THE ROYAL AIR FORCE

HC Deb 03 April 1978 vol 947 cc36-171

3.47 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Air Force (Mr. James Wellbeloved)

It is particularly appropriate that the Royal Air Force should have been selected as the first of the three Services to be debated in the House this year. Two days ago the Royal Air Force celebrated its sixtieth anniversary—60 years of splendid achievement in peace and war which have shown it a worthy partner to the Royal Navy and the Army in the defence of the United Kingdom.

The beginnings were remarkable. In 1914 few could have foreseen how rapidly aerial warfare would develop. After little more than three years of the First World War, it was decided to create a fully independent air arm, and on 1st April 1918 the Royal Air Force came into being. It inherited the achievements of its forebears, the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps—and earlier still the Royal Engineers—and added its own heroic chapter to the history of the Great War.

After the Great War the RAF faced many challenges to its existence, but it overcame them to play a special part in military operations in the inter-war years. The RAF's peace-keeping operations in the Middle East provided one of the earliest demonstrations of the versatility and economy of air power. In other fields it won its place in the affections of the British people, pioneering new air routes and setting up new records in long-distance, high-altitude and high-speed flying.

During those years there were important developments in aircraft construction and in ideas about the use of air power; and, with the Second World War, the RAF showed its greatness. We remember with pride and thankfulness the victory of the Battle of Britain, the defeat of Hitler's invasion plans and of a great battle fought and won in the air.

But that was but the beginning of the vital contribution that the Royal Air Force made in every theatre of war; in partnership with the Royal Navy in the Battle of the Atlantic; in partnership with the other Services in the campaigns in North Africa and Italy; in North-West Europe, the D-Day landings, Arnhem and the Rhine crossings; in Burma and the Far East; and in the enormous sustained effort of the strategic bomber offensive. The very aircraft of the Second World War are still names to conjure with—Hurricane, Spitfire, Mosquito, Lancaster and Wellington among many others.

Yet, fresh though these Second World War achievements may see, more than half of the RAF's history has fallen since the end of that war. These years, too, have been full of achievement, with the RAF playing a vital part in peace-keeping and stability in what may well come to be seen as one of the most turbulent periods in history. The RAF gave great mobility and flexibility to our forces worldwide, and operated in Malaya, Kenya, Aden, Borneo and elsewhere. It made a very special contribution in the Berlin airlift, which is remembered with deep appreciation by all those who now live in free Berlin. Besides these actual operations, the RAF both in NATO and overseas displayed the unique contribution of air power in the deterrent role.

It is now concentrating its responsibilities on NATO, and it has shown itself as one of the most highly trained elements in NATO's defences—respected among our allies both for its efficiency and for its contribution to the continuing debate on the tactical and strategic uses of air power.

These 60 years of history were celebrated last Saturday in Westminster Abbey in a splendid and moving service of thanksgiving, where Her Majesty the Queen, and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh joined many serving and retired officers and men of the RAF in commemorating those 60 years of dedication and achievement. The congregation of over 2,000 included many who had fought in the Second World War—and, indeed, some 250 founder-members of the Royal Air Force, reaching back to the days of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service.

The history of the Royal Air Force is superbly illustrated at the RAF Museum at Hendon where displays of famous aircraft, historic equipment and works of art enthral half a million visitors, young and old, every year. The trustees of the museum are now building a large new extension to commemorate the Battle of Britain, on land provided by the Ministry of Defence. The construction and operating costs of this venture are to be met entirely from the proceeds of a public appeal, launched last November. I take this opportunity of again commending this appeal to the House and to the nation as a whole as a practical opportunity for the people of this country to demonstrate their gratitude for the freedom that they now enjoy and that was preserved partly by the efforts of the Royal Air Force. They can make that practical demonstration by contributing to that fund in order to enable the Battle of Britain Museum to be created at Hendon as soon as possible.

Mr. Kenneth Lewis (Rutland and Stamford)

rose—

Mr. Wellbeloved

I will not give way because I have experienced the difficulty in past debates that in being generous and giving way on unimportant issues such as that which I have no doubt the hon. Gentleman wishes to raise I am then accused of being over-long in my speech.

Mr. Kenneth Lewis

Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Wellbeloved

No. The hon. Gentleman will have ample opportunity of deploying all his arguments on pay and any other matters if he does the House the courtesy of being here for the whole of the debate and seeks to catch Mr. Speaker's eye.

This brief account of the history of the Royal Air Force shows very clearly that the nature of air power, its inherent flexibility, means that the RAF has constantly to be able to adapt itself to meet new commitments and roles as they arise. To give but one example, the RAF has made major changes to its strategy and operational concepts as a result of the change in NATO's strategy from that of the tripwire, where the threat of massive nuclear retaliation was seen as a sufficient deterrent to a potential enemy, to its present strategy of flexible response.

This bears out my statement in last year's debate on the Royal Air Force that, because our strategic approach can change fairly rapidly, we need to ensure that the aircraft and weapons which we have in the Service are able to operate in a number of different scenarios. A prime example of an aircraft which is designed to provide such flexibility is the Tornado, which the RAF will be operating in the 1980s in the interdiction-strike, reconnaissance and air defence roles.

Since a large part of the capability of the Royal Air Force for the remainder of the century will depend upon the deployment of this aircraft in these two roles, I should like to tell the House of the progress we have been making in these programmes. The total number of Tornado aircraft which the RAF will procure is 385; 220 of them will be for strike-attack and reconnaissance and 165 in the air defence role.

So far, we have ordered 150 production models of the IDS version, the GR1, and we expect first deliveries to take place next year. This aircraft will provide the RAF with the capability to mount interdiction and attack sorties on the enemy's forces on the ground. The range, speed and avionic fit of the aircraft will enable it to penetrate enemy air space, exploiting tactical routing and the aircraft's excellent ability to fly in poor weather and darkness. The Tornado GR1 will indeed pose a formidable problem to an enemy's air defences.

In the strike and conventional attack roles the GR1 will replace both Vulcans and Buccaneers. In these roles its ability to fly fast and low in all weathers with a heavy weapon load will give the RAF a new and powerful punch. New weapons now under development will add to its effectiveness—in particular, the very promising advanced airfield attack weapon, on which agreement in principle has been reached with the US for a joint development.

Those aircraft which will have a maritime strike-attack role will also be able to make the maximum possible use of the versatility provided by the Tornado's airframe and avionics. They will carry the British Aerospace P3T anti-ship sea-skimming missile, which is a significant improvement over the TV Martel system which is presently deployed on the Buccaneers. P3T will be guided by active radar in order to provide an all-weather day and night capability and will also be able to penetrate the enemy's electronic-countermeasures defences.

In the reconnaissance role the Tornado GR1 will replace the Canberra reconnaissance force. The reconnaissance Tornado will be fitted with new sensors, including infra-red linescan.

The Tornado F2 air defence variant is now in full development, and construction has begun of three development aircraft. The F2 will eventually replace the Phantom and Lightning aircraft currently in the air defence role. The Tornado F2 will be able to remain on station for prolonged periods, and will be armed with Sky Flash medium-range and AIM-9L short-range air-to-air missiles as well as cannon. In order to be able to carry out its air defence task of identifying potentially hostile aircraft at long range, the Tornado F2 will carry an important new air-intercept radar. I am pleased to be able to tell the House that the first phase of the airborne trials of this radar has been completed and the second phase will begin shortly.

Because of the United Kingdom's geographical position, and the large airspace which we are committed to defend in order to ensure the security of the United Kingdom base, we need to have an air defence aircraft which can operate at long ranges, remain on its patrol station for significant periods and locate and identify at long range potentially hostile aircraft. The aircraft also needs long-range missiles in order that its radius of effectiveness should be maximised. The Tornado F2, together with the Nimrod airborne early warning system which we are developing, meets these requirements.

The Tornado F2 is an aircraft particularly suited to the air defence needs of the United Kingdom, whilst in its role in Europe it is entirely complementary to the air superiority aircraft deployed by our allies. As the House knows, the Tornado has been developed by the United Kingdom in conjunction with our allies in the Federal Republic of Germany and Italy. The collaborative programme has proved an immense success with benefits for the air forces and industries of the three participating countries. And we intend to take our collaborative programme beyond the stage of the manufacture of the aircraft.

It is hoped that all pilots and navigators—be they German, Italian or British—destined for front-line Tornado squadrons will undergo aircrew conversion training together. Plans for the tri-national Tornado Training Establishment to be set up at RAF Cottesmore are well advanced. The Governments of the United Kingdom and the Federal Republic of Germany have already agreed in principle to the establishment of this joint training facility, and confirmation of Italian participation is eagerly awaited.

The training task involved in converting aircrew to a new type of combat aircraft does not end when the aircraft can be flown in safety and with precision. The aircrew must be trained to operate the aircraft as a lighting machine. The second stage of training involves the development of this skill. The three partner nations in the Tornado project have looked closely at the possibility of establishing a tri-national weapons conversion unit. The establishment of such a unit in Sardinia has not proved feasible because the facilities that could be provided on the island would be insufficient to meet the needs of the three nations when taken together.

We now hope that it will prove possible to establish a bi-national weapons conversion unit at RAF Honington, where aircrew of the United Kingdom and the Federal Republic will train together in the use of the Tornado as a complete fighting machine. The opportunities during the joint training programmes for the exchange of views on tactical concepts, operational practices and general airmanship would contribute greatly to the ability of the air forces of the participating countries to work together in both peace and war, to the mutual benefit of the partners and the Alliance as a whole.

The introduction of the Tornado, in both its roles, is without doubt the major challenge facing the Royal Air Force over the next few years.

Let me now turn to some of the other improvements in equipment that are taking place. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State told the House in the debate on the Statement on the Defence Estimates that we had made an important decision to add to the RAF's airborne tanker fleet by buying and converting VC10 aircraft. The House may wish to know a little more about our plans for these aircraft.

This planned new squadron of VC10 tankers has a significance out of all proportion to its size. Effectively it is equivalent to increasing our fighter and strike-attack forces but at markedly less cost.

Mr. Neville Trotter (Tynemouth)

Will the Minister explain why the Government disbanded the third Victor tanker squadron if there was a need for additional tanker capacity?

Mr. Wellbeloved

I am very happy to be able to tell the hon. Gentleman that all of the five Victor tankers that were disposed of at the time of the defence review were virtually at the end of their effective life and would not have remained in service for very much longer, irrespective of the Government's decision. So I say quite clearly that the VC10s are a most significant and welcome addition to our tanker capacity. This is because these tankers allow combat aircraft to extend their range or endurance or to vary the balance between weapons and fuel carried at take-off. The ability to refuel in the air is of the utmost importance in the maritime strike-attack role as well as in air defence—where it enables combat air patrols to be mounted at some distance from the United Kingdom. The VC10 squadron will increase the RAF's tanker resources by fully a third.

The VC10 promises to be an aircraft well suited to the task. It should have a better performance than the Victor K2 tankers which it will supplement and, of course, it has the advantage of being already in service with the RAF as a transport—so the training for aircrew and support for the aircraft will be reasonably straightforward.

We are buying the VC10s second-hand. They will be extensively refurbished during conversion to the tanker role and will have a good useful life in front of them when they enter RAF service in a few years' time. All in all, it represents a sensible and very effective approach to improving the RAF's capability.

I mentioned in the course of the recent defence debate the steps that the Government had taken to improve the air defence of the United Kingdom. I am delighted to be able to give the House yet further details of the improvements we are making.

We have agreed to purchase an additional Rapier short-range surface-to-air missile squadron to be manned by the Royal Air Force Regiment. We plan to deploy this squadron for the air defence of aircraft based at RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland.

We have taken another step to augment the surface-to-air missile defences by agreeing with the Swedish authorities that we should acquire their stock of Bloodhound missiles to augment the reserves which we already hold.

Both these weapons represent further valuable enhancements of our air defence capability. Together with the purchase of the additional VC10 tankers, these decisions demonstrate the Government's determination to provide the most effective equipment possible for the RAF.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has announced recently that, subject to the satisfactory outcome of contractual negotiations, the RAF will order 30 Chinook medium-lift helicopters. This purchase will greatly increase the effectiveness of the Royal Air Force's support for the Army in Germany. The RAF's lift capability will be improved considerably. It will be possible to move heavier equipment, and the introduction of the new aircraft will result in a doubling of the total lift capability of the RAF over a 24-hour period.

In the longer term, we are continuing our studies on how best to meet the RAF's requirements for an aircraft to replace the Jaguar and the Harrier when these reach the end of their operational lives. In this connection, we are exploring actively the potential for collaboration within Europe. We hope that we shall be able to make real progress in defining the specifications during the course of this year.

I mentioned earlier the challenge that the introduction into service of the Tornado will present to the RAF. A large number of aircrew will have to convert from the aircraft they fly at present to the Tornado, and the demands which this will place upon our training machine will be very great indeed. I should like to dwell briefly upon one part of the training programme which will be particularly crucial if the Tornado crews are to be able to make the best operational use of the new aircraft. This is their training in low flying in the Royal Air Force.

Many right hon. and hon. Members have raised with me problems about disturbance caused by low-flying aircraft. I must stress that low flying is of paramount importance to the operational efficiency of the RAF. It is part of our deterrent posture, for a special feature of air power is the ability to counterattack swiftly and if necessary strike deep into enemy-held territory.

To penetrate the highly sophisticated radar and missile defences of today, the most effective technique is for aircraft to fly very fast and very low. The ground features and interference make it difficult for radar to pick up and track the aircraft at sufficient range to allow time for the defensive systems to react; and it is difficult for enemy aircraft to intercept low-flying aircraft. Low flying is also necessary when the RAF operates in support of Army units on the battlefield, not least for attacking concentrations of enemy tanks.

The techniques of following the terrain and of navigation when flying fast at very low level are difficult and can be acquired only by constant practice. There are severe limits to the skills that can be acquired on simulators or by flying over the sea. The necessary skill can be acquired only by actual low flying over land. Nor is it only a matter of initial training of pilots. The aircrew of operational squadrons must work at the techniques constantly to maintain their skills and improve them to the highest operational standards. Without constant practice in low flying, our aircrew would be like sailors who never went to sea.

Furthermore, training of individual aircrews is not enough. The aircrews must combine in special exercises and in co-operation with the other Services and NATO units in order to obtain the experience of operating as part of larger forces.

Mr. R. C. Mitchell (Southampton, Itchen)

My hon. Friend will be aware that the large majority of people recognise that low flying in training is necessary and are remarkably tolerant about it. But could there be a little more co-operation between the RAF and some of the civil flying units on this matter, because they are very worried about some aspects of low flying? For example, could the low-flying map be published?

Mr. Wellbeloved

We are carrying out in the Air Force department a review of the low-flying system in the United Kingdom. The consideration of that review is not yet complete. I am urging—and I am receiving every co-operation from my colleagues—that it be completed as soon as possible. My view is that it would be better for the low-flying system to be published, but these are matters that are still under consideration. I shall no doubt be able to make an announcement to the House in due course.

With regard to low flying, there are all sorts of special checks that must be made from time to time to test the operational readiness of stations, because it is only through special checks and special exercises that we can provide the depth and scope of training that the RAF and other Services require.

This vital training in low flying—essential to the RAF's ability to defend this country and maintain the freedom of its people—cannot be done without some disturbance to the public. Every effort is made to reduce the impact on individuals by distributing low flying as widely as possible around the country and over the most thinly populated districts. But it is not possible to keep clear of every small inhabited locality, and some disturbance is unavoidable.

We attempt to reduce the impact of low flying still further by controlling the height and speed of aircraft. Certainly it would be very unpleasant if aircraft flew at the high speeds and low levels which would be necessary in wartime operations.

Pilots are invariably briefed before flight to make sure that the planned heights are no lower than the particular sortie requires, according to the precise requirements of the type of training being undertaken. The speed of the aircraft makes a considerable difference to the amount of noise generated, so pilots are restricted in the speeds they may use.

We further try to reduce the disturbance by requiring that most low flying is done in daylight from Monday to Friday. But some low flying may be necessary outside these times—for example, during special exercises. In such cases I make it a practice to inform right hon. and hon. Members whose constituencies will be affected.

Mr. Victor Goodhew (St. Albans)

I appreciate the need to consider the people who suffer in the areas where low flying takes place, but the hon. Gentleman appears to have said that the pilots will not be able to fly as low as they will have to fly in operational circumstances, and that they will not be able to fly as fast as they should. If they are not to be allowed to do either of those things, how are they to be trained for war?

Mr. Wellbeloved

What I said was that it would be very unpleasant if during peacetime RAF pilots were flying as low and as fast as they would be required to fly in war. In wartime they would be skimming virtually a few feet above the housetops at the highest speeds at which they can go. If the hon. Gentleman is advocating that we should have a training programme which imposes that sort of everyday burden upon the general public, he had better convince his colleagues on the Front Bench to put it forward officially as the policy of the Conservative Party.

The policy which we are pursuing is to make it quite clear that low flying is an essential requirement for the training of the Royal Air Force, and we impose reasonable restrictions on height and speed to minimise the disturbance, but at the same time giving the maximum opportunities for proper training for RAF pilots.

Mr. Norman Tebbit (Chingford)

rose—

Mr. Wellbeloved

I do not want to keep giving way, but I give way to the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Tebbit

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not seek to make this a partisan matter. Will he confirm that what he has said is that pilots will never be trained in the full operational use of their aircraft until the first occasion on which they come to be required under combat conditions to fly at combat speeds and combat heights?

Mr. Wellbeloved

What I can confirm without any doubt is that all the professional advice available to Ministers in the Defence Department is that the programme of training now being applied by the RAF is, in the professional view as well as the ministerial view, adequate for the RAF to meet its training requirements for its wartime operations. Therefore, the hon. Gentleman and the House should not be under any illusions or seek to misinterpret my remarks.

We limit the speed and the height of aircraft in order to minimise the disturbance to the general public but at the same time maintain a training programme which is adequate in the professional judgment for the training of pilots to meet their wartime operational role.

Mr. John Cronin (Loughborough)

rose—

Mr. Wellbeloved

This must be the last intervention, otherwise I shall be accused of being over-long.

Mr. Cronin

This intervention is meant to be entirely helpful. Is it not the case that the RAF has a reputation of flying lower and more skilfully at that low altitude than any other air force in the world?

Mr. Wellbeloved

The RAF is the envy of every air force in the world, friend and potential foe alike, because of its professionalism and its ability to go low and fast.

A few people have the impression that low flying is indulged in lightheartedly with pilots skimming low for the fun of it. The House will appreciate from what I have said that low flying is a very serious professional business. There is a strict code of rules regulating conduct in the air. All low flying is carefully planned, and there is a special briefing for every flight. The aircrew themselves are very aware of the need to minimise disturbance.

Furthermore, spot checks are carried out in many parts of the country to establish whether aircrew are observing the rules laid down. As one might expect there are occasional minor transgressions, due to the difficulties of observing the very tight rules, but our checks have produced no evidence of casualness or irresponsibility.

Low flying is essential to the operational efficiency of the RAF, and we do everything we can to spread it fairly and reduce the disturbance it causes. Complaints that the Department receive are investigated most thoroughly. I am frequently in correspondence with right hon. and hon. Members about particular problems that have arisen in their constituencies, and we are constantly looking for improvements. But low flying must go on, and I fear that there will always be some inconvenience.

I should like to take this opportunity of thanking those members of the public who are troubled by low-flying aircraft but who do not complain because they realise that the training being undertaken is of paramount importance for the defence of this country.

I have spoken so far about the rigorous training that is necessary for the RAF to undertake its wartime task, and I have spoken more in terms of the equipment and machinery that it uses than in terms of the men who have to undertake this training. As the House is well aware, members of the Armed Services have, like the rest of the community, been subject to the provision of pay policy in the nation's battle against inflation. The effect on the military salary principle of comparability has been a cause of great worry to our officers and airmen, and, as I made clear in the recent defence debate, morale is not as high as I would like it to be.

The special circumstances of the Services have given rise to much concern that they have slipped behind their civilian counterparts. We are well aware of the crucitl importance of the forthcoming pay settlement to take effect from 1st April.

As the House knows, the pay increase will be made in the light of the recommendations made by the Armed Forces Pay Review Body. I can tell the House that the review body's report was submitted to the Prime Minister last Friday. As is the customary practice, the report will be published at the same time as the Government's decisions upon it, and since the Government have not yet had time to consider the findings of the review body I cannot anticipate what those decisions might be.

I recognise that recent years, involving as they have done redundancy policies, a reduction in the size of the Royal Air Force and a period of pay restraint for the nation as a whole, have caused a great deal of concern to the officers and airmen serving in the Royal Air Force. But, as every fair-minded person acknowledges, the tough and difficult decisions of the last few years are beginning to bear fruit. The inflation rate has been brought down from over 30 per cent. to under 10 per cent. and this real improvement will be felt by the Services as well as by the public at large.

The steps that the Government have taken to improve the nation's economic strength are bringing results, and, as the economic outlook for the country as a whole improves, the Services can look forward to receiving their full share of the benefits that this will produce.

Mr. Cranley Onslow (Woking)

rose—

Mr. Wellbeloved

No, I will not give way any more. The hon. Gentleman will have ample opportunity to make his comments in his own way, should he catch the eye of the Chair, and I have no doubt that we shall hear the characteristic tone and nature of his contribution when it is inflicted upon us.

The Services can look forward to receiving their full share of the benefits which will be produced by the success of this Government's policy. Already, the Government have been able to increase defence spending for 1979–80 by 3 per cent. over the figure for the previous year, in response to the NATO initiative in the face of the growing Warsaw Pact threat.

Members of the Royal Air Force, and, indeed, members of all three Services, can now look forward to a period of stability and feel secure in the knowledge that we shall take every step within our power to ensure that the vital contribution which they make to the well-being of the nation will be adequately recognised both in terms of providing the most modern equipment and in ensuring that the remuneration of our Service men is restored to full comparability as soon as possible.

These have been difficult times for our officers and airmen, and I wish to take the opportunity, in this the sixtieth year of the Royal Air Force, to pay tribute to the courage, skill and determination of the officers, airmen and airwomen who have seen the Royal Air Force through two world wars and many difficult periods in our nation's history. The nation as a whole owes a debt of gratitude to their selfless dedication, which not only prevented the destruction of this nation by Hitler's forces but has played a very significant part in ensuring over 30 years of peace since the European dictators were vanquished.

May I end on this slightly personal note? I have had the honour and privilege of serving as Minister for the Royal Air Force for one-thirtieth of those 60 glorious years. It has been one of the most worthwhile and rewarding periods of my political life. It has been an honour and a privilege to serve with men and women who are dedicated to the principle of preserving the freedom of our country and who have resolutely refused to fall prey to the party politics which have been introduced by so many Members of the Opposition.

The Royal Air Force offers and will continue to offer a rewarding career for all young men or young women who wish to serve their country. It offers an exciting opportunity to fly as well as to enjoy the company of other dedicated citizens.

I have great pleasure, on behalf of the Royal Air Force, in commending to the House the improvements which have been made by the Government to the strength and efficiency of the Service.

4.24 p.m.

Mr. Churchill (Stretford)

The Minister speaks, of course, not on behalf of the Royal Air Force but on behalf of this Socialist Government. He has treated the House to the predictable bluster and banter which we associate with him. The truth is that, despite his claims for what he has done in his association with one-thirtieth of the lifetime of the Royal Air Force, the present Government, of which he is a member, have done more damage to RAF morale in the past three years than the Luftwaffe did in the entire six years of the last war.

At the start of the debate, coinciding, as it does, with the sixtieth anniversary of the foundation of the Royal Air Force, I wish to pay tribute to the men and women who serve in the Royal Air Force today. Anyone who has had the privilege of seeing them at first hand, as several hon. Members now present have had during the past year, will have no doubt whatever that, as in the case of the few who saved Britain in 1940, the manpower of the Royal Air Force today remain the finest of their generation. I do not for a moment doubt that if they, too, were called upon to face the supreme ordeal, they would acquit themselves to the very limits of what their equipment permits. But it must be said that some of their equipment is older than the pilots who man it.

A few months ago, I had the opportunity of visiting one of our V-bomber squadrons, based at Waddington in Lincolnshire. It was illustrative of the way in which the Royal Air Force presses efficiency to the absolute limits that four Vulcan bombers waiting on alert beside the runway but with their engines closed down and cold were able to scramble and get airborne within 88 seconds.

It is that sort of professionalism which earned the Jaguar strike wing based at RAF Bruggen in Germany an unprecedented rating in a recent NATO tactical evaluation. Although the NATO team descended on the airfield at a weekend, when a high proportion of personnel were away from base, none the less more than 80 per cent. of the aircraft were "generated"—that is, placed on instant alert, with full war load—within a very short time indeed. The NATO team stated that RAF Bruggen had established "new standards for NATO".

Only last month I had the privilege of flying on an RAF Jaguar training mission from Bruggen. Having flown on training and even combat missions with other allied air forces, I have no doubt that the expertise and precision with which our pilots fly is second to none in the world today. Even though at 200 ft. and nearly 600 mph we saw our targets only three or four seconds before we were over the top of them, accuracy was total.

The House will be disturbed by the Minister's statement today, the clear implication of which is that this low-level training, which has formed an essential part of the high state of readiness and expertise of the Royal Air Force, may be changed in the future. The Opposition would certainly not be in favour of any such change.

Mr. Emlyn Hooson (Montgomery)

Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that over an area such as mine, where a great deal of low-flying exercises take place, aircraft should be allowed to go a few feet above the houses, at top speed?

Mr. Churchill

What I am suggesting is that the Royal Air Force should continue to be allowed to train at the levels and at the speeds at which it has trained hitherto. The Minister has not made clear whether he was enunciating a new policy or merely reiterating an old policy.

Mr. Wellbeloved

Perhaps I can clarify the matter for the hon. Gentleman. I told my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Mitchell) that we were reviewing the low-flying system, not—I hasten to inform the hon. Gentleman—the practice and methods of training, but merely the areas which are used for training. When that review is completed, I shall, no doubt, make a full statement to the House.

Mr. Churchill

We are grateful to the Minister for clarifying the matter, but I reiterate nevertheless that the Opposition would oppose the placing of further restrictions on the Royal Air Force. We are delighted if the Government are of that opinion also.

Because I, together with my right hon. Friends, have championed the right of those who serve in our Armed Forces to have a fair deal on pay, the Minister accused me in the debate on the Defence Estimates, of undertaking a destructive campaign to undermine the morale of our fighting men for squalid party reasons."—[Official Report, 14th March 1978; Vol. 946, c. 249.] That is a serious charge and one which he well knows to be the reverse of the truth. The entire Royal Air Force knows who is responsible for undermining the morale of our fighting men. It is the Minister and his Socialist colleagues, who have shamelessly sought to take advantage of the fact that the Armed Forces have neither trade union representation nor the right to strike. Nor do they ask for either.

