Fresh doubts cast over new Scottish-built aircraft carriers

Published on Wednesday 6 July 2011 18:08

A REPORT into the government's Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) has raised doubts over whether two new aircraft carriers will be built.

In a hard-hitting report the National Audit Office has questioned government claims that it would have been too expensive to cancel the carrier project and warned that if it is not to come under risk again there will need to be a "real terms increase in defence spending".

The report has also revealed that one of the options considered by the government in the run-up to the SDSR was to pull the plug on the carriers altogether, keep the Tornados until 2025 and "accept the demise of the ship building industry", a move that would have led to at least 9,000 job losses on the Clyde and at Rosyth.

The damaging nature of the report has sparked a row with the Ministry of Defence which has refused to accept its findings despite two weeks of private negotiations. The NAO has taken the unprecedented step of publishing the report without Whitehall approval, and it complained that it has been denied vital Cabinet papers.

In the report the NAO has also questioned the decision to scrap the old carriers this year along with the Harrier fleet when replacements are not expected to be ready before 2020.

It goes on to attack the decision to change the type of aircraft used on the carriers, bringing in a system that will allow French and US aircraft to use them.

The report said this decision had caused too much uncertainty which could lead to further delay and increased costs. Michael Whitehouse, chief operating officer of the NAO, said: "The SDSR has radically changed the Carrier Strike concept.

"It will take two years for the department to reach a mature understanding of the consequences of the decision. These consequences include a decade without an operational carrier and the risks after such a time associated with reconstituting the capability.

"The risks to the delivery of the new carriers are compounded by more generic problems with defence acquisition - notably the MoD's continuing difficulties in balancing its budget."

There are questions too about whether government sums add up. After the SDSR was published the government claimed it was forced to go ahead with the carriers because of the nature of the contracts signed by the last Labour government, which meant it would cost an extra 500 million to scrap them.

But the report says it would have saved 200m in the short term not to build one of the carriers and suggests that getting rid of both would have saved 1.2 billion in the short term and 6.3bn in a decade.

Last night the Defence secretary Liam Fox criticised the report and confirmed that his department had refused to agree it.

He said: "The SDSR put this programme back on track and delivered 3.4bn of overall savings to Carrier Strike. The NAO has noted that our decision to build the second new aircraft carrier makes financial sense, supports UK industry and the significant cost and capability advantages of the aircraft we now plan to fly from it."The carriers contracts and decision is being looked at by three parliamentary committees, the Treasury and defence select committees and the public accounts committee.

Margaret Hodge, chairwoman of the public accounts committee, said: "There are new cost and value-for-money risks which have yet to be quantified and which in the current financial climate are clearly unaffordable. The carriers may once again be a victim of the need to balance the books in the short term."

Labour shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy said: "It is now clear the government has created their own multi-million-pound black hole in the defence budget with an uncosted carrier programme. They must now come clean as to whether they will fully fund the programme, how much this will cost and explain the impact on the wider equipment programme."