Defence

James Cleverly Excerpts

Monday 18th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

The Minister made the point that this renewal—this continuation statutory instrument—is not normally discussed on the Floor of the House, but being able to do so is a great opportunity. The SI goes to the heart of the existence of our armed forces, because the British armed forces quite simply cease to exist without it. The Bill of Rights 1689 contains an assertion that the Army, and by extension the RAF and Navy, cannot exist without the explicit consent of Parliament. Provisions within this SI also enable the chain of command to deliver good governance within the armed forces themselves.

I do not intend to rehearse the arguments that may come about during the proceedings on the Armed Forces Representative Body Bill. It is an interesting idea that has been taken up by other armed forces around the world, but I think that the responsibility and the nature of the relationship between the chain of command in the British armed forces and the soldiers, sailors and airmen and women that they command is dependent on a fundamentally different relationship, which I think a representative body would be in danger of undermining.

[Carol Monaghan]

I ask the hon. Gentleman to look at how representative bodies work in other NATO countries.

[James Cleverly]

I have, and I do not like it.

Also inherent in this SI are provisions for enlistment, pay and the redress of complaints, and all those things at heart are J1 considerations, so I intend to restrict my short speech to the people carrying out the J1 function—the men and women who serve in our armed forces—and our responsibility and, as the Minister mentioned during his opening speech, our offer to them.

The armed forces currently face a challenge with regard to recruitment and retention. Ironically, it is a challenge that has been brought about through good news. The British economy currently has record low levels of unemployment, including record low levels of youth unemployment. It is the sad truth that it is a lot easier to recruit into the armed forces when there are few jobs available in the civilian world. Therefore, because actually unemployment is at a record low, the talented young men and women that we seek to recruit into our armed forces have other credible options.

The shadow Minister mentioned that the delay in the processing of recruitment applications through Capita has had a detrimental effect on our ability to recruit the brightest and best young people whom we need and want in our armed forces. People who are credible—people who have other employment options—are exactly the people we want to recruit and exactly the people who will be snapped up by civilian employers, who are currently competing with our armed forces to recruit them. We have a duty to improve and speed up the recruitment process—not just a duty, but a self-interest.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we must ensure that we change part of the medical assessment program for recruitment? Those who are diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder—often Asperger’s—should not automatically be disbarred from applying. We are looking to select young men and women who have that sort of skillset—that particular unique kind of mind—and we need to find a way to ensure that the system is changed so that those people make it through the system.

[James Cleverly]

My hon. Friend makes an important point—one that I will touch upon briefly later in my speech—about the changing nature of conflict and the skills mix that we require from young people coming into the armed forces. We need to ensure that we are able to be a meaningful and relevant set of armed forces in the here and now, rather than think about the conflicts that we have had in the past.

[Toby Perkins]

I agree entirely with what the hon. Gentleman is saying about recruitment, but that is only one side of the picture. The other side is the huge number of people who have left the armed forces in the past few years, and people left because they were kind of encouraged to do so by the Government, who made it absolutely clear that they were looking to reduce the size of the British Army. This is not just about recruitment, but about the skills we have lost.

[James Cleverly]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about the loss of skills, and that is particularly true of what may be thought of as legacy skills. We have been very focused on two main conflicts over the past decade or so—Operation Telic and Operation Herrick—but it is important that we are able to be active in a whole range of future potential scenarios or conflicts. This is not necessarily true of the old cold warriors, but we do not want to lose the skills of people who were trained in a more diverse range of potential conflicts. We must ensure that they are able to pass on that knowledge and experience to new generations.

I turn to recruitment. The British Army advert that was rather lazily described as the “snowflake” advert was greeted with a degree of derision. In my experience, that was unfair, and this goes to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan). There was a time in the not too distant past—about a century ago—when there were passionate advocates for the retention of the horse as the main method of conducting conflict, and they fought hard against the mechanisation of the British Army. We have a habit—this has also happened in militaries around the world and throughout history—of fighting the last war, rather than gearing ourselves up to fight the next war.

[Bob Stewart]

The definition of a snowflake—I had to look this up—is apparently someone who whinges a lot. I did 28 years in the Army, and I have never known a soldier who did not whinge, so the snowflakes outside will be joining the snowflakes inside the armed forces.

