The Government, Helicopters and the people of Yeovil and South Somerset

Speech on Westland/Leonardo

House of Lords

By Rt Hon Paddy Ashdown

Tuesday 10 July 2018

My Lords, for more than a hundred years the people of Yeovil and South Somerset have provided the nation and the nation’s allies with world-beating aircraft which have played an immense part in the defence of our shores and of our values.

Yeovil-built aircraft were amongst the first to fly in battle over the Western front and provide air support for the Royal Navy. Westland Lysanders flew our secret agents into every corner of occupied Europe in WWII. Westland helicopters dropped me on Jebel tops in Arabia, plucked me out of clearings in the Borneo jungle and gave us the mobility we needed in Northern Ireland. They did the same in Afghanistan, Iraq and every other conflict zone.

This is not just the past, My Lords. It is also the future.

As we rely more on special forces, they will rely more on helicopters for long range insertion. As the Royal Marines end assaults on defended beaches, helicopters will be the only means to land men in numbers where they enemy does not expect them. As the Russian submarine threat grows, rotary wing will arm our ships with the best means of detection and response.

But this debate is not just about our armed forces needs. It is also about an irreplaceable national aero-space asset. The rotary wing skills found in Yeovil, are found nowhere else in Britain.

So, Yeovil must surely feel pretty confident about what comes next? Our brilliant design and engineering teams must surely feel secure about their future?

No, My Lords, they do not.

They are beginning to leave in numbers. And there is a reason for that.

Despite many requests from me and, I am assured, from Yeovil’s MP, Marcus Fysh, the Government has made no clear commitment, as part of the National Industrial Strategy, that they wish to sustain this unique sovereign ability to design, engineer and manufacture our own rotary aircraft.

This doubt about the Government’s intentions began when the MoD abandoned the policy of the Coalition Government which insisted that an MOD order for Apache aircraft must be subject to a proper competitive tendering process – replacing this with a decision to buy off the shelf without competitive tender, from the US.

Since then, every procurement action of the Government has re-enforced the suspicion that the MOD prefers to buy new aircraft from abroad than make them ourselves, even if the consequence is that a vital national asset is lost and the Yeovil site degenerates into a repair and maintenance facility only.

Over the years, Yeovil-built aircraft have been sold to over 20 countries. We are one of the nation’s major exporters. But what export customers now say, is if the British Government will not buy helicopters made in Britain, why should they?

This is not a problem for today. The shop floor has plenty of work for the moment.  What we are short of is the engineering work needed now to prepare for and build the new aircraft for the future. What we need is a commitment from the Government that it prefers to buy the next range of aircraft from UK production, rather than from abroad

I cannot believe that the Government wishes to preside over the disappearance of a key national capability and prefers to make our armed forces dependant on foreign skills when we have such an abundance of our own.

Post-Brexit, they cannot wish to destroy export opportunities.

Yet that is where we are heading.

If this is not what the Government wants, then it is time to make that clear – urgently.

Leonardo, I am assured, are waiting to make the investment necessary in R&D, infrastructure and skills to maintain the long term integrity of Yeovil’s design and engineering teams. But as Leonardo’s managing Director said at Farnborough “We need some clear commitment [to a new helicopter strategy if we are],…to maintain the design and development capability of our work force.”

I appeal to the Government to make this statement without delay. Today for preference. In the Modernising Defence paper, due by the end of the month, if they must. In the Budget as a last resort.

I have to warn that if this, or something along these lines does not come by the end of the year then the crucial decisions Leonardo needs to make, may not be made, the erosion of Yeovil’s skill base will accelerate and a national strategic industrial asset will be in grave jeopardy.

In his answer the Minister may stress the Government’s Strategic Partnership Agreements – so called SPAs – and maybe even announce a new one.

SPAs are useful and they are welcome. But they are not the answer.

In their present form SPAs have no impact on the procurement process. That is where we need the action.

As part of the Government’s policy to maintain a national capability in the design and production of warships and combat jets, it requires front line commanders to consider indigenous industrial capability in making procurement decisions. This is what is needed and what has been so significantly absent in relation to rotary wing.

