the present era, the Nimrod serves excellently in the fishery protection and surveillance rôle, and as the fishermen's evidence to the Trade and Industry Sub-Committee shows—
§ The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock and the Debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
§ Adjourned at fifteen minutes past Eleven o'clock.