The Minister went on to deny categorically, as reported in column 250 of 14th March, that there was any truth to suggestions that certain RAF personnel this past winter faced a choice between "heating or eating". The Minister must lead a very sheltered life, because hon. Members on all sides of the House will testify that it is virtually impossible to visit any Service establishment these days without getting an earful about pay—unless one is seen to be unsympathetic, stand-offish or arrogant.

The fact is that I have met senior aircraftsmen at RAF stations who, after stoppages, even allowing for rent rebate, are receiving less than £30 per week on which to keep a wife and four children. That figure is £20 per week less than the £49.40 clear, after rent for which this family would qualify under supplementary benefit. If the Minister took the trouble to inquire about the conditions faced by those for whom he has the honour to be responsible he would know that many RAF married quarters have electric heating only and totally lack insulation. The cost of heating such dwellings in the winter months is more than £10 per week. With small children there is no choice for a family but to have the heating on.

In such circumstances a family on social security would qualify for an additional heating allowance—not so the senior aircraftsman. He is left with a mere £20 per week to feed, clothe and provide all necessities for a family of six. Could the Minister manage on such a pittance? Of course he could not. No one in this House could.

It is in these circumstances that men in RAF stations in the United Kingdom this winter have been deliberately going short of food to provide for their children. The choice has been between "heating or eating". It is a scandal that it should be so. How regrettable that, unlike his colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Navy—who has shown a genuine concern for the financial plight of those for whom he is responsible—this Minister has not even taken the trouble to find out that there are men in the RAF today who are living below the poverty line.

The Manpower Services Commission is currently paying out-of-work youngsters £43 per week for counting lamp posts. Why do the Government value an aircraftsman in the RAF at less than an individual doing an entirely futile and useless job, to the benefit of no one, least of all himself?

In opening the debate on the Defence Estimates on 13th March the Secretary of State advanced that well-known Socialist doctrine, namely the doctrine of "equality of misery", when he said: in the recent past almost all sections of the community have found that the rise in their incomes has not been enough to compensate for higher prices and that in consequence their standard of living has fallen. The Armed Forces are no exception to that, nor are they unique in having suffered in this way."—[Official Report, 13th March 1978; Vol. 946, c. 57.] The Under-Secretary of State for the Royal Air Force has, this afternoon, proclaimed himself to be an "equal misery wallah".

But why have the Armed Forces fallen so badly behind? The answer is simple. This is a Government whose policies are not based on equity or on fairness but merely on giving in to those in our society who are prepared to go at them with a big stick. The Pay Code was imposed on the Armed Forces in all its rigour but it was not applied equally to many other sections of the community. Even the firemen, by the strike action they took, were able to secure an undertaking that at least their wages would not be subject to future Government pay policy. This is how the Armed Forces have come to fall at least 30 per cent. behind those in industry.

When I say "30 per cent." I do not claim to be privy to the workings or even to the report of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body. I am basing my remarks merely on the figures supplied by the excellent research staff of the House of Commons Library which show that average earnings increased between April 1975 and January 1978 by no less than 42 per cent. whereas the average earnings of the Armed Forces increased by only 14 per cent. This shows, particularly if account is taken of the months of February and March, which are not included in these statistics, that the pay of the forces has fallen at least 30 per cent. behind the average industrial earnings since 1st April 1975.

The Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Army (Mr. Robert C. Brown)

Why does the hon. Member expose himself to the charge of hypocrisy? Does he not recall that as a result of the policy of the previous Conservative Government, led by the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath), this Labour Government, after taking power, had to award the Armed Forces a pay rise of 30 per cent. in 1975, to restore lost comparabilities?

Mr. Churchill

That was not the reason for the 30 per cent. award. The Minister knows that it was to compensate for the 30 per cent. inflation rate which his Government had created during the year that they had been in office. Furthermore, the Pay Code operated by the previous Tory Administration was operated fairly whereas this Government have patently operated the code unfairly. If that were not so, how else is it to be explained that the Armed Forces have fallen 30 per cent. behind average industrial earnings over the past two years?

Mr. Tebbit

Perhaps my hon. Friend could extract from the Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Army an undertaking that, if his Government's policy in 1975 was to give a 30 per cent. rise to the Armed Forces to restore comparability, we shall now see them making a further 30 per cent. rise to restore Armed Forces' comparability. That would make the Minister's case at least consistent, even if it remained false.

Mr. Churchill

I agree completely with my hon. Friend. The Opposition regard it as essential and urgent that forces' pay should be increased substantially and immediately with a commitment to full comparability in a timescale at least no less favourable than that accorded to the striking firemen.

In consequence of the defence Ministers' lack of influence with their colleagues the Armed Forces have got the dirty end of the stick from this Government. This has provoked a crisis in morale unprecedented in the 60 years' history of the Royal Air Force.

The wastage rate, especially in key specialist trades, has now reached totally unacceptable proportions. Trained manpower is the most important asset of the RAF. Yet there are now so many applicants for premature voluntary retirement that some are being told that they may not quit for eight years. Has the Minister any concept of what it does to the morale of men, their colleagues and their families when they are forbidden to quit their jobs for eight years? I have here a letter from a flying officer who writes: I have been detained, most definitely against my will, for six months now and my wife and I have become most frustrated with the style of treatment that I have received. We are most unhappy and quite desperate to leave and create a new life elsewhere…I am, however, determined to leave at all costs. How would Mr. Mulley propose to detain me? Would it be necessary for me deliberately to commit a court-martial offence? Short of writing to the Queen or deserting, how else must I make my point? My wife and I are at our wits' end. Please can you help? This is the sort of personal case of which the Minister should be taking care. He should see it as his role to be the trade union representative of the Armed Forces—a role in which he is so conspicuously failing.

Mr. Wellbeloved

Perhaps when the hon. Member replies to that correspondent he might be kind enough to tell him that this Government are still operating the rules on PVR which were laid down in 1973 by the previous Administration. Whatever steps we may take or have to take to ensure that people conform to their obligations will be done under the rules which were approved by his right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour).

Mr. Churchill

The Minister knows very well that only under his Government have so many people joined the queue for premature voluntary retirement that they have had to be told that they cannot quit for up to eight years. But there is not only the crisis of those queuing up to quit but the fact that the supply of recruits has dried up, as the Secretary of State so starkly admits in paragraph 404 of the White Paper when he says There has been a shortage of candidates of adequate quality to meet the recruiting requirements for the Royal Air Force. It has not proved possible to recruit the numbers required for the General Duties (Pilot, Navigator Aircraft Control and Fighter Control), Engineer, Security (RAF Regiment and Administrative Education) Branches, in some cases by a substantial margin. The University Cadetship Scheme has attracted only half the expected number of recruits to the General Duties, Engineer and Administrative Branches. This is an appalling state of affairs at a time when the RAF needs to attract a whole new generation of recruits of the highest calibre to man the Tornado in the 1980s.

As the Minister knows, the failure rate in the stream of pilots training for the "fast jets" is now running at an unprecedented level due to a drop in the calibre of those applying to enter the RAF. I am willing to give way to the Minister if he wishes to deny that this is the case.

This state of affairs represents a political mishandling of the RAF of consummate incompetence. This same Government, who have so recently slashed RAF manpower by, according to the Minister of State on 13th March in a parliamentary reply, no fewer than 14,400—that is 14½ per cent.—and embarked on a programme of enforced redundancies which has shattered the lives of many who had devoted their whole lives to the service of their country by joining the RAF. now find themselves short of pilots.

It is, furthermore, admitted that RAF Germany is under strength and no longer has the manpower to operate with maximum effectiveness on a sustained basis from the newly constructed, dispersed, hardened aircraft shelters. Who was responsible for cutting manpower in the first place? This same Minister, this same Government. These are the actions of a Government whose hallmark is one of gross ineptitude and bungling.

Has the Minister considered that perhaps if he raised the pay of pilots to that of London bus drivers he would not have so much trouble recruiting and retaining men of the right calibre? What a pity it is that this great array of five Defence Ministers on the Treasury Bench has less influence over their Cabinet colleagues when it comes to pay policy than even the chairman of London Transport.

Mr. Wellbeloved

I am sorry to intervene again in the middle of the hon. Gentleman's rhetoric, but if he can spare time at some time in the next few days to have another chat with his right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham perhaps he would like to canvass with him the policy which was intro- duced while the right hon. Gentleman was at the Ministry of Defence, when the Royal Air Force introduced a policy known as the bold and deficit policy which forecast many shortages of pilots in 1978 of a significant size. The hon. Gentleman, with the nonsense that he is now uttering, is completely ignoring, as he always does, the responsibility which his own colleagues bear for many of the difficulties which we now face.

Mr. Churchill

The Minister is suggesting that it was well known several years in advance that there would be shortages in the recruiting of pilots in 1978. Why on earth did this Socialist Government then presume to cut RAF strength by 14,400 and impose enforced redundancies on pilots?

The damage that the Government are wreaking on the Royal Air Force is not confined only to their disastrous and unfair treatment of the men and women who make up the RAF. They are doing untold damage to the capability of the RAF and, in the process, to Britain's contribution to the maintenance of peace by their repeated cuts and postponements in the re-equipment programme for the Royal Air Force.

The Defence and External Affairs Sub-Committee made a report on the "Cumulative Effect of Cuts in Defence Expenditure". Perhaps the Minister would care to listen to this.

Mr. Wellbeloved

To this rubbish?

Mr. Churchill

This is the rubbish, if he chooses to call it that, of a highly-respected Select Committee of the House which reported unanimously and which is composed of Members from all sides. Perhaps the Minister would wipe that smirk off his face and listen to what they said: The Royal Air Force has suffered a serious impairment of its strike and offensive support capability, not only with the cancellation of an extra squadron of Jaguars but also with the major cut back in the delivery rate for the long awaited Tornado which is designed to replace up to five existing aircraft types and perform in a variety of vital roles. The danger of such a deferment is not simply that the numbers needed will not be achieved quickly enough, leaving an operational deficiency, but that there is a risk that the aircraft will be obsolescent before the last of them is delivered. The operation of the Harrier force is also adversely affected. … The Royal Air Force and Britain's defence industries remain the world's pacemakers in pioneering new equipment in many areas. Specific examples that one could cite are defence against chemical warfare, Rapier with Blindfire, the airfield denial and cluster bomb weapons and the Skyflash missile. The kit in the pipeline is excellent. Much of it is second to none in the world. But it is coming out of the pipeline far too slowly and in insufficient quantities bearing in mind the escalating military threat from the Soviet Union.

We cannot know the intentions of those who wield power in the Kremlin. Even if we did, those intentions could change in the space of a weekend. What we know is that we are confronted today by a potential military threat that in conventional forces alone is greater than anything the world has ever seen and many times more powerful than Nazi Germany. We also know that the Soviet Union is today displaying in Africa distinctly aggressive tendencies. On top of this the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Haig, has informed NATO allies that we can now rely on no more than 72 hours of warning time in the event of an attack in Europe.

Our policy and that of our allies in NATO is based on deterrence, that is, on being strong enough to prevent a war from ever happening. For such a policy to be effective it is essential to have sufficiently powerful forces at a high state of readiness and efficiency to convince any potential aggressor that there is nothing to gain but everything to lose from embarking on military adventures.

But is the RAF today ready? Is it being allowed by this Government to play its full and vital part in the maintenance of peace in Europe? Knowing how fond the Under-Secretary of State is of seeking to construe any adverse reflections on pay or equipment of the RAF as criticisms of men and women of the RAF, let me make it perfectly clear that when I or any of my right hon. or hon. Friends make criticism, we hold him and his colleagues in this ramshackle Government exclusively responsible for such deficiencies.

Since the catastrophic cancellation by the Labour Government in the 1960s of the two main aircraft of the RAF the TSR 2 and the P1154, the equipment programme has been in disarray. It has to be said—and it gives me no pleasure whatever to say it—that, until Tornado enters squadron service next year or beyond, the RAF totally lacks a modern all-weather strike aircraft.

For some three years now, the Soviet Union has been deploying, at a rate in excess of 1,000 a year, a new generation of supersonic swing-wing aircraft such as the Fencer, Flogger, and Fitter, the like of which the RAF has no equivalent. In these circumstances, it can only be a matter for the gravest concern that the Secretary of State should have announced with such complacency and unconcern, in opening the defence debate on 13th March, the slippage in the Tornado programme. Indeed, he appeared almost relieved that this was where the bulk of this year's additional £267 million defence cut would be found.

The re-equipment of the RAF with the Tornado, including the air defence variant, is not now to be completed until the late 1980s. When the Tornado does eventually start to come off the production line, it is intended that it should be at the rate for the RAF of no more than three or four per month, while the Soviet Union's production rate for comparable aircraft has for at least three years been running at 90 per month.

The dispositions that Ministers are making bear absolutely no relation to the level of the threat that exists from the Soviet Union today. Regrettably, Britain's defence policy is related directly only to what the Government perceive to be the level of threat from those Labour Members below the Gangway—I will exempt those sitting there today—who, unlike the Italian Communist Party, believe neither in defence nor in the NATO alliance.

But the Government do not even make the best use of the equipment they have in service. Why do the very powerful forces of Harrier and Jaguar aircraft deployed in Germany today totally lack any air defence missile? The Opposition insist on knowing when this situation is to be rectified, for the lack of such equipment goes far to destroy the validity of an otherwise very powerful weapons system and places pilots at grave risk to interception and destruction by any aircraft equipped with an effective look-down, shoot-down radar and missile system.

In referring to the Jaguar mission that I flew last month from Bruggen, I mentioned the precision with which we flew over our targets. What I did not mention was the fact that we never made it to our target, as we were "bounced" by two air defence Phantoms from RAF Wildenrath. Although we were flying very low, the Phantoms had no difficulty in picking us up at a very great distance. Worse still, they knew that we were an easy prey. Had we been equipped with even a couple of Sidewinders or Magic missiles, they would have approached us with much greater circumspection. I hope that the Government will take effective steps to remedy that deficiency.

Another case of failure to make proper use of existing resources is highlighted by the failure to arm the Hawk. At least 160 of these excellent jet trainers could be fitted up with bombs and cannon in a tank-busting role, piloted by instructors from the OCUs. When will the Hawk be given a war role?

However, the greatest restriction on the readiness of the RAF at present rests in its level of war stock. I will not embarrass the Minister by giving figures. Suffice it to say that, in the light of experience gained in the October 1973 war. RAF war stocks are at an unacceptably, indeed dangerously, low level. At any remotely realistic wastage rate, Britain does not begin to meet the NATO requirement of a minimum of 30 days fighting capability.

The Government have now undertaken to increase stocks of missiles and other key items of equipment such as—

Mr. Robert C. Brown

The hon. Gentleman is being irresponsible.

Mr. Churchill

What is irresponsible is that the Government have not rectified this situation and brought stocks up to a proper level. The Government have now undertaken to increase stocks of missiles and other key items of equipment, such as Sonobuoys, by one-third before the end of the year. Naturally, the Opposition welcome this development, but why do we have to wait for our allies to tell us to pull our socks up before doing what is so glaringly obvious?

But even with this increase, let there be no doubt that we still have a very long way to go before these stocks reach a level which could remotely be described as providing an effective deterrent capability. In consequence of the Government's reckless and irresponsible slashing of RAF manpower by 14.5 per cent., there now exists a serious shortage in certain key specialist trades, especially armourers.

This results in the turn-around time of certain of our squadrons—I am specifically not referring to the Jaguar wing at Bruggen, which demonstrates a turnaround time of less than seven minutes, which is impressive by any standards—of double what it needs to be because there is a lack of trained armourers and personnel to turn the aircraft around.

Mr. Tebbit

They are probably driving London buses.

Mr. Churchill

How true! How sad!

In the event that Britain did raise her war stocks to the proper level, it would be the lack of trained manpower that would be the principal constraint in maintaining the momentum of our fighting capability in wartime.

In this context, it is difficult to conceive the reason for the situation pointed out by the Defence and External Affairs Sub-Committee in its report on reserves published in May last year. It said: We were surprised to learn that, apart from the 800 men assigned to specific emergency duties, as stated in the 1976 Defence White Paper, none of the remaining 33,000 or so Royal Air Force reservists have any specific wartime role. It is time that the Government took proper stock of this situation. Surely it would only be prudent to be able instantly to make use of the skill of those who have spent many years mastering specialist trades in the RAF and who are now in civilian life. There would be no shortage of work for the balance in protecting RAF fields both here and in Germany from sabotage or ground or airborne attack.

The Under-Secretary's capacity for absurd exaggeration and the unfounded personal attack is well known. However, even he overreached himself when he declared on 14th March: … under this Labour Government major steps have been taken to counter the threat to this island from the Soviet Backfire and Fencer bombers, something that his Government"— he was referring to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour)— failed to do in the four years that they were in office."—[Official Report, 14th March 1978: Vol. 946, c. 235.] Is the Under-Secretary so ill-informed on these matters that he does not know that the Backfire and Fencer—and he might have added the Flogger and Fitter—whose deployment has had the effect of increasing possibly as much as tenfold the tonnage of bombs which could be dropped on these islands in the event of war, had not even been heard of, let alone deployed, during the period of the last Conservative Government? The Minister made great play of the fact that the Government are now taking some very limited steps to take account of this greatly increased Soviet air threat to the United Kingdom. I am bound to say that his efforts are nothing to boast about.

The United Kingdom's air defence depends upon Lightnings and Phantoms, which are short on legs and will be very long in the tooth before the Tornado ADV replaces them in the late 1980s. The airfield hardening programme in the United Kingdom is progressing at too slow a pace, and it is a scandal that only a single RAF base in the United Kingdom is equipped with a missile capacity against low-flying aircraft. We are delighted to hear that now a second one is to be, but we need a much bolder programme in this regard.

Why is the Minister—and, indeed, the Secretary of State in his White Paper—so silent about the strategic nuclear role of the RAF? Will he tell the House whether the Government have taken a decision to stand down the V Bombers in 1982? Up to this moment, Britain's independent strategic nuclear deterrent has represented a powerful and serious capability, above all for the fact that the Polaris force of submarines has been backed up by the very powerful capability of the V-bombers. If they are to be scrapped, the RAF will no longer have the capability of striking a potential enemy in his heartland, and our deterrent will depend on two Polaris submarines—sometimes even a single one—on station.

It is idle for the Government to pretend that Tornado, despite its excellent qualities as a strike aircraft, is in any sense a replacement for V-bombers. Unlike them or TSR2, it does not have the range to strike beyond Eastern Europe. It is urgent that steps be taken to provide for an effective deterrent after 1982 or, if it is to be allowed to lapse by a Socialist Government—if by mischance we still have one after next year—let them state in plain terms to the people of this country that they are intending to lay the civilian population of these islands open for the very first time to the threat of Soviet nuclear blackmail.

The Government's responsibility in these matters is very grave. The cause of the deficiencies of manpower and the delay in the equipment programme is to be found in the 18 per cent. cut in defence expenditure, brought in by the Government to finance Socialism—despite the fact that it would cause the loss of 218,000 jobs in the forces and defence industries, as the Minister of State made clear in a reply only a year ago. It was done also to appease the Left wing in the Labour Party.

The sleeping-sickness which afflicted the Secretary of State last year seems to be engulfing the entire defence policy of the Government. Ministers are uniquely well informed of the threat, yet they cut, cut and cut again. Only a Government as devious as this one could announce, as they did in this year's White Paper on Expenditure, Cmnd. 7049, a further cut of defence expenditure of £243 million in 1979–80 and 1980–81, and trumpet it to our allies as a "3 per cent. increase."

The next Conservative Government will accelerate the Tornado programme. The Minister of State says that that is not possible. It is a pity that he does not find a way of making that acceleration possible, for on that depends the viability of the Royal Air Force. We shall not only accelerate the Tornado production but we shall also press ahead with the formulation of the next generation to replace the Jaguar and Harrier, the AST403, about which the Government are being excessively dilatory.

Deficiencies in manpower and reserves will be rectified. We shall give urgent consideration to the strengthening of our deterrent capability—in the light of the fact that we can guarantee only a single Polaris on station beyond 1982—and to the possibilities of a cruise missile system. We shall strengthen the air defence of the United Kingdom. Above all, we shall grant full comparability of pay to the Armed Forces. We shall once again make a career in the Royal Air Force one the worth of which is properly recognised by the nation as a whole and in which the men and women of the Royal Air Force can look to their future with confidence.

5.3 p.m.

Mr. Roderick MacFarquhar (Belper)

In the interests of brevity and of other hon. Members who wish to speak, I will not follow the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill), whose arguments have already been punctured several times by my hon. Friend the Minister, and doubtless will be again when the Front Bench replies.

I suspect, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that you and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Air Force are not regular readers of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, even though it is the leading newspaper of the capital of President Carter's home State.

I draw the Minister's attention to a series of articles published in this paper on 8th January, 15th January and 22nd January 1978, in which Joseph Albright of the paper's Washington Bureau exposed the very serious defects in the safety of nuclear weapons and their installations. Some of these revelations may have been relevant only to United States installations in America and on the Continent of Europe, and I shall raise only briefly those matters which directly concern or could concern us in these islands. I shall be very happy to furnish my hon. Friend with copies of the articles if he wishes to study the question more closely.

The most alarming aspect of Mr. Albright's revelations was the ease with which he was able to bluff his way into two nuclear weapons compounds where H-bombs for the United States Strategic Air Command were stored. Without doing anything illegal, he first obtained a set of Government blueprints showing the exact layout of the weapons compounds. One blueprint disclosed a method of knocking out the alarm circuits. Another showed two unguarded gates through the innermost security fences.

All Mr. Albright had to do to obtain this revealing material was to answer an official advertisement placed by the United States Corps of Engineers. Posing as a contractor considering tendering for the improvement of security facilities, he simply sent $5.30, accompanied by a five-line letter on his personal stationery. I have not been able to confirm a rumour that he signed the letter "Baader-Meinhoff". But within a week he received 53 blueprints and 300 pages of technical specifications, as well as an indication that interested contractors were invited to visit the sites in question.

When Mr. Albright took up the invitation, he managed to enter two installations, offering no more proof of his bona fides than his social security number and his driving licence. At one base his briefcase was not even searched. He did not suggest in his article that he could have stolen an H-bomb, but his story indicated that a determined gang of terrorists might have done unspeakable damage. The matter has been taken up very seriously by the United States Congress and the Pentagon has also ordered an investigation. I hope that my hon. Friend will bear that in mind when he considers the matter himself.

I should like to ask my hon. Friend two relevant questions. First, will he please contact his American opposite number and ensure that security conditions are better at United States bases in Britain than at United States bases in America?

Secondly, will my hon. Friend review the security arrangements at RAF bases to ensure that no one could brazen his way into them as he might do at an American base?

My second major point has to do with the security system of the nuclear weapons themselves. I understand from Mr. Albright's evidence that there are five types of United States nuclear weapons which are not equipped with modern electronic safety catches and "insensitive" high-explosive triggers. These are the Mark 28 H-bomb, the B 43 H-bomb, the B 57 theatre nuclear weapon, the B 61 Model 0 tactical bomb, and the B 61 Model 2 tactical bomb. Some or all of these are deployed in Europe, including Britain. I believe, as part of the American Quick Reaction Alert Force.

In view of the critical importance that the Americans themselves place upon having safer nuclear weapons—that is to say, B 61 Model 3, Model 4 and Model 5—will my hon. Friend again contact his American opposite number and ask him, as a matter of urgency, to substitute the safer bombs where these are not already deployed at United States bases in this country?

Will my hon. Friend, when he is replying, inform the House whether British nuclear weapons held by the RAF have or do not have the modern electronic safety catches and "insensitive" high-explosive triggers?

I believe that the American articles I have quoted reveal serious security questions regarding nuclear bases and weapons. I hope that my hon. Friend will give an undertaking tonight that he will institute a thorough investigation to ensure that in Britain—whether at British or at American bases—and at British bases abroad, there is, or soon will be, a far higher degree of security than that prevailing at United States bases in America and with some United States nuclear weapons probably stationed in this country.

5.8 p.m.

Mr. Neville Trotter (Tynemouth)

It is interesting that we debate the Royal Air Force tonight without any real comment from the Government Front Bench as to the threat which we face in the air—a threat which was very well elaborated by my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill).

The Soviet air force has changed its character in the last four or five years—very largely since the Labour Government came into power. There has also been a change in the Soviet Army. Why is that relevant? It is relevant for the reason that the Soviet Army has had a very large increase in the number of its anti-aircraft weapons in each of its divisions and corps. As a result of that, and the increase in its artillery support fire, it no longer needs to rely on the Soviet Air Force to defend it in Central Europe, and therefore a very large number of Soviet aircraft have been able to change their roles to an offensive nature, which include attacks against this country. At the same time the new generations of Soviet aircraft have a range and a bomb load many times greater than those of their predecessors.

As a result there is today a real threat to this country of an attack with conventional weapons of a sort that has not existed since the Nazi war. If a war broke out, we should face an attack of something like twice the scale of operations that existed at the time of the blitz, with conventional weapons raining down on Britain—and these would be of a very much more deadly nature than any that fell 30 years ago.

The Royal Air Force has a very great task ahead of it. It is committed to helping our allies on the central front, to reinforcing the flanks of NATO, to guarding the sea lines of communication across the Atlantic, and, above all, to the defence of the United Kingdom and of the air space around it.

We are considering today—or we should be considering—how well prepared the RAF is for these many heavy burdens. Unfortunately, there has been an extraordinary display of complacency from the Government Benches. The fact that the Minister is now turning his back is—I hope not—a further example of that complacency. Presumably, he has gone to seek some answer from the Box to the points made about nuclear weapons by his hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. MacFarquhar). It is extraordinary that no realism has been displayed by the Government Front Bench as to the threat that faces us, nor has any impression been given to the House of the problems that exist in the Royal Air Force. It is incredible that we have to read in foreign papers and other sources about those problems.

It is a fact that since the Government took office they have reduced the RAF by 15,000 men. If they are to stick to their original plans, they will reduce RAF personnel by a further 3,000. There has been a 15 per cent. reduction in the strength of the RAF in the last four years. We have now reached the situation in Britain where we have more taxmen than we have airmen. I believe that that is a wrong balance to strike in the public service.

We now have 500 first-line aircraft—fewer than the number in a country such as Poland—and only 13 per cent. of the aircraft we had in the 1950s. We have no reserves. In a crisis situation only 800 men would be called up in the RAF because there are no spare aircraft for them to man. As there are no reserve aircraft, the policy has been not to call up the extra 33,000 men who are available.

