§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Nicholas Baker.]
12.51 am§ Mr. David Martin (Portsmouth, South)The debate arises from the present and latest consideration within the Ministry of Defence of the future of the fleet maintenance and repair organisation in Portsmouth dockyard, which is crucial to the future of the dockyard. It follows upon a letter which I received in September from my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Defence Procurement, who is making tonight his first appearance at the Government Dispatch Box since taking up his ministerial duties in July, and whom I welcome wholeheartedly.
With about half of all naval personnel and their families living in Portsmouth, or within its immediate area, the considerations generated by the debate cannot be confined merely to the naval base. Its future has profound implications for the future scope and effectiveness of the Royal Navy itself. We must never forget that the Royal Navy is the world's third largest as an effective fighting force, and I want it to remain so.
The people of Portsmouth—above all, the debate is about people—have grown used over the centuries to cuts in times of peace and to expansion in war. There is a deep understanding of such necessities. These are timely considerations in the present Gulf crisis. In the euphoria of the aftermath of events in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, there was much talk of a peace dividend, of making huge cuts in our armed forces, including a drastic reduction of ships in the Royal Navy. I did not share that judgment, and to his everlasting credit nor did my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence. I asked him during the most recent defence questions on 17 July whether he agreed with me
that it would be criminal folly to reduce our defences, including nuclear weapons, to a lower level than any eventuality, however unforeseeable, might demand?"—[Official Report, 17 July 1990; Vol. 176, c. 847.]My right hon. Friend's reply, and subsequent remarks in the "options for change" statement a week later, were encouraging.The events of 2 August and subsequently in the Gulf wholly vindicate such an approach. Many of our ships are serving in the Gulf and more are likely to be needed. Thank goodness for the Royal Navy and for Portsmouth dockyard and those who serve it so well. The present investigation into the future management of the FMRO identifies several options, depending on several assumptions. I have not the time to explore them all. No one expects the present arrangements to continue indefinitely. Change is expected, and positive change will be welcome.
Before dealing with the options, I want to underline the importance of my hon. Friend reaching a swift decision. An interim report is sought from the consultants by 14 December, with a final report in February 1991. I suspect that the December report will be the vital one on which irrevocable decisions will be made. Apart from docking and essential maintenance work, the type 42 refit stream is being kept employed on HMS Nottingham, with a planned finish in August 1991. At that time, the FMRO was expecting HMS Manchester, but Plymouth's needs appear to be winning that order.
Portsmouth will suffer grievously from indecision and I urge my hon. Friend not to permit it. Whatever the 1353 structure of management, we need a continuous programme of work to keep the strengths of the FMRO together and the morale and confidence of its work force assured.
The options include privatisation and the introduction of commercial arrangements similar to Plymouth. However, the option I wish to be adopted, which I wish to concentrate on as the positive option, is the introduction of a defence support agency with a trading fund. That would assume a core programme of docking and essential defects on ships based at Portsmouth. Such an option keeps military control and the prized integration of service and civilian personnel which I referred to in my maiden speech almost exactly three years ago and which has been working so effectively since 1984. That integration also provides the best safeguard against industrial action.
Such an option would, in addition, give an undisputed yardstick for comparing costs so that the FMRO can compete fairly in the marketplace through tendering for naval refits or any other suitable work such as cross channel ferry maintenance and repair, rather than risking it going to French yards. Had such a structure been in place last year, we probably would not have lost the type 42 HMS Southampton repair and refit, which was a great blow at the time. Such a structure would keep in being the apprenticeships, of which there are 125 at present and 32 a year, which provide vital opportunities for young people in the work force.
The alternative to that option, which is the worst and most unacceptable of all, is a bollards and fenders option—in effect, closing down the existing FMRO, selling off the greater part of the dockyard and using what is left as a parking lot for ships, with all necessary work being contracted for and usually to be carried out at a great distance from Portsmouth.
To pursue such an option, or any other tantamount to it, would be foolhardy in the extreme for several reasons. Of the three dockyards—Portsmouth, Plymouth and Rosyth—Portsmouth is the most sensible in which to concentrate work on ships. It would be wise to increase the number of ships based there, and there is space. The policies of harmony, Slimtrain and others have for many years led to the highest concentration of people, ships with home base and training bases in Portsmouth and its area. Apart from the naval base, including HMS Nelson and Gunwharf—I press as strongly as possible for the special clearance diving unit to remain there—there is Collingwood, Whale island, which is soon to have the addition of Phoenix, Sultan, Dryad and Mercury, which is being transferred to Collingwood.
That is why I referred earlier to approximately half of all royal naval personnel and families living in Portsmouth or near to it. To reverse such policies would lead to excessive separation and the loss of good men and women, would risk personal morale and would have a serious effect on recruitment. It would be incomprehensible to many serving in the Royal Navy, let alone the people of the city of Portsmouth.
