Departmental Achievements (Hansard, 29 March 1985)

§ Mr. Butler

I refer my hon. Friend to the reply given by my right hon. Friend to my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Mr. Murphy) on 9 May 1984 at column409. Since that date the principal achievements in the field of defence have included the following:

(a) we have sustained our role within NATO and our contribution to both the conventional and the nuclear forces of the Alliance;
(b) we are continuing to enhance the capailities of our armed forces to discharge the four principal roles we perform within the Alliance. The programme for replacing our Polaris strategic nuclear deterrent with Trident in the mid-1990s is proceeding on schedule. We are enhancing the United Kingdom's own defences through the introduction of new and improved equipment and by strengthening our regular and reserve forces. We are further improving the combat effectiveness, sustainability, and equipment of BAOR and RAF Germany, and have introduced, for example, the Saxon armoured personnel carrier, more Challenger tanks, Milan ATGW and Tornado GR1 aircraft into service. We have ordered a number of vessels for the Royal Navy during the year, including the first type 23 frigate, and are continuing to introduce modern and sophisticated weapons and sensors into the fleet;
(c) in concert with our allies, we have taken our part in the modernisation of NATO's intermediate-range nuclear forces, by continuing with the deployment of ground launched cruise missiles in the United Kingdom, following the Soviet Union's failure to accept measures of arms control that would have made this unnecessary. We have also participated in Alliance decisions on shorter-range theatre nuclear weapons that will lead to cuts of one third in the number of nuclear warheads deployed by the Alliance in Europe, resulting in the smallest stockpile in 20 years;
(d) in September 1984 we successfully mounted Exercise Lionheart, in which the largest ever deployment of troops from the United Kingdom to BAOR took place, to test procedures for rapidly reinforcing our forces in the central region;
(e) we have played a major role in seeking to foster greater co-operation between our European and other NATO partners and have participated fully in the increasingly significant activities of the independent European programme group, the Eurogroup and the Western European Union;
(f) we have continued to promote Western defence interests outside the NATO area;
(g) we have assisted in famine-relief operations in Ethiopia;
(h) we have achieved economies in defence procurement and support activities through the more widespread use of competition in defence contracts, and the privatisation or contracting out of activities. Increased 385 efficiency has been pursued by the continuing transfer of resources from the support areas to the front line, and we have continued the steady reduction in numbers of United Kingdom-based civilian staff;
(i) using the powers conferred by the Ordnance Factories and Military Services Act 1984, we have transformed the royal ordnance factories into a company, Royal Ordnance plc, which now operates on a fully commercial basis in the same way as any other company;
(j) we introduced, on 2 January 1985, a major restructuring of the central organisation for defence, designed to provide stronger central control of defence policy, operations and resources, while decentralising day-to-day management responsibilities to the services and to the staff of the procurement executive.