The Role and Capabilities of the UK Armed Forces, in the Light of Global and Domestic Threats to Stability and Security

Baroness Buscombe Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Buscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak for the first time in a defence debate. Notwithstanding having been a Member of your Lordships’ House for 17 years, I feel some trepidation, as other noble Lords speaking in this debate know so much more than I do. However, I feel that I should declare an interest. I now have a son, of whom I am very proud, who is about to start training as an observer in the Fleet Air Arm. However, he has no idea that I am speaking in this debate. I have not learnt anything from him that I will reference in this debate, and I have no intention of telling him about it afterwards.

I thank my noble friend for introducing this debate. It is timely. Among others here, I am also a member of the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme. Surprise surprise, I am looking at the Navy. I want to focus my remarks on maritime security, given some issues that have been raised on various visits, which I would like to share this afternoon.

My immediate concern regards maritime security, particularly the security of our borders. These issues, while relevant to the next SDSR, actually need to be addressed as a matter of urgency. I say this given the clear and present increased threats from uncontrolled migration. My noble friend Lord King referred to the refugee crisis and the imminent threat of yet more failed states. In addition, there are the actions of small groups and individuals who are determined to cause maximum harm within our borders, including suicide bombers, coupled with ongoing and increased people smuggling and narcotics smuggling. My chief concern relates to our capabilities concerning air and sea surveillance of our shores—all 11,072 miles of shore, or 19,491 miles if you include the larger islands around our mainland shores.

As noble Lords know, maritime security requires a critical matrix of legislation, surveillance, intelligence fusion and co-ordination, interdiction, law and/or maritime enforcement. Effective surveillance is central to that matrix. There has long been a layered approach to UK surveillance, and the UK military used to have a fairly effective layered approach, developed to combat Russian submarines. The SDSR in 2010 removed the UK’s military marine patrol aircraft, a capability hitherto very effective for general surface surveillance and even search and rescue. The loss of maritime patrol aircraft has put greater pressure on other layers including the air surveillance contracted by a number of government departments and agencies that look for specific things such as illegal fishing, customs breaches, narcotics smuggling and people smuggling, on the surface rather than under.

Noble Lords will know that in 2012-13, a House of Commons Defence Committee study showed how, unlike Australia for example, the UK had a number of separate air surveillance contracts emanating from different departments. This current ad hoc approach means that economies of scale have been lost and that aircraft working to different departments operate in the same airspace and leave gaps. Scotland also has an entirely separate contract for fisheries. The House of Commons Defence Committee recommended consolidation, for obvious reasons.

This inefficient ad hoc approach that allows gaps as well as duplication in our surveillance is about to become much worse given the now imminent loss of one of the air surveillance contracts, thereby further undermining our layered approach. There is a solution—to have one overarching, consolidated contract to deal with maritime security as opposed to military or anti-submarine surveillance. That would help to alleviate some of the pressure on SDSR 15 decisions on maritime patrol aircraft.

A quick résumé of current contracts might add weight to my suggestion. Current contracts approximate as Border Force, the Marine Management Organisation, the National Crime Agency, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and Marine Scotland, which is entirely independent and operates only in Scotland. A single UK-wide contract is needed as soon as possible and, in the mean time, no diminution of the current capacity. Indeed, the contract that is due to expire in January 2016 should be extended to avoid a crucial gap in our air surveillance until a consolidated, more cost-efficient and effective contract can be executed.

Much of the work for a single contract was previously completed under the direction of the National Maritime Security Advisory Committee. To bring that about, we need central direction to direct departments and agencies to act as one. Noble Lords will know that a policy catalyst normally results from an incident or issue. For example, Australia got its act together in response to highly publicised boat migration. We now have a similar issue in our sights as well as the opportunity to gain efficiency for UK plc, especially if the SR and SDSR are putting individual departments under a huge squeeze.

There is a related issue in relation to surface ships surveillance—another important layer that presents a similar issue and requires consolidation and coherence that goes to interdiction as well as surveillance. Noble Lords will know that interdiction requires law or maritime enforcement and therefore competent enforcement officials—police and customs-empowered Border Force officers and marine management-empowered Royal Navy officers who have the right jurisdictional powers. Navy ships have weapons and sophisticated communications equipment and generally their own aircraft—helicopters—but currently, if required for a UK law enforcement mission, they have to embark customs, Border Force, police and so forth to make an arrest. That is extraordinarily inefficient. The only exception is fishing where Navy officers in our offshore patrol vessels—OPVs—have enforcement powers under UK legislation.