The city, as my hon. Friend is well aware, has coped magnificently with previous large reductions in the work force, which is reliant on the dockyard. A heritage area has grown up around HMS Victory and the royal naval museum, which comprises the Mary Rose and Warrior. Massive new investment is planned there. A thriving ferry port has increased in strength and importance, but to pursue any option that neuters the naval base, the core of 1354 the royal naval presence in Portsmouth, would be to sacrifice centuries of the closest and most fruitful relationship between the city and the Royal Navy, to the damage of both.
This brings me to the third and final strand of the debate. It concerns Navy days. Practically everybody in the United Kingdom is aware of Portsmouth's Navy days. For many visitors in late August, that is why they come to Portsmouth. They and those who live in the area produced an attendance of about 70,000 at Navy days this year. Navy days began in Portsmouth and are a veritable showcase of the Royal Navy. They make a sizeable profit every year, even after allowing for the greatly increased costs of security arrangements. This year, the net profit was £106,000, which was shared between various naval charities, chief among them the King George V Fund for Sailors. By contrast, Plymouth-Devonport attracted merely 23,000 visitors to its Navy days and made a net profit of £15,000.
It is rumoured that we are to lose our annual Navy days, to alternate them with Plymouth. I cannot understand why successful Portsmouth should suffer for the deficiencies of Plymouth as a magnet; nor can my constituents. It is not just a question of having an aircraft carrier to inspect. Portsmouth has many other related attractions. It is highly successful; it is not remote; and it is central, with an enormous catchment area.
Annual Navy days are a vital catalyst of interest in naval affairs by the public which has contributed to the special affection in which the Royal Navy is held. Portsmouth is inextricably linked with that feeling. The contribution of our Navy days to recruitment over the years should never be underestimated. This unique throwing open of the gates should be retained every year. There is no sense, operationally or financially, in jettisoning such a successful and profitable—particularly for charities—annual occasion.
I should like to draw together the strands of the matters that I have raised. The presence of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth and the surrounding area, with its core at the naval base, is above all about people who are proud of its service and traditions. Napoleons, Kaisers, Hiders, Galtieris and Husseins are always popping up in one guise or another. That is understood in Portsmouth as nowhere else in Britain in greater measure.
In Portsmouth, generation after generation of citizens and families have crammed the ancient battlements, crowded the shores or massed at the entrance to one of the greatest harbours in the world to mingle their tears, cheers, enthusiasm and profound respect in seeing off or welcoming home the men who do their duty in fighting our battles, in risking life and well-being for the preservation of our freedoms. That is the very lifeblood and spirit of Portsmouth. It will never be dated, and it will never be redundant.
§ 1.2 am
§ The Under-Secretary of State for Defence Procurement (Mr. Kenneth Carlisle)I am delighted to be able to reply to the debate initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Martin), partly because he has been kind enough to give me the opportunity to make my debut at the Dispatch Box but chiefly because it gives me the opportunity to discuss Her Majesty's naval base at Portsmouth.
1355 My hon. Friend is a staunch fighter for his constituency. In my short time at the Ministry of Defence, he has already made known to me several times his concern about Portsmouth. I know that I shall become used to his vigour in the months ahead. I sense from his speech his pride for his town and his determination to protect it. As he advised me, Portsmouth has a long and distinguished naval history. As long ago as the reign of King Henry VII, the first real dry dock and yard were built just outside the town. Henry VII built up a fleet in the face of the threat from France and chose Portsmouth for his dockyard and naval base. This progress was consolidated over the next 150 years and, by the end of the 17th century, Portsmouth was recognised as the chief naval centre of England. Its distinguished naval tradition continued for the next two centuries and capital warships were built there until the end of the first world war.
More recently, the Falklands war in 1982 saw the same degree of dedication from Portsmouth that we had learnt to expect in previous wars. HMS Hermes sailed for the South Atlantic on 5 April 1982 from Portsmouth and became the flagship of the task force, which was to grow into the largest fleet to sail from the shores of Britain since world war 2. Portsmouth also converted more ships taken up from trade than any other yard—21 in all. Again, Portsmouith met the challenge with its traditional spirit.
My hon. Friend represents a constituency with a unique and proud naval tradition, but he knows that history shows that the needs of the armed forces change over time. For example, the defence review of 1981 identified the need to reorganise defence efforts to obtain the best return from the defence budget. As a result, the role of Portsmouth dockyard was changed in March 1984 when it became the fleet maintenance and repair organisation, or FMRO as it is habitually known.
My hon. Friend has raised a number of important points and I should now like to deal more specifically with them. As the declaration at the London NATO summit in July recognised, Europe has entered a new and more promising era to which the alliance must and will adapt. As my hon. Friend knows, in the light of these developments, the United Kingdom, along with its major NATO allies, has been conducting a thorough review of the way in which our armed forces might be restructured in the mid 1990s.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence announced the broad thrust of the proposals that we had under consideration for our own armed forces in his announcement to the House on "Options for Change" on 25 July. My hon. Friend said that he understood the need for that statement, and expressed his general support for it.
In announcing the proposals for changes in our force structures, the Secretary of State also made it clear that we would be looking for substantial savings in the support area. As I am sure my hon. Friend would agree, if we are to achieve our aim of strong and reliable forces but at a lower level and at an affordable cost, we must carry out the most rigorous and wide-ranging examination of all our activities and resources in the support area to ensure that we are providing that support in the most effective and cheapest way. However, as my hon. Friend knows, many complex and inter-related factors impinge on the way 1356 forward and require proper evaluation. It is still far too early for any decisions to have been reached as a result of this continuing work.