[James Cleverly]

I thank my hon. and gallant Friend for that intervention. I was once told by my commanding officer that I did not need to worry about much, but if my soldiers stopped moaning, I needed to start worrying. However, the point about the recruitment campaign is that it highlighted the need not only for people who are physically robust and self-reliant, but for people who have empathy and are able to develop and deploy soft skills. When the toughest soldiers in the British Army, the Special Air Service, were deployed during the Malaya insurgency, they really understood the requirement for hearts and minds. Winning conflicts through kinetic means—through bombs and bullets, to pick two words at random—is one way to do it, but doing it through hearts and minds really matters.

I am getting those looks again, so I will draw my remarks to a conclusion shortly. We must make sure that the skills of the young people we recruit and retain in the armed forces match the threats and risks presented not just in the here and now but in the timeframe of their service. The people we are recruiting in the here and now have to be ready, able and capable of matching the threats that could present themselves in 10, 15 and 20 years’ time. That means people with adaptability as a core skill and who have the intellectual flexibility to take on new skills. Lifelong learning should not just be available to people in the civilian world; it should be available to people in the armed forces, too.

I am particularly proud of two things that my party has introduced in government. The first is flexible working throughout the armed forces. It would be unacceptable if talented, well-trained, experienced soldiers, sailors and airwomen were prevented from fully reaching their potential because they have taken maternity leave. Soldiers, sailors and airmen who also wish to make good on their family commitments should also have the opportunity to take periods out of frontline service so they can discharge their familial duties as well as their military duties and not feel that their promotion will be held back because of it. We do not have the luxury of seeing such talented people as disposable items, and we have to make sure they are valued throughout their time of service.

Finally, allied to that is that all roles in the military are now available to any woman who is good enough to discharge them. Quality should be the only metric against which selection is made. The fact that we have now done that and that our armed forces are now gender blind and focused purely on quality is a step in the right direction.

Armed Forces Covenant

James Cleverly Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2018 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

My constituency sits between Carver barracks to the west and Colchester garrison to the east, and while it has a fair few veterans and military families within its geography, it does not have the critical mass to result in the organic wraparound support provided in a more condensed military environment. I am pleased to say, however, that, because of the armed forces covenant, Braintree District Council has fully implemented a series of changes that prioritise the military and military families in the allocation of social housing. It has worked with both Colchester Council and Tendring Council to fund, through the AFC, a project manager to support military families.

It is incredibly important, as we move from an era of very intense military operations, and as the tempo of military commitments thankfully reduces, that we do not allow the level of public awareness and support to see a corresponding reduction. Warrant Officer Class One Glenn Haughton, who was until recently the Army Sergeant Major, the most senior warrant officer in the British Army, summed it up brilliantly when he said that veterans needed not sympathy but empathy, and that they did not want, and should not have, pity, but they absolutely should have support and understanding.

I am sure we are all partially familiar with the Kipling poem, “Tommy Atkins”, and know that, in the abstract, we are terribly supportive of our service personnel and, by extension, their families. We have already heard mention of a number of service charities, including Care after Combat, which has, as one of its principals, my former honorary colonel, General Freddie Viggers. Service charities do fantastic work for those armed forces personnel who are perhaps a little harder to love—the ones who have fallen into criminality, or perhaps addiction and alcoholism, and who need our support just as much as anybody else.

I will finish my brief remarks with one final point. We must always remember that the families of our service personnel are not just chattels, not a problem to be mitigated and worked around, but an essential element and moral component of our fighting power. They are a positive, and deserve our respect, admiration and support, and I am pleased to say that through the armed forces covenant we are seeing that, but I would suggest that this should be a constant watching brief for the whole of Government.

[Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[James Cleverly]

I think I would get a very stern look if I gave way to my right hon. Friend, so unfortunately I will not.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Cleverly Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s commitment to use the reserve forces as a way to get cyber-experts into the field, metaphorically. Will he ensure that they have a career path through the reserve forces that does not cap them because of their niche specialisations?

[Mark Lancaster]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. That is precisely why I was honoured to open the new Defence Cyber School at Shrivenham in March. We recognise that basic cyber-skills will be vital in our armed forces. This will become a separate career branch in time, but we hope that every member of the armed forces will have cyber-skills.

NATO

James Cleverly Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Francois]

My right hon. Friend is right about that, and it is no mistake that NATO’s centre of excellence on cyber-warfare is now located in Estonia.