The front line is far too small. There is no time to cover all the roles of the Air Force in detail today, and perhaps one will be able to talk about the central front in the Army debate, if one is able to catch Mr. Speaker's eye on that occasion. In regard to the sea lines of communication, I must stress the harm that was done to NATO by the withdrawal and disbandment of the Nimrod Squadron which for so many years has been based in Malta and which has been responsible for the identification and pursuit of a high percentage of the Soviet submarines in the Mediterranean. It so happens that the type of submarine deployed by the Soviets in the Mediterranean is particularly susceptible to detection by the Nimrod aircraft. I understand from the White Paper that the Government are strengthening their commitment to NATO by allocating Devon, Prince and Heron aircraft for a general maritime role. Those aircraft are unarmed and over 20 years old. I was tempted to think that in next year's White Paper we might see Flight Lieutenant David Cyster's Tiger Moth added to the long-range force as an additional commitment to NATO.

I wish to concentrate, in the few minutes available to me in this debate, on the air defence of Britain. There is surely no greater task for the RAF, and no greater duty for any Government, than the defence of the skies above this island. Sir Andrew Humphrey, who sadly died a year or two ago, said just before his death that the air defence of Britain had been disbanded to a far greater extent than any other force. That is a very serious accusation to make.

There are, according to a parliamentary Answer given a short while ago, 126 fighters in Royal Air Force museums. It is interesting to compare that figure with the 84 machines that we have in our front line to defend our skies. It would seem that in the event of a war we might be able to mobilise a squadron or two of Hurricanes and Spitfires, but it displays an extremely serious situation when there are only 84 front-line fighters to defend our country, despite the threefold or fourfold increase in the threat from the Soviet Air Force against this country.

When I served in the RAF in the 1950s there were 1,000 front-line fighters, and at that time the threat was infinitely lower than it is now. In 1939 we had not 39 fighters, but 39 fighter squadrons, and 20 years ago we had more than 50 fighter squadrons compared with the seven that we now have in this country. We are a prime target in the disastrous event of war breaking out. This country would be seen by our potential opponents as being the main base for United States reinforcements to Europe. We should be subject to an initial attack on a great scale.

Comment has been made about the fighter version of the MRCA, which will total 165 aircraft. If we allow for the aircraft which no doubt we shall be basing in Germany for the fighter role, for training, for those in maintenance units and for those which, sadly, will have to be written off, I suggest that we shall not even be able to maintain the present 84 front-line strength out of a total fighter force of 165 MRCAs. I hope that the Minister will assure the House that there will be as many fighters when the MRCA come into the front line as we have now.

There have been comments about delays in the delivery of the MRCA. Those comments come from two sources—not just the troubles which have arisen in regard to the construction of the aircraft, but from the conscious decision announced in the 1975 defence review that the rate of delivery would be reduced by a third. Therefore, we have seen not one but two reductions in the rate of delivery of this vital aircraft on which the future of the RAF depends.

In the last year or so there have been some improvements in air defence, but the air defence of this country remains far below the needs of the present situation. The Minister took credit for the few improvements which had been made when he spoke in the main defence debate, but of course all those plans were inherited. He implemented some, but cut others. May I remind the House that so far cuts amounting to £8,000 million have been made by the Labour Government?

The Minister said that there had been a few minor cuts after the main defence review. In fact £887 million was cut from next year's estimates in the defence review and a further £528 million was cut in what he referred to as the minor subsequent cuts. In other words, for every £100 of cuts made in the original defence review, a further £60 has since been cut. The present Government have shown time after time that they have not given the defence of this country the degree of priority that it deserves.

We have heard with pleasure that there is to be a second Rapier Squadron to defend Lossiemouth. There is also a squadron at Leuchars. That means that two RAF bases will be properly defended. What about the other 32? What are the Government's plans to defend the rest of the RAF? Why choose those two bases? What about the other stations that are completely open to the low-level attack to which the Minister referred as being the modern form of air warfare?

I suggest to the Minister that there is a case for forming reserve squadrons of the RAF Regiment to defend airfields with the aid of Rapier. It would not require a great deal of training but would, I suggest, give good value for money. There are a large number of retired airmen living around most bases who would be delighted to join a Territorial RAF regiment and still have some contact with their old units.

I should like to say a few words about the men and women in the RAF, without whom no Service can be efficient. It is true to say that they are still a superb body of men and women. I associate myself with the comments that have already been made about their courage skill and determination, and the dedication which they displayed, together with the other Services, at the time of the firemen's strike. I think that a particular word of gratitude is due, in face of the tremendous task that was carried out, to those at the training depot at Catterick where a large number of the Service firemen were trained—not just from the RAF but from the Army as well.

The Minister paid full credit to the men for their dedication and service. But when he speaks of a debt of gratitude to the men in the Royal Air Force, I suggest that the men and women in the Service want not just credit, but cash. The Sunday Telegraph in an article yesterday referred to recent visits made by its reporters to RAF stations and the pre-occupation they found over pay in every base they attended. It was the main subject of conversation, not just with the Press but among the Service men themselves.

It is extraordinary and incredible that this Government should have led us into a situation in which we are short of one pilot in three. They have been making hundreds of pilots redundant. I flew on the flight deck of a civil airliner not so long ago with a man who had given the best years of his life to the Royal Air Force as a pilot. He was thrown out and he is now sitting with only two bars on his shoulder on the flight deck of a BAC 111 aircraft and he is having to work his way up again from the bottom. He had been in charge of all flying at his last RAF stations. There are hundreds of others who find themselves in that same predicament. Hundreds have been thrown out, while many others have taken voluntary retirement because they are fed up. Yet at the same time, the Government reduced the number of pilots recruited and trained. As a result we find ourselves with a very serious shortage.

It will be extremely expensive to put that right because the short-service scheme which is being reintroduced was originally abolished because of the cost of training a pilot up to the necessary standards. It takes two-and-three-quarter years to train a pilot to the highest standard to fly the MRCA. These pilots will be able to leave the Air Force after a total of only eight years' service when it has cost nearly £500,000 to train them. What a false economy it was to make redundant so many pilots and encourage others to leave.

We are not only short of pilots; we are also short of fighter controllers, engineers and many other ground trades.

I share the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Stechford about our stocks of weapons. I am not sure whether we do in fact have 30 days' stocks. It does seem to be a State secret. The time stocks will last depends of course on the rate of use. I suspect that NATO is still working on a rate of use that is based on pre-Yom Kippur war experience. Judging from that experience I believe that our stocks would last hours rather than days, in the event of an all-out conventional attack.

There is distressingly little in the White Paper about the development of Smart weapons. It may cost £250,000 for each Smart bomb but one must allow for the fact that these weapons have an 80 to 95 per cent. accuracy. This is a very good investment if it results in saving losses of aircraft that each cost £8 million to £10 million. The RAF must follow lessons learned abroad. We have not been giving enough money or attention to the development of a modern generation of weapons. It is no good having superb pilots and superb training if at the end of the day when the pilot reaches his target and drops his weapons those weapons are 80 to 95 per cent inaccurate. In the case of Smart weapons, there is 80 to 95 per cent. accuracy.

Technology is very expensive and the RAF suffers from this perhaps more than any of the other services. Not only is it very expensive, but it takes a very great time to bring any new development into service. Therefore, one must be prepared to fight at any time with what we have already. There will be no time in a future crisis to build new aircraft or develop new weapons systems. We are talking about a few days, not the few years it now takes to bring new developments forward.

I commiserate with the Minister because he is serving in a Government which give very low priority to his Department. In my judgment there is little that can be done to improve the RAF without spending a great deal more money. It is right to spend money on giving a shield to the air space of this country. We need more aircraft and more money spent on paying those who fly and maintain our aircraft.

I do not believe that our country cannot afford it. It costs each member of the adult population of this country about £1 a week for the RAF. That is two-thirds of what he spends on average on tobacco.

5.26 p.m.

Mr. Bruce George (Walsall, South)

I would like to add my congratulations to those of other Back Benchers on the Government side to the RAF on the occasion of its sixtieth anniversary.

I do not subscribe to the dismal or gloomy picture portrayed this afternoon and in previous speeches by hon. Members opposite of the potential performance of the RAF. I would rather rely for judgment on the writings of Mr. Andrew Wilson in The Observer yesterday than on analyses of hon. Members opposite. Mr. Wilson wrote in an article: From some recent statements by Conservative defence speakers one might suppose that the Royal Air Force is on the point of collapsing for want of men and machines. They conjure up a picture of 50-year-old pilots flying 20-year-old planes against an opponent in central Europe who not only outnumbers the Allied air forces by nearly three to one, but is also overtaking them in quality. He says this view is simply not true. There has been an attempt by Conservatives and military men in both Britain and America to frighten the population into making an over-exaggerated response, one we cannot as a society afford.

I do not think that any political party has a monopoly of patriotism. No one on this side of the House wants to sell this country down the river. We all want to see viable defence at a realistic cost. However, the cost of one new aircraft is the equivalent of a new district general hospital in Walsall, which I hope we shall be getting soon. Hon. Members must bear in mind the cost of one such aircraft when compared with important social services and developments. If defence spending were very considerably to be increased, many people who were suffering from a deterioration in education, housing and social services would wonder whether the expenditure on a magnificent defence system was worth while, because it would seem that the social system being defended was hardly worth defending.

Mr. Churchill

It may have escaped the notice of the hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George) that that same defence correspondent said in the same article: The need to defend the Western Approaches and intercept attackers flying across the North Sea creates a need for more planes than currently exist or are planned. And this is despite the use of older aircraft (Lightnings), which are helping to hold the line till the air defence variant of the Tornado becomes available in the 1980s.

Mr. George

I do not want to embark upon a theological discussion using Mr. Andrew Wilson as a mentor. I retaliate by again quoting Mr. Wilson who said: The quite contrary truth is that in the past two years the decline into which the RAF was put has been halted. This decline was caused not so much by Labour defence cuts as by Mr. Duncan Sandy's 1957 White Paper which wrote off manned aircraft, and by a longstanding NATO strategy which relegated conventional forces to the role of a nuclear tripwire. Therefore, it may not be as simple as Conservatives suggest—that any one group of people is responsible for the decline.

I do not think that the RAF should be relegated in this way to this limited role. A survey of the RAF by the Economist, which is hardly renowned for radicalism, said recently that the RAF— now concentrated almost exclusively on Nato commitments and with the new multi-role, multi-nation aircraft, the Tornado, coming into production, it is convinced that it is getting back on the right flight path after suffering, through no great fault of its own, a traumatic series of programme cancellations and abrupt changes in defence policy in the 1960s and 1970s. The situation is being reversed. I believe that the RAF can look forward, with the acquisition of three of the most sophisticated aircraft in the world, the Tornado GR1, the Tornado F2 and the Nimrod AEW aircraft to a much greater role in future, and will be enabled to maintain its technological lead in the co-ordination of the air war of the future.

The purchase of the Tornado means an investment of £3,310 million for production aircraft alone. That is no mean amount. In expenditure on equipment—on page 61 of the Defence Estimates—we see that expenditure for the RAF greatly exceeds that of sea systems expenditure and land systems expenditure. Therefore the RAF is not getting the raw deal that some Conservatives have suggested.

The Defence Estimates show a continuation of the move begun 12 years ago to rationalise our defence system. I observe with some concern the atavistic ramblings of some Conservatives who seek to return to the position of Britain being ever-extended everywhere and effective nowhere. Our policy is to concentrate our defence efforts upon Europe and this has meant an increase in NATO capabilities rather than a diminution of its capabilities or our contribution.

The quality of the RAF was surely demonstrated last summer in Nevada when a squadron of Buccaneer aircraft was involved in the American Air Force training course designated Red Flag. In attempting to avoid Soviet-style SAMs and the best of American pilots, the Buccaneers were shot down fewer times in one month than the Americans' averaged in one week. We should not denigrate too much the existing equipment and the quality of our personnel.

Since the mid-1960s, there has been an almost continuous programme to make better use of the forces and resources we have available. The hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr. Trotter) mentioned the vast number of aircraft that we have, but he will surely agree that we should concentrate on the quality of our planes. Bringing back into use aircraft that could not withstand a modern conflict is surely a regressive step.

Mr. Trotter

Will the hon. Gentleman take on board the fact that the Soviets have increased by 20 per cent. the number of their aircraft in Central Europe in the last decade and that they now outnumber us by almost 2½ to 1?

Mr. George

Obviously, if we play the numbers game, some might see a deterioration in the relative position of NATO and Warsaw Pact forces but from journals such as that produced by the International Institute of Strategic Studies we can see that the relative figures are much less damning than is suggested by some people who are seeking to make political capital out of the situation.

We have to seek better value for money but, as I have said before—and this has not necessarily endeared me to my colleagues—I regret the cuts in expenditure on defence and we do not want any further decreases. I risk incurring the wrath of some of my colleagues again by welcoming that the expenditure cuts are being reversed. NATO has been tolerant in the last few years and obviously we have to pay our way and play a greater role in NATO than our economic situation of the past two years has enabled us to do.

We are guilty in the House of playing the numbers game and the concentration on this over-simplistic approach is disastrous. I quote an early authority. In 1934, Liddell Hart wrote: The cult of numbers is the supreme fallacy of modern warfare. The way it persists is testimony to the tenacity of stupidity. The numbers game is too simplistic an approach.

I do not want to see further cuts. I want to see Britain playing a greater role in NATO and I am glad that the cuts of the last couple of years—and I recognise why they had to be made—are being reversed. I want to see no further cuts that are not related to the reduction of tension and uncertainty between the Warsaw Pact countries and NATO.

In this country we need not just to talk about numbers, but to think more seriously about strategic and defence issues. We must look far more closely at doctrine than we have in the past. The blind spending of money is surely not the answer. The addition of more than £1,600 million to the defence budget, as appears to have been suggested by hon. Members opposite, would do nothing in itself. This House must think seriously about strategic issues. Meaningful debate is being hindered by the concentration not just on numbers but on hardware and its capabilities and costs without as much as alluding to the strategic ends to which these tactical means are supposed to convey us. Clausewitz said military power has its own grammar, but not its own logic. Parliament can help to provide this logic by considering not just the issues of manpower and hardware but by considering seriously the strategic issues.

The attacks by hon. Members opposite can often be categorised as shallow electioneering. They try to portray the impression, supported by some sections of the Press, that only one party is concerned about defence. We are creating a society which is a better, more just, humane, compassionate and egalitarian society. I want that society that we are trying to create to be defended until such a time that our defence system can be dismantled by agreed disarmament, but that is at least a generation or more away.

It is unfair of hon. Members opposite to assume that we on this side want to sell the system down the river and dismantle our defences because we have loyalty to some other political creed. The listing in the News of the World recently of hon. Members who were supposedly members of some Fifth Column is a total nonsense. We are as patriotic as any political party in this House.

I congratulate Ministers on what they are doing for the RAF, and I urge them not to be disheartened by the ramblings of hon. Members opposite. The RAF has a long and honourable history and I am convinced that it can play an even more important role in the years ahead in the defence of the better society that the Labour Government are seeking to create.

5.37 p.m.

Mr. Anthony Nelson (Chichester)

The hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George) is a good friend of the RAF and has contributed to these debates in the past. I heartily agree with a good deal of what he said about the national commitment towards the defence budget. I am pleased that one hon. Member opposite has the courage to say these things to his Government and I hope that his words will be heeded. However, I cannot share his faith that the capability of the RAF is not outmatched by the growth in armoury and airborne power of other countries, particularly the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries. If he thinks that our muster of aircraft is sufficient to deal with this threat, April Fool's Day has come a little late for him

There is an immense threat to this country and successive Governments have failed to recognise the need to respond to this early enough. We have therefore been left with sizeable problems that will cost a great deal of money to sort out.

This is the first debate on the RAF in which I have not been able to declare a constituency interest. The last RAF station in my constituency was closed by the Government at the end of last year. Chichester has long been renowned for such famous names as RAF Tangmere, the fighter station, and RAF Thorney, which was closed last year. All that is left of that once great RAF base is a ghost town of barracks, runways, married quarters and offices which are a tragic reminder of the Government's cuts in defence expenditure which have brought immense harm and difficulty to many of my constituents and attendent problems to many Service men whose squadrons have been disbanded.

More particularly and pertinently, it reflects the cuts in Transport Command which have not been discussed in this debate. The Government's cutting of Transport Command by one half has considerably reduced our flexible response. I listened carefully to my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) and I noted that he did not refer to Transport Command. I hope that in the winding-up speech we shall hear something about the Conservative Party's commitment to look early in its new period of office, either this year or next year, at building up Transport Command and that this will be a favourable and early decision. I hope, too, that some of the ghost stations and facilities which have effectively been mothballed in recent years can look forward to a reuse once again.

I wish to make one particular point. I believe that the RAF has had a very raw deal under this Labour Government. I wish to make my criticism as constructive as possible. I think that the RAF should have a greater proportion of the defence budget than it currently receives. As we heard during the debate on the defence White Paper, for 23 years we have had roughly the same breakdown in the allocation of financial commitments between the various forces. On this occasion I wish to explore whether this is proper and what changes we should consider for the future.

Mr. Hooson

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the percentage of the defence budget allocated to the RAF the Army and the Royal Navy has remained constant for the past 23 years, despite the changes in the threats to this country and the techniques that might be employed against us?

Mr. Nelson

That was exactly the point I made. I question whether that is indeed proper.

In my view, the RAF has had an extremely raw deal under Labour. Looking at the Budget in overall terms, we find that £6.9 billion is to be spent on defence in the forthcoming year. That is just under 5 per cent. of our GDP or £110 per head of the nation. Of that budget—the hon. Member for Walsall, South referred to this point—43 per cent. goes on pay, 40 per cent. goes on equipment—the hon. Gentleman specifically talked about equipment—and the remaining 17 per cent. goes on miscellaneous charges. But of that 40 per cent. on equipment, which amounts to just over £2.7 billion, 34 per cent.—just over a third—goes on sea systems, a quarter goes on land systems and the remaining two-fifths or 41 per cent. goes on air systems. Of course, one might expect that, because RAF equipment is bound to be relatively more expensive than that of the other forces.

Looking beyond the figures in Annex B to the White Paper and totalling the various apportionments of expenditure between the forces, we find that, in overall terms, the RAF accounts for less than 29 per cent. of our defence expenditure, assuming equal proportions of the overhead administrative charges for all the forces. In budgetary terms, I suggest that the RAF—I am open to correction—is certainly receiving less than a third of the overall budget and is therefore relatively badly off.

Secondly, the RAF has had a raw deal in manpower terms. Over the last four years the number of RAF officers has fallen by 20 per cent. to 14,500 and the number of RAF Service men is down 14 per cent. to 65,400. Those reductions of 20 per cent. and 14 per cent. compare with a decline in the manpower of the other two Services, during the same period of this Labour Government, of about 5 per cent. Therefore, again in terms of reduction in manpower, the RAF has had an extremely raw deal.

Thirdly, there is the question of morale and career prospects. Mention has already been made of the effect on morale of the cuts in the 1960s, particularly of the TSR2 and the F111, and, indeed, of the loss of the strategic deterrent which went to the Royal Navy. That may have been a proper decision in its own right, but to some extent it reduced morale in the RAF.

The losses in the 1970s have been even more dramatic. The loss of half of Transport Command, to which I have already referred, the loss of 18,000 jobs and the changing views on the balance between missile and manned aircraft have necessarily meant that there has been less opportunity for career promotion within the RAF and that morale has declined substantially.

This changing shape of the Service has brought with it the attendant feature that the proportion of combat aircraft in the RAF has increased substantially. Whereas five years ago about half the RAF's aircraft were combat jet aircraft, the proportion now is about 80 per cent. That means that options have now been reduced for trained pilots and the failure rate of officers during training has increased to about 40 per cent. In the past it was possible for a man who had been through training, but did not come up to the necessary high demands of combat jet aircraft piloting, to go into Transport Command or other sections of the RAE. Because of the heavy reductions in expenditure and equipment which have hit those other parts of the RAF, those job opportunities have been substantially reduced and therefore morale has gone down.

I believe that it costs about £500,000 to train a jet pilot. That is a phenomenal investment. It is absolute nonsense to pay these men peanuts once they have been trained. These people are the linchpin of our defence. A man who has been through jet training school and has the responsibility of flying an interceptor plane has a critical role to play at that point in the history of this country when he is called upon to use his skills in combat. Therefore, it is nonsense to pay such people less than we pay certain bus drivers.

Mr. George

The hon. Gentleman talks about the enormous expense of training a fighter pilot. Will he have a word with his colleagues lower down the Gangway who sought to allow fighter pilots to leave instantly if they wished to do so to reconsider their views? It may be that they have an obligation, if so much money is expended on their training, to remain in the Service rather longer than they do. Simply to say "I want to leave", as one might leave any other job, may not be compatible with the interests of our society as a whole.

Mr. Nelson

There is a limit to the extent to which people can be forced to do jobs that they do not want to do. The tragedy is that the pay and job oppor- tunities and the equipment with which they have to work are of such a low standard and calibre that they do not have the incentive to continue. It is a negative attitude to say, "Let us talk about the extent to which voluntary applications for retirement should or should not be allowed." We should be talking about the needs and commitments of the RAF and paying the men who carry out this critical task the rate for the job. I look to the Minister, in considering the findings of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body, for a satisfactory improvement and increase in their pay. I hope that the House will have no reason to criticise the Minister if and when he makes such a statement.

Another reflection on falling opportunities within the RAF is not only the reduction in the number of officers who have trained and passed satisfactorily the standard tests for pilots, but the lowering in standards which may follow if the Minister is not prepared to maintain the high standards which have been set in the past.

Morale and career prospects in the RAF are serious matters. I believe that there is now serious concern at the volume of premature release applications and the low officer recruitment figures. The Government must deal with this problem much more incisively. The White Paper, in paragraph 404, refers to the shortage of adequate RAF officer recruits in some cases by substantial margins. How many pilots are we short? What are the Government going to do, apart from what I suspect will be a petty increase in their pay, to deal with this problem?

In terms of morale, percentage of the defence budget and manpower, the RAF has had a very raw deal over the last four years, and to a lesser extent over the last decade. I believe that there are now reasons for giving higher priority to the RAF within the defence budget, which I should state as follows.

First, I believe that our failure to match the improved Soviet airborne capability means that we are vulnerable in a big way, particularly to Backfire and to Fencer. The fact that Backfire can now come in through our northern approaches between Iceland and the north of Scotland without in-flight re-fuelling and attack from the western side of the country was only recently recognised when we had the common sense to turn our early warning systems to face west as well as east. That is a remarkable reflection on the Government's delay in responding quickly to the changing and increasing capability in conventional terms of the Soviet airborne power.

However, our failure to match that capability has meant that the Soviets, by improving their own conventional hardware in the 1960s and 1970s, have raised their own nuclear threshold while we have effectively reduced ours. The threat to Britain now extends beyond the threat of intercontinental ballistic missiles, great as that is. These were mentioned in the defence debate when my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford spoke of the threat posed by the SS20s east of BAOR.

However, the threat means that the Soviet Union can for a much greater period maintain a conventional capability, deploying aircraft which will approach at low levels and deliver conventional weapons. That raises their nuclear threshold, but we have reduced ours and it is a tragedy, and a fact of which I complained in my maiden speech and in successive RAF debates, that we have effectively reduced that terrible point when any Government will have to decide whether to press the button.

I urge this Government and any future Conservative Administration to deal much more effectively with this matter by increasing the equipment of our Armed Forces. The Soviet's Backfires must be emphasised in this context. There are now up to 100 of them in service, and the fact that they can approach Britain through the back door must be taken very seriously. We look to the Government to deal with that threat.

A second reason for giving the RAF higher priority is its critical role in NATO. The United Kingdom is seen as the air base for NATO in any European armed conflict. It is estimated that 40 per cent. of the air power of NATO would be based in the United Kingdom. In view of the probability that Soviet tactical air forces would attack United Kingdom air bases, missile systems, radar and communications, it is imperative that the RAF improve its defence capability as soon as possible. I am not prepared to accept the Minister's bland assurances that the production and delivery of Tornados may not be speeded up before the end of the 1980s.

The third reason is a rather more general one, but I believe that it is equally forceful for giving higher priority to the RAF. That is that air forces have assumed greater political significance in foreign affairs over the last decade or more. The Soviet Union has demonstrated that air forces can be used as a political instrument whose phychological impact, quickness of response and symbolic value as a commitment to a host country's interests exceed those of navies, which have been the traditional source of political operations. The day of the gunboat is ended. The day of the airlift has arrived.

If we are to have any significant or credible diplomatic influence for good in the world and in supporting those interests which we must, we must have a more adequate Air Force capability. In its airlifts to Syria and Egypt during the Yom Kippur war, the lifting of Cuban legions to Angola and, more recently and frighteningly, the airlifts to the Horn of Africa, the Soviet Union has shown how quickly it can mount a substantial airlift of arms, equipment and personnel to countries where, as it sees it, it has an international role.

We shall not be taken as seriously as we should be, nor will our world influence be used to its proper advantage, unless we recognise this change in the relationship of diplomatic influence and the air force capability of the country concerned.

It is a source of great regret to me that the defence White Paper makes hardly any mention of the impact on Britain's defence policy of the changing international situation and political developments outside Europe. We have to look, for such analyses, to the equivalent publications in the United States, which are first-class assessments of the changing role and balance of power in the world.

I am not suggesting that Britain should once again try to police the world, but I believe that, as a free and developed country, we must accept our responsibility to play a part in defending the freedom of other countries from subjection and in protecting British subjects and interests internationally.

The groupings and the tensions of the future may be very different from those of the past. My right hon. Friend the Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Fraser), who spoke brilliantly in the defence debate, drew the attention of the House to the changing balance of power and influence in the world in future between those countries which produce commodities and those which consume them.

I, too, believe that in future the differences between countries may not be the historical basis of what sort of system one uses—free enterprise or collectivism—but may relate more to the question, freedom or subjection. The changing balances of influence on world conflict and international affairs are things to which we should begin to wake up. It should influence our foreign policy, which has a direct influence on our defence policy and on the commitment that we should give to the RAF.

The White Paper fails to recognise that Britain's diplomatic influence in international affairs is severely weakened by an inadequate defence capability or contribution, particularly the contribution that we make to the RAF. Many people would question whether we should have such an influence. I am sure that some members of the Labour Party who are not here today would be the first to cry that.

I believe that we should have an influence for two reasons. First, Britain's experience, our history of democratic government and our responsible approach to international affairs still carry weight abroad and can be used to further the cause of freedom and opportunity nationally.

Secondly, I believe that Britain's integrity is respected in world councils. This respect is based not so much on our imperial past but more on the stability of our institutions, the objective advice we bring to international issues and our recognition of the importance of human rights and the fulfilment of democratic principles.

For these reasons, there should be a greater commitment to the RAF. To make my plea more honest and accurate, I will say that I believe that this should be done even within the present defence budget at the expense of the other Ser vices. That may not be to the liking of many of my hon. Friends let alone to many Labour Members, but I believe in particular that, as and when a Conservative Government are re-elected, out of any increase in our defence budget, a much higher allocation should be accorded to the RAF than to the other Forces.