My Lords, led me, in summing up, lay out what is at risk here.

It is always looks cheaper to buy off the shelf. But in this case that would be, in the long term, far more expensive as we lose high value jobs, export opportunities and a key national asset.

It is not just Yeovil who stands to suffer from this.

Thousands of jobs and substantial high value high-tech industrial production elsewhere in the country is also at jeopardy. Leonardo currently spends more than a third of a billion pounds with suppliers all across the UK, 30% of which is with SMEs.

In the south of England alone, the total value of sub-contract business dependent on Yeovil amounts, to £275 million pounds.

What I am asking is simple.

The Government has a strategy for preserving our sovereign capacity in the production of fast combat jets.

It has one to preserve our ability to build warships.

What we need now – and urgently – is a clear statement from the Government that it values and will preserve Britain’s sovereign capability to design, engineer and manufacture our future rotary wing aircraft.

A key national aero-space industrial asset, providing the best for our armed forces, a work force whose skills have served the defence of the nation for more than 100 years, export opportunities, and tens of thousands of high-tech jobs across the country depend on it.

https://www.shephardmedia.com/news/rotorhub/farnborough-2018-leonardos-helo-future-uncertain-w/

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UK Foreign Policy after Trump

House of Lords debate on Foreign Affairs after President Trump

18 January 2017

I have been spending a lot of time recently researching the 1930s.

I am struck by the similarities between this suddenly turbulent and unpredictable age and those years.

  • Then as now, nationalism and protectionism were on the rise, democracy seemed to have failed;
  • people hungered for the government of strong men;
  • those who suffered most from economic pain felt alienated and turned towards simplistic solutions and strident voices;
  • public institutions, conventional politics, the old establishments were everywhere mistrusted and disbelieved;
  • compromise was out of fashion;
  • the centre collapsed in favour of the extremes;
  • the normal order of things didn’t function;
  • change – even revolution – was more appealing than the status quo
  • and “fake news” built around the effective lie, carried more weight in the public discourse than rational arguments and provable facts.
  • Painting a lie on the side of a bus and driving it round the country, would have seemed very normal in those days.

Perhaps the last time we stood as close to war as we stand now was at the height of the cold war.

But then, we had a comfort we do not have today.

Then, the Western liberal democracies stood together in defence of our interests and our shared values.

Now, under President Trump, the most powerful of our number thinks standing together,

is less important than going it alone;

abdication is preferable to international leadership;

collective action takes second place to America First.

Throughout the long years of the American century, we have taken great comfort in the fact that our alliance with the United States and its Presidents has been built not just on shared interests, but also on shared values.

Today we have to face the wrenching reality that this US President does not share our values – as his recent racist comments have so shockingly illustrated.

The liberal principles that have underpinned every civilised society, every peaceful age and every prosperous society are under attack as never before.

But President Trump appears more aligned with those forces ranged against liberal values than those seeking to defend them.

Throughout the long years of the American century we have taken comfort in the fact that the “Leader of the Western world”, while flawed like the rest of us, was well informed, judicious and cautious about going to war.

Now we have an American President who is ignorant, unpredictable, foolhardy and reckless.

(Bang goes my invitation to the Sate Dinner…)

This is frightening stuff for those who, like me, place their faith in the Atlantic Alliance.

So what do we do about it?

The answer is, grin and bear it in the hope that the US will find its way back to sanity.

After all, we in Britain are not entirely free of this kind of lurch into stupidity, just at the moment.

When the battle between the America we know and Donald Trump ends, only one side will remain standing. Either Donald Trump will destroy American democracy, as we know it. Or American democracy will destroy Donald Trump.

Personally my money is still on the American democracy.

But even if, on both sides of the Atlantic, we can find our way back to saner and safer ground, is there something deeper going on here?

The slow divergence of interest between Europe and the US does not date from President Trump’s election, although this has accelerated the process.

Even under President Obama the US gaze was looking more west across the Pacific than east across the Atlantic.

NATO and the Atlantic axis will remain Europe’s most important alliance for as far ahead as we can see.

