Armed Forces

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, on 22 October, in the third presidential debate, Mitt Romney said:

“Our Navy is old—excuse me, our Navy is smaller now than at any time since 1917 … That’s unacceptable to me. I want to make sure that we have the ships that are required by our Navy. Our Air Force is older and smaller than at any time since it was founded in”—

he got the date wrong—

“1947 … we’ve always had the strategy of saying we could fight in two conflicts at once. Now we’re changing to one conflict. Look, this, in my view, is the highest responsibility of the President of the United States, which is to maintain the safety of the American people. And I will not cut our military budget by a trillion dollars … That, in my view is making our future less certain and less secure”.

President Obama responded:

“I think Governor Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works. You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military has changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers”—

we do not—

“where planes land on them. We have these ships that go under water, nuclear submarines”.

Long may they exist. We need them. He continued:

“And so the question is … what are our capabilities? And so when I sit down with the Secretary of the Navy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we determine how are we going to be best able to meet all of our defense needs in a way that also keeps faith with our troops, that also makes sure that our veterans have the kind of support that they need when they come home”.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, and the noble Lord, Lord Davies, have said, morale in our Armed Forces is very low. There is no running away from that. I have heard it first hand from all the services. I am glad the Government have made the military covenant a priority, but are we honouring it? With the cuts that we are making, are we diminishing esprit de corps? The services are called the “services” because they serve and continue to serve us.

Peace in our time is a utopian dream that has never existed and, sadly, probably never will. As we have heard, we have been in Afghanistan since 2001, which is now longer than the First and Second World Wars combined. In his brilliant speech, the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, spoke about the whole debate of why we are there. Why are we there? What is achieved? What will people say about us when we leave? Are we leaving too early? Did we get the job done? We are meant to be securing the UK that is why we went there in the first place. We were right to go there in the first place, but were we right to stay there all this time and are we right to leave when we are going to leave? Are they going to laugh and say, “Oh well, the Russians were here and they left and look what happened. Now they have come, they are going, look at what is going to happen”? It is tough.

What is the role of the Armed Forces? We are a wonderful, caring nation. I have been privileged to support and be involved with institutions such as the Army Benevolent Fund, a soldiers’ charity that does amazing work; I have been a commissioner of the Royal Hospital; we have got Help for Heroes, we have got the Gurkha Welfare Trust—we are fantastic. We have Remembrance Sunday coming up where we remember not only the fallen but those who have served and sacrificed and those who continue to serve and sacrifice today. I was president of the commemoration committee of the memorial gates at Constitution Hill, and I continue to serve on its committee, founded by the noble Baroness, Lady Flather. The gates commemorate the sacrifice and service of the 5 million volunteers from the Indian sub-continent, Africa and the Caribbean. Without those 5 million individuals, we would not be sitting here doing what we are doing today; we would not be a free world.

In my tiny community of Zoroastrian Parsees, which now numbers fewer than 70,000 in India, my late father, Lieutenant-General Bilimoria, was commissioned into the Indian Army. His father, my grandfather, Brigadier Bilimoria, was commissioned from Sandhurst. My father’s cousin, Lieutenant-General Jungoo Satarawalla, from my father’s regiment, the 5th Gurkha Rifles (Frontier Force), was awarded the Military Cross in the Second World War, as was India’s first Field Marshal, Sam Manekshaw, also a Zoroastrian. My maternal grandfather, J D Italia, served as a squadron leader in the Royal Indian Air Force during the Second World War. I could on with a long list of Zoroastrian Parsees from this tiny community who have served in the British Armed Forces.

As to the Gurkhas, what an amazing contribution they have made to Britain over centuries. My father’s battalion, 2nd Battalion 5th Gurkha Rifles (Frontier Force), was awarded three Victoria Crosses in the Second World War—and those three names are inscribed in the roof of the pavilion at the memorial gates on Constitution Hill. I am so happy that the previous Government eventually recognised the contribution of the Gurkhas, allowing Gurkhas who wished to settle in this country after they retired to do so.

We now have Future Force 2020 and we had the SDSR in 2010—but the SDSR was all about means and not about ends. We have heard passionately from the noble Lord, Lord Judd, that we do not have any aircraft carriers. We got rid of our Harriers for a song and we do not have our Nimrods. What happened straight after that? In autumn 2010, I spoke in the debate on the SDSR and said that we are short-sighted. We did not predict the Falklands. No one predicted 9/11. We do not know what is going to happen or what is around the corner. What happened around the corner? We had the Arab spring and Libya. What we needed was our aircraft carriers. We were sending Typhoons all the way from Coningsby in Lincolnshire. When are we going to learn that we need these aircraft carriers?

Now, two years later, what do we have? We have troop cuts. When my father commanded the central Indian Army, he had 350,000 troops under his command. When he commanded a corps before he became an army commander, his corps was comprised of over 100,000 troops. We announced the troop cuts, and what happened? There was a problem with G4S and the security of the Olympic Games. As we have heard in the debate, who stepped in? Our wonderful troops stepped in. When I went to the Olympics and saw our troops, I thanked every one of them personally because they saved the day. We are now to have a British Army of fewer than 80,000 troops.

