Royal Marines

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Tuesday 28th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, for asking his Question for Short Debate. In 2010, the Conservative-led Government made a decision to retain the carrier programme. To be fair, I could easily argue that decision both ways. However, there is no doubt that the carriers will, in due course, give us a fabulous strategic capability. Even the US has only 11 full-size aircraft carriers in service. We should be able to deploy a UK carrier battle group matched with an amphibious task group. Contrary to what some newspapers seem to think, we have not been able to launch an opposed beach landing for a very long time. However, what we should be able to do is deploy 3 Commando Brigade almost anywhere we would want to in the littoral world, given only a suitable beach—and we can do this with full and effective air cover from the carrier. Furthermore, we could do it with a limited call on US assets in theatre. In other words, we can look after ourselves, which is extremely important to the Americans. As I understand it, the only other European ally which could possibly do this is France—but I do not know to what extent.

This capability is of strategic importance to our relationship with the United States and its President. Of course we co-operate very closely in the submarine world, but that is covert; no one sees it or even detects it. Sometimes it might be desirable for a carrier amphibious group not to be detected, but at other times a show of force may be all that is necessary to avoid or deter open conflict. What on earth is the point of having a carrier battle group capability if we do not have a fully bombed-up 3 Commando Brigade and the amphibious task group to go with it?

I understand that 42 Commando Royal Marines has already been, or will be, made non-deployable as a formed unit. This generates considerable savings as there is no need to train as a formed unit to achieve the required collective performance level and other specialist training is not required—so this increases the Royal Marines’ capacity for other desirable tasks, of which there are many. The unacceptable downside is that it reduces the ability of 3 Commando Brigade to be deployed with two match-fit commandos at any time, because if the choice is only between 40 and 45, one of them might easily be recovering from a battle group level operation or deployment.

The noble Lord, Lord Burnett, and others referred to our two landing platform docks, HMS “Albion” and HMS “Bulwark”—and the noble Lord, Lord West, gave us some detail. SDSR 15 determined that both were essential. If not, they would have been taken out of service at that point, so they must have been essential. My noble friend the Minister will tell us that no decision has been made and that everything is speculation. It seems to me that the only solution we have is to allocate some of the international aid budget—something that I would have opposed even six months ago.

Nevertheless, I have to say that I am extremely depressed about our current defence position. In my opinion we are heading towards having our posterior kicked hard at some point, and we will deserve it. Just because we are doing much more than our larger European partners—with the exception of the French—that does not mean that we are doing enough. Our Armed Forces may be engaged in numerous small but commendable military operations, but that does not equip us to deal with an existential or strategic threat. I believe that Ministers at the highest levels of government are living in a fool’s paradise so far as military capacity is concerned. As far as I am concerned, my noble friend the Minister and his colleagues are on their own and I cannot support this direction of travel.