But it will not be the same Alliance as it has been for the last 50 years. To remain strong the Atlantic relationship will have to look far more like J.F. Kennedy’s 1962 vision of a twin pillar NATO, than the present conjunction of a giant on one side and 21 pygmies on the other.

We will need a NATO which is mature enough to cope with areas where our interests do not elide –we should not be shy for example of calling out Israel for its illegal occupations, just because Washington doesn’t. Or of strenuously supporting the Iran nuclear deal, just because Mr Trump wants to pull the plug.

The United Sates will remain the world’s most powerful nation for the next decade or more.

But the context in which she holds her power has changed. The American century was one of the few periods in history when the world was mono-polar and dominated by a single colossus.

When all compasses had to point to Washington to define their positions, for or against.

Now we are moving into a multi-polar world – more like Europe in the nineteenth century than the last decades of the twentieth.

A foreign policy for the next fifty years based on what we have done for the last fifty, will be a foreign policy clumsily out of tune with the times. Which is exactly where we currently are. Everything has changed in the world, except Britain’s policies towards it.

British foreign policy in the post Trump era will need to be much more flexible, much more subtle, much more capable of building relationships on shared interests – even with those outside the Atlantic club – and even with whom we do not share values – than the simplicities of the last decades where we only needed to snuggle close to our friendly neighbourhood super power to be safe.

In a world dominated by a single superpower, might is the determiner of outcomes, not diplomacy. Our present foreign policy is dominated, not by diplomacy, but by high explosive. See a problem in the world, drop a bomb on it. The string of Western defeats; Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and most humiliating of all Syria should tell us that this age is over.

We have lost contact with the truth of Clausewitz, that war is an extension of diplomacy by other means. We have remembered the war but forgotten the diplomacy – and so we have failed.

In an age where building alliances, will protect and enhance Britain’s interests, better than using military capacity alone, high explosive will be less useful to us than diplomacy.

To be diminishing our diplomatic capacity, as we are currently doing, is folly of a very high order.

Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the current slide towards isolationism, is that, in an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world, the only solutions to our problems are multinational ones.

Climate change, trade imbalance, resource depletion, population growth, nuclear proliferation, over-population, poverty, migration, suppressing conflict – these are the greatest problems we face – and not one can be solved by nations acting alone.

As a medium sized nation with global reach but diminishing weight, it is in our interests to see a rule based world order, rather than one shaped by might. So actively pursuing the strengthening of multilateral institutions, should be a cardinal principle of a sensible British foreign policy,

Lastly we have to deal with the consequences of our own folly.

I make no secret of it.

We Lib Dems seek to reverse Brexit, which has already resulted in a catastrophic shrinkage of our ability to protect our interests abroad.

I reject the notion that, in seeking to reverse Brexit we are acting either undemocratically or unpatriotically. Any more than, for instance, the noble Lord Lord Forsyth, who I know to be both a democrat and a patriot, was offending either principle by seeking to change the country’s mind after the 1975 referendum.

But one thing is certain – in the EU or out, our foreign policy must continue to place its first emphasis on working intimately with our European neighbours. Because that is the best – indeed the only way – to pursue our nation’s interests in a dangerous, volatile and turbulent age.

It is too little recognised just how much the terms of our existence as Europeans have changed these last two decades.

Europe now faces an isolationist US President to our west, the most aggressive Russian President of recent times to our east and all around us, economic powers growing up, some already stronger than any single European nation.

The right reaction to this new context, is not to allow ourselves to broken up and scattered, but to deepen European co-operation and co-ordination.

So, inside the single market and customs union, or out – inside the EU or separated from it – our only sensible foreign policy is to proceed in lock step with our European neighbours.

I can put it no better than the Government’s own paper on post-Brexit foreign policy. Britain’s future relationship with the EU should be – and I quote – : “unprecedented in its breadth, taking in cooperation on foreign policy, defence and security, and development.”

Precisely My Lords.

The question we debate today is, does the Government mean it, or will the country’s interests once again be hi-jacked by the anti-European prejudices of the Tory Party?

My Lords, I beg to move.

