Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con): I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) for curtailing his excellent speech, as it gives me time to get in. He has great knowledge in this area, and the House will have missed the rest of his speech this evening.
I have no defence interests in my constituency. Hon. Members on both sides of the House have brilliantly defended the local businesses, services and units in their constituencies. My constituency contains a brand new cadet hut, of which we are very proud. It replaced the Territorial Army centre in my constituency—we were also very proud of that, and it is sorely missed. So I speak very much as a Back Bencher who is defending and speaking up for the troops in the armed forces.
I thought that the contribution made by the hon. Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Crausby) about uniforms was very interesting and factually correct. If the Minister were allowed to go to a quartermaster’s department in an average regiment to take a look at combat kit—the uniform that has been handed back in—he would find that most of it had got the backside busted out of it. The quality of the kit being purchased from the Chinese is just not up to scratch, and it does not last as long as the uniforms that were made in this country. After the contract went abroad, it was obvious that the uniforms just did not last as long, as any quartermaster who has the guts to talk to the Minister will tell him. That is to do with quality, although lots of different things have been tried—for example, double-stitching on certain parts of the uniform. The particular uniform that I have been issued with by the armed forces parliamentary scheme is simply fantastic, but it does not look anything like what is being issued to my friends who are serving in the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards. The uniforms are completely different.
I wish to ask the Minister some questions. I am sure that he will not have time to respond to all of them, so I ask him to write to me about the specific issues that I am about to raise. Can he confirm that all the C130s in operation have fire-retardant foam in the tanks? We all know about the disaster in which we lost all those servicemen. Long before that, Lockheed recommended to all the fleets around the world that fire-retardant foam be added to the tanks. Some countries added it; we did not, and one was shot down. It is too late for those who lost their loved ones, but I hope that the foam has been added to all the C130s on operations now.
Many of us had the honour of watching the trooping of the colour on Saturday. Those taking part are not toy soldiers, but operational servicemen—and women, these days—and we should all be very proud of them. When I served, many years ago, and trooped the colour, we saw very few service medals—a Northern Ireland medal and, perhaps, a United Nations one. On Saturday, there were servicemen and women who had more medals than some of the second world war veterans wear on Remembrance day. That is a tribute to how often our servicemen and women go on operations.
Unusually for a former Foot Guard, I also wish to pay tribute to the Life Guards and the Household Cavalry, because they go on operations as well as carrying out their ceremonial duties. I was very moved by the Westminster Hall debate on Lance Corporal Compton last week. I have met Lance Corporal Compton and his burns are horrific. As I said, the House was shocked when I mentioned the fact that a bullet-proof vest is not fire protective. If a soldier is in a Scimitar that is hit, as Lance Corporal Compton was, and his colleagues are dying around him and he is alight, the last thing he needs is for the uniform that has been issued to protect him to burn. That is frightening. If nothing else comes from this debate today, I hope that we will now look at how we protect our servicemen and women in the field.
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MIKE'S OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SAME DEBATE
Mike Penning: As someone who was on operations many years ago—many years before my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer)—I would say that when people are on ops they will go with what they are given. The soldiers will do what they are told. Operational commanders in the field will use Snatch because that is all they have for that purpose, and that is costing lives. We should listen to what is happening on the ground—not so much from commanders but from servicemen and women, who are losing their lives because of Snatch, and their loved ones. They will use what they are given; take it away, and they will not use it.
Mr. Ainsworth: The hon. Gentleman appears to be saying that there is no basis for a small, enclosed Land Rover-based capability and, in effect, that we will not be able to take vehicles into these kinds of enclosed spaces. We have continually to keep this under review. Mastiff cannot be taken everywhere. I saw that first-hand last time I was out in Afghanistan. I managed to get right out on to the front line to forward operating base Edinburgh and the district centre in Musa Qala, but I was not able to go into the town because the Mastiff vehicles that we were travelling in would have ripped up the roadways and presented a profile that was not in line with the message that we were trying to send to the local population at that time. However, our personnel have to be able to operate in the town and to engage with those people.
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Mike Penning: I think that the Minister slightly misunderstood my point, so I will try again. In the 1970s, when I served in Northern Ireland, we had the Land Rover and bolted some protection on to it, and we lost lives. The MOD saw sense, and after a procurement programme we brought in Snatch. It was designed only for Northern Ireland, not for anywhere else. It was certainly not designed for what we are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq, so we need a vehicle that is designed for that. I accept his point that we need mobile vehicles within town structures, but not Snatch. It was not designed for this situation, and the Minister knows it. We must listen to what is happening on the ground, not to the so-called procurement experts in the MOD.
Mr. Ainsworth: We are not listening exclusively to the procurement experts in the MOD. We are listening to commanders on operations—the people who have to do the job that we have given them to do. Snatch was upgraded and refurbished in 2006. I am not decrying the Mastiff, which is a great vehicle. People who have suffered attacks while inside it have a huge amount of confidence in its capability. However, any level of armour can be overcome, potentially including the Mastiff’s, and Mastiff cannot go to certain places or do certain things. The hon. Gentleman is saying that we do not have vehicles designed for Afghanistan, but Mastiff was designed and procured specifically with Afghanistan in mind. Ridgback will be more capable than Mastiff—smaller and able to go to places that Mastiff cannot—but it will be considerably larger than a Land Rover-based vehicle.
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Mike Penning: Body armour is obviously there to protect servicemen and women on operations, but is my hon. Friend aware that it is not fire protected? In other words, it will burn. Individuals such as Lance Corporal Compton, who suffered horrific burns after his vehicle was hit in Afghanistan, received those injuries because the body armour, which is designed to protect them, burns and their bodies are damaged.
Mr. Howarth: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that information, which I did not know. I am sure that the whole House will also be grateful to him and that the Under-Secretary will want to respond to that information in his winding-up speech.
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