The RAF has had a raw deal and it should get a higher priority. I have three suggestions for improving the situation. First, I would repeat what has already been said, that we must substantially improve the pay and conditions of the Forces, particularly for those at the sharp end of this country's defence. Second, we must improve, much more quickly than the Government are prepared to accept, our airborne capability.

I refer particularly to Tornado. In the defence debate and in parliamentary Questions since, I have asked the Minister when the Tornados will completely replace the Vulcans, Phantoms and Lightnings. We have been told in a somewhat sneaky way that it will now be the late 1980s. The Government should not be allowed to get away with that. When the programme and the orders were initiated. we were told that they hoped the deliveries would be made in the mid-1980s. Of course there may be production line difficulties but if there were a period of armed conflict, could we afford not to deal more incisively with these problems?

This may be far-fetched, but if this were 1939, would we really say blandly that there was not much we could do to bring forward the delivery date for Tornados?

If the Minister takes this matter seriously, he should ensure that the backbone of the RAF capability into the 1980s is dealt with more satisfactorily. We understand that the 220 "Battlefield" CR1 versions and the 165ADVs or F2s, costing respectively £6 million and £8 million will be delivered towards the end of the next decade, and that the Government are satisfied that, with the improved defence capability and the Rapier squadron that we have heard about, this delivery schedule is adequate. I have severe doubts, large as the number of Tornados is which is to be delivered. whether they will he sufficient to replace the Phantoms, Lightnings and Vulcans which will be going out of service.

I suspect that there are very large gaps in our early warning system throughout the length of the country. Given our strategic importance in time of conflict in Europe, and with the presence of the full brace of NATO air forces here, we should improve our early warning system, but particularly our interceptor ability by increasing the number of Tornados on order.

I come next to the question of the so-called AST 403, the proposed replacement for the Harrier and the Jaguar. I noted with interest what the Minister said this afternoon. He seemed to indicate that the Government were now considering sympathetically the possibility of joint collaboration with European partners. Originally we had open to us three options in deciding on the replacement for this all-important front line aircraft. His comments this afternoon indicated that perhaps the riskiest, but, nevertheless, from my point of view the most welcome of these options, has been chosen.

It was considered at first that we might buy the American F16 or F18, but clearly given the interests of our aerospace industry and the capability of those aircraft for the next 20 years or so that decision would be greatly criticised, certainly in Parliament. Developing a British fixed-wing version of the aircraft with the RB199 Tornado engine might have severe operational difficulties and such an aircraft might be outmatched and made obsolete well before an acceptable time span had elapsed.

The third option brings with it attendant risks, but it is the right one to take, and I hope that the Government will be able to indicate this evening whether they have chosen to take it. The option is to develop a short take-off, vertical landing supersonic aircraft with vectored thrust engines. I believe that work is being conducted on such a programme of research by Messerschmidt and McDonnell Douglas. These may seem curious partners in crime given the historical enmities between the three countries. In the changed world which I tried to describe earlier I believe we should consider sympathetically giving a far greater commitment to this joint effort to produce the AST 403. I know that the Government will be coming forward with a statement on this matter, and I hope that by probing with Parliamentary Questions or by other means we may gain some prior knowledge of their decision.

Mr. Wellbeloved

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising a serious point about a possible collaborative programme on the AST 403. We are pursuing this matter very energetically. The hon. Member, however, has indicated that he understands that this involves considerable delay in trying to arrive with potential collaborative partners at joint specifications for the aircraft. We are delighted to receive the hon. Gentleman's support in rebutting any accusations of unwarranted delay which may be made against myself and my right hon. and hon. Friends over the very great care that we are taking on this vital aircraft.

Mr. Nelson

I must accept the Minister's assurances in that respect because I do not know. However, I urge upon him, even from a layman's point of view, that in considering the specifications of this aircraft, he should realise that it makes a lot of common sense to go for short take-off, vertical landing aircraft, given the emphasis that Warsaw Pact countries or any other highly able armed forces would place on knocking out the airfields, and given also our poor performance so far in hardening runways. Although the Army is doing excellent work on airfield reconstruction, short take-off and vertical landing after weapon delivery would be a most sensible option to pursue.

Let me add my congratulations on the fine history of the Royal Air Force, but in paying tribute to its dedication and ability I should like to mention also the role of the Women's Royal Air Force, which is often neglected but which has for so long played a very important role in the defence of the country. The Princess Mary's Royal Air Force Nursing Homes have made a first-class contribution to medical care within the Royal Air Force for many years. I speak from personal experience since I was born in one in Germany in 1948. I therefore feel strongly that the Women's Royal Air Force should be given an accolade in the tributes that the House is paying today.

I believe that I have made the case for the Royal Air Force being given a greater proportion of the defence budget. I have indicated ways in which I should like to see that money spent. But, most important, I have indicated that sadly the RAF has had a raw deal under Labour. I sincerely hope that when my party is returned to office we shall give the RAF the tools to enable it to aspire to its motto. I hope that time will be soon and that our commitment will be enhanced by office.

6.6 p.m.

Mr. John Cronin (Loughborough)

The hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson) made an interesting and well-informed speech. I will not follow all the points in it because there were so many of them that I should be presented with a difficult task. He did not err on the side of brevity. I do not think that he carried the House completely with his suggestion that the RAF should receive a much bigger share of the budget than the other Services. I thought that I detected slight movements in the form of the hon. and gallant Member for Winchester (Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles) at the thought of Navy spending being cut in favour of the RAF.

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles (Winchester)

In fact, not so.

Mr. Cronin

The hon. Member for Chichester referred to the morale of the RAF being decreased. I think that it is common ground on all sides—my hon. Friend the Minister has accepted this—that there has been such a decrease. It is important, however, that that morale should not be diminished further by irresponsible speeches. I get very worried about the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill). He is a dedicated and conscientious Front-Bench spokesman on defence affairs. I speak on this matter with some knowledge because I stood at the same Front Bench many years ago discussing RAF matters. I sympathise with his desire to make the case. I know that the most generous feelings of humanity affect him when he discusses Service pay and the effect on morale. But he must appreciate that much of what he says is having a detrimental effect on the morale of the Services.

My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George) made an excellent speech in which he drew attention to this aspect. He pointed out how frequently the defence correspondents, who are by no means Socialists, get a little bit weary of the hon. Gentleman's excessive aggressiveness and the effect that it might have on the morale of the Armed Forces.

Mr. Churchill

Can the hon. Member not imagine that it is the excessively low levels of pay that are causing this collapse of the morale of the Royal Air Force and of the other Services, and not the fact that certain of my right hon. and hon. Friends and myself, and Labour Members, have shown considerable sympathy with their cause which they are not able to advance in any other way and for which they receive very little sympathy from the Government?

Mr. Cronin

The hon. Member is talking about the collapse of morale of the RAF. Who believes that the morale of the RAF has collapsed? Some of us have visited RAF stations in Germany and Britain and we know that there has been some impairment of morale. But to say that it has collapsed is the sort of irresponsible remark that a Front-Bench spokesman should not make. The hon. Gentleman means well, but he is behaving more and more like a bull in a china shop every time he comes to that Dispatch Box on defence matters, and he is doing harm. I suggest that he restrains that fighting spirit and adopts a more responsible attitude.

The RAF has been subjected to a lot of traumatic changes in the past few years. All kinds of important aircraft have been cancelled. The hon. Member for Stretford quite rightly referred to them. They include aircraft such as the TSR 2, the P1154 jump jet and the Anglo-French AFVG. It is surprising that they are not in a very much worse state.

While we are on the subject, and to be absolutely fair, I should have thought that the most appalling blow that ever occurred to the RAF's morale was in 1957. The hon. Member for Stretford talked about morale being impaired when certain aircraft are cancelled. But in those days Lord Sandys, the Secretary of State for Defence—the hon. Gentleman was riot in his present position then—wanted to end all fighting aircraft altogether. Heaven knows what effect that had on the morale of the RAF in those days.

There is no doubt that from the point of view of efficiency—I am sure that I carry both sides of the House with me in this—the RAF is probably second to none in the world. It has commanded the admiration of the air forces in NATO and in the Soviet Union and certainly in the United States. There is no doubt that not only is our Air Force the best trained but it is the most professional. The hon. Member for Stretford referred to the excellence of the work done by the Jaguars at RAF Bruggen. Another hon. Member referred to how well they did in Nevada under the Red Flag programme. It is certain that they are really a magnificent force.

What is important is that the RAF has the spirit of the tactical offensive. What rather worries me about Opposition Members is that they keep talking about the defensive. This is quite contrary to the spirit of the RAF. The RAF thinks in terms of interdiction of enemy airfields, first, and in terms of taking out jump points, bridgeheads, road junctions and railway marshalling yards. Opposition Members think in terms of the tactical defensive. When they talk about the defensive measures of the RAF, they do an injustice to the very important tactical doctrine of the RAF—that is, the offensive objective on every possible occasion.

Mr. Churchill

I hesitate to interrupt the hon. Gentleman again. However, would he not agree, therefore, that it is deplorable that the present Government should be stripping the RAF of its strategic offensive role, which it has had for so many years and which even today plays a vital part in our nuclear strategic defence?

Mr. Cronin

The strategic role has been taken over to a very large extent by the Royal Navy, by the Polaris submarine. Of course, the new Tornados will certainly have some strategic role.

Mr. Churchill

Oh!

Mr. Cronin

The hon. Gentleman should have listened to what the Minister said about in-flight refuelling.

Mr. Churchill

Can they get to Moscow?

Mr. Cronin

Certainly, with in-flight refuelling. I think that the hon. Gentleman is getting a little too pessimistic concerning that.

Anyway, there is no doubt that the improvements in the RAF's equipment are now somewhat overdue. It is very pleasant to hear the Minister announcing today that there will be 150 production models of the Tornado aircraft. This is a tremendous step forward, because the chief criticism of the RAF, from the point of view of equipment, is that it has too few of too many aeroplanes at present. We have too many obsolescent aeroplanes, such as the Buccaneer, the Vulcan, the Canberra and the Lightning, and even the Jaguar and the Phantom are becoming somewhat obsolete. It is very good to know that we shall have the Tornado GR1, which is to replace the Vulcans, Buccaneers and Canberras, and the Tornado F2, which will replace the Lightnings and Phantoms.

It is very pleasant to find one's ministerial colleagues announcing at the Dispatch Box measures that will greatly improve the fighting capacity of the Armed Forces and greatly raise their morale. It was delightful to hear my hon. Friend the Minister speak along those lines.

I wish that my hon. Friend could have said a bit more about AST403, but I appreciate that that is very much in the future and will involve collaboration with other countries.

I was delighted to hear that the Government are purchasing second-hand VC10s. What an excellent economy it is when second-hand aircraft can be put to a useful life and a strategic purpose.

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles

Oh. really!

Mr. Cronin

The important thing is whether they do the job.

The hon. Member for Stretford meets RAF officers, as we all do. All will tell him that the VC10 does the right job. I see that the hon. Gentleman agrees with me. Why does he want to have a brand-new aircraft, instead, which will not do the job any better? It is financial irresponsibility. I see that the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson) is trying to come to the hon. Gentleman's rescue.

However, this indicates that the hon. Gentleman does not think in terms of cost effectiveness as much as he should, as a budding defence spokesman or Defence Minister in some remote future Conservative Government.

Several hon. Members have made the point that there should be more stockpiling. The hon. Member for Chichester raised that point. That is certainly important. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will give some attention to the matter. There is no doubt that weapons are used up at a very rapid pace in modern warfare. The Yom Kippur war made it perfectly clear that both the Arabs and the Israelis were reduced to their reserves in a very short time indeed. Therefore, I hope that stockpiling will become a more important question for the Minister. At the same time, however, it is no good having the stocks without aircraft to deliver them. The Minister has made gigantic strides forward in his announcement about the 150 Tornados that we are to have in the near future.

Another thing that concerns me is what we are to do about pilots to fly these aircraft. It takes two and a half years to train a direct entry pilot. If he goes through a university, it takes five and a half years. Of those who are trained to fly fast jets, only one in four qualify to do so. I am rather concerned whether we shall have a sufficiently skilled and adequately sized force of pilots to fly these aircraft when they are delivered.

The Government have already taken some steps in starting short service commissions. I hope that that idea will be expanded. Also, I should have thought that there would be a very good case for augmenting flying pay. Some increased pay for these pilots would be a good thing if it could be fitted in as soon as possible consistent with the general rise in the pay of the Armed Forces.

I come now to the question of the morale of the RAF. As I said earlier, both sides of the House agree that the morale is impaired. But it is impaired in rather a patchy way. Among the officers, I should have thought that morale was quite good, from my personal observations. But certainly the morale of the skilled senior NCOs is a good deal worse than that of any other section of the RAF.

RAF Bruggen has been mentioned in the debate on more than one occasion When visiting RAF Bruggen with some of my hon. Friends, I was very impressed with the very strong feelings that were expressed by the senior NCOs and warrant officers about pay. I think that this is justified. But it is so easy to attack the Government on this question. There is no escaping the fact that we must have some sort of pay policy, and it has been a very effective pay policy.

Mr. Churchill

Unfair.

Mr. Cronin

It has certainly put a stop to the runaway inflation that would have happened if we had not had an effective pay policy. Obviously, the Armed Forces are bound to suffer, like anyone else. I accept that they have suffered very much more and that they have had a raw deal. But many people have had a raw deal. University lecturers, the police force and quite a lot of other people have had a raw deal.

Mr. Churchill

Socialist misery.

Mr. Cronin

The hon. Member for Stretford talks the whole time as though nothing has happened except this terrible treatment of the Armed Forces, but many people have been suffering as a result of the pay policy. It is full of crudities and injustices. One hopes that they will he smoothed out in the very near future.

There is no doubt that the RAF is having a particularly bad time. I think that most of us know how the RAF has had personnel teams touring the various stations, and they have reported that there is discontent in all ranks, to a greater or lesser extent, and among the wives, and they also feel that their case is not being put strongly enough to the Government. I am not sure that that is entirely true, because quite a lot of us have been putting the case strongly, but that is their feeling.

There is also a great deal of moonlighting in the RAF, which should not have to occur. It is intolerable that RAF personnel should have to do other work in their spare time to supplement their earnings. It is even more unsatisfactory that some RAF personnel should be dependent on their wives for support.

This is one of the unavoidable effects of the pay policy. I expect that the situation will shortly be greatly improved, because at present the report of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body is with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. I should be astonished if he had not heard what has been said on both sides of the House. I am confident that there will be a great improvement in the pay and conditions of service of the Armed Forces in the very near future. It will have to be consistent with the Government's pay policy, but even then it should be a very big improvement.

Therefore, Opposition Members who are making such a tremendous noise about the Armed Forces' pay are to some extent over-reacting. At this moment the vital report is in the most important hands, and I am sure that very shortly we shall see a very big improvement in the Armed Forces' pay.

One cannot end a speech on this occasion without referring to the magnificent service done by the RAF in its 60 years. All of us must feel very proud of its tremendous performance not only during the Second World War but as a very efficient fighting force during the past 30 years. It is wonderful how it has maintained its high efficiency and 1 think still quite good morale in spite of the adverse factors, the cancellations which have become necessary and the pay pause, which was equally necessary. It is a wonderful force, and it deserves all the encouragement and help that it will get from the House and the Government.

I also believe that not only shall we give it much more money, which is what it needs, but much better equipment. I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Minister was able to announce this, not merely for the sake of the RAF but for the sake of the Labour Party and the Government, becaues it is an indication that our economy is going steadily upwards. We are climbing out of the frightful inflation which was started by the Government of the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath). We are climbing out of that terrible despond and are reaching the heights, where the whole country will see a much higher standard of living.

It is a happy thought that the obvious improvements that will take place in the RAF are an indication of how life will improve for everyone in this country, provided we adhere to the same Government.

6.23 p.m.

Mr. Emlyn Hooson (Montgomery)

I begin by adding my congratulations and those of my colleagues to the RAF on achieving its sixtieth anniversary. The RAF has an enviable record, which speaks for itself. On the Liberal Bench it is a matter of pride to us that almost throughout the last war, under the grandfather of the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill), the RAF was under the control of Sir Archibald Sinclair, as he then was, who was then the Liberal leader.

What the RAF could be spared is politically motivated rhetoric. It does no good. The many people who have indulged in it give so many hostages to fortune that if they were over on the other side of the Dispatch Box the words that could be quoted back at them, no doubt when the country was again going through economic difficulties, would make matters very difficult. Playing the political game with the Armed Services is dangerous. I do not want to say any more on that subject.

The Minister referred to the first Tornados being delivered next year. Can he not be a little more precise? There has been slippage, as it has been called, because of difficulties in production. It is well known that the Government have virtually had to make no defence cuts because of the postponement of the money that will be due under the Tornado programme.

It would be helpful if the hon. Gentleman gave the House a little clearer indication of the present position. After all, it is not the Government who have failed to produce the Tornado aircraft but industry which has so far failed to produce them on time. The Minister owes it to the country to be a little more explicit on this. I am sure that those in the RAF would be particularly pleased if he could give the House a little more detail.

I have never thought that we debate defence intelligently as a Parliament. We indulge in party political points across the Floor. Looking around the Chamber now, I should have thought every hon. Member present was very keen that the country should keep up its defences and make a proper contribution to defence in NATO. On the basis of my 16 years' experience in the House, I believe that if one took a graph of expenditure on defence one would find that it goes up and down depending on the economic condition of the country. Whatever is said by any party, the truth is that under economic stress the Services are regarded as fair game by any Chancellor of the Exchequer. It does not matter whether it is a Conservative Government or a Labour Government.

What would be much more intelligent—I have often advocated this—would be to have a full-blown Defence Committee in the House, a Committee which continually investigated matters that affected defence, asked questions of civil servants, senior officers, and so on, and came to more intelligent and long-term conclusions on defence.

The point has been made that the state of morale and confidence in the RAF has been damaged. I think that that is true. There are troughs and heights in the morale or confidence of all forces. I do not think that the RAF morale or confidence is any more damaged than that of the other Services, but it is very important that the matter be put right, if possible.

I think that pay is a very important issue, but I do not think that it is the only issue that has affected confidence or morale. It is very important to try to analyse the other matters of concern.

I made the point during the defence debate that it is absolute nonsense that this country still spends the same proportion of its defence budget on the RAF, the Army and the Navy as it has done for the past 23 years. I think that it was in 1954 that the proportion was last agreed, and that there has been no deviation from it. It means that there can have been no close analysis of the lessons to be learned from such things as the 1973 Middle East war. It shows that under successive Governments there has been a lack, in the Ministry of Defence, of a suitable body or a decision-making machinery to achieve the right decisions.

For example, we hear in the House speeches advocating that more should be spent on the RAF, more should be spent on the Army, and more should be spent on the Navy. A good case can be made superficially for any of those things. For example, we have heard in speeches from both sides of the House that BAOR is very important. It is said to be weaker than it should be, and we are told that we should spend a great deal on the British Army of the Rhine.

An equally powerful case can be made for spending much more on our antisubmarine defences. Indeed, the proportion of its defence budget spent by the Soviet Union on its navy would lead one to believe that that might be the greatest area for expenditure by this country.

We have heard today a very powerful case made by the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson), for example, for much more expenditure on the RAF. He said that the RAF had had a very raw deal and that the proportion of defence expenditure on it should be greatly increased.

What is the answer? When we look at the Soviet might we see that the truth is that this country could spend every penny it earns on defence and even then we would not be really sufficiently armed to defend ourselves against the Soviet Union. There must, therefore, be a much more intelligent appreciation of these matters. We cannot defend ourselves. We are part of an alliance, the NATO Alliance, and the real question is whether the sum total of our defence alliance is suitable to meet the threat made against us.

I always listen with interest to the hon. Member for Stretford. It is his style to exaggerate somewhat, but I think that he speaks with a purpose, and he believes in what he says. Today, the hon. Gentleman was, in effect, making a case for tremendously increased defence expenditure all round. But if that were done and there was great social discontent in this country as a result, we should be far more vulnerable to the pressure of the Soviet Union.

I have always thought that we ought to read with great care what is said by the Soviet leaders. In the defence debate I quoted the speech of Mr. Brezhnev at the twenty-third congress of the Soviet Community Party, when he said that the might of the Soviet Union together with, or as an adjunct of, its foreign affairs policy was the most important factor in the social development of the world today. I quoted his words verbatim in that debate, but I am epitomising their effect now.

We should pay attention to that speech, recognising that the greatest probable threat to this country is of an insurrection within one of the NATO countries and Soviet might being used, as it were, as a threat or a warning to everyone else not to intervene. This could lead to the erosion of NATO itself.

I wish to relate that matter now to the question of the morale and confidence of the Royal Air Force. I believe that part of the lack of morale and reduction in confidence arises from the failure to give RAF personnel a clear idea of their long-term role in Britain's defence pattern. There must be a means of working this out. It has to be worked out within the Ministry of Defence. One great contribution which the Secretary of State for Defence could make would be to create a better decision-making machine at the very top in his Ministry.

There are good decision-making bodies in the Department below the top level, but at the very top there is not. I am speaking of the very top level where one has to consider the politics and economics of defence matters, the military arguments and the scientific arguments, taking into account a proper analysis of Soviet thinking and doctrine and the rest. It is here, I believe, that we lose.

It is pointless for us as politicians, however well informed we may be, to argue on the basis that "I was in the Royal Air Force so I must advocate the RAF case"—"I was in the Navy so I must advocate the Navy's case"—or the equivalent for the Army, according to one's particular predeliction. That is not an intelligent way of conducting our affairs today.

Mr. Antony Buck (Colchester)

Perhaps the hon. and learned Gentleman will recall that in the defence debate I suggested that the Government should consider appointing Sir James Dunnett, the former Permanent Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Defence, to investigate whether the present procedures were sensible. Prima facie, they are not. We have at the top a Defence Council which never meets, or practically never meets.

Mr. Wellbeloved

Yes, it does meet.

Mr. Hooson

I am sure that we are all grateful for that information, but, from the point of view of the House of Commons, it would be far better if we had a Committee with access to information and papers and a system of interrogation instead of our present practice of from time to time conducting debates of this kind in which speeches of a rather partisan nature are made.

I believe that the greatest single contribution which we could make to morale in the Royal Air Force would be to pinpoint its future long-term role. Personnel in the RAF feel extremely insecure. Changes are made from time to time. Whichever party be the Government, in military decisions we tend to hiccup from one position to another, reacting to a given set of circumstances, instead of pursuing a proper analysis of what we have learned, determining what should be the long-term role of one Service or another.

I turn now to what the hon. Member for Stretford said about the strategic deterrent. I take it that he is not suggesting that we should have a new generation of V bombers—that because the Royal Air Force had the strategic deterrent, it should necessarily remain within the RAF even if it is renewed. That might be the right place for it, but I do not believe that we shall reach a sensible decision by making points of that kind.

The hon. Gentleman made a perfectly valid point about the possible need for a strategic nuclear deterrent—although I may well disagree with him since I think it more important to see the matter in the NATO context—but he presented the case as though he was suggesting that we should have a new generation of bombers to replace the V bombers even if it were proved beyond doubt that the submarine was the right place even for a future new generation of such weapons.

Mr. Churchill

I was suggesting that our present independent strategic deterrent is viable today because not only is it based on having one or sometimes two Polaris submarines on station but it is backed up by the strategic capability of the V bomber force. From 1982 onwards, that part of it will be abolished, and from that moment on, unless alternative dispositions are made—whether a Cruise missile to be air-launched or submarinelaunched—the deterrent will depend at times on a single Polaris submarine, and I believe that even the hon. and learned Gentleman will agree that that cannot be regarded as a serious and effective capability.

Mr. Hooson

This is where I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. In my view, the right process for this country is to decide, as a member of NATO, whether we need an independent nuclear deterrent. If we come to the conclusion that we do, we should decide how and where it is best organised, by which force it should be carried or managed and so on, but we cannot take a decision of that sort on grounds of emotion in such a debate as this about the Royal Air Force, and there is no point in inflaming feelings or passions about it.

The long-term problem for this country is to define clearly the role which the Royal Air Force should have, and this can be done only when there has been a proper analysis of the future threat.

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles

Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Mr. Hooson

Certainly. I am always ready to give way to the hon. and gallant Gentleman.

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles

I am much obliged. Is not the hon. and learned Gentleman pursuing party politics, just as he accuses others of doing, by trying—as the Liberal Party always does—to be all things to all men? He calls for a long-term determination or indication of the role and purpose of the Royal Air Force. Is he not forgetting that there was one in the form of the defence review which the present Government produced at the start of their period of office? It was designed to produce exactly that, but now the hon. and learned Gentleman wants it done all over again.

Mr. Hooson

I was not at all impressed by the defence review, and I have no confidence that there was any really basic rethinking in it. That is the advice which I have always received on the matter—that there was no really long-term thinking—and it is the complaint of people in the Services that there has not been a sufficient review. The criticism is made to me constantly by experts who advise me on these matters that there was no proper analysis of the results of the 1973 war by those who were concerned with defence matters in this country. Certainly, there were specialist inquests held as they affected certain disciplines, but I believe that we suffer enormously in this country from inter-Service rivalry and intersection rivalry within Sevices. The pesent Secretary of State could do a great deal by ironing out these problems and smoothing the rivalries away.

I turn now to pay, which certainly affects morale. I am sure that all hon. Members present in the Chamber now would think it very foolish for any Government to allow such a situation as the present to continue any longer. I am, therefore, reassured to know that the report from the Pay Review Body is now with the Prime Minister.

It is always easy to make partisan points about any given pay policy. All pay policies which I have known in this country have been introduced in times of emergency. None, therefore, has been fair. All have been extremely unfair to various sections. Hon. Members can get up and argue for their own section. We have heard hon. Members from below the Gangway arguing for the firemen. We have heard others arguing for the civil servants, the police and the Armed Forces.

The truth is that none of these pay policies is eventually fair. They are introduced, presumably, because Governments have been forced into them. There may be a very good case, as my party believes, for a permanent pay policy, designed to be fair. But when they have been introduced so far they are said to be introduced in the interests of the country as a whole. I have yet to meet a member of the Armed Forces who thinks that the Armed Forces should be allowed to break the Pay Code. Most of them want the 10 per cent., like everyone else. Nevertheless, there is an important distinction which has to be made. There is the X factor—

Mr. Churchill

The minus-X factor.

Mr. Hooson

The hon. Member is being needlessly pedantic. It is the X factor, which has to be subtracted or added, as the case may be. It is capable of adjustment. It is acknowledged that the forces cannot earn overtime and have to work in the most incredible conditions. They have to meet all kinds of contingencies. The X factor can be adjusted to deal with this. I believe that such an adjustment would have the support of all parts of the House, even of those hon. Members who sit below the Gangway and who are so critical of the defence budget. They cannot and would not complain of that.

There is scope for some adjustment of clawback factors affecting those in the Services. The military salary concept was to provide pay and charges comparable with those in civilian life. Clearly, they have got out of balance and have to be put right. If they cannot be put right in one fell swoop, as with the firemen they can be put right over a period of a couple of years.