As I was saying, such an attack would no doubt be accompanied by a considerable disinformation campaign, the widespread employment of deception and fake news, and quite possibly the appearance of large numbers of “little green men”, as we saw in both Crimea and Ukraine, perhaps under the guise of so-called “local defence units”. That would very likely be accompanied by Spetsnaz and other special forces activity, potentially backed up by airborne or air assault forces. It is worth noting that the Russian 76th guards air assault division, based at Pskov, is located only 100 km from the Estonian border.

Any such intervention would probably be covered by a wide-reaching air defence umbrella, including highly capable air defence systems, such as the S300 and S400, to help establish an anti-access area denial—or A2/AD—shield, designed specifically to prevent NATO air power from intervening. In any such scenario, speed would be of the essence, as we saw in Crimea, where the key elements of annexation were effectively carried out in a matter of days. Russia’s likely aim would be to present NATO with a fait accompli, to undermine the article 5 guarantee, which Russia would no doubt regard as a meaningful victory.

How should we best respond to this? In May, the Select Committee took evidence from the Secretary of State for Defence, who is in his place, including on our readiness in the UK to respond to a Baltic scenario. He explained that our two high readiness formations, 16 Air Assault Brigade and 3 Commando Brigade, could be deployed to the Baltics in a matter of days, although it would have to be by air and therefore assumes that air heads would still be in friendly hands. In response to questions, he further explained that it would take about 20 days to deploy a mechanised brigade, whereas to deploy a full war fighting division, as envisaged in SDSR 2015, would take about three months, by which time the conflict could very well be all over. It is obvious from those timings that we would need our NATO allies, especially US air power, to seek to hold the ring until heavier reinforcements could arrive.

What is to be done? First, NATO would have to be prepared to fight and win an intense information campaign, in which television cameras would arguably be more powerful than missiles. The Skripal case showed that in fact the west was prepared to stand together quite impressively in response to Russian misinformation, expelling more than 100 Russian diplomats. I believe that really hurt the Russians.

[James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that in the era of hybrid warfare and conflict in front of cameras, it is more important than ever that our service personnel feel that if they make difficult decisions in the moment they will be protected through their lives? I raise this because of the intrusion of cameras in conflict.

[Mr Speaker]

May I gently say that the time limit will have to be reduced for subsequent speakers at this rate? I say that not by way of complaint, but as a piece of information to the House.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Cleverly Excerpts

Monday 5th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

It actually works the other way around, but I agree with the hon. Gentleman in that I would like to see an increase of more than 1%. However, I go back to the rather delicate point, which was received with a bit of hostility by Opposition Members, that we cannot lose sight of the fact that they must have a sense of responsibility in making sure we have a strong economy, so that we can increase public sector pay across the board.

If I may, I will just underline the wider point I made last week that without strong defence in this fast-changing and, indeed, dangerous world, a strong economy cannot in fact be guaranteed. That is why I said that 2% of GDP on defence is not enough. Thanks to the efforts of this Defence Secretary, we now have an opportunity to make the case and to put the argument through the defence modernisation programme for the more robust defence posture that will ensure we retain access to the very vital international markets that will help our economy.

[James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

13. What contribution the UK is making to NATO reassurance operations in Estonia and Poland.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mark Lancaster)]

The UK has a key role in NATO’s enhanced forward presence by leading a battlegroup in Estonia and contributing to a US-led battlegroup in Poland. We have deployed about 800 personnel to Estonia and about 150 to Poland. These deployments are but part of our broader commitment to NATO and its assurance measures on the alliance’s eastern flank.

[James Cleverly]

I thank the Minister for that response. Does he agree with me that both our security and our economy rely on the confidence placed in us by our NATO allies that we will, in the event of an article 5 situation, be both ready and willing to support our eastern flank NATO allies?

[Mark Lancaster]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. It is absolutely right that hard power is an important part of maintaining our defence and security. Indeed, the vice-chief of the defence staff said the same last week, and he made a strong case for spending more on defence. Our armed forces and our civilians in defence must and do work in partnership with other Departments in international development and, indeed, diplomacy.

Armed Forces Pay

James Cleverly Excerpts

Wednesday 1st November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank Opposition Front Benchers for calling this debate.

I was recently approached by the wife of a serving member of the armed forces who described to me the daily struggle that her family face in the light of the fact that her husband, a private in the Army, has not had a real-terms pay increase under this Government. In fact, figures from the Armed Forces Pay Review Body show that they have had a 5.3% real-terms reduction in pay since 2010. As with many families of service personnel, they rely on this income due to the fact that a life in the military often stations families away from their support networks, with real financial and childcare implications. She recently received a letter from the Combined Accommodation Assessment System, or CAAS, which outlines a year-on-year increase in the charges for their quarters. How does the Minister suggest that this family make ends meet as they face greater charges on the one hand and a real-terms pay cut on the other?

