UK Undersea Infrastructure: Hostile Activity

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Baroness Goldie

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My noble friend will understand that, coming from Scotland where ferries have become a very sensitive issue, I would applaud any approach which produced vessels where and when they were needed. My noble friend makes an important point. The commissioning and buying of this vessel—as I say, it is being refurbished in readiness for operational activity—is an important experience for the MoD. There are lessons we can learn. There may be merit, as my noble friend rightly says, in not looking so closely at the exquisite ultimate product but looking to what we need now and taking steps to get it.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, a couple of years ago the Government witnessed the cutting of a power cable to the Isles of Scilly, putting the mains off for about three months. I asked the Minister at the time whether they were going to claim compensation. They said, “No, it’s a private sector company so it can do what it likes”. I hope that things have changed.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

That area of responsibility, the noble Lord will understand, is slightly outwith my ministerial bailiwick, but I am sure his remarks have been heard by the appropriate department.

Defence: Type 45 Destroyers

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Baroness Goldie

Monday 10th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

As the noble Viscount will be aware from the refreshed national shipbuilding strategy, which is one of the most exciting developments we have seen for shipbuilding in the UK, there is a desire to nourish, nurture, sustain and fortify our indigenous shipbuilding industry. We are very anxious to do that, but we have never closed our minds to procuring elsewhere if that is what is required in the best interests of the country. At the end of the day, the shipbuilding strategy covers commercial activity, not just MoD activity.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister said that the work being done on the destroyers will make them more resilient. That is really good, but a few months ago none of them was operational, as other noble Lords have said. We have now got one of our two aircraft carriers with a bent prop somewhere in Rosyth. Have we got anything that works first time these days?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

The noble Lord is being slightly mischievous and, as he is well aware, yes, we have a lot of ships that work extremely well. They have been much in evidence, not least when they were supporting the carrier strike group and were part of that global support activity. They have also been active in various arenas, as the noble Lord is well aware. As I said to the noble Lord, Lord West, I cannot comment in detail on operational activity, but we are satisfied that our operational requirements are being met.

Ukraine Update

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Baroness Goldie

Monday 5th September 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness gave a wonderful summary of where the Government have got to. I want to look at the grain export issue. I congratulate the Government on what they are doing in helping to open up the Black Sea. The noble Baroness will know that I have been involved in an international task force to improve the volume of grain exported by rail, but the Black Sea is the answer.

I met some friends from Romania in the summer. They said that so many mines were being washed up in the Black Sea, at Constanţa and the coast nearby—Russian ones that have lost their tether—that people are forbidden to go into the sea. Are the Government or their allies doing anything to minesweep a channel? We do not want any of these ships—and the more there are the better—to hit mines and be damaged.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

That is a very important question. As the noble Lord will be aware, we do not have Royal Navy deployment in the Black Sea, but I understand that we have been amenable to providing training on countermine measures and have offered support to Turkey if Turkey would find that helpful. As the noble Lord will be aware, Turkey has deployed the Montreux convention and therefore there is very restricted activity. However, I reassure the noble Lord that if help is required by Turkey and advice and help are sought from the UK, we will look at that very sympathetically.

Ukraine

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Baroness Goldie

Tuesday 18th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

As I said earlier, the UK is looking at a package of broad and high-impact sanctions to raise the cost of any further aggressive actions by President Putin. I cannot comment on the detail of what these proposals are, but we are ready to act—and, as my right honourable friend in the other place indicated yesterday, we are not alone. A range of sanctions is available that are going to be enacted if there is any deterioration in the situation.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

There are terrible things going on in Belarus, between Belarus and Poland. I have some friends in the Baltic states who are reporting similar troop build-ups along the frontiers with Russia there. I suspect similar things are happening towards the south, east of the Black Sea. Are the Government aware of Mr Putin’s attempts, shall we say, to recreate the old Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and what are we doing about it? Are we just going to wait till it gets worse?