UK Foreign Policy after Trump

Indy

18 January 2018

I have been spending a lot of time recently researching the 1930s. I am forcefully struck with the similarities between our current turbulent and unpredictable age and those bygone years.

Then as now, nationalism and protectionism were on the rise and democracy seemed to have failed. People hungered for a government of strong men. Those who suffered most from economic pain felt alienated and turned towards simplistic solutions and strident voices. Public institutions, conventional politics and the old establishments were everywhere mistrusted and disbelieved, and compromise was out of fashion. The centre collapsed in favour of the extremes and the normal order of things didn’t function. Change – even revolution – was more appealing than the status quo and “fake news”, built around the effective lie, carried more weight in the public discourse than rational arguments and provable facts.

Perhaps the last time when we stood as close to war as we stand now was at the height of the Cold War. But then, we had a comfort which we do not have today. Then, the Western liberal democracies stood together in defence of our interests and our shared values.

Now, under President Trump, the most powerful of our number thinks standing together is less important than going it alone – abdication is preferable to international leadership and collective action should take second place to “America First”.

Throughout the long years of the American century, we have taken great comfort in the fact that our alliance with the United States and its Presidents has been built not just on shared interests, but also on shared values. Today we have to face the wrenching reality that this US President does not share our values – his description of a good percentage of the world’s nations as “sh**holes” bluntly reveals just how far from our own ideals he is.

The liberal principles that have underpinned every civilised society, every peaceful age and every prosperous society are under attack as never before. President Trump appears more aligned with those forces that are raging against liberal values than those seeking to defend them.

We have, in the past, taken comfort too in the fact that the famous “leader of the Western world”, while flawed like the rest of us, was well informed, judicious and cautious about going to war. Now we have an American President who is ignorant, unpredictable, foolhardy and reckless.

We are witnessing a historic Gunfight at the O.K. Corral standoff in Washington right now – and only one side will remain standing. Either Donald Trump will destroy American democracy, or American democracy will destroy Donald Trump. Personally, my money is still on the latter.

But even if, on both sides of the Atlantic, we can find our way back to saner and safer ground, is there something deeper going on here?

The slow divergence of interest between Europe and the US does not date from President Trump’s election, although he may have accelerated the process. Even under President Obama the US gaze was looking more west across the Pacific than east across the Atlantic.

The United States will remain the world’s most powerful nation for the next decade or more. But the context in which she holds her power has changed. The American century was one of the few periods in history when the world was mono-polar, dominated by a single colossus. All compasses pointed to Washington to define their positions, for or against.

Now we are moving into a multi-polar world – more like Europe in the nineteenth century than the last decades of the twentieth.

A foreign policy for the next 50 years based on what we have done for the previous 50 years will be clumsily out of tune with the times. This is where we are right now. Everything has changed in the world, except Britain’s view of it.

British foreign policy in the post-Trump era will need to be much more flexible, much more subtle and much more capable of building relationships on shared interests even with those outside the Atlantic club – and even with whom we do not share values – than the simplicities of the mono-polar world where we only needed to snuggle to our friendly neighbourhood superpower to be safe.

To continue to diminish our diplomatic capacity, as we are currently doing, is folly of a very high order.

The most dangerous aspect of the current slide towards isolationism is that, in an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world, the only solutions to our problems are multinational ones. Climate change, trade imbalance, resource depletion, population growth, nuclear proliferation, over-population, poverty, migration, suppressing conflict – these are the greatest problems we face – and not one can be solved by nations who stand alone.

Lastly, we have to deal with the consequences of our own folly. I make no secret of it. We Liberal Democrats seek to reverse Brexit, which has already resulted in a serious shrinkage of our ability to protect our interests abroad.

In the EU or out, Liberal Democrat foreign policy will remain the same. To work as closely as we can with our European neighbours. Because that is the best – indeed the only way – to pursue our nation’s interests in this dangerous, volatile and turbulent age.

Europe is now facing an isolationist US President to our west, the most aggressive Russian President of recent times to the east and all around us economic powers are growing up – and some are already stronger than any single European nation. The right reaction to this new context is not to allow ourselves to broken up and scattered, but to deepen European co-operation and co-ordination.

