A
Mr Beamish
PS/Mr Garel-Jones
Private Secretary
HMS ENDURANCE
HKB 063/1
09 JUL1 91
109
K
INDEX
PA
Acto
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FROM: M S BAKER-BATES.
SOUTH ATLANTIC & ANTARCTIC DEPT
СТІС
DATE : 3 July 1991
CC
: PS/Lord Caithness PS/Mr Lennox-Boyd Mr Broomfield Mr Goulden Mr Burns PS/PUS
Special Adrishes
Mc
Mr Case
My logo 57
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B
Problem
1.
How do we respond to the recent news from the MOD that HMS ENDURANCE is vulnerable to "catastrophic failure" in ice conditions and should not be deployed to the Antarctic later this year?
Recommendation
2.
I recommend that the Secretary of State should write to the Defence Secretary in the terms of the attached minute which suggests that a political decision now needs to be taken both about the immediate future of HMS ENDURANCE and the ship's replacement.
Background and Argument
3.
There has been little transparency between the Ministry of Defence and ourselves about the future of HMS ENDURANCE.・ For some months we have hearing that they wished to withdraw the ship from its service in the South Atlantic and Antarctic. Our efforts to obtain more information from the MOD met with no response. Meanwhile, MOD Ministers assured Parliament that the FCO would be fully consulted in any decision. We were not in fact consulted until the Defence Secretary minuted the Secretary of State on 11 June to say that he had concluded that, given the very considerable pressures on the Defence Budget, the capability represented by HMS ENDURANCE no longer enjoyed sufficient priority to justify a continuing place in the Defence Programme. Mr King wished to announce this before 24 June. The Prime Minister intervened on 13 June saying that he thought the scrapping of HMS ENDURANCE could be very "tricky politically" and that we could pay a high price for £1m savings on operational costs this year.
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