Armed Forces Bill

Lord Boyce Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Boyce]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a trustee and member of various service charities.

I welcome the provisions in this Bill that build on the significant changes brought in by the Armed Forces Act 2006. Five years ago, some of us in this House expressed concerns about the introduction of the then new disciplinary system, especially the speed at which it was proposed to be introduced. However, I am advised that it has settled in well; and this is good news, not least because of its appropriateness in an increasingly joint operating environment.

A successful disciplinary system relies on its constituent parts. For most cases, this is primarily the commanding officer—and some of us majored on this point in 2006. However, I recognise that for more serious cases others have to be involved—the service police, the Director of Service Prosecutions, the court administration officer and the judge advocates. This Bill sets out to strengthen the position of the service police in terms of their independence, and I understand and support the rationale for this. An effective investigation that supports the chain of command is invariably an independent one, and the Government are right to ensure that independence is protected.

However, I am concerned that the Director of Service Prosecutions is to be given the power to appoint prosecuting officers who are not service lawyers. To maintain its credibility, the Service Prosecuting Authority needs to be able to demonstrate that its prosecutorial decisions are taken by lawyers who understand the environment in which the accused persons are operating. The proposal in the Bill seems to reverse the understanding of the position that I thought we had established during the passage of the 2006 legislation.

I note also that the Bill aims to give commanding officers the power to require their people to be tested for alcohol and drugs by the service police. I am pleased that this power rests with the commanding officer, who has the central role to play. However, in this context, I also note that the Defence Council will be given the power to specify duties that will be subject to maximum alcohol limits. I hope that the Defence Council will exercise that power with proper regard to striking the correct balance between operational imperatives and the demands we place on our people. More importantly, I equally hope the Defence Council will not attempt to bind the hands of commanding officers, who in my experience are best placed to make that judgment.

I absolutely do not apologise for having mentioned several times the role of the commanding officer and the chain of command. They are absolutely key to the effectiveness of our forces and in particular to what is sometimes called the moral component of fighting power. It was good to hear the Minister reinforce that point in his opening comments.

I turn to Clause 2 on the Armed Forces covenant report, which was levered into the Bill at the last minute. I welcome the implied—I use that word advisedly, particularly following the comments of my noble and gallant friend Lord Craig—formal public and statutory recognition that this clause conveys of the self-sacrifice of all our service men and women, rather than it being imbedded in some Army doctrine manual, as it has been hitherto. I also welcome, bearing in mind the points that I have been making about the command chain, the proposal in the Armed Forces covenant provisions not to attempt to set out specific rights and obligations. It seems to me that, so far as serving personnel are concerned, the structures and processes established over many years of experience should continue to provide a proper mechanism for holding the chain of command to account.

I have in mind, for example, the service complaint system whereby a serviceperson can complain to the chain of command about an injustice that he or she believes they have suffered. The complaints system was bolstered in the 2006 Act by the establishment of the Service Complaints Commissioner. I have read her annual report for 2010 and support the good progress that has been achieved. However, I do not support her call for an Armed Forces ombudsman. The significant changes that have been made should be given time to bear fruit. An ombudsman scheme has the potential to undermine the role of the chain of command. I am pleased that the Government appear to have accepted that point.

The position for veterans and for those the Bill calls “relevant family members” is, of course, different. For these people, the disadvantageous effect of their former service, or the service of their spouse, father or mother, is unlikely to be a matter that the Ministry of Defence can fix. It is likely to be the responsibility of another government department. It therefore seems to me that it is ineffective to require the Defence Secretary to prepare a report and lay it before Parliament. Instead, the responsibility should lie with Ministers having the responsibility for providing the solution—or at least a Minister from the Cabinet Office with the authority to co-ordinate those Ministers.

As the covenant makes clear, it is not just in the fields of education, healthcare and housing that Ministers may have to become involved. For example, there is the matter of former armed services people in prison. In that context, a couple of weeks ago I was pleased to attend the launch of the report of the inquiry into this subject, organised by the Howard League for Penal Reform and chaired by Sir John Nutting QC, to which the noble Lord, Lord Lee of Trafford, referred earlier. I declare an interest as a member of that inquiry’s advisory board.

With official estimates suggesting that the English and Welsh prisons hold around 3,000 ex-servicemen, there is understandable public concern as to why those who have served their country go on to offend. The inquiry has been able to dispel some of the myths around serving in the Armed Forces and subsequent offending behaviour, and has thus countered much of the media attention given to the possible connections between the two. It has also made some timely recommendations on how we can do better. These include expanding the current free veterans’ helpline provided by the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency to provide information and support to ex-service personnel in a crisis, as well as rolling out existing efforts among the police, probation and prison services to identify ex-servicemen at the earliest possible point and put them in touch with ex-service organisations that can help them.