Happy Birthday Royal Marines – not.

Article Daily Telegraph

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/26/worst-possible-time-cut-maritime-forces-keep-britain-safe/

26 October 2017

The government would do well to remember the words of Nelson’s colleague Admiral, the Earl of St Vincent, who said of the Royal Marines: “If ever the hour of real danger should come to England, they will be found the country’s sheet anchor”. It comes to something when a senior US military figure, Lieutenant-General Jerry Harris, seems to understand better than our own Government why cutting the Royal Marines would be dangerous for our defence and that of the Western alliance.

This is the most perilous and unstable time I have known in my adult life. No-one can predict the future. We will need troops who can move fast, be flexible and adapt to any environment. The Royal Marines have done that for our country for more than 350 years, and still do it regularly, day in day out and to world class standards.

It is ironic indeed that this seems to be better understood abroad than it is at home. Senior US military figures have repeated unequivocally their message to the UK about cuts to the Royal Marines budget, describing them as dangerous.

The Ministry of Defence is considering a cut of 1,000 Royal Marines and the loss of two amphibious assault ships, which the American high command has warned would change the relationship between the UK Marine Corps and our Royal Marines.

If these reductions go ahead, they will undermine our position as a serious military force. Col Dan Sullivan, who works at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory in Virgina, says that a cut to the 6,640 strong Royal Marines would be a “real blow”. He makes the point that the Royal Marines are particularly vital because a major military power needs the capability to “project power ashore at some point.”

As Major-General Julian Thompson, himself an ex-Marine said, cuts will send a message to those who threaten us and our way of life, that the UK is just “not interested” any more.

As I have reminded the government before, the Royal Marines provide an essential pool of manpower from which our our Special Forces are drawn. Cut them and you will cut our Special Forces too. They have fought in more theatres and won more battles than any other British unit. To dismiss this legacy, and along with it a unique military capability, is to weaken our national defences and diminish our standing with our Allies.

We have a Twitter-happy president who might well turn out to be trigger-happy, too, and a prime minister all too keen to ally herself with him. We have a Foreign Secretary who remarked recently that a military option for relations with North Korea “must remain on the table”. This is hardly the time to  diminish one of our most unique and defining military capabilities.

We all know why this is being done. The Royal Navy cannot find enough sailors to man its ships. Many believed that the decision to spend so much of our defence resources on two aircraft carriers we may never need in the future was one of the worst procurement decisions of our time. Now we have them, these ships of course must be manned. But to make the Royal Marines pay the price for this is to compound an error with a folly – a dangerous one at that, with the military strategists having to work out how they can possibly make the £20bn to £30bn cuts to the defence budgets over the next decade which the Chancellor is demanding.

Today we celebrate the 353rd birthday of Her Majesty’s Corps of Royal Marines. A week ago we commemorated the 212th anniversary of the battle of Trafalgar. Have we so forgotten our history that we now consider weakening the maritime capability that has kept this country safe – that has been its sheet anchor in stormy times? The good Admiral Earl St Vincent would be spinning in his grave.

Its always a Tory Government that cuts Defence most

The Royal Marines

Plymouth Herald

23 May 2017

In this age of uncertainty and unpredictability, our national security relies on armed forces that are fast, flexible and can fight in any theatre. For more than three centuries – from Gibraltar and Trafalgar to Normandy and Afghanistan – the Royal Marines have epitomised those qualities. They have fought in more theatres and won more battles than any other British unit. In our nation’s hours of danger, they have been, as Lord St Vincent predicted in 1802, “the country’s sheet anchor”.

So the news that the Government is cutting 200 Royal Marine posts – and at such a volatile time in world affairs – should concern us all. They are committing this folly in response to a crisis of their own making. In 2010, the then-Defence Secretary Liam Fox embarked on a review of our Armed Forces, but failed to provide the leadership or strategic vision such a process requires. As a result, it descended into an undignified squabble between the heads of the different branches. That squabble placed status and prestige ahead of a sober assessment of the nation’s long-term defensive needs. Instead of “Securing Britain in an Age of Uncertainty” as the review’s title promised, we ended up paying £6.2 billion for two huge aircraft carriers, despite not having the fighters to fly off them.