The Minister has mentioned the subject of low-flying aircraft. They are the cause of great concern in areas such as mine, which is widely used for this purpose. Anyone who has experienced low-flying aircraft would completely reject the suggestion that aeroplanes should be allowed to fly at a few feet above houses at top speed. They cause great stress.

As I understand it, the fact that there is a ceiling, a restriction, on top speed, does not mean that RAF personnel are not getting the opportunity of working in simulated war conditions. When the review is made—it is being undertaken at present—consideration should be given to staggering the times at which this low flying takes place and to ensuring that other towns and villages have their share of it. Otherwise some towns and villages will suffer constantly. It would be most helpful if there could be some element of sharing here.

Representations have been made to me by the wives of RAF personnel about the registration of Service voters. The 1976 Act was well-intentioned. It intended to carry out the recommendations of Mr. Speaker's Conference. Nevertheless, it has been a mistake. There has been great resentment about the forms. I have a copy here. There is great resentment that the form has normally to be obtained by the spouse who is within the forces. The wife, or husband, greatly objects to this. There is no need for an attesting witness to the veracity of the application for the right to vote within this country. A normal householder does not need an attesting witness. Why should Service personnel need one? While there is a case for this abroad, to make sure that there is no fraud, it surely cannot be said that there is a case for requiring an attesting witness for a voter within this country.

Am I right in thinking that the Minister of Defence has made representations and that the "S" symbol opposite the names on the electoral role is now to be removed? I hope that I am right in thinking that that will happen. The argument has been put that diplomats, British Council employees, civil servants and their spouses abroad have the same kind of arrangement. It is not, I think, achieved by the same method and it is the method of achievement which is causing the problem.

We know that there is an application by the American Air Force for the reactivation of RAF Greenham Common as a base for tankers. This is in the constituency of the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. McNair-Wilson). This is obviously a matter of great concern because it affects an area of 50,000 inhabitants as well as the Department of the Environment and the Ministry of Defence. One would have thought that prima facie this kind of base could be accommodated in an area away from a large urban population. What people are concerned about here, those interested generally in the defence of this country, is the method of achieving a decision. What consultations will take place? What weight will the Minister give to environmental considerations? What steps are being taken to evaluate, with the Americans, the possibility of using an alternative base? Any further information which the Minister can give on this matter about the machinery by which a decision is to be achieved would be appreciated by the country at large.

6.47 p.m.

Mr. Alan Lee Williams (Hornchurch)

I am pleased to follow the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson), which was wholly constructive. He was right to draw the attention of the House to the need to look to longer-term developments in air power. It will not have escaped the notice of the House that this matter is now causing a great deal of intellectual curiosity among strategists and that a discussion on tactics has been taking place between the United States Air Force and the RAF for some time.

To do full justice to this debate and to the proud traditions of the RAF over 60 years it is no bad thing to look to the future. The RAF has evolved through various stages and it would be foolish for the House to fail to recognise that its role has profoundly changed. There is no point in hon. Members talking as if there has not been a change of this profound character. The reasons for it are fairly easy to evaluate.

The RAF is now part of a European air force. That is why 1 very much welcome what the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery said about the need to look upon the RAF as part of a European contribution to NATO and not to talk, as some Tory Members have talked, as if the RAF were meant exclusively to take on the Warsaw Pact in a European war. There is a tendency to argue that way and it is a mistake. The RAF makes a unique contribution to the defence of continental Europe. It no longer requires a global capacity, which is why it is strikingly different from the American air force, which has a bigger range and capability. The American air force has more aircraft, and many more different types of aircraft, than does the RAF.

For the record, the Americans have so many aircraft that they could not deploy all of them in Europe at any one moment. They spend over a quarter of their defence budget on their air capability. They have responsibilities outside Europe. But we are talking about a European contribution. The debate between the United States air force and the Royal Air Force is an interesting one. I do not believe—I am interested to hear the Minister's reply on this particular argument—that it is simply about technology. It is a question of tactics influenced very much by technology but not technology alone.

Basically the argument is that the Americans believe that the use of high altitude flying in dealing with a frontal attack from the Warsaw Pact would be likely to prove the most effective. To put it shortly, I hope not oversimplifying it too much, the view of the Royal Air Force is that the way in which to deal with such a frontal attack is by low-altitude tactics.

I think that my hon. Friend the Minister will agree with me that the American air force has now decided seriously to look at the tactics deployed and the methods used by the RAF. There comes a limit when one tries to apply in Europe the methods and techniques that were used in, say, South-East Asia, where the terrain and weather conditions were totally different.

It does not necessarily mean that we have to spend more money on the RAF. It seems that the amount of money that we spend on the RAF at present is about right. It gives us the all-round capability that we require. We do not need the aircraft for which the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) was arguing, because we do not need an air strategic capability for the Soviet Union. We have a strategic capability, but not a strategic role. I believe that it has been effectively taken over by Polaris and whatever succeeds that system. Therefore, the strategic nuclear role of the RAF has gone. It would be far better for the RAF if that were stated publicly. The role of the RAF is a tactical one in the aid of the Army in Central Europe. It has proved in its manoeuvres that it is very good at that role.

I finish on an aspect which I think has an influence on the debate, and it has been shown very clearly in the contributions that have been made this evening. All the time that we have the attempt of a separate Service approach to defence matters, we will make a mess of things. The contribution from the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson) was that we ought to spend more on the Royal Air Force. He made a very good case. He speaks very engagingly and with great knowledge. He made a powerful case for more expenditure for the RAF.

The hon. and gallant Member for Winchester (Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles) surprised me when he said that he agreed. If a case can be made for more expenditure for the Royal Air Force on logical defence grounds, I would be in favour of it, but we all know that that is not how it is conducted. Each Service puts in its own bids and in the end a compromise has to be reached—generally the worst kind of compromise at the end of the day. It seems to me that we must try to move away from that approach.

Some time ago I made proposals which unfortunately got a very bad reaction wholly because I explained my ideas badly at that time. I suggested that, since the role of the RAF was no longer strategic and that the Air Force was now a tactical one, there should be a merger between the Army and the RAF. What I meant was not that the RAF role should be abolished. The Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Army seems pleased with what I am saying. That was the reaction I had from people who wrote to me and from those who stopped me and asked whether I was proposing the abolition of the Royal Air Force. I was clearly doing no such thing.

There is a strong case for merging at the very highest rank all the senior officers so that we keep our separate armed Services and all the functions that follow from that, so that we have at the top a genuine tri-Service approach.

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles

The hon. Member has made a very interesting point, but is not the Chief of the Defence Staff exactly what he is advocating?

Mr. Williams

In my view, not since Lord Mountbatten has that been the case. Lord Mountbatten, when he was chairman of the chiefs of staff, showed what personality and drive could do in that direction. But that has not been the case since.

Part of my argument is that we need to move towards that kind of approach if we are to get the right kind of decisions about defence and not go in for one defence debate after another in which hon. Members on both sides of the House make false, superficial party points. The time has arrived, since our proceedings are now to be broadcast and people, presumably, will listen to our defence debates, when we must measure up to that audience and provide it with the real debate about the future of the RAF.

6.56 p.m.

Mr. Hector Monro (Dumfries)

The hon. Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Williams) made an interesting contribution to the debate, though I am not sure that I agree with him on almost anything that he said except that today's debate is about the Royal Air Force and we should be concentrating on that. The role of the Air Force has changed over the last 60 years. It has been one of constant evolution and much more geared to a technical advance than perhaps the hon. Gentleman indicated, always having to be an advance within the Defence Estimates.

Many of us could disagree with him over his last point, perhaps inadvertently, being critical of whoever may hold the post of Chief of Defence Staff and his colleagues in the Defence Staff. Today, when the Services are so advanced in technology, we need officers of the highest calibre such as we have at the moment in Sir Neil Cameron. I doubt whether we have ever had better Chiefs of Defence Staff than we have had over the last 10 years or so.

Mr. Alan Lee Williams

May I make it clear that I was not making a personal attack on any member of the Chiefs of Staff? I was merely mentioning the unique contribution of Lord Mountbatten.

Mr. Munro

I accept the point that the hon. Member was making, but I, too, stick to my point that we are exceptionally well served, in such an age as we are in, in the latter part of the twentieth century, in having Chiefs of Staffs who know so very much about the technological role of all the Services.

As the Minister said in opening the debate, this is the week of the 60th birthday of the RAF. We applaud—I put on record my views, too—the esteem in Britain and throughout the free world in which the Royal Air Force is held at present, not only for its great traditions of the past but now for its present efficiency.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) mentioned the supreme effectiveness of the squadrons at Bruggen when he was there. I was not so long ago nearby, at Wildenrath and found the same super-efficiency. Quite rightly, NATO commended the RAF on its exceptional standard, when it came to action, under its present rules of defence operations. This is the parliamentary occasion, during the week of celebration of the Royal Air Force, on which we can all speak with pride of the Service. Those of us who have been in the RAF, the Royal Auxiliary Air Force or the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, perhaps feel a little wistful that Parliament has not been as involved as it might have been in this week's celebrations. But it is not without significance that we chose this week for the new all-party RAF group to have one of its major meetings in the House.

The right hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Harrison), the chairman of our new group, would have spoken in the debate, were it the custom for the Deputy Chief Whip so to do. He was the instigator of this important new group in which I am glad to serve as vice-chairman and in which we have been joined by the Chief Accountant of the House of Commons as treasurer.

I emphasise that the group will not cut across party defence committees, the normal defence visits, or the Royal Air Force Association branch in the Palace of Westminster. But we will, we hope, establish a much closer relationship with the RAF than ever before. The membership is open only to those who have served in the RAF, the RAFVR, or the Royal Auxiliary Air Force, or any of the other branches of the Service. We will have close liaison with the Ministry of Defence, and I warmly welcome the helpful and co-operative view taken by the Under-Secretary of Sate.

It is, of course, early days yet, but we believe that nothing but good can come from this venture, not in politics or in the defence estimates, but in enhancing the RAF that we have today by fostering and developing good will between Parliament and all ranks of the RAF. Comparatively few Members now have constituency interests in the RAF—that is sad, but a fact. It is easy, therefore, for hon. Members to become remote from the Service. This liaison will be of great benefit to those interested in the RAF both geographically and personally.

The House has rightly congratulated the RAF on its 60th birthday. This would be the right day also to commemorate two recent events which have touched the fancy of all of us who have served in the RAF. The first is Flight Lieutenant David Cyster's dramatic flight to Australia in a Tiger Moth, and the second is Flying Officer Paul Warren-Wilson's circumnavigation of the world in a Piper Cherokee, which begins this week. These flights represent the spirit of the RAF at its best. I think that I am right in saying that these officers have received every assistance from the RAF. Such ventures are something that we want to encourage as much as possible.

This is also a day when we should be saying to our helicopter pilots "Well done". Year in and year out, they have tremendous achievements in terms of airmanship, rescuing so many people, particularly from the sea and the mountains. The standard of skill of our helicopter pilots—I include the Fleet Air Arm pilots.—is quite exceptional and deserves the highest praise that this House can give.

At the same time, I would like those who look after public relations in the Ministry of Defence to concentrate much more on promoting the numbers of those squadrons involved in action in the RAF and Fleet Air Arm. It was nice to hear about No. 1 Squadron, or No. 73 Squadron, or No. 111 Squadron, or No. 617 Squadron, and others, including the auxiliary squadrons, rather than just "an RAF helicopter" or "RAF fighter". Let us hear the squadron number and bring the public into touch with the squadrons that do so much and form the RAF. I believe that this process could come with a lead from the Ministry itself. So many squadrons have as great an achievement as the great regiments of the Army which are household names.

I want now to turn to the theme of the White Paper on defence and here I must be rather more critical. I turn first to the question of RAF training. The White Paper is very coy in relation to the RAF as opposed to the Fleet Air Arm, for which lists of aircraft and squadrons are given. The only reference in the White Paper to RAF training comes in a couple of paragraphs about the Hawk, but there is nothing else about other non-operational aircraft in service with the RAF.

Could the Minister say a little about initial training and how we are getting on with the Bulldog? How many Bulldogs have we in service, and how many are ordered and in the pipeline? The Bulldog is an outstandingly good aircraft to succeed the Chipmunk, and we do not want to feel that we are in any way short of this very significant initial training aircraft.

Most hon. Members who have spoken have raised the issue of the shortage of pilots. The Minister should tell us the position. Once again the figure of 200 is being bandied about as the shortage of pilots at present. This is an extremely serious matter. It is early yet for the Minister to deal with the development of the short-service commission that he recently announced, but it should be possible for him to say a little about the failure rate not only in initial but in advanced training.

Why are we short of 200 pilots? Every hon. Member has discussed the issue of pay, but is not the opportunity to fly very important too? There is the terrible term "job satisfaction", but in the RAF it is a question of the desire to fly. I have read in the newspapers that about 20 hours a month is the average for a pilot in the RAF. That is not much of a total if one joins the RAF in order to fly. I recall that 60 hours a month was regarded as a fairly meagre total and that only when one did over 100 hours a month did it seem like hard work.

Is this cutting down of flying by the RAF deliberate policy? Is it because of a shortage of spares, particularly where we are dealing with American aircraft? Or is it simply a lack of money for flying time? The Minister should tell us which one of the three it is. I cannot believe that it is combination of all three, but it must be one of them.

While I am on the subject of the opportunity to fly, I ask the Minister whether he believes that our squadron strength is sufficient for our front-line strike aircraft. At the moment, squadron strength seems to be 10 aircraft. Allowing for unserviceability, my view is that more pilots should be flying more than they are allowed to do and that 15 aircraft in a fighter squadron would be more satisfactory. This could step up the number of crews from 15 to 22. Such a situation would also be much more satisfactory for the air crews who have to spend long hours hanging around virtually at action stations—and I know that it is a wearying process.

We spend about £500,000 to train a pilot, and it seems to me to be a false economy to reduce the chances of a pilot flying when he has operational efficiency. Our accident rate in the RAF is exceptionally good. The RAF goes to immense trouble in briefing, and considering the length of time briefing takes for com- plicated operational exercises, the whole flying side of the RAF is handled extremely effectively. Are we not restricting this valuable experience and, if it continues, sailing close to the wind, to the point where the operational pilot becomes less effective than he could be, if we deny him sufficient flying practice?

Again, in terms of the desire of air crews to fly, this process must have an effect on morale when one is so seldom allowed into the air. I believe that it is not uncommon now for officers of the rank of flight lieutenant and squadron leader to be out of the cockpit for six or seven years while doing staff jobs. From front-line operational service they go to a staff job for six or seven years. During that time they are never behind the controls of any aircraft. After conversion courses and upgrading they go back to command squadrons, but there is a tremendous hole in a key period in their flying life.

This is a problem that ought to be looked at again. Is it a matter of distinct policy that our leading pilots should be away from an aircraft for six or seven years? If this is so, is it because there is not sufficent money to give them flying hours in other aircraft—perhaps Hawks? If they could put in some flying hours, even in non-operational aircraft, it would help to keep them in flying practice and keep up their enthusiasm to fly, which was their basic reason for joining the Royal Air Force. I believe that the question of morale is tremendously important, not only in relation to pay but in relation to this lack of flying opportunities for officers once they have reached operational effectiveness.

I mentioned, in a Royal Air Force debate 10 years ago, that if senior officers were enabled to get regular flying practice it would not only do an immense amount of good but also give them great pleasure. We seem now to have only a very limited number of Service officers flying, and therefore the whole outlook of the Royal Air Force could change over a generation.

I said earlier that these frustrations in flying were perhaps second only to pay. The Minister admitted that morale is not all that I should like it to be. There are genuine anxieties and frustrations."—[Official Report, 14th March 1978; Vol. 946, c. 239.] This affects particularly the key management group, between 25 and 35, the members of which could and should be flight commanders and squadron commanders in the Royal Air Force today.

There are these frustrations due to lack of flying opportunities, but above all there is frustration over pay. This exists, of course, not only in the Royal Air Force but in the Army and the Royal Navy. Everyone who has been to RAF stations has met this as the principal topic of conversation. I think it is right, when the report of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body is before the Prime Minister, that we should vent our anger and our concern, so that, when he discusses the report during the next week, he will know that the House of Commons will not put up with any second-best procedure. He will know that, as all hon. Members have said, we want substantial pay increases for the Services, and these must be implemented as soon as possible.

Several hon. Members have mentioned, as did the Minister, the issue of low flying. I absolutely accept that we must have it, and that it is essential. I appreciate the problems of maintaining air corridors for airlines. Our low flying air craft must be kept well away from them during operational exercises. The hon, and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson) said that a strong case could be made out for the provision of additional routes, so that the frequency of flights over existing routes could be reduced. I live in an area in which low flying happens regularly. I pass on to the Ministry of Defence the letters that I receive on this subject, and they are courteously answered, but I think that rather more than this is required, particularly at certain times of the year.

I am a farmer as well as a pilot, and I know only too well that in April and May, when hill lambing is in full flow, the addition to low-flying aircraft certainly does not help the shepherd. If those two months could be kept virtually sacrosanct for the Lowlands of Scotland and the Highlands, and areas which are affected in this way in Wales and other parts of Britain, it would be greatly appreciated. Consultation with the National Farmers' Union could surely clarify any detailed problems that might arise in keeping low-flying aircraft away from the hill country in those months.

I come down on the side of the Ministry of Defence and the Minister in relation to the height of low flying. I think that 200 feet is perfectly adequate for training purposes. To go below that in peacetime would be to take an unjustifiable risk because aircraft are then coming down almost to the height of this Chamber, and beneath high tension lines. This involves taking risks which really cannot be justified when there is not a war in progress. I think that the Ministry is right in maintaining that 200 feet should be a basic limit for low flying. If lower flying is required, it should be done over the sea in the right conditions.

Despite the regular criticism, year in and year out, of the meteorological service, I believe that, bearing in mind its resources, it does a particularly sound job. It is very helpful and friendly to pilots who telephone asking for advice at any time.

We have now come from Lord Trenchard to Sir Michael Beetham, and from the Western Front to the Germany and NATO of today. My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson) mentioned the concern that exists in relation to what General Haig has said about the build-up of Russian forces, and whether we are prepared to meet them when the crunch comes. We are, of course, seriously under strength in aircraft and men. I hope that the Minister will give an indication tonight that the delivery of the Tornado will be speeded up. But, thank goodness, as I said at the beginning, our efficiency makes up to some extent, but not completely, for our handicaps.

We must increase pay. We must increase strength in both aircraft and reserves. This cannot be done without increased expenditure, but it is one of the priorities that I believe this country is prepared to accept. I believe that this country wants a first-class defence. Without it, we can have none of the things that we want, such as new hospitals, schools and social benefits. Above all else, we must have strong defence in order to keep the peace.

We are extremely well served by the Royal Air Force, as we are by the Army and the Royal Navy; therefore, we should tonight be thinking not of cutting back on the RAF but of building on strength and giving the RAF all the encouragement that it deserves.

7.18 p.m.

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles (Winchester)

One ought to start today by mentioning broadcasting. Broadcasting from this Chamber may make us behave ourselves. It may or may not make our speeches somewhat shorter—although certainly not all of them. But broadcasting does not seem to fill the Chamber.

I should like to join in the tribute paid to the Royal Air Force, on its sixtieth birthday, by so many hon. Members who have spoken. The Royal Air Force has a splendid past and a splendid present record. Although it was not my Service, I have enormous respect, admiration and affection for it, particularly because I was lucky enough to be loaned to it during the 1939–45 disturbances. For many months I was living and flying with the Royal Air Force in the Western Desert. It did everything very charmingly, including destroying three of its aircraft in which I was a passenger. After that it was found expedient to return me to my own Service. However, everything it did was done entirely thoroughly and with the greatest possible élan. I do not disagree with any word that the Minister said in his opening tribute today to the Royal Air Force. Despite all that has been said, and despite many of the harsh things that I shall say, I agree that a career in the Royal Air Force is still an extremely rewarding one.

By criticising the Government in these debates we are not criticising the Services as such. We are certainly not criticising the Royal Air Force today. On the contrary, it is our duty as an Opposition to act as a kind of watchdog. It is unfair for Labour Members to accuse us of making political capital in raising various matters which we regard as important in these Service debates. It is most unfair to accuse us of seeking to damage Service morale. If morale is damaged, it is not damaged by remarks made by hon. Members on either side of the House. Any damage that is done arises from conditions in the Services.

A reasonable line has been taken by many hon. Members who have dealt with the problems of the RAF. It is fair to say that most of the personnel difficulties arise first from over-stretch and, secondly, from disgracefully low rates of pay. Many statistics and examples have been given in recent debates, and again today, on the subject of pay. I wish to put the matter in a reasonable perspective and not to spoil the case by over-statement.

Let me illustrate my remarks by quoting the case of a constituent. He is a senior NCO who serves as aircrew in a helicopter squadron. He is a highly qualified man, a master rate, and already has to his credit 20 years of service. He enjoys Service life and appreciates that it involves a greater degree of family separation than that experienced in any civilian employment.

My constituent has kept most meticulous records of his duties during the year 1977. In that year, he spent 170 days away from home and he was away on duty altogether for a total of 4,776 hours. That included two tours in Belize, four in Northern Ireland, one in Denmark and several exercises and temporary deployments away from his base in the United Kingdom.

One may well say that that is all part of the job. But what about the rewards for duties of that kind, with all the turbulence that goes with them? Somebody in normal industrial life working 40 hours a week, with an average of, say, four weeks holiday per year, would work about 1,800 hours. Anything more than that would rank as overtime. Yet this RAF man, who has worked well over double that number of hours—indeed, two-and-a-half times that figure—receives no overtime whatever; except that when on duty in Northern Ireland he receives a beggarly special allowance of 50p per day—less than the price of a packet of cigarettes, certainly less than a London office cleaner would be paid for half-an-hour's work.

Furthermore, there is no possibility of that master aircrewman moonlighting. I am sorry to see that Ministers seem to regard such a practice with equanimity. I believe that it is disgraceful that any Service man should even have to contemplate moonlighting.

Here is a man who undertakes many hours of duty and has heavy responsibility and yet, by common consent, has a rate of pay 25 per cent, below that received by comparable civilian workers.

I am glad to see the Secretary of State for Defence present, because he has already made it clear that he believes that forces' pay is not comparable with that of other workers.

There are several thorns in the flesh of Service men over pay. For example, civil servants in BAOR are accommodated free of charge, whereas men in uniform find their charges increased year by year and discover that any increase they receive is only an "Irishman's rise". It would be hardly surprising if, under these conditions, Service morale were in danger of becoming seriously undermined, but I wish to emphasise that that is not yet the case. Even when called upon to stand in for striking firemen—who, incidentally, were being paid far more than the Service men—they carried out that job with exemplary willingness and efficiency. Although one might well have expected their morale to have been damaged, they put up a good show and did the work willingly and efficiently. It is to their eternal credit that their morale does not yet appear to be damaged.

I disagree, on this point, with the comments made by several speakers in this debate, including the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman. Morale certainly has not "collapsed" among senior NCOs and long-service, experienced personnel, but I must point out that there are worrying aspects to be considered. A Written Answer given to me a few weeks ago showed that 693 RAF officers had applied for premature retirement. Because so many officers wish to retire, the queue will be that much longer, which in itself is an unsatisfactory state of affairs, although I emphasise that it would be wrong to regard this as a collapse of morale.

There is another worrying aspect of the matter which is not often brought out into the open. In the nature of things in the Services juniors tend to look to their seniors for almost everything—for justice, discipline and leadership. In other words, they look upwards. It is an extraordinary structure, but many hon. Members will fully understand what I mean. However, there is a risk that confidence by juniors in their senior officers will begin to be eroded. They are aware that their senior officers, right up to the Chiefs of Staff, are aware of the problems of pay, but appear to be unable to produce the goods from the Government to put the situation right. I do not need to emphasise how dangerous the situation would be if the junior personnel were to lose confidence in their senior ranks. This argument is common to all three Services.

Young men do not enter the Services to make a fortune. They enter it for the pride of carrying out a worthwhile job. They do not want to be unionised, and they would be ashamed to be involved in industrial action. I repeat that it would be wrong to say that their morale has collapsed, but it is right to say that Service men as a whole are furious about their pay. Their teeth are clenched and they are coldly and silently angry about the matter. They appreciate the nation's difficulties. They do not wish to be treated as a "special case", nor do they ask to be excluded from the sacrifices which face the nation. They ask only to be paid the rate for the job, according to the principles promised within the concept of the military salary.

It is a political reality that the Government are facing a difficult dilemma, in having set a magic yardstick of 10 per cent, for the current year. But the Government can no longer hide beyond, the skirts of the pay review board, Clearly, the board is unhappy about the situation because in the last review a year ago it pointed out: Our recommendations comply with the restraint measures set out in the White Paper "The Attack on Inflation" … We have again focused attention on the shortfall in relation to the pay levels justified on the basis of outside evidence that has arisen. The board was suggesting that what was happening was not fair, but felt constrained—rightly or wrongly, and I felt wrongly—to go along with what the Government said.

The board then made this significant remark: Effectively we are free only to recommend whether the pay of members of the Armed Forces should be increased by the maximum amount allowed by the pay limit or by some lesser amount. That is a grotesque situation, which cannot be repeated again this year.

According to Press leaks the latest report which has just reached the Prime Minister will recommend 10 per cent., plus 2+ per cent, in the X-factor, plus a freeze on food and accommodation charges. I do not know whether the leak is right, but it has been widely reported in the Press. We shall have to see the details but this report does not even begin to come anywhere near restoring comparability, which is the basis of the whole thing.

The Government should be ashamed to come up with anything less than 20 per cent, plus a doubling of the X-factor immediately. I do not think that this would be resented by the trade unions. The average trade unionist is a very decent chap and would not begrudge giving the Service men a fair deal. I believe the public in general would be entirely in favour of such a step.

There are other concerns within the RAF which arise from successive defence cuts under this Government. Reduced numbers mean a continuing situation of overstretch and turbulence. The Government's original defence review was supposed to produce a period of relative stability and calm. That is the expression the Government used in producing their review.

A fair and balanced article in the Sunday Telegraph said that officers were leaving the Service at an alarming rate. There was also a severe shortage of pilots, particularly for the new Tornado, which is due to begin coming into service at the end of the year. The article also emphasised the shortage of spares and equipment, and the shortage of flying time.

To sum up, the article says: Successive cuts in the defence budget have left the RAF poorly paid, short of aircraft and starved of manpower. Yet the same article ends with the remark: The outlook is not entirely black. The RAF is highly respected for its professionalism by the NATO Allies with whom it trains. The article quotes a squadron leader as saying that despite everything he is "still in love with the idea of being in the RAF."

That is a marvellous spirit and is the sort of remark that leads me to believe that morale has not been damaged. While people under these difficulties show that sort of spirit there is a moral duty on the Government and the Minister to make sure that they get a fair deal, and are not taken for granted.