I commend the work of the Howard League and Sir John Nutting QC to this House, but my point in raising this is to emphasise that this adds further strength to the argument for a Minister detached from the MoD and with cross-cutting responsibilities for veterans, who could provide stewardship in this area as well. I guess that the Minister is getting this point, as it has been mentioned by many. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, had he been able to be here, would have made the point very strongly also.

In sum, I am not convinced that the Government can be held fully to account when the delivery of the covenant is not met, and I fear that the good intentions that lay behind getting the covenant formally recognised may be squandered.

My final comment on the covenant is that perhaps the annual report should also cover how the expectations of those serving, regarding the size, shape and capabilities of their forces, are matching up to what they are being called to do today, and how expectations are being met in proceeding towards the vision for the Armed Forces in 2020—how those expectations actually stack up. Such expectations underpin fighting morale and sense of worth, which surely are a fundamental part of the rationale for the covenant. I am afraid a report on that subject currently would make depressing reading.

Defence: Reform

Lord Boyce Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, my noble friend makes an important point. We now have a CDM who I confidently expect to get on top of all our procurement issues and, in doing so, save the defence budget a great deal of money.

[Lord Boyce]

My Lords, much has been made about the greater flexibility that the Chiefs of Staff will have as a result of having more money and resources to play with. As things stand at the moment, most of that money is tied up in salaries and fixed costs that do not have much flexibility—probably 5 or 10 per cent of their budget. Can the Minister indicate how much more money they are to be given to play with for equipment and how that will be managed when, for example, a significant amount of equipment is used across all three services? How will that be arbitrated?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

I am grateful to the noble and gallant Lord for that question. It is too early to give a specific figure. We received the report of the noble Lord, Lord Levene, today and we are considering it. We have not come up with any figures on that issue.

Armed Forces: Resources

Lord Boyce Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

I agree entirely with the noble Lord. As the Chief of the Defence Staff has said, we can sustain this operation as long as we choose to. I am absolutely clear on that.

[Lord Boyce]

My Lords, further to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Reid, I am sure that the Ministry of Defence can sustain the task in Libya as long as possible. Will the Minister say what other, higher-priority tasks will have to be given up in order for that to be sustained?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, the Government will continue to provide sufficient resources to achieve operational success in Afghanistan and elsewhere as long as we are in Libya. We are quite clear that we can manage what we are being asked to do in Afghanistan and what we are doing in Libya at the same time.

Nuclear Deterrent

Lord Boyce Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, in answer to the noble Baroness’s first question, I suggest that she has a word with her honourable friend the Member for North Devon, who will be keeping oversight on this. We will do all that we can to help him with this study. I am not sure who he and the Cabinet Office will call in to give advice.

We feel that submarines are the most cost-effective way of delivering a credible deterrent. Their invulnerability to detection makes it impossible for a potential aggressor to launch a pre-emptive strike. Trying to achieve this level of capability with other platforms is either not possible or would require an enormous number of platforms. Obviously if the review comes up with an alternative, it must be considered. The matter has been looked at over and over again and I am confident that there is no improvement on the submarine system.

[Lord Boyce]

My Lords, first I apologise to the Minister for not being here at the beginning of his Statement. I declare an interest as a non-executive director of Atkins. I welcome the government Statement. However, perhaps I may ask the Minister to confirm that we would not have a credible nuclear deterrent were it not for the people who man our submarines. As we are launching this study—which I happen to believe will be a complete waste of time—it is very important that there is no irresponsible talk or conjecture by responsible people about the importance of the role that our submarines currently carry out in exercising their duty, as they have done for the past 42 years, in order that the operational commitment of our sailors conducting their continuous at-sea deterrence on submarines is not undermined.

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I agree entirely with the noble and gallant Lord. The Statement paid tribute to the sailors on submarines who are very often away from home for very long periods, and also to their families. I agree entirely with that.

Pensions Appeal Tribunals Act 1943 (Time Limit for Appeals) (Amendment) Regulations 2011

Lord Boyce Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Addington]

I am sorry to delay the Committee but I wish to say only a couple of things. This scheme—as the previous Government brought it in, I think we can pass on our congratulations to them—seems to be an improvement on what went before it, and it certainly seems to be much more fit for purpose than what it replaced. When you are dealing with the Armed Forces and anyone who has been injured, there is always a part of you that wants to say, “Give them more”. However, I appreciate that there are limits.

The noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, has already touched on the specifics of the ongoing process of reviewing the scheme. Is there an inbuilt structure which means that we will constantly keep an eye on it as changes take place? If there is, I think that many people will be reassured. We will never get it right for all time with changes in medical technology, survival rates and so on, but if we were to have a look at the thinking here, that would help those of us who take an interest in this matter.

Perhaps we could also have a little more information on the body that has been set up. Knowing where it started from would be a help. As I said, the scheme may not be the most generous in the world but it seems to be a vast improvement on what preceded it and it provides a point from which to develop. An understanding of the logical basis and development of the process will help those outside and in the forces to have an idea of how they are viewed and how development will occur. That is something that we could usefully do today: we could put down a basis for future developments for as long as we will unfortunately need a scheme such as this.

[Lord Boyce]

I support the Motion to implement the two instruments, which very much fall within the recommendations from the AFCS review report. I think that some of the questions that noble Lords have asked were addressed in the report, and I am sure that the Minister will have adequate answers for them.

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I start by thanking all noble Lords for their support for the regulations. As I said in my opening remarks, the previous Government should be commended for introducing the scheme, as well as for initiating a review of the AFCS.

I shall try to answer the questions asked by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester. First, he asked how the scheme compares with other schemes in the UK and internationally. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Boyce, and his independent scrutiny group undertook comparisons with other schemes and compensation arrangements, and acknowledged that some adverse comparisons had been made in the media. The guaranteed income payment of an award can be the most financially beneficial part of a compensation package. This tax repayment over a lifetime is worth many hundreds of thousands of pounds and is not capped, whereas other compensation schemes may be subject to limits.

The noble Lord’s last question related to Afghanistan and Iraq and to compensation payments.

The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Boyce, considered carefully whether improvements should be made available to those who were injured before the start of the scheme in April 2005. The conclusion was that the improvements should not be backdated before that date. Those injured due to service prior to 6 April 2005 qualify for compensation from the War Pensions Scheme. Although the War Pensions Scheme was first designed over 90 years ago, it still provides valuable benefits for those who rely on it for compensation for their service-related injuries. Backdating improvements for a particular group would create new distinctions between that group and others who had suffered injury due to service all the way back to when the War Pensions Scheme was introduced in 1917. That would be a significant financial undertaking.

My noble friend Lord Addington asked about the new financial group, the Independent Medical Expert Group, and in answering I hope that I will address all his questions. The Independent Medical Expert Group of leading medical experts is undertaking its work on behalf of the MoD. It is chaired by Professor Sir Anthony Newman Taylor of Imperial College London’s faculty of medicine, and it comprises six medical experts, two service representatives and Colonel Jerome Church, who is the chief executive of BLESMA. They are appointed by Ministers.

This group was set up in March 2010 on the recommendations made by the review of the AFCS, led by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Boyce, to advise Ministers on certain complex injuries that had been raised during the review as requiring further detailed medical consideration. These were, specifically, injury to genitalia, non-freezing cold injury, paired injuries, brain injury, spinal cord injury, loss of the use of a limb, mental illness and hearing loss. The group has examined each of these types of injury and has formulated recommendations to ensure that the AFCS appropriately compensates for them. IMEG’s initial recommendations will be published in the next few weeks, and the group will continue its work through to 2012 in order to consider fully the issues raised by the noble and gallant Lord.

My noble friend asked who will provide a constant eye on the progress of the AFCS. The Central Advisory Committee on Pensions and Compensation will continue to provide an ongoing overview of the AFCS post the implementation of the noble and gallant Lord’s recommendations.

I think that I have covered all noble Lords’ questions, although there was also a question about how we communicate with service personnel. The Independent Medical Expert Group is about to publish a report that identifies its initial findings and recommendations and that will address the very important issue raised by my noble friend about how service personnel will be communicated with.

I thank noble Lords and the noble and gallant Lord for their support. Our Armed Forces are indeed a special group of people and should be properly compensated for injury or illness arising from what we ask them to do on our behalf. I commend both sets of regulations to the Committee.

Armed Forces: Redundancy

Lord Boyce Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

Absolutely not, my Lords. We are reshaping our Royal Air Force to be configured for Future Force 2020. It makes sense that we reduce the number of pilots only if we are reducing the number of planes. On the question of a no-fly zone in Libya, no decisions have yet been taken.