And now it’s our Royal Marines who are paying the price for this folly.. Michael Fallon, is the first ever Defence Secretary to have decided to focus his first cuts on the elite forces who serve on the front line. He’s playing fast and loose with the nation’s defences.

The cost of Conservative foolishness doesn’t end with the Royal Marines. They’ve cut personnel numbers, breaking their manifesto promise not to reduce the Army below 82,000. Troops on the frontline are deprived of basic equipment and combat training has been slashed, putting soldiers’ lives in greater peril. Navy warships sit idle at quaysides. No wonder top generals have accused the government of “deception” over defence spending.

The Tories are very practised at talking tough on defence in elections. But, look at the history and you will see that its always Tories who cut most on defence in Government. Its now clear that Mrs May will get back because of the hopelessness of the Labour Party. But it would be very dangerous to give her a big enough majority to ignore us again. Britain needs a strong opposition to stand up for our Armed Forces and hold the government to account – and only the Liberal Democrats are up to that task. We will fulfil our NATO commitment to spend 2% of national income on defence, and we’ll spend it wisely, prioritising the things that truly keep our country safe rather than prestige projects to keep the service Chiefs happy. I have launched a petition against further government cuts to the Royal Marines, and I urge you to sign at  HYPERLINK “http://www.saveroyalmarines.org/” www.saveroyalmarines.org.

The Conservatives’ misjudegements on the Armed Forces are symptomatic of their mismanagement of their wider failures in the country. Just look at the way they have neglected the South West and pushed our public services to breaking point. They’re cutting school budgets by 8%, forcing headteachers to cut back on teaching staff, equipment and training. Classrooms are getting increasingly crowded and the burden on teachers is mounting. And that’s before the big extra cuts that will hit more than 500 schools in our region when the Conservatives’ new funding system comes into force next year.

You don’t need me to tell you about the crisis in health and social care. Thousands of patients are lying on trollies in hospital corridors, waiting for a bed. Thousands more have their operations cancelled at the last minute. Nursing homes are overcrowded and understaffed. Their defence procurement is failing our defence industries. Look at the way their short-sightedness in awarding the MoD’s Apache helicopter contract to Boeing in the US without any competitive process has contributed to the closure of GKN in Yeovil and the loss of 230 local jobs

Theresa May is taking voters for granted in this election. That’s why she ducked difficult questions and public appearances on her recent visit to Cornwall. As pressure on local schools increases, she slashes their budgets. As the NHS crisis worsens, she refuses to give it the funding it needs. As the cost of food rises, she cuts support for low-paid workers.

The message is clear. We may now be on course for a Tory Government. But it would be folly to give Mrs May so big a majority that she could go on ignoring is. She needs to be held to account and, for the West Country, only the Lib Dems can do this

The Liberal Democrats will reverse the cuts to our schools, investing an extra £7 billion to make sure funding rises in line with both inflation and rising pupil numbers. We’ll also put an extra £6 billion a year into the NHS, funded by a 1p rise in income tax rates. And we’ll establish a cross-party health and care convention to work with patients, staff and the public to integrate the NHS and social care and put them on a sustainable footing for the long-term.

With your support on 8th June, our local MPs will stand up for the South West and for our schools, our hospitals and our Armed Forces.

I know that the combination of Theresa May’s cynicism and Jeremy Corbyn’s failure to provide a proper opposition can be depressing. But they don’t represent Britain. We are a wonderful country full of decent, hard-working people. Our future can be bright, but only if people vote to change it.

Don’t cut the Royal Marines!

Royal Marines

12 April 2017

‘I never knew an appeal made to them for honour, courage or loyalty that they did not more than realise… If ever the hour of real danger should come to England, they will be found the country’s sheet anchor.” So said Admiral Lord Vincent, a contemporary of Nelson’s, speaking more than 200 years ago about the Royal Marines.

