Many of the technicalities have been covered. The FA2 is not comparable with the GR7 or the upgraded variant, the GR9, which do not have radar that can track 20 targets simultaneously 70 miles away from the aircraft, 100 miles away from the battle group. The first key capability of the FA2 is its deep penetration 100 to 200 miles away from the battle group, seeing over the horizon. The second is the AMRAAM—the advanced medium-range air-to-air missile. Even the upgraded variant, the GR9, will carry only the Sidewinder missile, which is a short-range missile requiring visual contact that can be used only in daylight and is ultimately a weapon of self-defence rather than a weapon for taskgrouped defence. GR7/GR9 is a slower aircraft: if it encounters fighter aircraft—Russian Migs or French Mirages—it will be outrun. It will not be able to catch up with the target if it is attempting to attack. It will not be able to escape an attacking aircraft because it is too slow. That leaves the GR7s and GR9s—which are supposed to replace the FA2—deeply vulnerable to attack.
Reference has been made to the militarily dyslexic assertion that the type 42 and new type 45 destroyers
"will herald a quantum leap in our maritime air defence capability".
That is the sort of rubbish that should end up at the bottom of deep-trenched latrines in Kabul. It is no serious contribution to a debate on defence. Radar capability on these destroyers will be a mere 20 nautical miles. Even with the new helicopter-based airborne early warning system, it might extend no more than 70 nautical miles—not the vital hundreds of miles that provide the crucial first and second layers of air defence that the fleet requires in order to remain capable.
The only possible conclusion is that the Government have decided that compromise requires us to forgo a considerable element of our expeditionary capability. That means that they do not foresee the need for that capability—what an extraordinary risk to take. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) pointed out, the only certainty is that things are uncertain. Who could have foreseen an amphibious assault on Sierra Leone led by British forces? Who could have foreseen that we would send a huge taskforce to fight in the Gulf war in the early 1990s? Who could have foreseen that we would send 1,000 Royal Marines to do battle with terrorists in the mountains of Afghanistan at the same time as an infantry battalion and headquarters were managing peacekeeping in Kabul? The precise purpose of our defence policy is to provide for the unforeseen. If the unforeseen happens, how long do we have to prepare for it? How many times in history can we look back and say that we wish we had what we have not? The Falklands was a case in point; we need go back no further than that.
Mr. Henry Bellingham (North-West Norfolk): Does my hon. Friend agree that we have been here before. When a previous Labour Government decided to get rid of strike carriers, the Gannet airborne early warning system was scrapped as well. That proved to be the main
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weakness of the taskforce that went to the Falklands. We have been there before, but we did not learn the lesson. What on earth are the Government up to?
Mr. Jenkin : One can conclude only that Ministers have cajoled themselves into this decision on the basis of advice from the services about what is available. Our armed services are brilliant at making do. If they have been told that they must make do with less than they really need, they will not appear on the television screens to say that it cannot be done. That is not in their character and we should not expect them to do so. It is for Ministers to ask themselves whether the advice that they are receiving is the best that could have been provided if the strategic defence review had been properly funded from the start. We know from the comments of Lord Guthrie in another place in December that the SDR was underfunded from the start.
No doubt the Minister will speak about obsolescence: he will say that the aircraft is obsolete, the engine inadequate, and so on. Every piece of defence equipment becomes obsolete, but many obsolete pieces can prove extremely effective in certain types of conflict. We can all agree that it is desirable to upgrade the Sea Harriers' engine and we know that it will be expensive. Even if the Government cannot afford the engine upgrade, I submit that Sea Harriers with the existing engine remaining in service as long as possible is much better than no Sea Harriers at all. We should not be scrapping them all on the basis that they cannot deploy in extreme tropical conditions when they will be capable of deployment everywhere else. Even in extreme tropical conditions, we could deploy them, perhaps with fewer munitions and a lighter load of fuel, to perform their essential airborne early warning function.
That option would be better than scrapping the Sea Harriers altogether simply because the Government think that they cannot afford the upgrade. Money is, of course, at the heart of this issue. The real question is whether the Government are capable of funding the strategic defence review by which they set so much store when it was launched in 1998.
The purpose of drawing attention to the Sea Harriers in an emotional way is that the decision about them betrays what is going on in the armed forces in a way that we can communicate to the public. The scrapping of long-distance weapons programmes and the downgrading of other technical capabilities do not seize the public imagination. That may be why Ministers have chosen Sea Harriers: it is the bleeding-stumps syndrome, where something visible is cut to up the ante in negotiations with the Treasury. Those negotiations are the real crunch point in the Government's defence policy. It is meant to be foreign policy led, but is proving to be anything but.
I shall conclude my remarks now to give the Minister plenty of time to respond. I hope that he can also take one or two interventions. His purpose must be to explain a major change in the Government's defence policy and a major departure from their original intentions, but how he will square that circle, I do not know.
10.46 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Dr. Lewis Moonie) : I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) on securing the
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debate, which has given us a chance to explore an important issue. I shall preface my remarks with a couple of points that have gone astray in the Opposition's fantasy football league equivalent of defence. All our decisions are taken within the framework of a finite budget, so they all involve some form of opportunity cost or benefit foregone elsewhere. It is worth remembering that when considering what we are trying to do.
Mr. Blunt : The Minister should say what programmes have been kept in the budget. The Government's decision to strike out the Sea Harriers for the period that has been mentioned indicates the enormous pressure that the Ministry is under because of a wholly inadequate budget. He should shed some light on the alternatives that produced such an extraordinary conclusion.
Dr. Moonie : The hon. Gentleman did not listen: I said that we had a finite budget. In the real world, when one is in government, that is what one has to deal with. It is only in opposition that people have the luxury of a fantasy budget that can be expanded infinitely to take in every choice that they want to make.
Mr