Ajax Noise and Vibration Review

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Baroness Goldie

Thursday 16th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, listening to the questions and the Minister’s answers persuades me that this is a complete disaster, as we have debated in your Lordships’ House quite a few times now, and it does not seem to be getting any better. I am glad that some further work has been done; we have now spent billions on this, apparently.

I wonder how it is possible that the Army top brass has allowed the situation to get this far without coming along and explaining why it has got so expensive and why it does not work properly. In the previous debate, in addition to the effect on the soldiers inside the tank, there was the question of whether the thing can go backwards up a step or something, and I think I made a comment that the British Army probably does not think we ever retreat so it does not matter—I hope it has some better reasons than that for saying what it has. Nor can it fire on the move or do its designed speed. If any private company were ordering something at a hundredth of the cost of this thing and made these kinds of mistakes, they would have been sacked.

This has also been debated before in your Lordships’ House, but Ajax came out very badly in the Infrastructure and Projects Authority annual report. I remember asking at the time: do Ministers ever read that report, and do they take action? It is clear that in this case they have not, otherwise they would have done something by now to get the answers. I appreciate that the report is a step in that direction, but they need to take stronger action to control the costs.

My last question is: why do we need this at all? Is it really part of the Army’s necessary equipment? Do we need to spend all this money on tanks? I do not know where we deploy them apart from Salisbury Plain. Is it not time that someone took a step back and said, “Do we, as a medium-sized power in the world, need tanks that can’t go backwards and cause injury to the people inside them?” We do not seem to be questioning it.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I will respond to the noble Lord’s questions in reverse order. Yes, Ajax is an important capability for the future British Army. It will provide a mobile, resilient and crewed ISTAR capability that is optimised for “find, understand and exploit” effects. It will offer the newest and most technologically advanced capabilities, equipped with a best-in-class sensor suite and other cutting-edge technological aids. It is a very important piece of equipment and I think that is universally acknowledged.

The contract for this is a firm-price contract. We know what the price is. It is now down to the company, in collaboration with the MoD, to resolve the issues that have been causing the noise and vibration.

The noble Lord raised the question of the IPA report. The IPA released its public data in July 2021, showing that the Ajax programme had moved from amber to red status back in April 2021. The then senior responsible owner asked the IPA to review the programme over concerns that it was not progressing as it should be. However, as the health and safety report indicates, that is just one element of a very confused system of accountability, communication, acknowledgement of warnings and reaction to warnings. The noble Lord is right to express concern about that, and I will not diminish the significance of his question. If you look at the recommendations of the health and safety report, there is a lot of comfort to be derived from it, not only in relation to the Ajax programme but the relevance of some of these recommendations to the wider procurement programme. The noble Lord is correct that there are still questions to be answered. That will fall within the jurisdiction of the forthcoming follow-on review.

Army Restructuring: Future Soldier

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Baroness Goldie

Thursday 25th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My noble friend covered a lot of ground there. Let me see if I can deal with some of the points. He mentioned the possibility of too many chiefs, but I would make two observations. First, as was indicated in the Statement, at Army headquarters, there will be a 40% drop in the number of regular Army personnel, so that is one way of reassuring the Chamber that we are alert to the need to simplify the structures. The other thing implicit in the new structures is that we are providing opportunities for people to join and see career progress. If we have chiefs, we want them to be the right people —in my case, I want them to be women as well as men. If we can broaden the base, which is what this is all about, and provide more channels for activity and for operational work, we will get more people into these units, and they will see a fulfilling career ahead of them.

My noble friend was a little pessimistic about whether we are biting off more than we can chew. I would say no, we are not. The Army will continue to be a fighting entity and to have a warfighting division at its heart. The future structure will comprise two deployable manoeuvre divisions—the 1st and 3rd (UK) Divisions—and one information, manoeuvre and unconventional warfare division, which is the 6th (UK) Division. Thought has been given to what we are trying to do and how we do it.

