Red-faced minister refuses to say where warship is four times as presenter jibes ‘P&O would have been there five days ago’.
The HMS Dragon still is not at Cyprus (Image: Getty)
British warship HMS Dragon still has not reached Cyprus despite setting sail more than a week ago in a humiliating blow for the Royal Navy. Red-faced ministers were forced to defend the snail’s-pace of the Type-45 destroyer again today after it emerged the vessel was “somewhere in the Mediterranean”.
Challenged on the location of the ship this morning, government minister Matthew Pennycook was unable to confirm when repeatedly asked when the warship would even arrive at the besieged British base. Scrabbling to give an answer, he claimed that providing a specific date on HMS Dragon’s arrival would not be useful.
The departure of the vessel came a week late, after it was revealed the Navy did not have a single ship in the region when the war in Iran started. It effectively meant that for the first time in decades the UK’s senior service was absent from the war-stricken area.
Speaking this morning on LBC, a desperate Mr Pennycook said: “I don’t think providing a particular date is useful” when presenter and Express columnist Nick Ferrari asked when the ship would be fully deployed. Mr Pennycook refused to answer the question four times, prompting the presenter to say: “A P&O would have been there five days ago.”
He added that the Royal Navy was “slower than the P&O”, a major ferry company that provides cruise services to the region. The humiliated minister defended himself saying he would not comment on “operational matters”, a line used by ministers to avoid answering questions on active military deployments.
Mr Ferrari demanded answers several times during the tense exchange but was repeatedly met with deflections. The deployment of HMS Dragon has caused headache after headache for Downing Street after it was deployed late and only after repeated demands from the US President.
Its late deployment then caused the Cypriot President to call for a discussion about the future of the British territory which hosts UK bases on the islands. Speaking last week, the President of Cyprus called for an “open and frank discussion” about the future of Britain’s bases on the island once the crisis in the Middle East is over.
Speaking outside a meeting of the European Council in Brussels, Nikos Christodoulides said the two bases were a “colonial consequence” as he appeared to cast doubt on their future.
He told reporters: “When this situation is over in the Middle East, we are going to have an open and frank discussion with the British Government.”
The UK’s two military bases in Cyprus, Akrotiri and Dhekelia, are British sovereign territory under a treaty signed on Cypriot independence in 1960. Britain has used the bases to conduct operations in the Middle East, with RAF jets currently flying sorties from the island to protect against Iranian drones.
HMS Dragon is a missile-capable ship able to shoot down drones and Iran’s longer-range offensive ordnance.
It departed the UK weeks ago after a rapid reloading process saw the ship equipped and ready for deployment.