James Gray MP presses Ministers over the future of RAF Lyneham
Mr James Gray
MP for North Wiltshire
27th March 2009
North Wiltshire MP James Gray continued to press the Government over the future of Programme Belvedere, which could see the Joint Helicopter Command move to RAF Lyneham. 

“A continuing military use for RAF Lyneham is important for hundreds or thousands of people across North Wiltshire,” said North Wiltshire MP James Gray, speaking after the Defence debate (26th March 2009).

“The options facing us are continuing use for the Hercules fleet,which I think is what we would all prefer; a possible replacement of the Hercules by helicopters, which would be noisier but better than outright closure; some other military use such as the infantry; or outright closure, followed by re-use of the land for some other purpose.”

“I put these options to Ministers yesterday in the House of Commons and above all else, demanded that they should come to a clear decision quickly and then implement it.”

Extract from Hansard:
Mr Bob Ainsworth - 26 March 2009:
This country must leave no stone unturned to ensure that the remarkable people of our armed forces and their families, and veterans, are appropriately recognised and supported. That work can and must never be finished; it must be a work in progress to which we are all committed. To do otherwise would break the crucial relationship. The public’s generous recognition of the armed forces in the past year, including fundraising and welcoming people home from operations, proves that fulfilling that relationship is squarely in society’s consciousness. I applaud the efforts made by all of our citizens, and in particular by the people of Wootton Bassett, whom I visited earlier this month. I thanked them for the way in which they ensure that our fallen are properly received back in their country.

Mr. James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con): I am grateful for the Minister’s kind words about the people of Wootton Bassett, which is in my constituency. Some 2,000 of them turned out last Saturday for the tragic return of three bodies. The Minister will understand that the people of Wootton Bassett are deeply concerned about the future of RAF Lyneham, which is just down the road from them. We are awaiting an announcement on that, following consideration of Project Belvedere. Can the Minister give us some idea of when that announcement might be made?

Mr. Ainsworth: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his support for the armed forces and the encouragement that he gives us to continue to use RAF Lyneham. It is good to see that the community there is very supportive of our continuing to do so. However, he knows that we must try to get the best that we can from the estate and that we must use money efficiently. If we waste money on the estate, we cannot spend it on kit and equipment and the health and welfare of our service personnel.

As I hope the hon. Gentleman knows, I am trying to bring the issue to a conclusion as soon as possible. I cannot promise that he will be on the good end of that news. We have not yet made any decisions, but we will inform the House as soon as we can about the outcome of Project Belvedere and the potential reconfiguration of our helicopter force basing priorities. The hon. Gentleman is worried about that and wants to try to take the opportunity to keep Lyneham alive. I cannot say whether he will be successful or otherwise.....

Later..
Mr. James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con): I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot), the Chairman of the Defence Committee, who is temporarily not in his place, about the structure of these debates. I am glad that today’s debate has not been a topical debate, unlike, I believe, the last event of this kind. None the less, I feel that the present structure of our defence debates is rather false, and does not quite work. Those of us—such as me—who are defence anoraks turn up on a Thursday afternoon, drone on for a quarter of an hour, and then go home. No one listens to a word we say, and the sum total of human happiness is not necessarily advanced. That should not be happening at a time when the nation and the globe are involved in such potentially catastrophic and vastly important defence matters. The entire House of Commons should be eagerly involved, and competing like mad to secure a five-minute slot. I hope the powers that be—the Government, the Leader of the House, or others—will think about whether we could restructure our defence debates, at least while the current turmoil in the globe continues, and find a way of attracting greater interest in them.

As always, however, this has been a successful, well-informed and wide-ranging debate. I shall not seek to add to what my many better-qualified colleagues have said about assorted defence matters. Instead, if the House will forgive me, I shall focus on a topic which may sound like a constituency issue more suited to an Adjournment debate, but which I would argue has a much wider significance for the defence of the realm than for my own constituency.

We know that, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, one of the biggest failings one way or another—although the exact way in which it has failed is debatable—has involved helicopters. There are those who would say that we have not got enough of them, there are those who would say that we have not got enough pilot hours, and there are those who would say that both are the case. There are others who would say that although we could always do with more, we have enough to manage with. That, broadly speaking, is the Government’s line. I think everyone would agree, however, that the way in which our joint helicopter force — Army, Navy and Air Force helicopters — are currently managed is not ideal. The helicopters are based in a variety of places around Britain, and there is very little coherence. Joint Helicopter Command, which I believe was created only a year or two ago, experiences some difficulty in acting as a coherent “purple” organisation.