On the Challenger tank, I am afraid my mechanical engineering knowledge is way short of what is necessary to reply to my noble friend. I will offer to write to him, which I hope is acceptable to him. His final question was on the important matter of the welfare of our Armed Forces. Indeed, I have a sense of déjà vu here, because we talked about this at length in our debates on the Armed Forces Bill. At the heart of what the Government and the MoD do with our Armed Forces is their welfare and well-being. Very important developments have been made in that field. I would hope that my noble friend’s prognosis as to the future would not manifest greater instances of people suffering from post-operational trauma or from mental health issues. We want to ensure that our Armed Forces personnel operate in environments where, with the support and advice that they get, they are spared that. If there are people who are unfortunately affected by such health conditions, we absolutely will make sure that we are in there supporting them, whether directly within their Armed Force environment or through many of the other support agencies available in conjunction with the MoD and the NHS.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, there are many things in the Minister’s Statement that I welcome, and a more high-tech, more professional military with the most modern equipment is something that I think we all welcome. What worries me is that the Statement mentioned the word “global” four times. Do we really think we are a global power any more? We have one aircraft carrier, I think, which is fiddling around in the China Sea; maybe it has some Ajax tanks on trial there, but do we think we are going to invade China with it? We are getting to be a bit naive on this. Surely the time has come to get rid of some of this gear and concentrate on the humanitarian elements that the Army does and has done so very well, and to cut out some of these vanity projects that, to me, are just a massive waste of money.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I can see that the noble Lord is not filled with festive enthusiasm for the Statement. I disagree with his assessment; I think that being a global power is not about chest-beating or trying to talk big and look big. Being a global power is about trying to make sure that, where you can work with allies and partners who share the same values, then, together on a global basis, you can influence agendas and bring support to where it may be required.

The noble Lord said that he thought we had one aircraft carrier. I am pleased to inform him that we in fact have two. I am also pleased to inform him that Carrier Strike Group 21, which has been operating over the last few months, most recently in south-east Asia and the Indo-Pacific, has proved an amazingly effective convening power. I can tell the noble Lord at first hand that the interest of other powers in what we have been doing has been extraordinary. They want to understand what we are doing, they want to visit and be on the carrier, and they want to be part of that activity. It is not about going around the world threatening people; it is simply making sure that we are a global presence, that we have a convening power and that we can reassure our friends and allies in different parts of the world that we are in the business of wanting to stand with them, shoulder to shoulder, and to support them if they feel in any way intimidated, never mind threatened. That is what we try to do.

The noble Lord suggested that there is a binary choice between having an effective defence capability—which of course is what the Government want and, I would argue, is very much what we do have—and dealing with humanitarian challenges. It is not a binary choice; the obligation of a responsible state is to deal with both. It is in fact our naval and military capabilities that enable us to respond to humanitarian situations. He makes an important point, but I do not think that it is a question of one or the other—you try to address both.

I certainly disagree with his somewhat depressed assessment of where we are. What we are doing with our defence capability in the United Kingdom is positive, strong, necessary, effective and, let me tell him, much admired, not least in NATO. He has a vision of what is meant by the phrase “global power”, but it is not about some Victorian caricature of people strutting around looking self-important; it is being at the cutting-edge of the real-life, 21st-century global existence and trying to be a presence for good within that.

Royal Yacht

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Baroness Goldie

Tuesday 13th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con) [V]]

As I indicated, the MoD is one government department but we operate in conjunction with others. We consider it our duty to support these other government departments in their respective obligations and missions. As I also indicated earlier, the MoD spend on shipbuilding will double to over £1.7 billion a year over the life of this Parliament, while the national flagship is less than 0.1% of that defence budget over the next four years.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I would like to explore why the MoD is the right department to take forward this vanity project. When we debated its record on procurement a couple of weeks ago, we heard that the 400 tanks it had ordered cannot reverse, cannot go forward very fast and cannot fire on the move. The staff inside also had to be changed every hour and a half because it was too noisy. Why is the MoD the right department to procure this, rather than the business department?

[Baroness Goldie (Con) [V]]

As I indicated on a previous question, the Defence Secretary is the Government’s shipbuilding tsar and the MoD’s role as the lead department for this project reflects our knowledge and experience in shipbuilding and procurement. That has been a very active part of our defence engagement and continues to be so, with a really proud and substantial shipbuilding programme in process.