NHS: General Medical Practitioners

Debate between Earl Howe and Lord Stirrup

Monday 20th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, it is the turn of the Cross Benches.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, it is clear that allowing doctors to spend more time with their patients would permit more searching diagnoses, leading to fewer unnecessary referrals and helping to take some of the pressure off secondary care waiting lists. What allowance has been made for this in the calculation of the total GP requirement?

British Army: Troop Size

Debate between Earl Howe and Lord Stirrup

Monday 27th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, through history, the same effects have been delivered by fewer and fewer people due to the smart employment of new technology. In our own day, robotics and artificial intelligence play into exactly the same trend: in reconnaissance, one drone can do a job done by scores of people in the past. So this emphasis on the integration of emerging technology will make an enormous difference to the capability of the Army and indeed across the Armed Forces.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Earl made reference to Future Soldier. Can he tell the House by what date this country will be able to field a full fighting division, with all of the necessary attendant capabilities, including combat and logistics support and adequate weapon stocks?

[Earl Howe (Con)]

The noble and gallant Lord is well aware that we are not in a place that we would wish to be in, which is exactly why Future Soldier has defined the path over the next few years. The Army is designed to fight; it will remain that way, and we will ensure that it is equipped to do so.

Armed Forces: Morale

Debate between Earl Howe and Lord Stirrup

Wednesday 29th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, Britain has a competitive advantage in defence, and that advantage is based on the commitment, professionalism and skills of our people. We place heavy demands on them all, including those in the Armed Forces whom we ask to risk their lives on operations. Therefore, we place a very high premium on recruiting, retaining and developing the right people. As set out in the 2015 SDSR, we have identified a number of long-term plans to ensure that the service offer to which I referred better reflects the aspirations and expectations of our personnel and new recruits.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, our future military capability depends on retaining sufficient talented and experienced personnel. That retention in turn depends on offering those personnel sufficiently challenging, rewarding and exciting training. Can the Minister reassure the House that, in its search for savings, the Ministry of Defence will not be looking to cut back in this area, which would be the falsest of all false economies?

[Earl Howe]

The challenge, when looking for efficiencies rather than straightforward savings, is to achieve the same or a better level of outputs with the money available. I can tell the noble and gallant Lord that, while training is of course under the spotlight, what we do not want to do is to dilute or degrade the quality of that training for those whose standards we set great store by.

Royal Marines

Debate between Earl Howe and Lord Stirrup

Tuesday 4th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord and the House know that the carriers, when they arrive, will be fully manned and have British aircraft on them before they are brought into service. I can assure him that we will make sure that the Royal Marines are properly trained and equipped to perform the vital tasks we ask them to undertake.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, I listened very carefully to the answers the Minister has given. If there is a key strategic judgment to be made about the balance of capabilities between the surface fleet and the Royal Marines, surely the last strategic defence and security review was the time and opportunity to do that. It was not done then, so is not the only conclusion we can draw from the current situation that there is insufficient funding in the Ministry of Defence to afford what was decided upon at the end of the last SDSR?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, we set out our key priorities in the 2015 strategic defence and security review. At that time we announced an £11 billion investment package towards our highest priority defence equipment needs over the course of this Parliament. We have been quite open that some of the funding for this is contingent on delivering efficiency savings. I concede that the savings are challenging, but we are working very hard to deliver them.

Refugees and Migrants: Royal Navy and NATO Interception in Mediterranean

Debate between Earl Howe and Lord Stirrup

Monday 7th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My noble friend is absolutely right. This is why NATO is in a support role, as I emphasised, to alert the authorities in the Turkish coastguard and FRONTEX, which is the EU border control agency, to intercept the ships. It is not our role to intercept those ships; it is for the Turkish and, if need be, the Greek coastguard authorities. They have assets in the area which are well placed to do that.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, what degree of co-ordination will be maintained between the NATO mission and the EU’s anti-people-smuggling mission in the Mediterranean, Operation Sophia? While the two have separate areas of operation they will both require access to strategic capabilities such as surveillance, reconnaissance and helicopters, which the noble Earl has mentioned, and which are in short supply. It would seem essential that a high degree of co-operation is maintained between these two operations if those scarce resources are to be used as effectively and efficiently as possible.

[Earl Howe]

The noble and gallant Lord is absolutely right. As he knows, the UK has provided a significant contribution to the EU naval force operation countering migrant smugglers in the Mediterranean off the coast of Libya. We have been doing that since July last year. HMS “Enterprise” remains committed to that operation over the winter, identifying potential migrant-smuggling vessels off the coast of Libya. He is also right to draw our attention to the whole of the Mediterranean as an area of concern. We must not forget that Operation Sophia is just one part of the overall, comprehensive approach to tackling the migrant crisis. The migrants who come up from sub-Saharan Africa are, by and large, those who leave the Libyan coast. In the main, those arriving at the Turkish coast stem from Afghanistan and Syria.

Syria: Brimstone Missiles

Debate between Earl Howe and Lord Stirrup

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. There is no question that Russia is actively targeting civilians and is almost certainly in breach of international humanitarian law in the process. That has to stop. Russia cannot continue to sit at the table as a sponsor of the political process and, at the same time, bomb the civilian areas of the very groups of people whom we believe will form the backbone of the new Syria, once Assad has left.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, is the Minister able to give the House figures for the number of civilian casualties in Syria caused by the action of ISIL on the ground?

[Earl Howe]

I do not have precise figures, but as the House will know the vast majority of civilian casualties in Syria have been caused by the regime itself and also as a result of Russian actions.