There has been a strong demand from Joint Helicopter Command, and from the three services, for a move towards the establishment of a single unified base for, in particular, RAF and Army helicopters. That strikes me as an immensely laudable and hugely sensible ambition with a great deal to be deal to be said for it, and I think that just about everyone in the defence world agrees that it should be realised. One senior officer involved with helicopters said to me the other day, referring to Project Belvedere—which is what we are talking about—“They cannot afford to do it, but they also cannot afford not to do it.” I think that there is a good deal of truth in that, and I shall return to it in a moment.

There is a reason for my interest in Project Belvedere. The House will recall that some eight or nine years ago it was announced that the C130K fleet of Hercules aircraft based at RAF Lyneham, in my constituency, would reach the end of their useful life in 2012—or would progressively approach the end of their useful life in the years leading up to 2012—and that, at that stage, the C130J fleet of modern planes would be transferred to RAF Brize Norton, just down the road. All the RAF’s transport capabilities for passengers, freight and tankers would be based there.

Many of us argued strongly against that decision, which was advanced for two main reasons. First, it was claimed that combining the two bases would produce a cost saving. That may be the case, although a substantial capital cost will be involved in the move, and only accountants will be able to tell us how long it will take for the modest year-by-year saving to pay that off.

I was talking to one of the base commanders—I will not say who it was—who would be involved in Project Belvedere and in the transfer of his helicopters to RAF Lyneham if that were to happen. He maintained that the cost would be so large that it would take 50 years to repay it. I said, “That is a very interesting argument. If that applies to your helicopters being moved from base X”—which I will not name—“to Lyneham, how much longer would it take to repay the vast amount that it will cost to move our Hercules fleet from Lyneham to Brize Norton?” He said, “Well, it is certainly 50 or 100 years, and it is possibly never.” I said, “I will not name you, but I will quote you,” which I have happily done.

The accountants are going to have to answer much more clearly on how they can add the thing together to make a sum that justifies shifting 3,500 RAF people and up to 50 planes from RAF Lyneham to RAF Brize Norton, which is already too small. Anyone who has had the misfortune to travel courtesy of crab air to Afghanistan or Iraq, which I have done two or three times recently, will know that RAF Brize Norton is already one of the least hospitable bases and that it is demonstrably too small for the job that it does at the moment. If about 50 Hercules, A400Ms—if they arrive—or C-17s were also operating out of the base, goodness knows what it would be like.

At the moment, three tactical runways, two of which are at RAF Lyneham and one of which is at Brize Norton, are used for transport. If we were to bring everything together in one place at Brize Norton, all our eggs would be in one basket—there would be only one runway, and there are many reasons why it might be inoperable. I was there the other day waiting to fly out to Afghanistan. I was delayed for 12 hours because of ice on the runway. If all our transport capability—refuelling, transport and passenger planes—were in Brize Norton, who knows what the end result would be? The first argument in favour of collocating everything at Brize Norton, namely cost, is questionable, and perhaps the accountants will have a second look.

The second argument for collocation at Brize Norton advanced at the time was that the A400M was coming in by 2012, that it would be the greatest thing since sliced bread, that it was a European co-operative project and that it would be a superb aeroplane. We all know that the project has been delayed—the latest I have heard is that it will be delayed by up to four years, although no doubt the delay will be longer than that. The Secretary of State has made it plain in a couple of interventions from the Dispatch Box that he is by no means confident that the A400M will be bought by the British forces, at least to the extent that we said we would buy it.

The whole future of transport is questionable. Most people in the RAF would prefer to see a fleet consisting of Hercules and C-17s, which is the ideal combination of sizes. From memory, we already have six C-17s—perhaps the figure is eight—and we can certainly buy or lease more. Hercules and C-17s seems like a nice combination to me. That combination operates nicely out of RAF Lyneham, and there is no reason why it would have to be based at Brize Norton. At the time, the argument was that the runways at RAF Lyneham are too short for the A400M to take off or land. That is demonstrably not the case, and that excuse was used to achieve other things.

I would prefer to see RAF Lyneham remain the same as it is at the moment. I hope that the delays with the A400M and/or the delays in rebuilding RAF Brize Norton will lead to that outcome. I hope that that door is not entirely closed. Without being party political about it, if there is a Conservative Government at some stage in the future—of course, there might not be—perhaps Conservative Front Benchers will consider reversing that decision. There may well be good economic reasons why it is impossible, but I hope that they do. In a recent informal conversation with one of my Front-Bench colleagues, I was encouraged to hear him say that Conservative policy is not to close RAF bases. We have to keep RAF bases open—in 1942, we discovered that we did not have enough. That was an informal remark, and I may be corrected by other Front Benchers, but I will seek to persuade them to keep RAF Lyneham as it is.