[Lord Boyce]

My Lords, will the Minister confirm what I have heard at the coalface among soldiers, sailors and airmen—that the redundancy terms for this round may be significantly meaner than those that were available in the early 1990s when we had another large redundancy programme? If that is the case, why?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, it is not necessarily meaner than last time. A full plan is in place for the military redundancy programme with full information available to all service personnel to make decisions for themselves and their families as soon as possible. We have gone to great lengths to ensure that the process and the practical application of this is both fair and understandable, and we are putting great effort into ensuring that it is communicated appropriately to all members of the Armed Forces.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Lord Boyce Excerpts

Friday 12th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Boyce]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a non-executive director of WS Atkins plc and other interests as in the register, including pro bono appointments in various service charities and organisations. I intend to concentrate on the defence part of the SDSR but, in passing, I welcome the attempt, under the umbrella of the national security strategy, to get some sort of order among the plethora of departments and committees dealing with various aspects of our security. It will certainly be good to see some tidying up of the shambolic and Byzantine network and, some might say, the spaghetti-like structure for security and defence that has been in place for the past few years.

So far as defence is concerned, I remain absolutely unable to reconcile the word “strategic” with what has emerged in the review, notwithstanding the country’s economic difficulties. This has been a cost-cutting exercise, although I congratulate the Secretary of State for Defence on his damage limitation efforts with respect to the sort of savings that some parts of the Government, notably the Treasury, were after. The Treasury’s empathy and understanding of defence are probably best captured by the Chancellor referring to aircraft carriers as “those things” in a TV interview.

With an effective cut in the defence budget of 17.5 per cent—not the headline figure of 7.5 per cent that is bandied around by those trying to cloak the true nature of the cuts—the Prime Minister’s words that the security of our country is the first priority of the Government ring very hollow, as does his expectation that we should retain a prominent position in terms of global influence. In particular, I challenge the complacency of the statement that a defence budget—it now includes the cost of the Trident replacement, thereby, by the way, unravelling the promise of both main parties in the 2007 White Paper—of 2 per cent of GDP meets NATO targets. Only a few months ago, the then Opposition rightly railed against the then Government about the inadequacy of a defence budget of only 2.3 per cent to meet our strategic security needs. The world has certainly not become less dangerous since then and there is no security justification for certain of the proposed cuts in our defence capabilities.

Turning to some of the detail of the defence review’s conclusions, I am sure that noble Lords would like to bear a thought for the 17,000 or so uniformed people who are to be axed—that is, service men and service women who have put their country first and their lives second. The fine-sounding words about the military covenant in the review sound cynical to me. By the way, lest anyone should think that only our outstanding soldiers have been in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past 9 years, I should say that there have been, and are, plenty of sailors, marines and airmen on the ground. The Royal Navy is the only remaining UK force in Iraq, for example. Next year, once again, the Royal Navy with its Royal Marines will constitute more than one-third of our commitment on the ground in Afghanistan.

I am sure that great resentment will have been felt by all our uniformed personnel about the comment in the review that manpower savings will be taken from non-front-line service personnel. Certainly in the Royal Navy everyone is required to serve on the front line. I ask the Minister for reassurance that, in the looming redundancy programme, our sailors, marines, soldiers and airmen are not going to be got rid of with the bare minimum pay-off that I am absolutely certain the Treasury would like to inflict. Incidentally, I suspect that, like me, our uniformed personnel must find it curious that the MoD Civil Service will have no compulsory redundancy programme.

Turning to capabilities, I would like to focus on maritime. I start by applauding the Defence Secretary for supporting so strongly the need to retain a balanced Navy on which we can build in better times. However, despite his best efforts, I believe that the Navy will be too depleted to be able to deliver all that history has shown might be expected of it and which can be expected again. It will be too depleted to be able to meet the aspirations of global influence that the national security strategy would have us deliver and too depleted to be able to contribute sensibly to every one of the seven military tasks laid out in the review. Incidentally, the Navy is the only service that is so obligated.

In particular, a destroyer frigate force level of 19, which I understand will be reached in just five months’ time with the paying off of our four very capable Type 22 frigates by next April, is just too small. I suspect that we will dip below that number before 2020, as Type 23s have to start paying off. Meanwhile, fewer ships should mean fewer tasks, not least because the fleet is already overstretched to meet its current operational commitments. Will the Minister say which commitments are going to be given up or, at the very least, if such details are not yet thought through, will he assure the House that the fleet load will be reduced? I should add that that reduced role will do nothing for our international standing and influence.

Let me touch on the carrier decision; your Lordships would be surprised if I did not. The disposal of Harriers, which other speakers have mentioned, will, notwithstanding my earlier comment, cause the Royal Navy to be unbalanced in the medium term. First, the underlying rationale in the review for disposing of this aircraft, which gives the carrier its strike capability until the introduction of the Joint Strike Fighter, is this:

“The Government believes it is right for the UK to retain, in the long term, the capability that only aircraft carriers can provide—the ability to deploy airpower from anywhere in the world, without the need for friendly air bases on land. In the short term, there are few circumstances we can envisage where the ability to deploy airpower from the sea will be essential”.

