Libya

Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde Excerpts

Friday 1st April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde]

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for initiating this debate and add my thanks to my noble friend Lady Royall of Blaisdon, who asked for this debate last week when we had the first Statement on the implementation of the no-fly zone over Libya.

This has been a wide-ranging and interesting debate. I have a particular interest in our Armed Forces personnel. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, used the term “strategic balance”. I think that that term would do justice to a diplomat from the Foreign Office in the sense that I believe that this is about overstretch. I am concerned about our Armed Forces personnel because UN Resolution 1973 calls for a no-fly zone and the people who have to implement it are our Armed Forces. We call on them, they deliver what they are asked to do and they do it time after time.

HMS “Cumberland” has been playing a very important role over the past two weeks. She was on her way home, having been at sea for months. Obviously, the personnel on that ship will now not see their families for some time. Some folk may regard that as a small issue against the important issues of the Middle East. In its own right, that is possibly the case, but alongside the “Cumberland” is HMS “York”, which was on her way to the Falklands and had to be diverted. My concern is that what we are asking the Armed Forces to do is actually stretching the overstretch. It is a concern that we have to respond to more substantially than perhaps we were able to do before.

That said, I have yet to come across anyone who disagrees with what has happened and I congratulate the Government on delivering the broad-based coalition of countries and forces. But here we are again with UK forces in the first wave, at the forefront, and on this occasion not even alongside our American allies. We cannot keep doing this. At some point we have to recognise that if this is the wish of British Governments of whatever colour—I include the previous Government —we have to make sure that our Armed Forces have the resources and the respect that they deserve. The personnel on HMS “Cumberland” will lose their jobs when they get back to the UK. I do not know, but some of the pilots will also probably leave the services through redundancy. We say fine words about the work that they do, but if I was a member of the Armed Forces I would be looking at it from my family’s point of view.

This year, anyone in the services earning £21,000 or above will not get a pay award. Again, people may think that that is a small issue when set against an international challenge such as this, but we must take into account the fact that accommodation charges have increased, and that is for accommodation that many of us would not deem to live in. Also, we were given to understand that service pensions would not be involved in the public sector review of pensions, but they now have been. If we want to treat our Armed Forces personnel during periods of austerity in the same way as we treat people walking up and down Whitehall doing safe day-in, day-out jobs, we are going to have a very different Armed Forces in this country from what we have at the moment. That is something that we need to address.

Some people may feel that it is not appropriate to raise these issues in a debate about foreign policy and strategy, but we cannot carry out our foreign strategy without the full support of our Armed Forces in delivering it for us. They will decide whether we actually succeed or we fail. I think that I speak for many of us when I say that the noble Lord, Lord Astor, has done a sterling job keeping us informed through the briefings that he has been holding on the strategic defence and security review. The pay bill, as I know only too well having chaired the Armed Forces Pay Review Body some years ago, is not the lion’s share of our defence budget. There is no real need to be punitive towards the gallant men and women who do such a proud job for this country. I urge the Government to take the opportunity offered by the situation in Libya to review the situation for our Armed Forces personnel. They will not appear to be making a U-turn and they will not lose face, because many of us will thank them and congratulate them on recognising the covenant that we owe to our Armed Forces.