Let us assume that for good reasons advanced by accountants or others, it is not possible to keep RAF Lyneham as it is. At the moment, 3,500 service personnel and 750 civilians work on the base. If one brings those people’s other halves into the calculation, some 10,000 people in my constituency owe their livelihood one way or another to RAF Lyneham, and there are also retired service personnel. It is, therefore, a major part of my little constituency, and plays a very significant part in its economy, so the future of RAF Lyneham is of gigantic importance to me as a constituency MP.

I hope and think that I speak for the vast bulk of my constituents in saying that we would very much like Lyneham to remain military. We do not think it is right to convert it to any other use. We do not want a new town—an extension of Swindon, perhaps—or a refuelling base for Virgin Atlantic; that is a proposal I have heard, but it would certainly not be appropriate. We do not want it to become a gigantic industrial site either. We would very much like it to remain military. Wiltshire is home to the military, and the military are home for us in a very real way. We are very proud of our contribution to the military; half of the British Army is in Wiltshire. We want Lyneham to remain military—either RAF or, potentially, Army.

Therefore, if we can find a way of making Project Belvedere work and of bringing all the helicopters from all the different commands together—leaving aside the Royal Navy, which will stay in Yeovilton, I think—under Joint Helicopter Command at RAF Lyneham, that would be an eminently sensible solution.

That would involve 15,000 people and 230 helicopters, so there would be quite a significant environmental price to pay—although I am encouraged to hear my right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire telling me that in all his time he has only had one or two complaints about noise from Chinooks. Nevertheless, I am aware that if we were to have 230 helicopters operating from RAF Lyneham and 15,000 people, compared with the 3,500 we have at present, there would be a price to pay in terms of developing the air base. My soundings so far—I cannot claim to speak for everyone by any stretch of the imagination—are that the vast bulk of the population would be ready to accept that environmental price under certain conditions, which I will return to in a moment, in return for the continuing economic viability of the area. We want the jobs and the military there, and therefore putting up with helicopter noise, which is a little bit noisier than Hercules noise, is something that I think the vast bulk of my constituents—although not all of them by any stretch—would be ready to accept.

In that context, I say to the Minister that if Project Belvedere goes ahead, it would be nice to enter into a period of negotiation with the RAF and the Army about flying protocols, so that we could minimise the disruption to the surrounding areas. I have already had brief discussions with the Army, who tell me that the majority of flights would be in a narrow corridor going from Lyneham down towards Salisbury plain, and we could enter into negotiations to minimise disruption and noise for local people.

The main problem is not knowing. In recent weeks, I have had a number of discussions about this matter with the Minister, as has my right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire, and rumours have flown to and fro—“Belvedere is on. Belvedere is off. Who knows what’s happening? We haven’t got the money, but we need to do this,” and so on. It is important that a decision is made soon. Rumours coming back from various people in the MOD suggest that there is a plethora of committees and commands, and reports going to and fro and minutes of meetings, and that no one can make up their mind what to do. It is important now that the MOD decides either to go ahead with Project Belvedere or a lesser form of it, or—although I am very opposed to this—not to go ahead with it at all.

If the MOD comes to that final conclusion, the last thing I would say on this subject—I am sorry to have bored the House by focusing on what is largely a constituency matter—is as follows. I have seen what happened to RAF Wroughton, which my own Conservative Government made the foolish decision to close in 1995 or so. It lay empty for many years, and there was vandalism and dereliction and total waste. I have seen the same in the town of Corsham in my constituency. The Army moved out in the ’50s or ’60s, and the town went down for a long time, although it is now coming back up again because of investment through the Defence Information Infrastructure process at Rudloe Manor.
The one thing I would not want to see at Lyneham is indecision and its lying vacant. We must not pull out the Hercules and then have nothing happening there at all. We must have clarity in terms of what is happening. The military might want it for some purpose—perhaps a garrison returning from Germany. Alternatively, if the military come to the clear conclusion that they do not need it and that they will leave in 2014 and hand it over to the local authorities and others who will make something out of it, I would welcome that, too. It is important that we now start to get a little bit of clarity about what the future holds.

I repeat my main point: I hope very much that we can keep the Hercules fleet at Lyneham. If we do not, I hope that we can get Project Belvedere and get the helicopters there. If we do not, I hope that we will find some other military use for Lyneham. If none of those three options works, all I would say is, for heaven’s sake let us have a clear decision and let us get on with the next stage in our life.