This country is famous for its soft power. We are so lucky because we have the BBC, the Royal Family, our history, London, which is the greatest of the world’s great cities, our tourism and the Olympics. We publish the Economist and the FT; we have the City of London, and we have Oxford and Cambridge. I could go on. We are one of the top 10 economies in the world, but soft power is useless without hard power. In terms of population, we rank 22nd in the world, and yet however we are ranked as an economy or a defence power, we are in the top 10 in the world. We punch above our weight the whole time, and yet today we are devoting half the percentage of our GDP spending on defence than we did 30 years ago, in 1982—the time of the Falklands war. You could argue that there was the Cold War back then, but we are in a war that is far more uncertain. We do not know what is around the corner. We did not know how long we would spend in Afghanistan when we went there. No one, however much we debate Afghanistan, should ever say that even one of our troops has made that sacrifice in vain. The troops have been doing their duty. They have been attempting to help a nation and to help our security over here. We should always be grateful for that and inspired by what they have done for us.

I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, to the Front Bench, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Astor, who is a true champion of the armed services; I have seen that for myself. His heart is in the right place and we always appreciate what the noble Lord does.

Our Armed Forces are the best of the best in every way. Our regiments are the elite, and their history is phenomenal. I asked one of our legendary sergeant-majors at the Royal Hospital Chelsea what he felt about all these cuts. He was dismayed and said, “What people do not know is the term ‘espirit de corps’. Yes, we fight for our country, but we also fight for our regiment and for the comrade who is right next to us. We fight for each other”. When you amalgamate regiments, cut out battalions and then lump them all together, you are cutting away history and espirit de corps. Backing for the Armed Forces in this country is almost at an all-time high; it is fantastic. Yet in many ways I feel that the Government’s support for the forces is low. That is both frightening and disappointing when we look at the sacrifices that are made.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, said, it is not just the soldiers and service people who make a sacrifice, it is also their families. I remember as a 10 year-old that when my father went to fight for the liberation of Bangladesh, I would read the papers every single day, terrified that my father’s name would be in them. That is how I remember being a child in an army family; I know what it is like. I also know what my mother felt like. Do we really look after the families well? The noble Baroness spoke passionately and stressed that what leads to low morale and problems is the uncertainty. It was the word she used most often. What are the Government doing about it? Putting our hand on our heart, are we fulfilling our side of the military covenant?

In his excellent speech, the noble Lord, Lord King, said that nowadays we talk about wars of necessity and wars of choice. We had to go to war in the Falklands, and we had to go to war in Kuwait. We had to go to Afghanistan in 2001. With hindsight, Iraq in 2003 was a huge mistake, but let us think of the practicalities. The United States, our biggest ally, went to Iraq. We regret having gone, but did we have that much of a choice? The bottom line is that we have to be prepared for the unexpected. The noble Lord, Lord King, also talked about conventional wars and unconventional wars. When my father took over command of the central Indian Army just over 20 years ago, one of the first things he did was to go to Sri Lanka, where there were a lot of his troops, and in his view that was resulting in conflict. Within two weeks of returning from his visit, the Indian troops were withdrawn. It has taken more than two decades for the issue to be resolved by the Sri Lankans themselves.

In many cases, we do not know what is going to happen. We might intervene, but then we do not know how long it is going to last. The noble Lord, Lord King, also talked about defence being the number one priority, yet we have had five defence Secretaries in five years. I am sorry to say that under this Government, we have had two in just over two years. You cannot say that you are taking defence seriously if you do that. It is one of the most important jobs in government. Cutting is easy, but training up troops again is difficult. I have full respect for the Territorial Army, but should we rely on it? The Territorial Army should be there as a support, not as something to be relied on. We have to rely on our main Armed Forces for the security of this nation.

Let us take a look at international comparisons just within NATO. I am using the 2010 figures, from before the cuts. In 2010, France had 234,000 service people, while Germany had 246,000. We had 198,000, while the Italians had 193,000. Soon the Italians will have more service people than us. The Americans have 1.4 million service people, and we are never going to compete with them. I think that we are cutting too much and that is not right for the safety of this country.

I am going to conclude by quoting from a poem sent by my mother’s cousin in honour of my father. There is no name for the author, so I shall just quote an extract from it. It is called “The Final Inspection”:

“The soldier stood and faced God,

which must always come to pass.

He hoped his shoes were shining,

Just as brightly as his brass.

The soldier squared his shoulders and said,

I’ve had to work most Sundays,

and at times my talk was tough.

And sometimes I’ve been violent,

Because the world is awfully rough.

And I never passed a cry for help,

Though at times I shook with fear.

And sometimes, God, forgive me,

I’ve wept unmanly tears.

If you’ve a place for me here, Lord,

It needn’t be so grand.

I never expected or had too much,

But if you don’t, I’ll understand.

There was a silence all around the throne,

Where the saints had often trod.

As the soldier waited quietly,

For the judgment of his God.

‘Step forward now, you soldier,

You’ve borne your burdens well.

Walk peacefully on Heaven’s streets,

You’ve done your time in Hell’.”

We can never thank our troops enough for their service and sacrifice or show them enough gratitude for what they do for us every day. All we can say is thank you, thank you, thank you.