Appeal over carriers signals Brown's return to Commons

The last time Mr Brown addressed the House was April, before he led Labour to defeat in the General Election and he has only been seen in Westminster a handful of times over the past six months, as he concentrated on writing a book about the financial crisis.

Mr Brown will urge that 50-year carrier maintenance contracts be awarded to Rosyth, which borders his Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath seat,

instead of the French dry-dock in Brest.

But Tory MP Bernard Jenkin said Mr Brown should be using his first speech since rejoining the backbenches to say sorry for tying the coalition in to the disastrous multi-billion-pound defence deal.

Mr Jenkin said: "Gordon Brown should be apologising to the country for allowing such a deal to be made that meant it would cost the taxpayers more to cancel the second aircraft carrier than to build it.

"His appearance in this debate shows that his decision to order the aircraft carriers was always about protecting his own political interests rather than the national interest."

Yesterday, the former head of the armed forces said Labour Ministers had been forced to commit to building the Royal Navy's two new aircraft carriers in return for the shipbuilding industry agreeing to rationalise.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, who stepped down as chief of the defence staff last week, said it had signed a "terms of business agreement" with the dockyards which meant they had to commit to the carriers.

There has been controversy over the 5.4bn carriers project, which was saved in the Strategic Defence and Security Review, amid claims it would cost more to cancel it than to go ahead. But the massive ships will not enter service until at least 2014 and 2016 .

Sir Jock said: "We had too large a shipbuilding industry in this country for what we are able to sustain and we had to come down to one dockyard.

"To enable us to come down to one dockyard the industry had to invest in the necessary rationalisation.

"They were only going to do that if they had a commitment to a certain level of work for a certain number of years. Part of that work of course was the construction of these two carriers."

Sir Jock said there had been some "pretty unfortunate cases in procurement" during the Labour Government but the real problem was spiralling cost growth.

He claimed Labour Ministers were shown proposals for "painful" cuts to the armed forces which would be difficult politically but had vetoed them.