Armed Forces Bill

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

My Lords, I shall confine my remarks to Clause 25, which is concerned with claims against visiting forces. The role of visiting forces in the UK is defined under the Visiting Forces Act 1952. We in Parliament have very little opportunity to explore and scrutinise the relationship between UK citizens and visiting forces. When questions are asked, they are usually batted back to the questioner with, “We don’t answer questions on matters of security”. There are many interfaces between UK citizens and visiting forces, whether for matters of trespass because the force bases sometimes cross footpaths that have been diverted, or because of protest at those bases. Therefore, it is important that we get any change to this legislation right.

The change proposed in the Bill is quite small on the face of it. At the moment, should a claim be made, the UK Government can handle and settle it, but it is still the visiting force’s responsibility to defend it. My question for the Minister is: why, and for whose benefit, is this change being made? There may well be a very good reason for it. However, when I looked at the Explanatory Notes to discover a little more, the change was explained in paragraph 108 as being made because it was very difficult for the sending state, which would find “itself in unfamiliar proceedings” as the defendant. I find it hard to believe that the USA would have great difficulty in finding a lawyer who could not cope with the unfamiliar proceedings in the UK to defend a case.

This is not a small problem. I am sure that noble Lords are aware of the scale of visiting forces. I could mention, for example, National Security Agency Menwith Hill, better known as USAF Menwith Hill, the scale and importance of which will grow later this year as some of its new facilities are implemented. There is also RAF Fylingdales, USAF Lakenheath, USAF Mildenhall, USAF Croughton, JAC Molesworth, USAF Fairford, USAF Alconbury, the deep space tracking facility at Feltwell and USAF Welford. At all of those bases, the US commander is in charge and the base has a shop, medical facilities and housing; it is a little bit of the USA in the UK. As the USA is our special ally, we have worked very hard over the years to build on that relationship and make sure that we have a very good understanding. However, we in Parliament do not know the basis of that understanding. A lot has changed since the 1950s.

Therefore, I am concerned about whether these changes are being made for the benefit of UK citizens. Will they make matters fairer and easier? I should be very grateful if the Minister could answer any of these questions today. Is this change to the legislation for the benefit of UK citizens, or for the benefit of the visiting forces? As parliamentarians, we want to see that legislation being for the benefit of UK citizens.

Libya

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and gallant Lord for his questions. We do not comment on the military contributions of other nations to the campaign. However, we are grateful for them. He asked me about risk assessments. Before we take any operational decision, we make a full risk assessment to understand the environment in which we require our personnel and equipment to operate. We will look particularly at the regime’s capability, not least its surface-to-air missiles.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a board member of UNICEF UK. If we are to have helicopters and ships in greater number in the area, have any further instructions been issued on what to do with boat-loads of refugees who are fleeing the situation? I am sure that, like me, the Minister does not want to see any more of the disasters that were seen previously.

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, as I understand it, there is an international stabilisation response team in Benghazi looking at this issue. Of course, the United Kingdom will continue to provide medical and emergency food supplies.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Friday 12th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a co-president of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament— PNND—which is a global network of over 700 parliamentarians in 75 countries. We work to prevent nuclear proliferation and to achieve nuclear disarmament. We aim to encourage our Governments to hold to treaties that already exist and to continue to work on them. We work closely with the UN and support the Secretary-General’s five-point plan. We do not expect miracles, and we are not expecting disarmament tomorrow.

Today, I am not going to talk specifically about Trident, or about the decision to put off that decision, for the very reason that the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, mentioned: that it just buys us time to explore the negotiations further. I want to make some more general comments about the SDSR in the wider context of tackling nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament.

There are a few good things in the review. The Government have continued the useful steps towards greater transparency and talking openly about plans and numbers of warheads. One of the measures of progress is that nuclear-weapon states become more transparent about the size of their arsenals, stocks of fissile material and specific disarmament achievements. It is also good that the tangible steps that are mentioned in paragraph 3.6 refer, I presume, to the continued commitment to the verification programme to be undertaken with Norway, which is our partner in this work and a non-nuclear state. I invite the Minister to mention any other initiatives that would further develop these tangible steps, and seek from him an assurance that funding for this sort of work at our strong research and skills base at Aldermaston will be safeguarded. The only mention of funding in that part of the defence review is of minimising expenditure and where spending can be reduced. I would like to know about the safeguards for that verification work.

In the review there is much more negative wording: a step in the wrong direction in both the language and the aspiration. This statement is made:

“As a responsible nuclear weapon state … the UK … remains committed to the long term goal of a world without nuclear weapons”,

The very phrase “long term” implies that this work is not urgent. The paragraph goes on to state:

“We will continue to work to control proliferation and to make progress on multilateral disarmament … to take tangible steps towards a safer and more stable world where countries with nuclear weapons feel able to relinquish them”.

“Feel able” is not an adequate phrase with which to recognise the situation. It does not recognise our international commitments under the treaties that we have already signed. It does not recognise the urgent necessity of nuclear weapon removal in a world where proliferation means that dirty bomb material is easier to get hold of. It does not recognise the cybersecurity issues that Dr Liam Fox raised when he talked about the cyberattack that deactivated six Minuteman missiles. What if hackers could activate them? It does not recognise a world where near-miss accidents are horribly common. It does not recognise the feeling of all the non-nuclear states that this issue is really urgent. I hope the wording does not reflect our Government’s commitment to making further progress and recognising that such progress is urgent.

Earlier this year, I spent four days on the Japanese-sponsored peace boat with some of the survivors and children of survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Their testimonies of what happened 65 years ago were, of course, very moving. However, some of the knowledge that they shared with us was even more shocking, and that was the pictures of their chromosomes and the damage that was done to them. Their chromosomes are wrecked for all time. The genetic damage is there, pictorially, for all to see. It shows that the damage done by nuclear weapons is not only to the people who are killed then; it affects the human race and its genetics for all time.

That is one of the reasons why the rest of the world expects a more energetic commitment from us. However, the core reason is the deal that was made more than 40 years ago in the nuclear non-proliferation treaty in 1968, when the nuclear-weapon states gave a commitment to the non-nuclear weapon states that they would work towards disarmament, in return for which the nuclear have-nots would not seek to acquire their own weapons. That is what we are risking now.

Last Wednesday, the Secretary of State, William Hague, gave an excellent Canning House lecture on the UK-Latin American relationship. He highlighted the fact that Latin America had given moral leadership to the region in that huge nuclear weapons-free zone. It is promising that nuclear weapons-free regions are increasing. There is a move to make the Arctic a nuclear weapons-free zone, followed by the Antarctic, and an extremely important Middle East conference is coming up in 2012 to establish—we all very much hope—a nuclear weapons-free zone there. However, as a nuclear weapons state, we should treat this as an urgent matter and should encourage our friends in the US Senate to take the same attitude towards their new START treaty.

In conclusion, the previous Government made a very good attempt to further this work—that was due in good part to the tremendous work of my noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby—and were seen as being seriously committed to achieving nuclear disarmament within a realistic timescale. I am sure that this Government will want to continue on that path, but that is not reflected in the wording of the strategy.