Labour ‘saddled Navy’s ships with shoddy engines’
THE former Labour government ignored concerns about the reliability of new engines for the Royal Navy’s most powerful warships in order to buy from a British manufacturer, a top officer has claimed.
Rear-Adml Chris Parry, a former head of Britain’s Maritime Warfare Centre, last night accused ministers of saddling the Navy with higher longterm costs by not commissioning more effective foreign-built units.
The Rolls-Royce WR-21 engines have been beset by repeated breakdowns since coming into service in the Type 45 destroyers, leaving the air defence ships without power for propulsion or working weapons systems.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) faces questions after all six destroyers were spotted laid up in Portsmouth at the same time. However, Adml Sir James Burnell-Nugent, former Commanderin-Chief Fleet of the Royal Navy, told Sky News that may have been down to recruitment problems.
Rear-Adml Parry, who has himself commanded an air defence destroyer, said the decision to use the Rolls-Royce engine, taken in 2000, was “shortsighted” and not motivated by the best interests of the Navy.
“The Government made a decision that they would go for British shoddy engines and everyone said at the time ‘don’t go for them, they’re rubbish’,” he said. “It was a political decision because of electoral politics, and now of course the engines are useless. They don’t operate well at all, but all the politicians do is look at the next election. They don’t look at the long-term life of these things.”
In March, Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, said the MoD had learned the lessons of choosing simpler and more robust engineering, as well as investing in more comprehensive shore testing, and that these had been applied to the process of commissioning the two new Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers.
In a letter to the Parliamentary defence committee, Mr Fallon said former defence secretary Geoff Hoon, who made the decision, had acknowledged that the Rolls-Royce engine “presented a greater degree of risk” than other designs. The six engines, which are worth £1 billion each, will be replaced as part of a programme starting in 2019.
Rolls-Royce has defended its manufacturing, saying the destroyers are now operating in “far more arduous conditions than envisaged in the specifications”.
However, the MoD has said the Type 45 was designed for operations from the subarctic to extreme tropical environments.