What a desperate expression of hope over bitter experience. The people serving on the National Security Council must have been asleep for the past dozen years or so.

We have no problem today because we have no emerging crisis. That can change in days, as it did for Sierra Leone, as it did in 2001 and as it did in 2003, to take the most recent significant examples where some so-called friends and allies, let alone neutrals, prevaricated endlessly over or even denied our overflying rights and host-nation support. We cannot even fly direct from Cyprus to Kandahar today. The review goes on to say,

“that is why we have taken the decision to retire the Harriers early”,

but that absolutely does not stand up to any serious analysis or judgment of history. The reason, pure and simple, is to save money. The Government should have the moral courage to say so and admit to the enormous gamble that they are taking.

Secondly, the Harrier GR9 is a relatively modern aircraft, not 40 years old as deviously implied in the review. It is significantly more modern than the Tornado—for all its virtues mentioned by my noble and gallant friend Lord Craig—against which it is compared and which will cost around £2.5 billion to modernise. So far as the close air support role in Afghanistan is concerned, if you speak to those on the ground at the very sharp end, especially the forward air controllers, as I have done recently, there is no question but that the Harrier is their aircraft of choice, not least because of its speed of response and reliability. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Lee, was right to say that we need both the Harrier and the Tornado in the interim before 2020.

Thirdly, will the Minister explain how, without “Ark Royal” and the Harrier force, we are to retain enough of the Navy’s current carrier operators and pilots to keep alive the critical and essential expertise that will allow us safely to re-establish a UK carrier strike capability in 2020? In particular, will he provide an unequivocal reassurance that the future Joint Strike Fighter force will be manned by both Royal Navy and Royal Air Force pilots?

Shifting to the deterrent, I generally welcome the decisions in the paper, especially the commitment to continuous at-sea deterrence and ballistic launched missiles. Any other course of action simply will not provide a truly invulnerable and totally assured strategic deterrent. However, as someone scarred by the trials and tribulations of managing ageing nuclear submarines, I have serious misgivings about extending further the lives of the Trident class. Of course, Ministers will not have to go to sea in them when they are ancient—the submarines, that is, not the Ministers. I predict difficult times ahead when those submarines are past their proper sell-by date.

I conclude by saying that many aspects of this review have resonance with the ill fated Thatcher-Nott review of 1981, the Options for Change review of 1991 and the defence costs studies of the early 1990s. We can but hope that we are not once again assailed by events shortly after these reviews, as has happened before, showing how ill advised they were. We can but hope that we are spared the time for the Prime Minister to realise his “own strong view”, articulated in his Statement on the SDSR in the other place, that we,

“will require year-on-year real-terms growth in the defence budget in the years beyond 2015”.—[Official Report, Commons, 19/10/10; col. 799.]

That is, as I say, assuming that we are spared until then.

Defence: Treaties with France

Lord Boyce Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, in answer to the noble Lord’s first question, we are committed to improving access to each other's defence markets. This commitment is clear in the defence and security co-operation treaty. That includes opening up the French market. As for the French being nationalistic, we are aiming to deploy a combined joint expeditionary force, with UK and French forces operating side by side and with both countries engaged in the same theatre. However, a commitment to deploy UK forces will remain a decision for the British Government alone.

[Lord Boyce]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a non-executive director of WS Atkins. Does the Minister agree that there has been a certain amount of overreaction and hype with regard to some aspects of this initiative, especially naval co-operation? Does he agree that we have provided escorts with great success to the French carrier battle group, and vice versa, over the past 15 years or so? However, will he also acknowledge that he has been somewhat complacent when he says that we will maintain a full spectrum of capability to allow independent operations? This simply will not be the case with carrier strike when only one carrier is available. Does he agree that this will be an area of high risk in our ability to operate independently, and in the ability of the French to operate independently, when we are in a one-carrier situation? Does he agree that it is difficult to imagine how we will mitigate the risk in the years to come?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I agree with the noble and gallant Lord about the overreaction and hype. There are a lot of successes. I have been on a number of Royal Navy ships and have witnessed our personnel exercising very successfully with the French and indeed socialising with them afterwards. I have seen warm relations between the two navies; it is the same with the Royal Air Force and increasingly so with the Army. I am looking forward to witnessing Operation Flanders next spring, when our two armies will be exercising together in northern Europe. There are obviously risks in everything that we do, but we have considered this matter carefully and believe that the risk is manageable.