It was the Royal Marines who captured Gibraltar in 1704, almost a hundred year before Lord St Vincent spoke those words. And since then, for three long, dangerous centuries, they have carried more of the burdens of battle in our nations defence, fought in more conflicts and played a part in more victories than any other British regiment, from Gibraltar, to the Falklands, right through to Afghanistan.

In this most uncertain and unpredictable age, what we need are forces that are fast, flexible, mobile and able to fight in any environment. This is what the Royal Marines do – and they do it better than any other force on earth.

So why on earth are we cutting the Royal Marines?

The answer is as simple as it is depressing.

Because the Navy has not got enough sailors to man the ships it has, let alone the two huge aircraft carriers shortly to enter naval service (five years after the initial target date). Many defence experts fear these are future floating white elephants which are soaking up the money to pay for the defences we need now to keep the country safe.

How did this happen?

It is precisely the outcome many predicted during the disastrous 2010 Government Defence Review. Liam Fox, then Defence Minster, was repeatedly warned that without leadership and strategic direction, that Review would descend into an undignified squabble between the Chiefs of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force to hang onto their most prestigious projects, irrespective of whether they met the nation’s needs or not. And that’s exactly what happened. The RAF hung onto fighters that couldn’t fly off aircraft carriers. And the Navy went ahead with two huge £6.2 billion carriers, even though they had no fighters to put on them.

And so we must now cut to pay for these.

When Defence Secretaries had to cut in the past, they always began with the MoD’s back-room “tail” of administrators. Our present one, Sir Michael Fallon, is different. He starts with the élite and those on front line.

The price we have to pay for this folly does not end with the Royal Marines.

Finding the sailors to man those carriers has meant that other navy warships have been left idle at quaysides, or prematurely shunted off to the Reserve Fleet.

The Army is feeling it too. Their combat training has been slashed by a billion over the next decade. The first casualty in this cut back will be the tank training in Canada – just at the moment when that training becomes more vital as we deploy British armoured units to Europe’s eastern border to face the new threat from Russia. One MoD source said “the only way (we) can (make these cuts) is to stop training” altogether. This is playing fast and loose, not just with the nations defence, but with soldiers lives as well. Anyone who has seen action knows that less training, means more dead soldiers on the battlefield.

It’s not that there is no “tail” to cut. We all love to be thrilled at our summer fetes by RAF display teams like the Red Arrows. But if front line troops are being slashed, do we really need to be funding six of these teams? Is it really sensible to spend money for our defence, on heritage aircraft for museums? If we cannot  find the cash for fighter jets, should we really be spending it on air cadet gliders scattered on disused airports up and down the country?

It seems to me someone somewhere has their priorities wrong.

This is not a time to be cutting those upon whom we depend for our defence now, like the Royal Marines, for projects of doubtful purpose in the future and schemes which, however nice, are not part of our ability to protect ourselves in an increasingly hostile and unpredictable world.

710

 

PRESS NOTICE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

6 February 2017

Paddy Ashdown welcomes the Government’s promise, at last, to maintain and support Yeovil’s full capacity to manufacture and design helicopters.

Like many others I have become increasingly concerned about the risk that Leonardo’s Yeovil site would drift towards a maintenance and assembly facility only. For this reason I have been pressing the Government for six months now to make it clear that they are committed to maintaining and supporting the full range of skills at Yeovil, so that we can continue to design and manufacture the nation’s helicopters.

I therefore greatly welcome the answer I received today in the Lords from Government Minister, Lord Prior in which he promised:

“The capacity to manufacture helicopters in the UK is extremely important. The MoD is entirely committed to that. We will be publishing a refresh strategy later on in the year which … will make that clear”

Note to editors:

Paddy Ashdown asked:
“The Minster is aware that a Defence Industry Strategy.. paper will be published later this year. Is he aware that if, like the Industrial Strategy published last week, that document does not contain a clear commitment by the Government to maintain and preserve our national ability to design and manufacture helicopters… then that capability will be lost, along with hundreds of jobs in Yeovil and a key national aero-space industrial asset. Everyone else recognises that danger. Why is the Government blind to it?”

