Armed Forces: Resilience

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, on 28 November, just under two months ago, I sat opposite Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet. Let me quote from his speech:

“As Edmund Burke argued, circumstances and context are everything. And today the pace of geopolitical change is intensifying. Our adversaries and competitors plan for the long term. After years of pushing at the boundaries, Russia is challenging the fundamental principles of the UN Charter. China is conspicuously competing for global influence using all the levers of state power. In the face of these challenges, short-termism or wishful thinking will not suffice.”


We have heard many brilliant speeches. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, said that size matters. What is the reality? The noble Lord, Lord Empey, has just talked about this. The number of recruits enlisted in the UK’s Armed Forces has dropped by 30% as Russia carries on attacking Ukraine. There was a 17% rise in experienced personnel signing off in the year ending September 2022. Our excellent Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Patrick Sanders, has warned that the country is weaker after donating so much equipment to Ukraine.

The reality is that the Army is shrinking to its smallest size since the Napoleonic wars. By 2025, it will be down to 73,000 troops. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, for initiating this debate. In the debate we had in 2019 to celebrate the anniversary of NATO, which was well before the Ukraine war, I remember saying very categorically that we need to increase expenditure on defence to 3% of GDP. Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, in their irrational exuberance, lasted for just a few days, but they were right on one thing: they wanted to increase defence expenditure to 3% of GDP. My noble and gallant friend Lord Stirrup said that the Treasury needs a more innovative approach and that critical mass matters. My late father, Lieutenant General Bilimoria, commanded a corps of 110,000 troops on the Pakistan border in Punjab and Rajasthan. The Central Command, of which he was commander-in-chief, had 350,000 troops.

NATO matters. When I was president of the CBI, the Ukraine war started and the following week I was invited by the EU ambassador to be the guest speaker at his weekly meeting of all 27 EU ambassadors. I said directly to the ambassadors of Sweden and Finland: “Are you now going to join NATO?” and they said, “We are ready to join in five minutes.” Thankfully, they are now joining. Of course, the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, who has phenomenal experience as a former Secretary-General of NATO, implemented Article 5. The reality is that NATO will stand together. People say, “What if Putin attacks Latvia or Lithuania?” We will stand and Article 5, I guarantee, will be implemented.

As the president of CBI, one of my proudest moments was straight after the war started. I reached out to Vadym Prystaiko, the Ukrainian ambassador, who has become a good friend, and asked how British business could help. In his office, we held a virtual meeting with leaders of British industry. Since the week after the war started, we have sent millions of ration packs to the troops in Ukraine. We sent medical kits that they did not have, we sent food parcels for people who are starving in the food basket of the world, and now, thankfully, the USA and the UK, above everyone else, although now everyone else is joining in, are sending the tanks in. Will the Minister say whether we should be sending more? Should we be sending missiles with a range of more than 200 miles? Should we be sending aircraft? I get asked that question all the time.

To quote again from the Prime Minister’s Lord Mayor’s Banquet speech:

“By protecting Ukraine, we protect ourselves. With the fall of Kabul, the pandemic, the economic strife, some said the West was weak. In fact, our response in Ukraine has shown the depth of our collective resolve. Sweden and Finland are joining NATO.”


How far are we prepared to go? How scared are we about retaliation from Russia? If we want to help Ukraine win this war, it is in reality our war for freedom and democracy.

The noble Lord, Lord Hintze, said that he is an honorary captain in the Royal Navy. I am proud to be an honorary group captain in 601 Squadron of the Royal Air Force. This was a very famous squadron that performed very well and with great valour in World War II in the Battle of Britain and in Malta and North Africa, and it has now been revived. The way in which we look after veterans in this country is not good enough. The Americans are so much better. People wear their uniforms with pride. Members of the public respect that uniform. In India, my 86 year-old mother can go into a canteen or a military hospital for the rest of her life. Veterans are looked after. I suggest that we do more. Does the Minister agree?

I am very proud to chair the Memorial Gates Trust, which established the memorial gates on Constitution Hill, which were inaugurated by Her Majesty the Queen 20 years ago. The noble Baroness, Lady Flather, had a huge role to play. The gates are there to commemorate and remember the five million volunteers from south Asia, Africa and the Caribbean who served in the First and Second World Wars. In the roof of the pavilion next to the gates are the names of all those who were awarded the Victoria Cross or the George Cross, including three from my father’s battalion, the 2/5th Gorkha Rifles (Frontier Force), who were awarded the Victoria Cross.

Earlier this month, I was in Jodhpur with His Highness Gaj Singh, the Maharaja of Jodhpur, to celebrate his 70th birthday. At the celebrations, I met Brigadier Jodha, whose grandfather led the charge in the Battle of Haifa at the end of the First World War in 1918. I was privileged to speak at an event here in the House of Lords to celebrate and commemorate the centenary. It was the Jodhpur Lancers, the Hyderabad Lancers and the Mysore Lancers against the Turks in one of the last cavalry charges against machine-guns, and they won. This is the bravery. This is the reputation that this country has always had.

It was Field-Marshal Manekshaw, the former Chief of the Army Staff of the Indian Army, who said:

“If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying or he is a Gurkha.”


That is their bravery. We are lucky: we still have thousands of Gurkhas, and I want reassurance from the Government that we will never cut our Gurkhas. The noble Lord, Lord Hintze, said that today is Australia Day. Today is also India’s Republic Day, and I will be back at the Guildhall today to celebrate that. Going back to 1961, Her Majesty the Queen was the chief guest at the Republic Day parade. My father, then Captain Bilimoria, was the senior ADC on duty on the podium with the President of India and the Queen.

Fast forward to a few years ago and the then Prince of Wales, now King Charles III, visited the Indian Military Academy in Dehradun. The links that we now have are absolutely phenomenal but, as the noble Lord, Lord Hintze, said very clearly, soft power without hard power is no power. We have this amazing relationship with India; our trade at the moment with India is £29 billion, but India is only the 12th-largest trading partner of the UK. It needs to be much more.

I said in a debate a week ago here in this House:

“The Indian express has left the station. It is now the fastest train in the world—the fastest-growing major economy in the world.”—[Official Report, 19/1/23; col. 2013.]


In 25 years it has a target to reach a GDP of $32 trillion, to become the second-largest economy in the world. Are we going to be the best partners of India in the years ahead? I say that we should, and we will be even closer partners if we have closer defence ties with India beyond staff college and the Royal College of Defence Studies, the National Defence College and Wellington staff college—of which my father was commandant. We need closer ties. As we speak, a British Navy ship is visiting the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, for joint exercises and much more.

I would go so far as to say—and I would be very interested to hear the Minister’s response—that I think that the UK should join Quad. Quad is the USA, India, Japan, and Australia: if the UK joins, we square the whole world round and it would be a really powerful force. I think we should bring back the Indian Army liaison officer role from the Indian Army within the British Army.

The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, spoke about morale. I think that esprit de corps is something that is greatly under threat if we have a morale problem. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Peach, in his excellent maiden speech, spoke about innovation and research and development. Well, the reality is that we spend 1.7% of GDP on research and development innovation, and America spends 3.2%. We need to drastically increase our investment in R&D innovation.

So I conclude with this: we have, as a country, one of the strongest elements of soft power in the world. We have the highest-quality Armed Forces in the world, so we do have that hard power. But, as the Duke of Wellington’s motto says, fortune favours the bold. We need to be bolder: we need to invest in our Armed Forces, to respect our Armed Forces, and to treasure our Armed Forces. They serve us; they serve our nation. It is our duty to never ever take our superb Armed Forces for granted, and to always be grateful to them.