Certainly pay is not the only matter for concern. There is the question of the shortage of aircraft spares. A remark in the article to which I have referred shows that there is cannibalising of four aircraft in order to get one in the air. That sort of thing worries Service men.

There is also the question of war stocks and reserves. Obviously that is a classified subject, and I do not expect an answer from the Minister across the Floor of the House. However, it would be nice to have a realisation by the Minister that we need a great deal of reassurance that war stocks are up to scratch. Also perhaps he could say whether there is still any restriction on flying because of fuel allocation.

I was very interested in the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson) who pointed out the fact that the balance between the three Services has remained unchanged for 25 years. My concern is that there is a lack of maritime aircraft for the tasks arising from the fact that there is now a Soviet global presence particularly at sea and over the sea.

In a recent debate on the events in the Horn of Africa I put forward the theory that possibly the vast Russian effort in the plains of Central Europe is really a smokescreen designed to keep our gaze in NATO away from other places in the world—where the Soviets are running rings around us. I think I said at the time that in the unlikely event that I was in the Kremlin, the last place where I would send a great army marching, if I wanted to have a go at the West, would be the plains of Central Europe. I would do exactly what the Russians are doing—topping up in Angola and supporting all the so-called independence movements around the world. This pays the most enormous dividends for the Soviet Union on the diplomatic front.

If it is in fact the flanks of NATO, and the wider flank round the Cape which are the really crucial places, why are the Government withdrawing the Nimrods from the Mediterranean? The Nimrod has a fantastic surveillance capability and has made an enormous contribution to the intelligence available to NATO. How can Britain exert surveillance over the sea areas which are vital to our future in conditions of emergency, as well as in peacetime, if we do not have maritime aircraft available?

This leads into what I call the "blue water school" strategy. I am very unhappy that the RAF should be put in a position in which it is unable to exert surveillance over our merchant shipping, except within the narrow confines of the waters around the United Kingdom.

Finally, the RAF in a great and glorious history, has overcome many difficulties. The obstacles that have been put in its path by the utterly mistaken policies of this Government are just the latest in its trials and tribulations. Indeed, "Per ardua ad astra".

7.38 p.m.

Mr. John Watkinson (Gloucestershire, West)

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. and gallant Member for Winchester (Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles) because he speaks with authority on Service matters. There are two points that Government spokesmen will note. The first is his condemnation of criticism of his own Front Bench in running down the state of morale which exists at present in the RAF and the Services generally. I hope that the more bellicose Opposition spokesmen will take due note of what the hon. and gallant Gentleman said.

I also echo his remark in a later part of his speech when he spoke of the danger of concentrating too fixedly upon the central front. In saying that he echoes the remarks of General Haig when he talked of the danger of myopic vision in relation to Europe. But there are problems and dangers related to the central front to which I shall refer later.

In fairness to the hon. and gallant Member for Winchester, he joined others in attacking the Government on the question of pay for the RAF and the other Services. There can be no doubt that there is a great deal of unhappiness over pay matters in the Services, and it would be exceptional if morale were not affected. However, hon. Members opposite fail to appreciate the wider perspective in which this matter must be seen. We have to consider not only the morale of the Services but the morale of the nation at large.

Conservative Members may not agree with it, but we have a pay policy and if it were breached for the forces or for one element in the forces, it would seriously damage the Government's economic posture and the morale of the whole nation. I have no doubt that Ministers would like to pay the Services a great deal more and probably accept the worth of the case for increased pay, but they cannot give way without breaching the pay guidelines.

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles

This is a serious discussion of the most important point to arise in the debate. The hon. Gentleman seems to think that giving the forces what they deserve now would be a breach of the pay policy, but the forces were promised that they would keep pace with what everyone else was getting, yet in the past three years they have not even kept pace with the pay policy. That is the crux of the matter.

Mr. Watkinson

I accept that there are hard cases. It has been spelled out by other hon. Members that as soon as we have a pay policy, there will be hard cases. However, the hon. and gallant Gentleman cannot say that the Armed Forces do not want to be a special case and then say that they should be given a pay rise of 20 per cent. That would immediately make them a special case and would create all sorts of difficulties for the Government with the rest of their economic policy.

If the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) goes to an RAF base and asks the men whether they think they are underpaid, they will naturally say "Yes". We all consider that we are underpaid at present. The hon. Gentleman ought to ask them a second question—whether they believe that it is necessary for there to be an overall pay policy. They will almost certainly say "Yes". We know that from polls that have been taken.

Mr. Goodhew

In a defence debate in another place on 7th December, Lord Peart, who was replying to the debate, said that the Government had great sympathy with the predicament of the forces and wish to restore them to comparability as soon as possible but that this would have to depend upon the general economic situation and constraints of the time.

The next day, the Home Secretary announced the terms of the settlement with the firemen and said that they would be restored to comparability over the next two years and that this was guaranteed regardless of economic circumstances of the time. This is a nasty difference which has been noticed by the Services.

Mr. Watkinson

I did not hear what was said in another place, though I have heard references to the statement by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. The Government must hold firm on the pay policy for the rest of the year. If we can phase in the necessary increases during the next two years or so, that will be a welcome development, but there must not be a breach of the policy now.

Having defended Ministers on this question, I should point out that I shall be raising later the question of RAF personnel who are suffering a severe loss of morale at RAF Innsworth in my area.

The hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson) raised again a question that is periodically brought up in debates—the desirability of much more powerful Back-Bench committees. A Select Committee on defence would be an ideal institution for the House. Defence is a highly specialised subject where there is a great deal of bipartisan support. It would be an ideal subject for a Select Committee, and I lend my support to the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery in that suggestion.

It was in a Select Committee—the Public Accounts Committee—that we recently considered the question of the Tornado aircraft. The decisions on the Tornado have been made, but there were elements that emerged during the questioning that raised doubts. For example, evidence was given to the Committee that the cost of the aircraft could be well in excess of the estimate of £6+ million. Given what we know about the development of aircraft projects in this country, it would not be strange if the eventual cost were far greater man the estimate. This must have severe repercussions for the defence budget because the Tornado will take an enormous slice of that budget and there are worrying factors concerning the cost of the plane.

In addition, in my travels around Europe I have not found a great deal of enthusiasm for the Tornado among other armed forces in Europe and I find this slightly disturbing, especially when we know that the Germans have cut back their orders for the plane. It would be interesting to know the reasons for their decision.

Mr. Ronald Brown (Hackney, South and Shoreditch)

My hon. Friend has complained bitterly about some of the answers he received on the Tornado, but he is fortunate to have got any answers at all. I asked questions in the last defence debate that have still not been answered. Before he speaks too harshly to Ministers, perhaps he will remember that he is fortunate to have received any answers.

Mr. Watkinson

We must all live in hope.

Turning to the broader issues of the central region, I must say that there is a danger of over-concentrating on the problems there. There are problems, too, on the flanks. Nevertheless it must be admitted that the might of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact in the central region has increased dramatically in quantity and quality. We cannot deny that and there is a self-evident threat there.

There has been a total transformation in the Warsaw Pact air forces. They have changed from an interceptor, ground support air force system to a highly offensive, attacking capability. That must have profound consequences for the West.

Obviously certain conclusions can be drawn. The Opposition see the possibility of the threat, however remote—and I believe that it is very remote—of a no-warning attack and jump to the conclusion that it is just round the corner. I disagree with them on that matter. They are right to draw the attention of the Government and of the people to the build up of those forces. That is inescapable, and we must respond to it. I think that we have responded in the correct way by increasing defence expenditure. But we must ask certain further questions about the Soviet Union and its policies and why it is building up its forces in that area.

I do not take the view that we are in danger of having to endure a no-warning attack in the central region. It has suited the Soviet Union very well, because of the nature of its society, to build up forces in that area. It is able to do so because of the tyrannical, dictatorial nature of its society. The Russians decided, as we did, that they have to depend on conventional weapons. They have been more purposeful than us in their build up. That build up having taken place, they are able to exert a great deal of pressure upon the West, as has been exemplified by the speeches that we have heard from Opposition Members. The pressure is present.

It is important for Opposition Members to realise that there is a conservative military industrial complex in the USSR which has a position of great dominance and authority at present. Its decisions have been accepted and its policies continue. We in the West, because of our open democratic society, are able to switch and change our policies more easily than are the Soviets. They are rather like a super tanker; it seemingly takes years for a dictatorship to change its mind or to change the direction in which it is moving.

There is then a build up in the central region, but I do not think that there will be a no-warning attack. However, the nature and quality of those forces and their aggressive potential are such that we cannot realistically ignore them. Therefore, I support the Government's policy of increasing defence expenditure.

I turn now to two brief constituency matters. The first issue has been raised on two occasions by the Opposition; namely, low-flying aircraft. The northern part of my constituency suffers from low-flying aircraft. I appreciate and understand the need for low flying over our land base. Indeed, the Under-Secretary has sent me several courteous replies to my letters on this subject. I agree with Opposition Members that if planes have to fly low over our land base, we are entitled to ask for a greater degree of variation wherever possible.

When the planes fly over my constituency the noise is horrendous. I had the good fortune to go walking in the Yorkshire Dales last year. For some extraordinary reason, the low-flying planes over the Yorkshire Dales did not seem to make any noise. I do not understand why. I am not wishing all the low-flying planes upon Yorkshire. However, the noise from such aircraft can be thunderous and terrifying to older persons in the northern part of my constituency. Must the planes pass over the northern part of Gloucestershire on their way to exercises? Is it not possible to vary the flight path? It is not as if they exercise only in that area, but I understand that many pass over it. I hope that the Minister will consider that matter.

The last matter that I wish to raise relates to RAF Innsworth in the northern part of my constituency. I appreciate that the decision relating to RAF Inns-worth, which is to "disperse" it to Glasgow, is as yet not final. Indeed, I understand that no decisive step will be taken until some time in the mid-1980s. Nevertheless, the decision is important because it affects morale which is exceedingly low at RAF Innsworth at present.

The prospect is that a significant base in my area will be moved to Glasgow as part of the Government's dispersal policy. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will not be surprised to hear that over two-thirds of those at the station who we asked whether they wished to move said that they did not want to move and that they would support any activity which could be carried out to prevent the move. I have to report that only one member of RAF Innsworth supported the move to Glasgow. He was a Scot. No one else was actively prepared to support the move.

What will it mean for my area if RAF Innsworth is moved to Glasgow? It will involve the loss of about 1,400 jobs. That will have a significant effect on the economy of the northern part of Gloucestershire because, in terms of pay alone, it is estimated to amount to about £3 million a year.

Ministers, when questioned about the Government's dispersal policy, sometimes give the impression that they intend to move RAF Innsworth to Glasgow and then to move something else in to replace it. That seems an odd form of dispersal policy. It appears to involve two different units: RAF Innsworth going to Glasgow and another unit possibly coming to north Gloucestershire. That seems an extraordinary supposition.

RAF Innsworth is a highly skilled centre. The personnel involved are highly skilled. Therefore, the move to Glasgow will not of itself provide any great new job opportunties for people in that area. I notice that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary is nodding his head.

I have had the pleasure of visiting RAF Innsworth and been enormously impressed by it. The buildings and the equipment are excessively modern. If the move to Glasgow is made, will it mean the Ministry of Defence building a new military base with new buildings and computers in that area? If so, it will cost a great deal of money.

I have introduced these matters into the debate because they are of concern to people in my constituency. I hope that my hon. Friend will take note of what has been said on this matter. I do not expect him to reply to the issues that I have raised, but I hope that he will accept my contribution as a marker of the feeling being expressed in the northern part of my constituency—a feeling that I think will grow in intensity as we move closer to the 1980s.

7.59 p.m.

Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson (Newbury)

I should like to start my speech by paying my tribute to the RAF in its sixtieth year of existence and reminding the House of those famous words of Sir Winston Churchill: Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few. Indeed, we all know that at one time in our history the RAF saved our nation. It brought us to peace and to the freedom that we now enjoy. For that we shall always owe a great debt of gratitude to the RAF, the most junior of the three Services.

It seems that in this debate we have changed the question that the Government tried to put before us some years ago when they suggested that we could have only the defence that we could pay for. At the time it seemed a fresh approach, but the truth is that the defence we ought to have is the defence that we need to meet whatever threat faces the nation.

Now that that simple reality has broken through, we are seeing this change of mind and heart by the Government, the suggestion that the forces should be increased once again and the concern expressed from the Treasury Bench that perhaps the pay of the forces is as low as we all say and that it is high time that something was done to give them back the parity to which they have a rightful claim.

But as we say that, Ministers continue to remind us of the pay policy. They suggest that that pay policy is the most important policy of this or any Government. That is their fallacy. If our nation or Western Europe cannot defend itself, the pay policy is a worthless scribble on paper. If we ever allow ourselves to suppose that a policy born of failure and chaos, created by Government, shall take pride of place over the defence of our nation and our freedom, then all our priorities and values are singularly out of joint.

Some hon. Members have said that if one asks two questions—first, whether someone is satisfied with his pay and, second, whether he believes in a pay policy—the answer will be "No" to the first and "Yes" to the second. They say that the "Yes" justifies the Government in holding on to a 10 per cent, norm as the flat rate for everybody.

But that, too, misses the point, that defence is the first priority and that those involved in defence must be a priority. That in turn means that they have a right to a larger rise which guarantees that their morale recovers and that we have sufficient forces to defend our nation and to meet our treaty obligations.

Mr. Watkinson

If the hon. Gentleman had attended previous debates he would have heard his hon. Friends argue that the police and the firemen, as well as all branches of the forces, are special cases. Surely it makes nonsense of a pay policy to yield in all those areas.

Mr. McNair-Wilson

If one cannot defend oneself, one's nation is at risk. If one cannot defend society, society is at risk. Thus, our first priorities have to be the defence of our nation and of society, and those things take pride of place for me. What others argue is their business; I argue what I believe. Therefore, whatever the Armed Forces Pay Review Body may have recommended will, I hope, be accepted by the Government without quibble.

This debate, which should have been a paean of praise for the RAF, in terms of its having the aircraft, the equipment and men it needs, has turned out to be a dirge. That is not because any of us wishes it—certainly not the Minister, who is a doughty champion of the Service that he represents—but because the Government have had to cut defence spending to try to scramble together a sort of economic policy within which they will claim some success, when we all know that the roots of that success lie elsewhere.

So this question of money is a great shadow over this debate. At Strike Command, at High Wycombe, I talked to some very senior officers. One summed up the situation by saying, "Too few aircraft, too few pilots and a shortage of other ranks." It is all there in those three phrases. It is in fact all there in paragraph 404 of the Government's Statement on the Defence Estimates for 1978, except that there it is written in such an anodyne way that if one did not bother to probe one might be persuaded that things were better than they are.

The Minister knows this, however, and we all know it. If the Opposition go on saying it, that is our duty, for our task is to vote Supply and to criticise Governments when they are making a hash of things. That is what we have done, and shall go on doing until we become the Government.

The Royal Air Force, which once boasted thousands of aircraft, has now shrunk to 740 first-line aircraft—smaller than the Polish air force. That must indeed be a record for our great Royal Air Force. About 100 aircraft are earmarked for the defence of this island. I have heard hon. Members say that we should not be thinking about the Royal Air Force defending Britain any more; that we should think instead of a European air force; they say that we should think about NATO, about putting all our eggs into some treaty basket and expecting everybody else to feel about Britain as we do.

General de Gaulle was right when he said that in the last analysis the person who would fight for France was a Frenchman. In the last analysis, the person who will care about fighting for Britain is somebody from this island. Thus, if we entrusted our defence to some treaty, we should be taking a very dangerous step. No one has suggested that the RAF should not have a responsibility for the defence of this island, and I hope that nobody ever does.

But things are clearly not as they should be. The Royal Air Force has 100 aircraft to defend this island and it lacks art air superiority fighter. It is unlikely to have such an aircraft until 1985, when it will have the ADV version of the Tornado.

It is surely not out of place to pose some of the doubts which exist in so many minds and which have been expressed today about the Tornado A moment ago I was talking about the air defence version, but paragraph 32 of the White Paper ends with these slightly cryptic words about the Tornado: and test data indicate that service requirements will be met. That is not quite the definitive statement that I should have liked to read. I do not think that that sentence would be phrased in that way if the Government were as sure as they should be that the Tornado will do all the tasks for which it was designed. That phrase is far from a final statement that the aircraft has lived up to its promise, and I hope that the Minister will comment on it.

I hope that the Minister will tell us that such bugs as existed in the RB199 engine are now finally cured and that the aircraft is now meeting the whole of its performance range. I hope that he will also say that it has the range which most Service chiefs seems to be worried that it lacks and that when the aircraft goes into service in 1981 it will be able to do all the jobs on which we are pinning our hopes.

Some of my hon. Friends have quoted from the article in the Sunday Telegraph by Duff Hart-Davis. I should like to read a short quotation. Talking about Royal Air Force personnel, he says: The worst problem for most is that they scarcely get enough flying hours to keep themselves sharp. The aim is that everyone should have a minimum of 20 hours a month, and this is considered barely adequate. He quotes a pilot as saying: If we flew any less, we would not just become operationally inefficient: we would become bloody dangerous to ourselves and everyone else. Those words sum up the problem of money in the Royal Air Force. I think that they sum up the dangerously low level that we have allowed that great Service to reach, and that we are now beginning to play with the defence of our nation if we do not do something about it.

There is then the question of how many pilots we are short. In reply to a Question on 21st March the Minister of State told me that in his view the shortfall of pilots was less than 3 per cent. I might well ask "Three per cent. of what?" If there are 740 operational aircraft in the RAF—I am told by a senior officer that the shortfall is between 100 and 150 pilots—that is not 3 per cent. Either the Minister of State or that senior officer has the facts badly wrong. If I say that I believe the word of the senior officer in preference to that of the Minister of State it is not because I wish in any way to cast a slur upon the Minister's honesty, but merely to suggest that he was giving me an answer which did not meet the facts and perhaps satisfied some form of words which allowed him off the hook without admitting the true shortfall.

If it is also true, as so many of my hon. Friends have said, that it takes between two and a half and three years to train a pilot, what are we going to do in the next three years? How are we going to maintain the Royal Air Force at its first line of readiness? How will it go on meeting its commitments? How will it go on defending this nation and fulfilling our treaty obligations to NATO? Again, I hope that the Minister will say something about the shortfall, whether he really believes that short service commissions will give him the pilots he needs and whether those pilots will be adequately trained to fly our jet strike aircraft.

The RAF lacks an air superiority fighter aircraft. I think that if it had its way it would like some American F15s in squadron service. As that same senior officer said to me, even if we had them we do not have the pilots to fly them, so there is not much point in pressing for them.

In fact, I understand that ironically there is every chance of F15 aircraft being stationed in this country. I think that the United States Air Force is currently considering forming an F15 unit, no doubt with all the pilots, equipment and spares it will require, to keep those aircraft flying, and yet the aircraft will play no part in the defence of our island. They will not come under the command of the C-in-C RAF Strike Command. The United States Air Force, flying out of RAF stations in the United Kingdom, comes under the command of the United States Air Force (Europe). The senior officers of the Royal Air Force have no right to order how these aircraft shall operate or what missions they shall perform.

If this brings me to a constituency point that I suspect the Minister knew that I had up my sleeve, I hope that he will forgive me. The United States Air Force currently has earmarked for its exclusive use a number of Royal Air Force stations. They are Lakenheath, Upper Heyford, Mildenhall, RAF Welford, just outside my constituency, RAF Green-ham, in my constituency, RAF Skulthorpe and RAF Wetherfield. They are standby deployment bases. Yet these bases, which are earmarked for the use of the United States Air Force, in no way impose a responsibility on the United States Air Force to tie their operational activities within the United Kingdom into the RAF's flying pattern. Those bases are commanded by a United States commander. They take their orders from the commander in Western Europe. The way they operate and the noise procedures their aircraft follow are all governed by the United States commander.

We know that the United States authorities are seeking another base in the United Kingdom. I know that they have told the Ministry of Defence that they would like to open RAF Greenham Common as that base. All of us living in West Berkshire wonder what lies in store for us if the Ministry agrees to that request. That base has been closed operationally for 14 years. Now the United States Air Force is seeking to station 15 KC135 tanker aircraft there on a permanent basis. They are the military version of the Boeing 707, but they are a "primitive" variety of that model and they are among the noisiest four-jet aircraft in the world. They are probably as noisy as, if not noisier than, Concorde when taking off or landing.

That base has been on standby since 1964 and the Ministry of Defence had clearly made up its mind that there was little chance of its ever being reactivated. I have had assurances from Ministers, including the Minister at the Dispatch Box today, that it was not envisaged that the base would ever be reopened for operational flying. Worse than that, the Department of the Environment, on appeal, has allowed a large number of planning consents. A whole mass of housing estates has grown up around that base, and in some of these young couples have sunk most of their savings in buying houses in a belief that the base would never be operational and that they could live there in peace and quiet.

When the Department of the Environment gave its consents it must have been as sure as the Minister was that the base was not likely to become operational. How ironic that in the month that the Americans put in their request for Greenham—February this year—the Government produced its document, "Airports Policy". Paragraph 54 of that document states that aircraft noise emerged as a matter of widespread concern. The Government recognises the genuine anxieties which exist and, … it will continue to maintain and develop a range of ameliorative measures as an essential component of its airports strategy. In the Government's view the maximum value from direct measures, such as those governing aircraft noise abatement procedures and the noise certification of aircraft, can only be realised if they are supported by firm and widely understood policies covering, among other things, the identification of those airports where the main growth in traffic is to be concentrated; the definition of aircraft flight paths; and the control, under the Town and Country Planning Acts, of residential and other noise-sensitive developments in areas subject to aircraft noise. What cold comfort those words are to my constituents when they find themselves faced with what in effect will be an airport on their doorstep. They are told that because Greenham is RAF Greenham Common and is therefore a military base there can be no public inquiry and there will be no compensation for noise and no sound insulation grants. They are the victims of having a base on their doorstep, against which they have no right of protest through any statutory procedure. Is it any wonder that I brought a petition to this House a few weeks ago with 16,000 signatures protesting against the reactivation of Greenham Common? Is it any wonder that one of my headmasters—12 schools will be affected—has written a letter to The Times pointing out that when an American strike group was stationed a Upper Heyford in 1976 the examination standard of his children dropped markedly. In addition to those schools, some of which have been built since 1964, there are two hospitals.

Thousands of people living in houses and going to schools and hospitals which have been built round this semi-dormant RAF base, which has been earmarked for the United States Air Forces as a standby deployment base, suddenly find themselves faced with something that may create for them a nuisance that is bound to affect the value of their properties and, far worse, is bound to damage the quality of life that they now enjoy. For several thousands, they will be experiencing noise levels of between 100 and 125 pndB. The latter figure apparently causes pain.

I raise this point because in my closing remarks I want to ask the Minister a question. My constituents, like myself, have no wish not to pay our tribute to the United States Air Force for the role that it is performing in NATO and in terms of the defence of Western Europe. What is more, we have had Americans stationed at Greenham from time to time, and the relationship between the town of Newbury and those American Service men has been very good. But the fact of the matter is that this base has lain semi-dormant for 14 years. None of us at this moment can say that there is an emergency or that there is a war-time situation. Surely it is not beyond the wit of the Ministry of Defence to devise an inquiry procedure that allows all those people who have moved into the area, who have moved into houses for which they know that the Department of the Environment has given planning permission, to be able to express their concern through a statutory public inquiry procedure and to make known to the Ministers in the Ministry of Defence that another base without that environmental problem should be sought as a matter of urgency.

By the same token, if that base is to be reopened, is it unreasonable to ask for the same sort of compensation as would be given to those householders living near an airport? Why cannot we have noise insulation? Why cannot there he compensation for loss of amenity? Indeed, as we are providing these stations for the United States Air Force, why should not the Americans chip in a bit to make the lives of these people more bearable?

If I say that I hope that RAF Greenham Common will not turn out to be the choice of the Ministry for this base, I say no more than what I feel and what 50,000 of my constituents feel with me. If it has to come, so be it—but at least let us feel that in this decision justice has been done.

8.23 p.m.

Mr. Geoffrey Pattie (Chertsey and Walton)

We understand that the Procedure Committee, in another part of the House, is looking at new ways of organising the affairs of the House of Commons. We can deduce from that that reform and change are obviously in the air. I hope that one of the changes, which that Committee will not be looking at but which we should have, will be a different way of running these defence debates. It may well be that we shall have to wait for the arrival of the new Conservative Government to see such a change. However, in defence debates we always hear comments about the dearth of information. Those comments are made with increasing frequency. We also hear comparisons with the depth of information that is provided in the United States.

I think that it would be very helpful, when we have the major two-day set-piece debate, which we had before the Easter Recess, if the first day were restricted to strategic matters and the second to more specific matters, such as pay and equipment. As it is, we move from discussion about the Horn of Africa immediately on to the high cost of married quarters heating and on to the in-service ADV version of Tornado. All these are important matters, but they make for an untidy debate. What happens in the present situation is that, ill armed with information, hon. Members hurl accusations and counter-accusations against each other about levels of expenditure, cuts, pay, equipment delays, and so on.

While the so-called debate proceeds here in the House, another debate—I submit that it is the real debate—is going on more quietly but probably more viciously behind the scenes. I speak not of inter-Service rivalries, because these are as traditional as they are healthy. I am speaking of the moves towards collaboration on future NATO projects, when all logic says that we must collaborate but when the temptation urges self-interest when the rewards are very considerable.

AST403 has been mentioned by the Minister, and it was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson) in his excellent speech, when he spoke of the three options that face the Royal Air Force. I think that my hon. Friend, probably very kindly bearing in mind the limitations on time, did not go into the difficulties caused in this particular project by the fact that France and Germany, our most obvious collaborative partners, require their new aircraft much later than we need our replacement for Jaguar and Harrier. This project is a classic of the problems that beset collaboration, the main problem in this particular case being the out-of-phase, whereby Britain is going to require a replacement for Harrier and Jaguar some time in the mid-1980s and the two countries that I have mentioned, France and Germany, in the mid-1990s.

The real significance of this project, AST403, is that it will almost certainly be the last major new development for the Royal Air Force this century. If that sounds a rather dramatic statement, it is not meant to be such. I think that one must remember, first, the length of time that it takes to develop a new aircraft and then the in-service life. When we consider that the Tornado will take over five roles, we can see that the trend all the time is towards not only fewer aircraft but concentration on one particular type and, therefore, changes being made rather less frequently.

We have some other Air Staff targets which are already the subject of some fairly frantic wheeling and dealing behind the scenes. I refer particularly to AST1227, where a decision is overdue. I think that it would be a good idea if the RAF declared itself in favour of Sabre, the air-launched version of Rapier, because an early decision here would put us in a rather good position vis-à-vis the United States. We have the defence suppression weapon, AST1228. We have the surface-to-air guided weapon, which I refer to as Sam3, where really, without exaggerating, one could say that the future of the European missile industry is at stake, because if we have to go in with the Americans on that one it will be in a very subordinate role indeed.

