§ Mr. LuffTo ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on the future of the West Indies Guard Ship. [52655]
§ Mr. Doug Henderson[holding answer 27 July 1998]: We will continue to deploy a West Indies Guard Ship (WIGS). However, following the adjustments in destroyer and frigate numbers as part of the Strategic Defence Review we are adopting a more flexible approach to some of our peacetime Naval tasks, including that in the Caribbean, designed to make more efficient use of our naval assets.
We will maintain a very high level of commitment to the Caribbean with a destroyer or frigate deployed as WIGS for a large part of the year. It will be present during the whole of the hurricane season with flexibility to increase coverage at other times by adjusting other commitments, if necessary. During that part of the year when a destroyer or frigate is not in the Caribbean, a destroyer or frigate will be earmarked to deploy there at short notice, and when other ships deploy to the region, they will be used to cover some of the WIGS tasks.
We aim to maintain the effectiveness of our counter drugs efforts by ensuring that the WIGS programme is focused more on counter-drugs operations, and by involving other RN maritime assets in this work when they are in the region.