Lord Prior of Brampton is the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy

For further details please contact Theo Whitaker – 07884145397 / organiser@yeovil-libdems.org.uk

Industrial Strategy – Statement by Paddy Ashdown

The Industrial Strategy

Paddy Ashdown voice concerns about the absence of any commitment to Yeovil and appeals to Marcus Fysh MP to join in a joint campaign to persuade the Government to change its mind

“Sometimes it is silence that speaks loudest.

This Industrial Strategy mentions Airbus, Rolls Royce, Boeing, Bombardier Aerospace, GE Aviation ,GKN, Loughborough and Solihull. But it mentions neither helicopters or Yeovil once. Given the worries about preserving the UK’s stand alone ability to manufacture helicopters and the integrity of the Yeovil site I have repeatedly lobbied the Government to use the opportunity of the Industrial Strategy to state clearly the Government’s commitment to maintaining the full capacity to manufacture helicopters on the Yeovil site, the UK’s only stand alone helicopter manufacturing facility and as such a key part of the country’s aerospace industrial base. No such commitment is contained in this strategy paper. To say that this is disappointing would be an understatement. Like many others in the Yeovil community I feel let down and angry about this omission.

I am now informed that this is paper is being published for consultation only. But bitter and long experience has taught me what that means. What we have been looking for is not consultation, but influence on the Government by our local MP. It is inconceivable that, under the coalition when David Laws was our MP, a national Industrial Strategy like this would have been published without a clear commitment to preserve the full range of capacities of the Yeovil site.

I have repeatedly asked our MP Marcus Fysh to put aside politics and work with all the other political voices in Yeovil, including the Unions, to lobby the Government on a joint basis to provide this vital commitment for the future. He has repeatedly declined to do so. Instead of action, we have had only repeated announcements of re-cycled news. The absence of a clear commitment to preserving of the full capacities of the Yeovil site is a very serious omission. I appeal to Mr Fysh again join us in a joint lobbying exercise to persuade the Government to change its mind.”

Yeovil Helicopters – Correspondence with MoD

 

Harriett Baldwin MP
Minister for Defence Procurement
Ministry of Defence,
Whitehall,
London,
SW1A 2HB

Wednesday, 19 January 2017

Thank you for your letter of yesterday.

I am glad that you have now agreed that the AW159 tools and jigs will not be allowed to leave the Yeovil site for Poland unless and until there is a full in-depth study of the comparative costs of production on the two sites and that this will involve all relevant factors, such as the impact on the overheads of Leonardo’s Yeovil site, the costs both of transporting the tools and jigs to Poland and of transporting the assembled AW159 airframes back from Poland back to Yeovil for fitting out.

I am grateful to you for finally giving this undertaking which will, I know be welcomed, not just by the Leonardo workforce, but also by the Yeovil community at large. I also welcome this change of policy in favour of a proper competitive process, rather than repeating the procedure which applied when the Government foolishly gave the recent Apache order to the United States without any kind of tendering process.

One simple question. Given how much locally and nationally depends on this decision (not least because of what happened over the Apache order) I am sure you will agree with me that the Government should be as transparent about its forthcoming decision on the tools and jigs as possible. Of course I realise that the details of the relative costs which are incorporated into your decision cannot not be made public as they will be commercially confidential. But I hope you will be able, at the very least, to agree that, when you announce the decision, you will also make public the broad list of the factors which have been taken into account.

I would be most grateful if you would provide me with confirmation that you have no difficulty with publishing such a list at the appropriate time.

I have finally to express my surprise (and concern) that you have not been able to be more specific about the inclusion of a commitment to maintain a UK stand-alone ability to make helicopters, in the forthcoming and long awaited Industrial strategy. Given that our ability to make helicopters is a vital part of the nation’s aerospace industrial base, I am bewildered that you seem unable to give a clear answer to this crucial question at this late stage in the publication of the forthcoming White Paper. I am sure you will understand that the absence of such a
commitment, when the White Paper is finally published, will be treated with shock, even anger, in the Yeovil area and far beyond.

I look forward to hearing from you.
Paddy Ashdown

 
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