Lest anyone thinks that I am breaching any confidence in mentioning these ASTs, let me say that one has only to read Aviation Week fairly assiduously to be able to get all the information required—or to go along to the Soviet Embassy, which I do not make a habit of doing.

Various points have been raised by my hon. Friends. As one or two of my hon. Friends still wish to speak in the debate, I shall just go over a very brief check list of points that ought to be borne in mind in any debate about the RAF. I do not mention these in any particular order of importance.

On any visit that is made to the so-called clutch airfields in BAOR—some of my hon. Friends are very grateful to the Government for arranging the visit that we shall be starting tomorrow—one is aware of the vulnerability of the clutch airfields to chemical attack. Bearing in mind the concentration of the Warsaw Pact forces on chemical capability, this must be a cause for concern.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester referred to the ADV version of the Tornado having slipped back. He also expressed his surprise that the Minister of State seemed to think that it would not be possible to accelerate the programme now that it had been slid back. I think that once a thing has been slid back it can always be accelerated again, and we are going to be in grave danger if we cannot get that version of the Tornado into service more quickly than is now being suggested.

The point has been well made about weapon stocks—that these are unlikely to be adequate. The Chinook helicopter order, which we are being told is about to happen, is being deplorably delayed. It should have been ordered some time ago, and that is not a matter that calls for congratulation on the part of the Government.

On the question of SAM protection, we have been told that Lossiemouth is to be protected by another Rapier squadron, but there are many more bases and more sensitive targets in this country that need protection of this sort. We also need hardening of the radar sites, and the point made by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Winchester (Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles) and one or two others of my hon. Friends about the number of hours of flying training is vital, because 20 hours a month must be considered to be the absolute minimum to keep pilots in first-class training. This is essential.

I think that if we take all these factors together we see that the Royal Air Force is in amazingly good shape. None the less, is high time that the Government faced up further to their responsibilities and did even more to bring the Royal Air Force right up to date, to give the air crews the training and the equipment that they need, and of course—I have not mentioned this because the matter has been dealt with by some of my hon. Friends and by some hon. Gentlemen on the Government Benches—to deal with the question of pay. We are all awaiting eagerly to see what the Armed Forces Pay Review Body report says and, after that, what the Government do with that report. We hope that they will do the right thing by the personnel of the Royal Air Force, because those personnel are doing the right thing by the people of this country.

8.31 p.m.

Mr. Nicholas Scott (Chelsea)

It is late in the debate, and in adding my voice to the congratulations to the Royal Air Force on its Diamond Jubilee it will not be surprising if I cover, albeit briefly, some of the points that have been made by others during the debate.

In particular, I want to reinforce the plea that has been made from both sides of the House that we should have established a Select Committee on Defence. I am an unrepentant believer in the development of the Select Committee system in this House. There are two arguments which are normally used against it. One, which is not respectable, is that it causes difficulties for Ministers and those who advise them if there is a properly informed and advised Select Committee system of Back Benchers studying the topic and making themselves well informed about it and able to confront Ministers and others with the benefit of that study and research. I do not think that that argument stands up for a moment.

The other argument which the Lord President of the Council is always advocating is that if there is a powerful system of Select Committees it detracts from the powerful clashes that take place on the Floor of the House. If one looks around this Chamber this evening, I do not think one can say that that argument carries very much weight at all.

How much better use it would be of the resources of our parliamentary assembly if those who were particularly interested in special subjects were able to get together in Select Committees and devote their time and efforts to pursuing their arguments there. I hope that we can go on arguing for a Select Committee on Defence.

I want to take issue, albeit briefly, with my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. McNair-Wilson). I suspect that there is not a great deal between us, but I think that in some of his remarks about our commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation he may have somewhat over-egged the pudding. Let us remember that the security of this country above all has been guaranteed since 1945 because we have been members of NATO and because of the American nuclear umbrella. I think that we in this country owe an immense debt to NATO and to our American allies for that security and that effort.

I think it is inconceivable that we could look to defend these islands against the sort of threats that might be mounted against us unless we had the collective security which the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation offers us.

Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. Does he think that the independence of France hinges upon its doubtful membership of NATO?

Mr. Scott

It pains me to say this, but I believe that what the French have been doing is sheltering under the NATO umbrella without accepting their duties, or what ought to be their duties, under the NATO umbrella. They have been bad members of the Alliance, in so far as they have been members of it. I would not want to see us emulating that example.

It is interesting that but for a very tangential comment by the hon. Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Williams), there has been no mention of joint services or the elimination or reduction of the independence of the Royal Air Force as a Service. I do not claim to be an expert in these matters, but those who are seem to say that those countries which have experimented with unified services or with army air forces have always been dissatisfied with the outcome. Had we not had in 1940 a totally independent Air Force, we might well have been tempted to commit more fighter squadrons to the land battle on the Continent of Europe and thus have been unable effectively to defend this island when the real crunch came in the air. Therefore, I certainly hope that we shall continue to have a totally independent Royal Air Force, although, of course, co-operating with the other Armed Forces.

Mention has been made in the debate of the withdrawal of Nimrod from the Mediterranean and the blow that that is to NATO's strength in that area. I was lucky fairly recently to be able to go on an Atlantic patrol in a Nimrod aircraft. It is an immensely sophisticated piece of machinery, yet we are using it—and it may be that we have withdrawn it from the Mediterranean because we want to increase this use—as a maritime surveillance and fishery protection aircraft.

I wonder whether it is right to use a piece of machinery as sophisticated and expensive as the Nimrod for that sort of role when we are producing in the Isle of Wight the Britten-Norman Defender and when Hawker-Siddeley is also producing aircraft that it is selling to other countries for maritime surveillance and fishery protection, aircraft which can do those limited jobs much more cheaply and more cost-effectively than Nimrod can. I wonder whether we are using that aircraft in its best role, whether it would not be better to use those alternatives for such roles and to keep Nimrod for its proper job of surveillance and be able to commit it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. Monro) and other hon. Members mentioned low flying. One idea put to me by a serving officer might be worthy of consideration. It fits in with the Minister's mention today of airborne refuelling and the new tanker aircraft that are being purchased. The suggestion is that it might be possible to send squadrons of aircraft across the Atlantic to Eastern Canada, refuelling them in the air on the way and then giving the pilots three months' intensive low-level flying in Eastern Canada, over areas of virtually nil population. If that were possible it might well reduce the burden on the inhabitants of this country, while giving our pilots the sort of low-level training that they need.

I turn to the two points perhaps raised most often in the debate—the pay and the hours of the pilots who fly the aircraft that are our defence. Neither of the two main protagonists who talked about pay policy are in the Chamber, but I say to those Labour Members who are present that they missed the following point. I realise that our society could be destroyed as easily by inflation as by attack from outside. Certainly, I want to hold the line against inflation, but when Service men see a Government saying that we have had a pay policy now for a number of years, and the line must be held here, they reply "Yes, but what you are imposing on us is a pretence of what pay policy has actually achieved so far. We have had the reality of it, and we have fallen steadily behind." Other people have had settlements, but wages drift and other arrangements have meant that earnings have gone up over that period progressively, whereas the Service men, the firemen and the police have been left behind up to now.

I believe that when the arrangements are made the Service men should have settlements no less favourable than those announced for the firemen, who struck, as compared with the Service men, who have patiently put up with the position for so long, and who did the job.

As regards hours, I am sure that the 20 hours' flying a month for a front-line pilot are too few. I understood that the original limitation was imposed because of the fuel crisis in 1973–74 and that was when the number of training hours was cut to 20. If that is so, surely the restrictions could by now have been relaxed so that pilots could have rather more training that they are at present.

There is an even more frustrating aspect to the lack of flying for pilots. if I am right in saying that it is now the practice for general duties branch officers to have only one flying tour at each rank level, this means that an officer may spend five or six years in a rank and, if he has his flying tour early on, it may be four or five years before he gets back to a flying post again.

I suspect, although I do not know, that that is the period at which there are most applications for premature voluntary retirement. Men have joined the Royal Air Force to fly, they enjoy flying and see it as their job to fly, but they face several years stuck behind a desk and unable to look forward to any early prospect of getting in the air again. I know some serving RAF officers who go off at the weekend or when they have some leave and train private pilots, just for the chance of getting behind the controls of an aircraft and also, perhaps, earning themselves a bit of money at the same time.

There has been a good deal of talk about the shortage of pilots, but no one has mentioned an interesting fact in this connection. I almost hesitate to mention it in this entirely male company, but an interesting event occurred only two weeks ago, when the United States Air Force graduated its first class of women pilots. They will be used on transport flying in the United States Air Force, for instructing and for other roles. It may well be that we have a potential here in the Royal Air Force for women pilots in the future, perhaps not for combat roles but for other flying roles.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson) made special reference to the cuts in Transport Command and the need for Transport Command to be expanded again. I understand—I think that the figures are right—that the Soviet Union transports in and out of central Europe every six months about 100,000 ground troops. Part of the reason may be that the Soviet Union does not want its ground troops in central Europe to become over-familiar with the local population, but I believe that it is doing it also as a training exercise in order to maintain air transport capability so that it may engage, if necessary, in such operations as those which we have witnessed in Africa. I endorse what my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester said in urging the need for a better transport capability in the Royal Air Force.

I join in the congratulations to the Royal Air Force on its 60 years. What I hope, perhaps above all, is that we can keep this nation an air-minded nation. Too many people tend to think of aircraft as rather noisy and inconvenient things, failing to remember the role which they and their aircrews have played both in defending these islands and in developing the world as we see it today.

We should not ignore the importance of inspiration in all this, and two names in particular come to my mind. When he flies at Farnborough this year, Neville Duke will have completed 25 years as test pilot for Hawker Siddeley. He has been a great inspiration for many young men and women. Then one remembers Neil Williams, tragically killed recently in Spain, who both as a serving RAF officer and then as a great aerobatics pilot, inspired thousands of our youngsters to take to the air. I hope that that sort of inspiration will continue and will continue to be encouraged by the Royal Air Force.

During the debate there has been reference not just to the main arm of the Royal Air Force but to the other branches—the nursing service, the auxiliary force and the volunteer reserve. I wish to pay tribute, in particular, to the RAF air traffic control service, whose members are unfailingly helpful and courteous to pilots, both private and business, who fly about these islands. When they ask for the help of air traffic control, the service never resents giving of its help and expertise.

I mention also those in the volunteer reserve training branch who train the air cadets and prepare them for a career in the Royal Air Force in the future, upon which the whole strength of the Service depends.

We can all say that the first 60 years of the Royal Air Force have been a thoroughly good show, but perhaps we can add the hope that the next may be better yet.

8.45 p.m.

Mr. Ronald Brown (Hackney, South and Shoreditch)

I follow the hon. Member for Chelsea (Mr. Scott) by echoing the sentiments which he has just uttered. I also agree with him that we ought to have a Select Committee for discussing defence matters. I believe that it is the only way that we shall be able to examine representatives of the Ministry of Defence and get proper replies from them. It seems absolutely hopeless to get anywhere near the information that we want, either by way of traditional Questions or through debates in this House.

During the last defence debate I put three specific questions to the Secretary of State, during a very short and pithy intervention which could not be described as rambling. I am still waiting for a reply to those questions. When I get them, I know what the answers will be. There will be a whole lot of gobblede-gook and it will take another series of Questions to eliminate the rubbish from the important parts. I am firmly convinced that to discuss defence in the House in the traditional way is merely to give everyone the chance of an emotional orgasm. It is a hopeless exercise when it comes to discovering information about defence contracts.

I hope that we shall continue to press for the establishment of a Select Committee through which we can not only discuss the political aspects of many military matters but also examine many of the manufacturers. I would love to have representatives of Marconi Avionics before me in a Select Committee. I would like to have before me some of the retired Ministry of Defence personnel to find out how they translated from their previous work into working for industry. I would like to know what is the relationship between themselves, their company and the Ministry. We must continue to press for a Select Committee so that the House will have the opportunity to probe much more deeply certain aspects of Government defence policy.

The debate seems to have been characterised by a paradox. I listened to Tory Members arguing that the Royal Air Force was not big enough. They wanted more sophisticated aircraft and more pilots. Having got more pilots, it would be necessary for them to have plenty of hours of flying and training to reach peak performance. Then we heard the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. McNair-Wilson) coming down to the political reality with the 16,000 signatures about which we talked. "We want all of that—but not over my area", he seemed to be saying. Pilots could fly low everywhere except over Newbury. I have never heard a more extraordinary speech. I was beginning to be persuaded that perhaps we did need more than 740 aircraft and the permitted number of pilots. Then the hon. Member got to his crunch point about the American base. Whether they are American pilots or United Kingdom pilots, the noise will be the same. I can understand the hon. Gentleman's point politically, but I do not see how, in the context of the argument on defence, he can put that case.

The hon. Member for Newbury spoke about the peace and quiet which he wanted for his constituents. To judge from the arguments of his hon. Friends, who said that we did not have enough aircraft and had very few pilots, it would seem that we have got all the peace and quiet his constituents need. I am not sure what he is complaining about.

I turn now to pay policy. I understand Service men and many other public servants feeling that they have not had a fair share of the national cake. I do not accept it. Nevertheless, I understand it. But I do not believe that the House and Conservative Members can take the view that we can play fast and loose with this issue. As my hon. Friends have said, if we have a pay policy and are attempting to get hold of inflation, as this Government have attempted to do, we have to suffer certain things in the process. If we identify special cases—we had experience of this in the 1960s—we are on a collision course immediately with any concept of pay policy.

It is marginal and subjective whether we think it more important to spend more money on defence or more money on the police. If hon. Members talked to the elderly people in my constituency they would find that they were not concerned with defence. They would talk about the police and mugging and hooliganism. They will make their subjective judgment that the police are more important. They cannot understand why we do not pay the police fantastic sums of money because we need more police and we ought to be attracting them by paying them more.

During the firemen's strike people argued how disgraceful it was. We were all afraid that we might suffer from a fire and there would be no firemen to deal with it. Many people, including Conservative Members, said that we ought to pay them more and that they deserve it. What are the Government doing to protect a society in which there are not sufficient firemen available?

It is said that we want vast numbers of ambulance drivers ready and available with all the skills that they need to have. There is an endless list of groups of people whom one could argue subjectively should be of first priority depending upon one's own propensity for choosing which one. Therefore, I do not believe that we can do what hon. Gentlemen have been suggesting—that we should forget everything else in the country and select a particular group. So I urge the House to understand that for as long as the Government are grappling with the problem and, in my view, successfully doing so, I believe that the Services, as well as others, understand the difficulty.

I do not think that Conservative Members who spend a great deal of time visiting all our military establishments do well to re-tell anonymous stories about what an officer said to them and what an officer did. We all have these private discussions. In my experience, the officers attempt to give one a broad backcloth to defence matters. None of them has ever thought that what he was saying in a general briefing would be quoted here in a very selective fashion under the heading of "An officer said to me". Therefore, I do not believe that it does the case any good to pretend that there is that great disaffection in the Services which is being argued today.

I come to deal with the Tornado for the umpteenth time. I have been dealing with it for four years. I hope that in the not-too-distant future my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will reply to the questions that I put to him on the weapons system of the Tornado. After my last intervention on this issue in March I received a number of anonymous telephone calls from people wanting to see me to tell me how right I was and asking whether I would keep sticking at it because I was being lied to. I said that I could not do that and that I did not take people's numbers, but asked for their names. I said that I wanted their names and addresses and that I would talk to them. From the replies that I have received from a wide range of people I am not sure that I am so far from the truth in the submission that I have made to my hon. Friend. I therefore look forward to hearing from him urgently on the matter.

At the same time, he might remember the previous debate last year when I asked whether the Tornado, with the stores management system, was to be inter-operational. It could be said that I used the wrong terminology, but I am an ordinary guy and words mean what they say to me. "Inter-operational" to me meant that a squadron of Tornado aircraft employed in an operational sortie could land on a German airfield or an Italian airfield—our allies—and something having gone wrong with the stores management system, could be repaired there and the aircraft sent back into action. That seemed to be a simple understanding of the word "inter-operational". My hon. Friend then replied that that was perfectly true and that they were, I thought he said, inter-operational.

But my hon. Friend was shrewd and cunning. He did not actually say that. He said that it was inter-operative, which does not mean the same thing. As I now understand it, "inter-operative" is distinctly different from "inter-operational". It means that if the aircraft lands without damage it can be rearmed, but that if there is anything wrong with it they cannot repair it on these foreign fields. I hope that my hon. Friend will tell me which of these two situations applies to the Tornado, which is due to come into service at the end of the year. I put the question again. If a Tornado lands on an allied field, will it be possible to rearm it, if all is well with it, and also repair it, if all is not well with it?

Whatever the terminology that the Ministry of Defence is using, I am merely asking whether this aircraft will be able to be operated integrally from any allied airfield—German, Italian or British, say—and can thus be truly said to be inter-operative or inter-operational.

Hon. Members have been talking about the importance of enthusiasm and of ensuring that we have a good quality of people coming forward to serve in the RAF. But no one has mentioned the Air Training Corps. As my hon. Friend knows, I have a particular interest in the ATC and it staggers me that it should be so neglected when it is a source from which we can recruit young men and gain their interest and enthusiasm—and often they are young men with primary flying training. The ATC squadron in which I am particularly interested is outstanding. It has a high record of attain- ment among its young men right through the RAF's requirements. It has won several Duke of Edinburgh's Awards and has a wide range of activities.

I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to give an assurance that the ATC will receive more funds than at present in order to encourage young men of the country to take part in its activities. Not only will it be a source from which the RAF will be able to choose its personnel—already partly trained—but, in the light of the present youth unemployment problem, it will be of great value in giving young men the opportunity of self-discipline and in gaining their interest in taking part in society as a whole. I am anxious to ensure that, in any cutting that my hon. Friend may be contemplating for the RAF, the ATC, while it may not have all the glamour that hon. Members have been talking about, will be recognised as an important part of the Service and one which he should be supporting.

In all the exchanges and the arguments that go on in the House about the RAF, Members usually finish by saying how marvellous the RAF is and what good shape it is in. I hope that that is the message that will go out from the House tonight—the message that the RAF is a first-class and efficient organisation and that we are proud to be defended by it. The Government are to be congratulated. It does not matter if one has 740 aircraft only—what matters is what those 740 are capable of doing.

The argument that we now have to have massive numbers of aircraft reaches back 40 years in our history to an old concept of RAF requirement. What counts is the quality of the aircraft, the opportunities that the RAF has and the role it plays. It does not do the House, the RAF or the defence of the country any good to keep running down, as so many hon. Members have done, a first-class Service.

9.0 p.m.

Mr. Victor Goodhew (St. Albans)

At this late hour I do not wish to follow the speech of the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Brown) in everything that he said, but at a time when the threat is constantly increasing and we are faced by more and more advanced and sophisticated weapons and aircraft on the other side, we have to look to numbers and to the advances in our own Air Force as well.

I should like to join in congratulating the Royal Air Force on its 60th anniversary and to mention one part of it, the Royal Air Force Regiment, which does a very fine job in defending Air Force installations. It has also proved itself to be as smart in its drill and marching as any regiment that I saw at the Queen's Silver Jubilee last year.

I should like to have an assurance from the Minister on the subject of flying hours. He began by saying that with the Tornado it was vital that there should be flying training; otherwise the pilots would be like sailors who did not go to sea. The pilots have to do enough flying to be able to fly safely and efficiently. There have been many warnings about the 20-hours limit. I hope that the Minister will be able to say, as the situation is supposed to be improving, that there will be a possibility of at least allocating more fuel to those who have to fly very sophisticated aircraft.

I really cannot allow Government Members to keep on saying that because there is a pay policy, nothing can be done for members of the Armed Forces. Theirs is quite clearly a very special case. To start with, they are not free, as others are, to move from one firm to another in order to secure a higher paid job. They cannot move at all. In fact, there is a queue of those who are waiting to get out. Many are queuing in order to have the chance to pay a few hundred pounds in order to get out of the RAF and into a higher-paid job.

What do we mean by comparability? How can it be said that these Service people are comparable to those who do similar jobs in other organisations? The Royal Air Force pilot may be called upon to risk his life in some operation at any time. His position is quite different from that of the pilot who is flying a British Airways aircraft to and fro on an ordinary route. How can the two be compared?

How can the home situation be compared? The RAF officer is not able to live where he likes. He has to live on his station. He does not even have the choice of deciding how much he can afford to spend on his house. There is a much- quoted argument which mentions a squadron commander who is paying £90 a month for a house which is larger than he really needs, but because he is a squadron commander he has this house. He spends £250 a year on central heating because it is a larger house than he needs. If he were a civilian, with the ordinary freedom of civilian life, he could move into a smaller and cheaper house and thus save money, but he is forced to stay where he is. I cannot see, therefore, how he, as a squadron commander, can be compared with somebody in a similar job outside.

The same can be said about the other ranks. The smallest two-roomed married quarter costs £40 a month. That is an enormous amount to deduct from a Service man's pay. If his pay is not being advanced in the same way as that of people in civilian life, obviously he will get worse and worse off. As we have heard, the pay of the Armed Forces today is 30 per cent. below that of civilians. There have been pay policies for several years now, and the Government have been content to let the Armed Forces drop back during that period. This is what is wrong.

I ask myself what the Government will do on this occasion about the report of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body. We know from the review body's last report that the Government leaned on it. The Government in one breath say that the review body is independent, but once it makes its recommendations it is not regarded as independent. It was clear from the last report that the review body was told by the Government that there were certain parameters within which it could work. In other words, it was leaned upon and told that it must consider the economic situation and the Government's pay policy.

I wish that on this occasion the review body would say clearly "This is the figure the Armed Forces should receive". Then, if the Government were prepared to say that the Forces did not deserve such a figure, the Government rather than the review body should carry the responsibility for denying the Armed Forces what that body believed the Services were entitled to.

The Government said in the other place on 7th December last that the Armed Forces would have to wait until the economic climate permitted and until the Government's economic policy allowed, but on the following day, to the shame of the Government, the Home Secretary announced in this House the firemen's settlement, which guaranteed that they would be brought up to comparability in 1978 and 1979 regardless of economic policy. Surely what is good enough for the firemen is good enough for the Armed Forces.

The Services must not be treated as though they do not deserve as much as the firemen receive, just because Service personnel do not have a trade union to fight for them and because they cannot strike. It is the Ministers in the Department who must undertake the job of shop stewards for the Services. They must fight for the Service men whom they represent in the House. I hope that when the time comes we shall be told clearly that they will do for the Armed Forces what they did for the firemen—that they will give them a guarantee for the future rather than leave the situation to chance.

9.7 p.m.

Mr. Robert Banks (Harrogate)

The timing of this debate is wholly appropriate because on 1st April 60 years ago the Royal Air Force was formed. In opening the debate the Under-Secretary spoke glowingly of the record of the RAF. To those who have served and who are now serving to protect the nation we offer our deepest appreciation of the job which they have carried out over the past 60 years. We wish the RAF well in the years ahead. We are confident that its officers and men will always live up to the sacrifice and the daring which is the hallmark of The Few.

My hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. Monro) spoke with regret of the fact that Parliament has not marked the occasion of the Diamond Jubilee anniversary of the Royal Air Force. I wish to reiterate what he said, because I believe that it is a pity that Parliament has not in some way marked this important occasion.

It was in every way predictable that the issue of pay would be in the forefront of this debate. The bitterness that followed publication of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body report in April last year arose from what was a double deal. The pay recommendation was in line with the Government's pay policy and within those terms of reference. On the other hand, rents for single and married quarters were increased, garage charges rose, and food charges also were raised.

Since then inflation has bitten deeper and deeper into the standard of living of our Service men, and as the months have passed the protests have been louder and louder, and justifiably so. Service men have no productivity deals, no bonus payments, no overtime rates, no profit-sharing schemes and no company perks that can be applied. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Winchester (Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles) gave a graphic illustration of how some Service men were overstretched in the hours they work.

More than three out of five Service wives are forced to go out to work, and many men are taking jobs in their spare time when they deserve to be at home with their families.

Service men had a raw deal not only on pay and charges but on allowances in respect of expenses incurred. As the Minister confirmed in a written reply, these do not come within pay policy, but even so some allowances have not been reviewed since 1976, and this during a period of swingeing increases. The Minister's neglect over this is a scandal.

Another injustice is that which is deliberately engineered. The excess baggage charges come into this category. A family man who is transferred to Germany will, in most cases, arrange for his furniture and household equipment to be sent out to his new quarter. A specified proportion of this is, quite rightly, transported free of cost, but the cost of moving the excess weight or volume is charged to the airman concerned. In 1976 these rates were reviewed and increased by an unprecedented 174 per cent. and 189 per cent. respectively. They have been increased again since then. In these days of washing machines and refrigerators it is inevitable that excess charges are levied. Even so, the amount of free weight and volume which has been unaltered since 1948, was considered in the Government's review and left unchanged.

The Minister is free to put up these costs by staggering amounts under the pay policy, but now he says that he is unable to rectify the injustice of these increases until the pay policy permits. The basic disturbance allowance for airmen was increased by a miserable £13 on 1st January this year, so that the total allowed is £114. But if the Civil Service transfers a man who is married without children and who is in the lower salary band he is allowed £610. The Civil Service is getting generous treatment, but the Government are pound-pinching on our Service men.

This Socialist Government are clinging like a leech to power, and draining the airman of his patience and forbearance in the co-operation that they demand of him in their battle against inflation. Their performance reveals that they do not understand the meaning of fair play.

The Government cheated to get into office in October 1974 by telling the people that inflation was running at 8.4 per cent. when they knew it was not. They cheated in the Division Lobbies to save their Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Bill from defeat, and now they have cheated our Service men by holding back on pay and allowances and walloping on charges. I would not buy a second-hand trailer from the company of brothers opposite.

We have always been proud of the men and women in the RAF who, despite the stresses and strains placed upon them, are superbly keen to give of their best when called upon to do so.

An internal report by the RAF's own personnel liaison teams for the Air Force Board has received some publicity in The Guardian. In an article on 11th January reference was made to low morale among RAF personnel and airmen's money problems, which constituted a hazard to flight security and safety. In the recent defence debate the Minister at last recognised that morale is not all that he would like it to be. We want to know exactly what he intends to do about it.

My advice is to prevail on his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to put an end to this dying duck of a Government and call an election in the national interest. The return of a Conservative Government would do more to bolster the morale of the RAF than anything that he could con- ceivably do. Morale is vitally important to our defence ability. The state of it should never be neglected and the fact that it is as high as it is is a tribute to the spirit of the Service and the leadership of officers and NCOs.

