Last week, I was in Turkey with the Prime Minister to sign Britain’s biggest fighter jet export deal in a generation. The £8 billion contract for 20 Typhoons is a win for European security, the British economy and 20,000 UK workers. It comes just weeks after we won the biggest ever warship deal—a £10 billion contract with Norway that will secure 4,000 jobs over the next decade. These deals demonstrate defence as an engine for growth. Today we go further and publish our defence housing strategy, in which we plan to upgrade 40,000 forces family homes and build 100,000 new homes for military and civilians alike. This plan is backed by a £9 billion investment over this decade—more than double what was in the Tory plans. This is a Government delivering for defence and for Britain.
May I congratulate the Secretary of State on the Turkey deal last week? A year on from his signing of the Trinity House agreement with his German counterpart, can he outline what progress has been made on implementing that deal, in particular to boost industrial collaboration and drive greater investment into integrated air and missile defence?
Indeed, we are a year on from the Trinity House agreement, and our co-operation over the next year will only deepen further. Within weeks, we will have German P-8s flying out of Lossiemouth. We have a new cyber programme to conduct joint activities. We have accelerated work on a new 2,000 km deep precision strike missile, and a new £200 million bridging deal to support the British Army. I have to say that this agreement is more important now than when we signed it a year ago.
The SDR quite rightly said that further decisions on investment plans were central to delivering the SDR. We are doing that work thoroughly at the moment so that we will no longer have what the hon. Member’s Government left: a defence programme that was overcommitted, underfunded and unsuited to meet the threats that face us.
The Secretary of State did not answer the question. I am afraid the worry is that it is yet another delayed defence Command Paper. That prompts the obvious question: what exactly are the Government delivering for defence except delayed defence Command Papers? Is not this the truth: they are putting the British Army back in the dock, they are surrendering Diego Garcia for £35 billion, and all the while—they have not denied this today—they are cutting £2.6 billion from the frontline this year? Don’t the men and women of our armed forces deserve better?
The hon. Member’s figures are wrong, and his characterisation and description are wrong. We have put £5 billion extra into the defence budget in this, our first year, and we are raising defence investment with the highest increase since the cold war. But the public expect us to manage better the budgets that we have got, so we are managing those budgets, which he failed to do. Alongside the strategic defence review and the defence investment plan, we are already acting and have let over 1,000 major contracts, 84% of them to British firms. Today, we are putting £9 billion into defence housing for the future.
T2. Welin Lambie in Brierley Hill in my constituency designs, builds and manufactures davits for marine applications. It employs about 45 local people, uses local supply chains for its products and is really keen to win a Government contract, but sadly under the previous Government it lost out to a Spanish cruise ship company. What is the Minister doing to support British defence businesses? Will he visit Welin Lambie with me to help it work further with the Government?
We want to direct more of our increasing defence budget at British companies, including small and medium-sized enterprises. I would be happy to meet my hon. Friend to see how we can encourage her business to win more defence contracts and to feed back on how we can be better in allowing SMEs to access the defence funding that we provide.
We have already heard about the sentencing last week of Warrant Officer Michael Webber for the sexual assault of Gunner Jaysley Beck, and I am sure that all who heard them were deeply moved by the dignified words of Jaysley’s parents as they described how that abuse and the failure to address it contributed to her death five months later. Will the Minister for Veterans and People, whose personal commitment to these issues is not in question, update the House on the implementation in full of the Atherton report’s recommendations, and specifically on creating a fully independent complaints procedure and providing access to civilian courts for sexual abuse offences?
As the hon. Member will be aware, the Ministry of Defence accepted 33 of the Committee’s recommendations, partially accepted a further four recommendations and noted 13 points that were conclusions rather than recommendations. There are three recommendations that we are not implementing, but it must be stressed that we are instead taking action to address the underlying concerns of those recommendations in other ways. The remaining 33 recommendations have been addressed through both Defence and single service activity delivered over the past two years.
T8. The opening last week by the King of the UK’s first national memorial commemorating LGBT veterans marks an important moment for all LGBT people who have served or continue to serve in our military. Will my hon. Friend confirm that this will not be merely a symbolic moment for those veterans? I put on record my thanks to those LGBT personnel who have served and continue to serve with distinction.
It was without doubt a huge honour and privilege last week to attend the unveiling of the Etherton memorial, commemorating the life and legacy of the late Lord Etherton. We have now paid £20 million in total to veterans under the LGBT financial recognition scheme, and I can assure my hon. Friend that, to me, the monument stands not only as a memorial to what has gone before but as a firm anchor for where we must go in the future.
T3. I warmly welcome, as do the families of 40 Commando in Taunton, the Government’s adoption of the decent homes standard proposed from the Liberal Democrat Benches, and the £9 billion investment. Can the Minister give an indication of the timescale within which all service family accommodation will be brought up to that decent homes standard?
The scale of the problem is truly gigantic. We have re-bought 36,000 homes. Nine out of every 10 homes will be refurbished and 14,000 homes might be completely rebuilt. We have already started on the first 1,000 that need modernising, and once that is done we will move on to the next.
T9. Across our country, service leavers like Brady, a 29-year-old from my constituency, are experiencing homelessness and addiction before receiving the support they need. I welcome the Government’s work on the renewed armed forces covenant, but does the Minister agree that structured and timely health and welfare checks following discharge would strengthen that promise to veterans like Brady?