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Maritime Surveillance

I will not, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, because I feel passionately about the issue, and I want to get my comments on the record and hear what my right hon. Friend and former esteemed ministerial colleague has to say.

My right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire is right: the aircraft, which was already nine years late, had not been accepted into service by the Royal Air Force. I was told, for example, that it was porpoising through the air, and that BAE was going to deal with that by installing software to make the elevator go up and down. Forgive me, but that is metal against metal. I said to the then Chief of the Air Staff, Sir Glenn Torpy, “It’s going to wear out.” He said, “You don’t need to worry, Gerald,” but I do worry, and I did at the time. I was also told, although I do not know whether it is true, that at a certain high angle of attack, the air flow into the engine intakes was disrupted, which would lead the engine to stall. There were technical problems that were not overcome.

Secondly, as the report mentions, there was a question of finance. Again, I want to put this firmly on record. Leaving aside the £36 billion, £38 billion or whatever black hole it was, whatever chaos there was in the Department’s finances—there was chaos in the MOD’s accounts long before the last Government came into office—the fact is that this Government inherited a Budget deficit of £156 billion, and we had to deal with that deficit.

I would not say this to my colleagues, but it might be true of other people listening to this debate: hands up, those who knew what the Budget deficit was in 2010. I addressed a land warfare conference of 300 officers. Three put up their hands, and all three got it wrong. They were intelligent people. The country needs to understand. If people do not understand the magnitude of the deficit that we inherited—that £156 billion would have bought us three Type 45 destroyers every week of the year—nothing done in the Ministry of Defence can possibly make any sense whatever.