In parallel with and as an input to our work on "Options for Change", as my hon. Friend knows, we are undertaking a study looking into the future of the FMRO. The study has a long pedigree. I do not want to burden the House with a lengthy account, but I think that it is important to record the background against which we find ourselves needing to review our ship refitting capacity generally, and the Portsmouth capacity in particular.
Since the introduction of commercial management at Devonport and Rosyth in 1987, there has been a steady decline in the core programme of refits allocated to those yards. The decline has been faster and to a lower level than expected before vesting day when the term contracts were negotiated with Devonport Management Limited, or DML and Babcock Thorn Limited, or BTL. Devonport, with a higher proportion of surface ship work, has seen a particularly sharp drop in load. More than 4,000 jobs have been shed by DML since vesting day in an attempt to keep productivity ahead of the declining load and compete for new business.
Equally, I acknowledge that Portsmouth endured a major reduction earlier in the 1980s when civilian jobs declined from 7,000 to under 3,000. Since then, however, the FMRO workload has been kept fairly constant while the load elsewhere has declined. The aim of the study is to examine the role of the FMRO in the light of the reduction in the overall fleet repair and maintenance task, given the need to secure value for money. As my hon. Friend knows, the study will be undertaken by external consultants.
I want to stress that no decisions have yet been taken on the future workload at Portsmouth. The consultants will be invited to recommend separate arrangements for each of three different workload scenarios. One is broadly the status quo; another is the status quo less the few refits currently in Portsmouth's programme, leaving the intermediate dockings, other routine maintenance periods and unprogrammed work intact; and the last is to leave only berthing facilities, with the ships docking elsewhere for deep repair or refitting.
It is necessary to study this wide range of workload alternatives so that the future of the FMRO can be better determined within the context of our wider work in the fleet support area on "Options for Change". The smaller fleet envisaged for the mid-1990s implies significant rationalisation of shore support. The FMRO study will therefore form a useful input into that broader study of our naval bases, dockyards and other support facilities. We hope to be in a position to make that input by the turn of the year. I understand what my hon. Friend said about speedy decisions and the need to avoid uncertainty as far as possible.
My hon. Friend also mentioned his wish for a defence support agency. As one of the alternatives, the study will also have to consider whether that status would be suitable for the FMRO.
I should like to follow my predecessors in paying tribute to the dedication and skill of the work force in the FMRO, both service and civilian, who have a record of which to be proud, not least in recent weeks as they have helped prepare the ships deployed to the Gulf on operation Granby. As I have said, this is service in the great tradition of Portsmouth, and we pay tribute to that, as my hon. Friend did so proudly.
1357 My hon. Friend referred to the effects on the morale of the naval community of any decision to diminish or abandon the naval presence at Portsmouth. I understand that concern. As part of the continuing work on "Options for Change", and as part of the FMRO study, we shall take carefully into account issues related to morale. I regard that as particularly important. It is, however, as I have already emphasised, too early to make announcements since this work remains to be completed. The interests of the Portsmouth naval community, service and civilian, will of course be given careful weight before any decisions are taken. Of course, I understand the worries that any review creates, but we should be negligent if we did not look carefully at all the options before us.
My hon. Friend also expressed concern about the future of Portsmouth Navy days. He may find it helpful if I explain the current position. As he is certainly aware, Navy days are currently held each year at Portsmouth, Plymouth, Rosyth and Portland. We have, however, initiated a review of the present arrangements. Pending the outcome of the review, it is intended to introduce interim revised arrangements for Navy days in 1991. Under these revised arrangements, Rosyth and Portland would continue to host Navy days as at present, but major Navy days would alternate between Plymouth and Portsmouth every year. It is planned to hold that event in Plymouth in 1991. I know that that may well be a disappointment to my hon. Friend.
The principal reason behind the change is to 1358 concentrate assets at one major port each year so as to make more efficient use of available resources, and to ensure the best possible show for the public. It is far better to have one really good show than two shows with less panache and zest. I am sure my hon. Friend will understand that we need to strike an appropriate balance between the many competing demands on the fleet's ships and personnel. No decision on future arrangements beyond 1991 will be taken until after the review. I assure my hon. Friend, however, that we shall take full account of the popularity and value of Navy days at Portsmouth and at the other venues when reaching a decision.
I recognise and have taken note of the concerns expressed by my hon. Friend on behalf of Portsmouth naval base and its naval and civilian personnel. I assure him that we are very much alive to those concerns and that they will be given their due weight as we go forward with our examination of the infrastructure needed to support the fleet in the changing circumstances that have come upon us.
I said at the beginning of my speech that my hon. Friend is a doughty campaigner for Portsmouth. I respect his efforts and I welcome the opportunity to work closely with him over the months ahead. I certainly look forward very much to my forthcoming visit to Portsmouth.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at sixteen minutes past One o'clock.