[James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

rose—

[Alex Sobel]

I am sorry, but I must make progress.

On top of this, as a family of five, they have been hit hard by the Government’s two-child cap on child benefit. The personal experience of the woman I spoke to is reflected in the findings of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body, whose latest report says:

“A common theme from our visits was that the one per cent basic pay award for 2016-17 was not perceived as an increase as it coincided with increases in National Insurance, changes in tax credits and CAAS increases…that left a number of Service personnel seeing a reduction in take home pay”.

It is no wonder, given these circumstances, that servicemen and women are leaving the profession and that the armed forces are now facing a recruitment and retention crisis.

Like most Members on both sides of the House, I am wearing a poppy to commemorate and honour those who have sacrificed their lives in the service of our country. The best way to honour those who put themselves at risk is to make sure that their families are not living hand to mouth. As my former constituent said to me—she is no longer my constituent as the family have been stationed away from her home county of Yorkshire for some time—she is one more ill-advised Government reform away from not being able to afford to feed her family. This is again reflected in the report of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body, which says:

“On levels of pay generally, our visit programme made clear that Service personnel are becoming increasingly frustrated with public sector pay policy.”

Last week, we saw a BBC “Panorama” programme that showed a mental health nurse brought to tears, a firefighter forced to take a second job, and a homeless police officer. If we add to that the family of an Army private struggling to cope, we get a full picture of the destruction that is caused by this Government’s systemic squeeze on living standards and public sector pay. I would like Ministers to consider this: we once built a land fit for heroes—what has happened?

Armed Forces (Flexible Working) Bill [Lords]

James Cleverly Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 30th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

I rise to support the Bill. Having recently served on the Finance Bill Committee, one realises that there is a beauty in brevity, and the two pages of this Bill are indeed beautiful. They are beautiful in what they seek to do, which goes to prove that a Bill does not have to be large in stature to be effective.

During my time in the reserve forces, I interacted with a number of friends and colleagues in the Regular Army and the regular services who dealt on an uncomfortably regular basis with members of their service going to them as their officer to say, “Boss, I am going to have to leave because my recent service has been very intense and if I want to keep my family together, I am going to have to enter ‘First UK Civ. Div.’”. In this place, we would call that civilian employment. I know that a number of my colleagues were hugely disappointed, but they understood that these soldiers, sailors and Air Force personnel would have to put their family first, and they reluctantly let them go. That was the right thing for these people to do, but unfortunately it was a loss to the service.

It is worth remembering that the patterns of military service we are now used to were put in place at a time when a single employer for life was the norm in civilian employment, and the idea that the bloke would go off to earn all the money for the family and the wife would be happy to stay at home looking after the children was also the norm. The world of work in the civilian sphere has changed beyond recognition. It is now perfectly normal to have two working parents in a household. It is now perfectly normal for the woman in the household to have the more significant and high-earning job, and for the man in the household to be the one who bends their working life around the needs—[Interruption.] Of the wife, indeed. There are plenty of examples in the Chamber this evening of that happening, yet until this Bill is passed it will still be the norm in this area for the woman in a relationship to have to sacrifice her career for that of her husband. Surely in 2017 that should no longer necessarily be the case.

I was struck by the point made by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) that we have few women in very senior roles in the armed forces. That is a shame, and it weakens us at a point in time when we now recognise that the diversity of experience and knowledge is an important element in successful planning for not just operations, but the background work in which our armed forces take part. One Opposition Member made the point—I apologise for not recalling who it was—that it is not enough just to pass this Bill, important though it is; it is also important that we drive through a cultural change in the armed forces. The hon. and gallant Members who have served will know that there is an unwritten rhythm to the perfect military career. Someone becomes a platoon commander at a certain age and a company second-in-command at another, they go to staff college at this point and then become a brigade chief of staff, before going on to command a sub-unit and then hit other markers at other points. That is the route to high command in the armed forces. It is great for completely flexible men, but it is much harder to hit those career markers if you need to take time off to have children, and that massively disadvantages women.

