Royal Dockyards (Hansard, 20 March 1984)

§ Mr. Gordon Brown (Dunfermline, East)

I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 10, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent attention, namely, the plan now being considered by the Secretary of State for Defence to hand over to private commercial contractors responsibility for the royal dockyards, including the responsibility for refitting Britain's strategic nuclear deterrent, Polaris. The matter is specific because a report has been prepared by the personal adviser to the Secretary of State for Defence which has profound and disturbing consequences for the two great naval dockyards at Plymouth and at Rosyth, which is in my constituency, and for the 25,000 loyal civil servants who work there.

The matter is urgent because the report to which I refer has already been accepted for further study by the Admiralty Board and because negotiations about the privatisation of the dockyards are already taking place with commercial contractors, the plans evidently to be finalised before 31 March.

The report has been commissioned, received and apparently acted upon without the knowlege of the House. The matter is of the utmost public importance because in the report no consideration has been given to the consequences for national security of changes that would place the responsibility for our independent nuclear deterrent, Polaris, in commercial and perhaps even foreign hands. Only two lines of the 3,000-word document are concerned with national security and it is clear that the report as a whole has simply subordinated all questions of national security to those of commercial advantage. Our nuclear deterrent is being treated by the Government as if it were a fast-food franchise.

Perhaps the most unsavoury aspect of this disturbing case, and the reason why urgent consideration of it is necessary, is that the author of the recommendations, who is personal adviser to the Secretary of State for Defence, is not only vice-chairman of the Defence Manufacturers 910 Association but chairman of a number of arms companies with financial links in Egypt, West Germany, America and Singapore and chairman of a holding company which, according to the latest Ministry of Defence statistics, benefits by at least £25 million a year from British defence contracts.

In view of all this, and of the silence so far of the Secretary of State for Defence on a matter vital to national security, I ask that the House debate this question without delay.