The report, which is now overdue from the Armed Forces Pay Review Board is crucial to the Board's future as a body which is able to make reasonable and unbiased judgments, and to the acceptance by officers and airmen, as fulfilling the trust they put in it to understand and air their grievances on pay and charges, allowances and comparibility with civilian jobs. The Minister explained that the report is with the Prime Minister, but he must give the House an assurance of a date for the report's publication and the Government's response. Nothing could be more important.

The report must clearly show the increases in pay scales that are right to bring levels up to a reasonable comparability and the Government must say when and how they will do this. Let us be quite clear about accommodation and food charges. They must in no circumstances be increased if the pay increase ceiling of 10 per cent. has to be the limit. Allowances must be brought up to date immediately, and the X factor must be improved. We put the case for airmen getting a fair deal quickly and those are our terms of reference.

The House should know that an airman mechanic with two children, after paying rent for his Service house of £9.59 a week, is left with take-home pay of only £30.51 a week for heating, food, clothing and the support of himself and his family. Is it any wonder that our Service men are fed up with the way that they are being treated?

Surely it cannot be right for a chief technician who lives in my constituency and who has served the RAF for 22 years to be on such a low earnings scale that his third child qualifies for free school milk.

The hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Watkinson) argued for the pay policy. I am sorry that I was not here for the whole of his speech, but he should reflect on the conclusions of the pay review body's report in April last year. The concluding paragraph said: we have again focused attention on the shortfall in relation to the pay levels justified on the basis of outside evidence that has arisen, in part at least, because of the accident of the timing of the introduction of the pay restraint measures on 1 August 1975. It went on: We attach particular importance to the need for a measure of flexibility in the period after 1 August 1977 in a form that is directly relevant to the armed forces pay system, having regard to the plain fact that measures which provide flexibility in an industrial environment may very well be impossible to reflect directly in an armed forces environment. The argument is that the Government have failed to take heed of what that report asked them to do, namely to respect the particular position of the Armed Forces.

The hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson), speaking on behalf of the Liberal Party, said that the Government should not allow this situation to continue any longer. This is somewhat belated support from the Liberals, and I regret that the hon. and learned Gentleman was not more specific.

Mr. Hooson

If the hon. Gentleman reads my contribution to the debate in December, when we discussed Service pay, he will find that I said exactly that.

Mr. Banks

We look forward to Liberal support in the Lobbies when we discuss these matters.

This year's defence White Paper says what the White Papers said last year and the year before. As before, there is less equipment and fewer men to go round the same area. Pay gets only a brief mention in the last White Paper.

Once more, the startling increases in Soviet forces bear out the frightening horror of what is happening in the world today, and that is something that no one wants to believe. The haunting symptoms of the 1930s are there in black and white.

The reality of the Soviet intentions to dominate the African continent is unmistakable. The peril for Europe and the West is a gradual and increasing suffocation through the denial of essential supplies. It will surely come about unless the will and military strength of this country and our allies is sufficient to deter that from happening. The Chief of the Defence Staff, Marshal of the Royal Air Force, Sir Neil Cameron, speaking to the Air League on 1st December last year, said: The Soviet Union now has a military capability which is already quantitively superior to the West in many of the key weapons systems—ICBMs, fighter and fighter bomber aircraft, submarines, tanks, personnel—and which will be further enhanced by the dramatic qualitative improvements they are making to their equipments. Having directed so much effort into improving the Soviet military machine, they now have a production base which is turning out seven submarines for every one that the United States produces and they could re-equip the front line tactical aircraft of the RAF and the German Air Force together every 12 months. The plain fact is that doctrinaire Socialism is hell-bent on reducing our Armed Forces regardless of the consequences. The growth and improvement in Soviet arms is completely disregarded. The fact that they have the new swing-wing aircraft Fencer and Fitter C, and the formidable Backfire supersonic bomber in service, and are daily making technological improvements in their striking competence, is apparently not sufficient evidence to cause a reduction in the cuts that have already been made from the planned programme of expenditure since 1974.

The Soviet Union is undertaking the most massive military expansion ever undertaken in peacetime by any nation. This Government are embarking on a massive reduction in defence expenditure of £10,000 million over 10 years, and yet they are still curious to know why multilateral balanced force reductions are getting nowhere.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson), in a most impressive, eloquent and well-informed speech, gave an illustration of the last airfield which has been closed in his constituency. That is indicative of the way in which cuts have worsened our defence position.

My hon. Friend also referred to Transport Command. He was right to do so, because this force has been cut by 50 per cent. It is an area that deserves the closest scrutiny.

In this context it is important that a review should be speedily undertaken of the way in which civilian aircraft can be brought into service in a period of tension and how they should be equipped beforehand to deal with the transportation of equipment and personnel that would be necessary in a war or close to war situation.

The hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George) made a stand for defence expenditure. That was indeed a breath of fresh air from the Labour Benches. It is not often that we hear a speech from a Labour Member in which we get a firm commitment to defence expenditure.

The areas of the NATO Alliance are recognised by definition as the northern flank, the central front and the southern flank. There is art immense Soviet fleet at Murmansk, in the north, substantial Warsaw Pact forces facing the central front, and a fleet of between 40 and 90 Soviet ships operating in the Mediterranean.

I cannot find any argument that justifies any one sector being carried at a weaker state of deterrent than another in the light of Soviet strengths in each area. Such weaknesses as may exist directly result from the failure of Governments in NATO to raise their contributions, and this Government have set an example in reverse by the severity of their cuts.

The danger in current thinking is that NATO is preoccupied with holding the equilibrium on the central front and accepting weaknesses on the flanks as a bearable risk.

The greatest single danger is the philosophy of the Secretary of State, who believes that defence depends, first, on a sound economic base. As things stand at present, we shall be waiting until Doomsday for that to happen. The Soviet Union spends twice what we do on defence, in gross domestic product terms, on a very rocky economic base. Defence expenditure depends on sound judgment of the assessment of the military power of a potential aggressor. The same mistake was made in the 1930s. That led to appeasement, and in effect that is the policy of this Government now.

If we allowed NATO to be weakened by our reduction in expenditure when the Soviet Union's forces or effectiveness were being weakened by age or a policy of equalisation and disarmament with the West, it might be acceptable. But for us to weaken NATO when the Soviet Union is spending well in excess of the rate of NATO's expenditure on arms and is rapidly building up its forces to a point of universal supremacy is not only to weaken the political will of the allies but to disarm the logicality of NATO.

The Government's decision to pull out of the Mediterranean is just one such example of a weakness that they have imposed on the southern flank of NATO. If any country now lost faith in the NATO concept and bowed to Soviet pressure, if applied, the West would enter the Dark Ages. Our minds should therefore be set on strengthening the NATO commitment and the integration of the Alliance.

In this context, I stress the importance of equipment interoperability and the planning and manufacture of aircraft. The Minister made a statement about the AST403 this afternoon and the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Brown) made a valuable point about the interoperability of the Tornado, and we look forward to the Minister's answer.

Our task is to rethink the NATO boundaries. I look to the day when Spain enters the Alliance and contributes to European security in return for her own security. The boundaries of NATO's operation need to be reconsidered in the light of the events in the Horn of Africa and the Indian Ocean. In this respect we need to approach the subject with flexible minds.

I am concerned about the future position of Malta now that we no longer have an air base on that island. Its key position in the Mediterranean, and the facilities of Malta's dockyards and airfields are well understood. It would be sensible to begin early discussions with our NATO partners and the Prime Minister of Malta on any future arrangements for sustaining the NATO connection when the British lease arrangement expires next year.

The withdrawal of the Nimrod reconnaissance squadron from Malta has had a profound effect. That should not be underestimated. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Winchester made a good point about that.

On 16th March, I visited the Naples headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief, Allied Forces Southern Europe, with members of the Defence Questions and Armaments Committee of the Western European Union, of which I am a member. In the words of the Chief of Staff, Vice-Admiral Roderick Macdonald, the withdrawal was a very heavy blow. The holes left in the reconnaissance of the Mediterranean have not been filled. That is one example of the way in which Britain's defence cuts have directly weakened the Alliance.

Reconnaissance for the early warning of military movements is of the topmost importance. The RAF is now short of pilots and aircraft. My hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Mr. Trotter) referred to the greatly reduced number of front-line aircraft that we have in service. In particular, we are far below the numbers of Nimrod aircraft that are imperative to our defensive role and that of NATO.

I welcome the decision to develop the early warning Nimrod. Many people whose jobs depend on it will also rejoice. Britain and our NATO partners must not delay in reaching conclusions on the surveillance of the Mediterranean. There is a vital necessity for building in inter-operability among whatever systems are chosen in the different NATO sectors. Major-General Leiser, Italian Chief of Staff of the Allied Air Forces, Southern Europe, told us in Naples that provision of an early warning system was essential to the survival of NATO as we understand it—and I believe that he is right.

The most startling fact in the White Paper relates to the drop in the numbers of personnel in the RAF. The defence cuts have bitten more deeply into this Service than into the other two. From 1974 to 1978, the Royal Navy lost 600 officers, the Army 800 and the RAP 3,500. In the case of Service men, the Navy is down by 2,600, the Army by 7,700 and the Royal Air Force by 10,700. That drastic reduction has led to a cumulative desire for exodus.

Not only is the Service unable to attract men of the required qualifications; it is about 300 pilots below strength. The figure that I have is that 537 officers in the last nine months of 1977 took advantage of the early release programme. But if we are to make up this shortfall of 300 pilots, how are they to be trained? How are they to be produced in the period required? My hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea (Mr. Scott) spoke about training women pilots. That is an interesting point.

At the moment, recruits are harder to get with the qualifications needed. This comes down to the fact that people are not attracted to joining the RAF any longer because of the low scale of pay and the general dissatisfaction with the recognition that they get.

In the defence debate my hon and gallant Friend the Member for Eye (Sir H. Harrison) spoke of the need to increase the strength of the reserves. He speaks with experience and authority, from his valuable work as Chairman of the Defence and External Affairs Sub-Committee. That is the Committee which offers us about the only way we have of getting information of any substance.

This is an important point. The role of the Air Force reserves is becoming increasingly important when the Service is already stretched to meet its commitments. The Minister would be right, therefore, to follow this line of thought. particularly in terms of those who are leaving, who have many years of experience but who, possibly have years of service in the reserves ahead of them if they could be persuaded to continue. In general terms, they could act as an invaluable backup to the fine RAF Regiment. My hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth referred to this and to the reserves having an important role to play in the defence of airfields. He is right.

My hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries spoke of the record of the RAF in its mountain and sea rescue work. agree entirely about that, and I add to it fishery protection and the work it does on oil rig surveillance.

The work of the Royal Observer Corps is hardly mentioned these days. but its activities in maintaining its high state of readiness to report nuclear bursts and to forecast fallout levels all over the county are commendable. The Corps is made up of volunteers whose dedication deserves our praise. It is amazing how they spend generally one night a week sitting in a concrete bunker undergoing their training. They do it for virtually no money, but out of love of the Service and because they are doing something useful.

The hon. Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Williams) referred to his previous thoughts on his proposal for merging the RAF and the Army. I got the impression that he had dropped that idea, perhaps because he was intrigued by his new proposal for merging the Service Chiefs. I detected a hint of criticism, by implication, in what he said, but I do not believe that he necessarily meant to criticise the Service Chiefs. To merge them, however, would solve no problems and would more likely create new ones.

The RAF is our front-line force and is guaranteed to be in action first. I wonder at the skill of the pilots and crews, who master what to me is a bewildering technology in the planes that they fly. Theirs is a life of considerable daring and expertise, which only a few can accomplish. Their training is unavoidably expensive, and we cannot afford to lose them. They seek a way of life, not just financial reward. Life in the RAF has to be something special, or it is not worth the candle. It is a responsible life, because the lives of those working together depend on each other's efficiency.

The Service must never be taken for granted, because morale is a kind animal that does not bite. It just goes away, and we are determined to prevent that from happening.

9.33 p.m.

Mr. Wellbeloved

With the leave of the House, Mr. Speaker, I should like to reply to some of the points made in the debate.

First I should like to thank the hon. Member for Harrogate (Mr. Banks) for his kind and fulsome tribute to the Royal Air Force. I turn directly to the hon. Member for Dumfries (Mr. Monro) and my right hon, Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Harrison) to express my appreciation and that of the RAF on their initiative on this the 60th anniversary of the foundation of the RAF in having formed a parliamentary all-party group for the Royal Air Force. They are now about to have their inaugural meeting and I hope that they will move forward from success to success in arranging meetings and inviting informed speakers to address them. Perhaps they will even invite me to fulfil that role. I can assure both the hon. Members that we shall do all that we can in the Air Force Department to facilitate any reasonable requests that that group puts to us for visits to the Royal Air Force and for any other facilities which it wishes to have and which are within our power to arrange.

The hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) raised a great number of questions. I shall attempt to answer some of them—to his satisfaction, I hope, but I shall be surprised if I succeed in achieving that hope. The hon. Member raised the question of giving Jaguar a self-defence missile capability. I can assure him that this question has been looked at very closely. Indeed, I have no doubt that his right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour), during his period of office, considered this matter. We are certainly again giving consideration to the possibility of a self-defence missile capability, but the issues are not simple and straightforward. It is not a case of just bolting missiles on to the aircraft. All the implications need to be studied very carefully, and this is currently being done by the Air Staffs.

Mr. Churchill

And Harrier.

Mr. Wellbeloved

And Harrier.

The hon. Member asked about Hawk and its war-time role. This again is being examined to see whether we can give the Hawk trainer a cost-effective war role, and we hope to come to a decision within the next six months. As soon as a decision is reached, I shall ensure that the hon. Member and the House are informed.

The hon. Member also referred to the strategic role of the Vulcan. He spoke about losing that role when the Vulcan is replaced by the Tornado in 1980. I think that I had better make it clear again to the House and the hon. Member that the United Kingdom's nuclear strategic role is carried out entirely by our Polaris submarines. All the current tactical strike and attack roles on which Vulcan is at present employed will be fully covered by the Tornado aircraft when Vulcan is replaced by that aircraft. The Vulcan in the maritime reconnaissance role will not be replaced and will continue in service, and it will continue with its responsibilities in that area.

The hon. Member also raised the question of heating costs in RAF married quarters. I think that in one of his more rash and perhaps unkind moments he accused me of indifference to the financial problems caused to those who live in quarters which are heated solely by off-peak electric central heating because of the cost of this form of heating.

I wish that the hon. Member had done his homework a little more thoroughly, because he would then have found that we are undertaking an extensive programme of improving the insulation in married quarters, which should be of considerable help in this respect. The hon. Member might also like to know that as a direct consequence of a series of visits that I have made to RAF stations, in consultation with the Air Staff I directed that a pilot scheme should be carried out at two RAF stations of unblocking fireplaces in married quarters that have night storage heating to see whether this could be done in a cost-effective way and whether it would meet the requirements of serving men and their families to have an alternative to the off-peak electric central heating.

This trial scheme has gone forward with considerable success, so much so that we are now seeking to see whether we can extend the scheme to quarters throughout the three Services. Discussions are taking place between the quartering departments of the three Services to see whether this can be done. I do not claim this as a major achievement, but I think that I can claim that it refutes the hon. Gentleman's allegation that my colleagues and I are indifferent to the personal problems of Service men.

The hon. Member also referred to the criticism in the DEASC report about the cuts in defence expenditure and about the RAF's capabilities. He referred specifically to the cancellation of a Jaguar squadron and the slow-down in the delivery rate of Tornado. I thought that I had laid this Jaguar "ghost" squadron to rest when I said in the RAF debate last year, on 4th May, as reported at column 491 of Hansard, that this squadron was only a "planning assumption" and that there has never been any commitment to that extra Jaguar squadron. As regards the Tornado programme, the reductions in planned delivery rate made at the time of the defence review will have no significant effect at all on the time needed to build up the operational squadrons.

My hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. MacFarquhar) referred to articles by Mr. Albright in the Atlanta Constitution and Journal about security in the United States special storage sites. My hon.

Friend will, I am sure, understand that I am not prepared to comment on newspaper reports on matters of technical nucclear safety, but I assure him that we keep the whole subject of security of nuclear weapons under continuing review. I thank him for kindly passing on to me the correspondence and the documents to which he referred, and I give him the undertaking that I shall cause a review to take place to ensure that all is well in every respect from our point of view.

Mr. MacFarquhar

I thank my hon. Friend for his undertaking, but he cannot, in my opinion, lightly say that he will disregard things simply because they appear in newspapers. These are serious allegations. The American Government have taken them up, and I hope that my hon. Friend can take them up in public as well as privately.

Mr. Wellbeloved

I never lightly disregard things that appear in newspapers. I do not always believe them, but I have said to my hon. Friend that I shall consider the reports that he has passed on to me, and I can go no further. It would not be right at this stage to go into details of nuclear security.

The hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr. Trotter) talked about a deficiency in the provision of what he called Smart bombs in the RAF. I am happy to be able to tell him that if he had read this year's defence White Paper carefully he would have seen that the United States laser guidance kits for our bombs and laser designators for fitment to certain of our offensive support aircraft will be delivered during the course of this year.

The hon. Gentleman also said that there is no greater duty—I think I have his words right—than the air defence of the United Kingdom. I do not for a moment dissent from that comment and that is why I am delighted in this debate—as I was in the debate on the statement on defence estimates—to make clear to the House that it is this Government—and I make no apology for repeating this—who have restored the air defence capability of the United Kingdom, a capability that was discarded by a previous Conservative Administration. I think that we should have more praise from hon. Members on both sides of the House for that great contribution.

Mr. Trotter

rose—

Mr. Wellbeloved

No. I shall not give way because I have a lot to get through in a very short time.

My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George), in an excellent speech, said that he agreed with Andrew Wilson in his superb article in last weekend's The Observer and claimed that that was a fairer and more accurate assessment of the facts about the Royal Air Force than are many of the scenarios put forward by Conservative Members. I wholly agree with that splendid judgment of my hon. Friend and of Mr. Andrew Wilson.

Mr. Churchill

rose—

Mr. Wellbeloved

If the hon. Gentleman will excuse me, I shall not give way. I do not want to be discourteous, but I have a lot to get through.

Mr. Andrew Wilson, in that superb article, said that the attempts by Conservative Members to frighten the public into an awareness is complete rubbish. I shall not go through all the quotations because I am pressed for time, but I commend that article to all hon. Members. Hon. Gentlemen opposite would have done themselves, their cause and the Royal Air Force more good if they had quoted from the article in The Observer rather than from the Sunday Telegraph which falls below the standard of accurate reporting of the affairs of the Royal Air Force of The Observer. The hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson), who made a thoughtful speech, raised the subject of AST403, and in particular wanted to know whether we intend to go for a short take-off and vertical landing aircraft. As I have said already, we are actively exploring the possibilities for collaboration with Europe. Until these negotiations have reached fruition it is not possible for me to say how the requirement might be met—for example, whether it would be a vector thrust aircraft with a short take-off-and-landing run. That would meet our requirements, but we must take into consideration the requirements of our possible collaborative partners. However, I hope that we shall be able to make real progress in defining the specifications during the course of 1978.

Mr. Nelson

rose—

Mr. Wellbeloved

If I have time when I have covered all the points raised, I shall come back to the hon. Gentleman.

In an excellent speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Mr. Cronin) gave glowing support to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and my hon. Friends in the Department. I thought it remarkable. He said clearly that the most appalling blow struck at the Royal Air Force since the Second World War was without doubt the Duncan Sandys policy of 1957, when the RAF was virtually decimated in all its roles. I do not dissent. We have begun to restore the position.

My hon. Friend asked me about missiles. We meet NATO's requirements on missile stocks. We are well aware of the lessons of the recent Middle East conflicts, but it is not right to bandy across the Floor of the House details of missile stocks. However, I can tell my hon. Friend that the matter is receiving attention at the highest possible level in this country.

I very much appreciated the comments of the hon. and gallant Member for Winchester (Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles), when he almost took to task his hon. Friend the Member for Stretford. The hon. and gallant Gentleman said clearly and categorically that he, too, did not consider missile stocks a matter that could be dealt with across the Floor. That is absolutely correct. I hope that his hon. Friend has taken note of the hon. and gallant Gentleman's more responsible approach to these matters.

The hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson) raised questions about the timescale of the Tornado programme. Full production of the GR1 version began in July 1976. It is fair to say that the build-up of production has been slower than was earlier expected, but we do not expect that the slippage that has been identified so far will have a significant effect on the build-up of the operational squadrons.

Speeding up the production of the Tornado has been mentioned, but it is important to remember that we cannot make a unilateral decision on this matter. No change in the programme can be made without the collaboration of our German and Italian partners, to whose needs the current schedules are carefully geared. There is not much room for manoeuvre. I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman will be reasonably satisfied with those comments.

The hon. and learned Gentleman also raised some doubts, which the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. McNair-Wilson) echoed, about the Tornado's ability to carry out all its operational roles. The hon. Member for Newbury need not rely upon any assurances from me as the Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Air Force. I shall be happy to do far better than that and see that he is sent copies of the excellent comments by the Chief of the Air Staff and the Chief of the Defence Staff, both of whom have said quite clearly that the Tornado fully meets the operational requirements of the RAF and that they are delighted that it will shortly be coming into service with the RAF. I shall arrange for those comments to be sent to the hon. Gentleman, so that he may be reassured.

My hon. Friend the Member for Horn-church (Mr. Williams), in a most profound speech, said that he was aware of the great debate, as he put it, that is going on between the United States Air Force and the Royal Air Force on tactics that should be used—whether we should, as he said, take the American view about high altitude attack or whether the Royal Air Force tactic of very low penetration and strike should be regarded as best.

It is wholly healthy that there should be such debates, whether between our two air forces or between civilians engaged in the aircraft industry or defence research in our two countries. It is good that that sort of general debate should go on, and I can tell my hon. Friend that we are delighted with the co-operation which we receive from the United States.

In particular, we were extremely pleased with the co-operation recently afforded to the Royal Air Force to participate in the use of the magnificent facilities which the United States Air Force has in the Nevada desert. We sent a number of Vulcan and Buccaneer aircraft out to Nellis airfield to participate in an exercise designated "Red Flag". I am delighted to be able to tell the House that those two detachments of aircraft, both from the United Kingdom and from RAF Germany, achieved quite outstanding results in the exercise. I believe that our tactic of low-level penetration displayed during the exercise was of great benefit to the debate to which my hon. Friend referred, which seems to be going on in some circles in the United Kingdom and in the United States.

I very much hope that we shall have further opportunities to co-operate with the United States Air Force in exercises of that nature, because it is highly beneficial to both our air forces that we should be able to get together in that way to test our tactics and see whether they are successful in conditions as near as one can get to operational circumstances.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Watkinson), in a very interesting speech, raised two matters of constituency importance. The first was low flying, and I assure him at once that I fully appreciate the concern which is felt. No one could occupy the office of Minister for the Royal Air Force for more than a few hours, let alone for a couple of years, without becoming well aware of the difficulties and the disturbance and the concern of the general public about low flying.

However, as I said in my earlier speech, low-flying training is a vital requirement for the Royal Air Force and it must go on. However, I hope that the review of low-flying systems which is now taking place will lead to some reductions in the intensity of noise and disturbance in some areas. We shall do our best to ensure that flight paths are varied wherever this is possible.

My hon. Friend then raised the question of RAF Innsworth and referred to the consideration now being given to plans for the dispersal to Scotland of the Ministry of Defence establishment there. My hon. Friend fully understands that no final decision has been taken on the possible involvement of RAF Innsworth in those plans, and I give him the assurance which he seeks, that the points which he has made will be taken into consideration with all the other factors before a final decision is made. I am sorry that I cannot go further than that at this stage.

The hon. Member for Newbury asked about Greenham Common and its reactivation. I must be brief about this because we have gone over the issue several times with the hon. Gentleman. No final decisions have been made in respect of the reactivation of Greenham Common. I must stress, however, that Greenham Common is a Royal Air Force station, it remains an RAF station, and it is, of course, subject to use should the Royal Air Force decide that that is a defence requirement of the United Kingdom.

As regards the United States Government's application for its reactivation, Greenham Common is no more than one of a number of possible alternatives which are being considered. The hon. Gentleman has brought a delegation of constituents to meet my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, and tomorrow he will be leading a further delegation of local government officers to see me regarding the Royal Air Force side of the matter. I hope then to answer the many points which, no doubt, members of the delegation will wish to air, and I shall do my best to set their minds at rest.

I do not want to be unkind, but I noticed that the hon. Gentleman stressed in his speech the point that the defence we need is that which is necessary to meet the threat posed. I have to say to him and to any other hon. Member who has the same genuine problems concerning reactivation and noise that these are the criteria. If it means that we have to reactivate stations because it is in our defence interests, we shall do so. We are not doing it for fun or because we want to impose problems upon people. We do so only when it is essential for the defence of the United Kingdom.

I apologise to the hon. Member for Chertsey and Walton (Mr. Pattie) in that I was out of the Chamber when he made his speech. My right hon. Friend the Minister of State has conveyed the contents of the speech to me and has told me that it was in line with the hon. Gentleman's usual high standard. I only wish that the fine example set by the hon. Gentleman in his thoughtful, courteous and meaningful contributions were emulated by some of his hon. Friends on the Front and Back Benches. I shall read at first hand, when Hansard is published, the comments made by the hon. Gentleman and if any of them requires an answer I will ensure that he receives it.

The hon. Member for Chelsea (Mr. Scott) spoke of the role of women in the Armed Forces, in particular in the RAF. I agree with a good deal of his comments and I shall certainly look again to ensure that we are doing all that we can to encourage equality between the sexes in the Royal Air Force, as far as that is possible. I hope that as things develop it will be possible for women to play a greater role in our Services.

I thank the hon. Member for his kind words about the RAF and particularly his comments upon the vital importance of air power. There ought to be more debate, not only in Parliament but throughout the country, on this vital question of air power and the irreplaceable, essential, part that it plays in defence and will continue to play for as far ahead as it is possible to see.

I turn now to the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Brown). I can assure him that his comments today and in the debate on 14th March have been noted. I am sorry that he has not yet received a reply. I will draw my hon. Friend's anxiety to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Minister of State. If he continues to show this persistence about Tornado I have to warn him that he is exposing himself to the serious risk of receiving a reply in due course.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch also spoke of the Air Training Corps. I join him in the tributes which he paid to the work of officers and civilian helpers in maintaining the ATC. We have recently been able to approve a modest increase in the expenditure available for the maintenance of the corps. I very much appreciate the interest of my hon. Friend takes in the 444 Squadron in his area.

This has been a useful and timely debate—

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles

What about pay?

Mr. Wellbeloved

It is of great importance, on the sixtieth anniversary of the RAF, that we should have had this opportunity to pay tribute to the superb service given to the country by the RAF.

My final words are that I believe from the depth of my heart that it is the courage, skill and dedication of all ranks of the Royal Air Force that has ensured that the freedom of this country and the liberty of its citizens are maintained in a free Parliament and in a free country.

Mr. Peter Snape (Lord Commissioner of the Treasury)

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.