Hopefully the Bill will become an Act, after which the acme of its success will be that if a man needs to take time off from that career rhythm to support his family—his children, an elderly relative or whoever it might be—he still feels that he has as much chance of getting to high command, should his talent lead him there, as a woman. As the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) said, there must be no stigma for either a man or a woman in taking advantage of flexible working.

[Ruth Smeeth]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the cultural change we need to see is a senior officer being the first person to access flexible working? That would send the right message to the rest of the force about how the changes should be implemented and how we should operate.

[James Cleverly]

That is not something I had thought of, but it is an important point. If not someone at a very senior rank—there might be the implication that they had already cashed in their chips so were fine—I would love it and it would be interesting to see one of the potential high fliers take up flexible working. Those Members who have been involved in one of the numerous all-party groups on the armed forces all have a little shopping list of the people who could be the service chiefs of the future. Were one of those marked people, the future high fliers, to say, “I’m going to take advantage of this and send a really powerful signal that it will not carry any stigma”, that would be important.

I hope that the Bill will drive a change in attitudes towards service leavers. While I was waiting to speak, I took part in an exchange on social media in which someone reminded me that traditionally the armed forces have not been very good at dealing with people on their way out. I have always been massively frustrated by that, because those people are the recruiters of the future. It is remarkable that someone who might have had decades of happy service, whether in dark blue, light blue or green, and who could have gone on to become a fantastic recruiter for their branch of the armed forces, could get messed about so comprehensively in their last few weeks and months of service that when they finally hit civvy street the only thing they have to say is what an awful experience they had. That seems a massive waste. Perhaps, through this model of flexibility of service, the armed forces will get better at dealing with people as they move from full-time service to part-time or flexible service, from part-time service to reserve service, and from reserve service to civilian life, in such a way that those people become and remain powerful recruiters for their branch of the armed forces.

The changes in the Bill will need careful management, but this agenda should not be avoided just because of that. We will need to make sure that flexible working is not used as a way to duck out of a particularly bad potential deployment—we all know that there are good and bad deployments. We must also make sure that the availability of flexible working is well communicated throughout people’s service life, so that they have thought about it before they need to do it, rather than just afterwards. I do not want to see anyone else sacrifice either their career because of their family or their family life because of their career. The Bill is a big step forward and I commend it to the House.

Armed Forces

James Cleverly Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger; I appreciate the opportunity to be squeezed into the debate, and I thank my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty) for securing this important and timely debate. I want to focus on a small number of issues that have been taxing my mind for some time, with regard to the structure of the British armed forces. A number of hon. Members have spoken with great knowledge about the senior service, the Royal Navy. No one has specifically discussed the RAF, and a crueller man than I am might suggest that that is because they are the RAF, and they kind of deserve it—but I would not want anyone to think that. [Interruption.] Ah, no— my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts) mentioned the RAF, so never mind, that is forgiven.

I want to focus on the Army, but some things that I say will be broadly applicable to the armed forces as a whole. I will echo some of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Witney, to the effect that the key word is flexibility. I was pleased that Her Majesty outlined in her Gracious Speech the Government’s willingness to introduce the Armed Forces (Flexible Working) Bill. This is the right time, if not perhaps slightly overdue, to recognise the different demographics of people joining the armed forces. I cannot help thinking that if we were better at managing flexible working for armed forces personnel we would not lose so many people at the pinch point where personal and family circumstances and military commitments conspire to put them under pressure that forces them to leave. If we could find a way to manage the transitions from full-time to part-time and back, we would not lose so many highly experienced and important individuals.

I am going to be an unapologetic nerd on the subject of equipment. As a Conservative, I obviously believe that all the questions of the future are answered somewhere in the past, and I draw the Minister’s attention to other periods in our military history when we have been under huge—often existential—threat as well as severe financial limitations. It should be noted that in the brigades and divisions that went ashore at Normandy the Sherman tank platform had commonality across a wide range of weapon systems. There were the standard Shermans, with the Sherman Firefly in support, the Sexton 25-pounder armoured gun and the Achilles anti-tank gun, all based on a common Sherman chassis, which meant that spares and repairs were easily and efficiently delivered to the front line. I welcome the fact that we are moving to a shared platform now for our strike brigades, and I urge Ministers not to do what we have done throughout our history, which is to start with the best intentions for commonality and shared platforms, and then drift until finally the hard-working men and women in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers are presented with a plethora of platforms that they have to repair and maintain during conflict. Flexibility as to people and platforms must be the watchword.