The other vessels for UK surveillance and interdiction are UK Border Force cutters. But unfortunately the UK Border Force is struggling to run them. Only three of five are available for at-sea work around the UK unless they are supported by Royal Navy staff. The obvious solution is to focus now on a trial undertaken by national maritime asset co-ordination which, as its name suggests, co-ordinates the activity of the Royal Navy’s OPVs and Border Force cutters to increase the capability of assets, expand geographical spread, increase the size of the area patrolled, deconflict activity to remove duplication and reduce response times.

A scientific study conducted in 2013 clearly demonstrated that currently UK surface ship coverage does not compare favourably with similar-sized countries such as France, Australia and Holland. The NMAC trial, however, places additional capabilities in different ships and the trial has already proved successful. More importantly, to assist in terms of practical solutions to the threats that we face and the task at hand, the Government have already committed to build three more offshore patrol vessels in Scotland in order to keep shipyards alive between finishing the two aircraft carriers and work on the next generation of Navy frigates—the Type 26. This surely presents the ideal, cost-efficient opportunity to use the Navy offshore patrol vessels to replace the Border Force cutters and thus have the capability to do UK-wide maritime surface patrol properly using OPVs with a maritime enforcement cadre embarked to cover all boarding requirements. That has been trialled and is achievable.

The SNP in Scotland often criticises Westminster for the lack of Navy and maritime patrol presence—particularly Border Force cutters—in Scottish waters, which this could address not least because Scotland spends more than £9 million per annum on its limited capability. In other words, they cannot do any other tasks. Rather shockingly, that is more than the Marine Management Organisation gives the Royal Navy towards the running of the offshore patrol vessels.

The nexus between the issues is that the current situation is a symptom of an ad hoc and inefficient approach thus far, which can only get worse. There has to be impetus to generate efficiency, better surveillance and better interdiction capability. The development of the National Strategy for Maritime Security plus governance mechanisms, ranging from ministerial oversight to an officials committee, has increased interagency coherence, but the bottom line is that each of those comes from a department where maritime security issues are only an element of the work and seldom core. So issues of funding are very difficult indeed, and cross-Whitehall savings or increased UK capacity do not register on departmental agendas. This is the context in which surveillance capacity, whether via an air or surface ship, needs to be considered. What is needed is a rationalisation of air and surface assets, and improved mechanisms to use the information and intelligence product to the benefit of all.

I want to touch on another issue, which came to my notice when I recently visited Portsmouth, where of course the two new Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers are destined to arrive. Looking at a three-dimensional model of the dockyard, as well as driving through it, it struck me that there is a serious issue regarding planning for the necessary support services for the carriers, as well as all other ships, in what should become a 21st-century highly secure base.

My first concern is security. Since the terrible killing of Corporal Rigby at Woolwich, I would like to presume that high on the list of MoD priorities is the need to ensure that our Armed Forces personnel are as secure as possible. I suggest that the current layout of Portsmouth makes that difficult, given the presence of some listed buildings, a few of which currently have little or no function and which I suspect would cost a great deal to refurbish sufficiently to accommodate some ships and carrier stores. Whether they are empty or not, the Royal Navy is required to maintain those buildings out of the defence budget while looking for ways to improve access and flow across the base. In short—I have not shared this with any Royal Navy personnel, who may be horrified at the suggestion—I question whether it is sensible to ask the Royal Navy to accommodate the new carriers, and all the related equipment that that entails, coupled with the heightened need for personnel security in an area where currently it is something of a maze to navigate and, frankly, the historical value of a few of those buildings is quite questionable. Nowhere else in the world would the listing of a building, built hundreds of years ago to store goods and house staff, take precedence over national security.

Please be assured, I am not looking to wreck a wonderful historic shipyard; I am simply suggesting that the Navy should have the option to remove a few buildings in its midst to ensure we have a base to be proud of that is fit for purpose and which will protect our personnel and our very expensive assets in a less safe and secure world.