Tax Credits (Income Thresholds and Determination of Rates) (Amendment) Regulations 2015
Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
The right reverend Prelate is speaking very movingly and rightly about the injustice and suffering caused by the passage of this statutory instrument unamended, but does he not feel in those circumstances that it is our duty not just to talk about it or even record our objections to it, but actually to do something to stop it?
The Lord Bishop of Portsmouth
I am grateful for that intervention. I believe that our first duty is to speak and in a variety of ways to act. That will involve, as many noble Lords know, the very many who participate in charitable organisations and support on the ground. I commit that those in my diocese will do our very best. I myself shall be listening to the rest of this debate before I determine how I shall vote on the amendments before us.
I return to those commitments that I asked the Government to make over the coming weeks. I ask the noble Baroness if she can make those commitments on behalf of the Government. During the past few days, I have wrestled long and hard with the question of how to vote and speak today. Partly the dilemma has been because of the anger, the party-political point scoring and the raising of the issues around constitutional matters. That has obscured what ought to be a measured and careful consideration as to the best interests of the poorest workers in our society.
I am appalled by the Government’s proposals. I emphatically did not table this amendment because of party-political pressures. I am aware of the conflicting views on constitutional matters. This amendment offers an alternative and an opportunity—whatever happens with the other three amendments—for this House clearly to register its disapproval of these proposals and its expectation that our reservations will be addressed. Your Lordships’ House must, in my judgment, make that clear. I will listen carefully to further contributions this afternoon and intend to vote with, at my heart, the interests of those who have most to lose through these regulations. Should other amendments fail or fall, then I present mine as a respectful but firm message to the Government that the regulations are not acceptable in their current form, and that significant work is required for us to be satisfied that the needs of those working for the lowest incomes will be met.
The Role and Capabilities of the UK Armed Forces, in the Light of Global and Domestic Threats to Stability and Security
Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
My Lords, I start off with an apology: I am trying to speak also in the other debate in the Chamber, so I will be coming and going in the course of this afternoon. I am delighted, as I think everybody here is, at the initiative of the Minister. I am very grateful for this opportunity to talk about such an important subject today.
There is no point in having Armed Forces unless we can use and deploy them when there is a real need to do so. The great thing about our forces is that, thank God—I touch wood when I say this—they never let us down; they always carry out their missions with superb professionalism and accuracy. That was the case the other day with the RAF taking out those two terrorists in Syria. I was delighted, as I think was the whole country, to see that we were prepared to use our means of defence against the murderous army of ISIL. If anybody ever needed to use their defence forces and had a right to do so, it must be in the face of that kind of threat, so I have no inhibition at all in saying that I congratulate them. I believe that I will be supported by a great many people in this country when I say that. I also congratulate all those who took part in the intelligence inputs that will have been so central to the success of that operation.
Before I come to my main remarks, I want to say a word or two about the Minister. The noble Earl is a man of great ability; the whole House knows that. I believe that he is genuinely committed to defence; for that matter, I believe that I am as well. However, I wish that when he comes to make statements before the House he would raise his game a little and distinguish between facile and disingenuous PR and a fair description of the facts. He said two things today that have led me to make that remark. One was that he said that the Government were now able to go ahead with a whole list of programmes that he then listed, such as Astute, carriers, Scout vehicles, the F35 and so on. In fact someone who did not know much about defence—that does not apply to anyone in this Room today, of course, but applies to an awful lot of our citizens in the country as a whole—would have assumed that the Government themselves had conceived and launched all those programmes. In fact, they were all inherited from the previous Labour Administration, and there is continuity. Indeed, some of them have been held up or reduced, and he did not say that either. So there was something very disingenuous about the way that he presented that.
He also once again raised the issue of the so-called £38 billion black hole. I have had this disagreement with him in the past and we really must resolve it. I think that the Government get to the figure of £38 billion if they use the assumption that we were not going to increase defence spending in real terms, or indeed nominal terms, which would have meant a considerable real-terms reaction—which of course is exactly what the Government did. We were actually committed to a 1.5% annual real-terms increase in defence spending. If he looks at the figures based on that assumption, which is the assumption that I was working on when I was Defence Procurement Minister, he will find that there is no such thing as a £38 billion black hole. I challenge him to ask the OBR to examine the figures, and if it comes back and says, “Yes, there was a £38 billion black hole”, I will formally apologise to the House and eat my words. If it does not come back and justify this figure, I hope that equally he will apologise to the House and eat his words.
We are at a critical moment. The Government are a purely Conservative Administration. They have a majority. They are about to come out with their own defence review. We have had a period of five years of devastating reductions in numbers and capability and programmes have been cancelled or cut—we all know that story—but the Government have now turned over a new leaf. They are going to increase procurement spending by 1% per annum and are committed to the NATO target of 2% of GDP. That is all splendid and I have already congratulated them on that in the House. So this is a good moment to look at matters. I shall focus today on the equipment programme and ask the Minister a number of questions about it. I do not expect detailed answers today but I would be grateful if he would write me a letter following today’s debate and place a copy of it in the Library of the House so that we can see where we are on some of these very important equipment programmes.
First, I will start with a rather sad story, the Nimrod programme. When the coalition Government came to power, within a few weeks—if I recall correctly—they literally cut up the MRA4 Nimrods when every penny of their capital cost had already been incurred. They were not even mothballed so that a future Government could use them. They were simply destroyed. That left a tremendous capability gap and the Government, again, have been less than straightforward about this. They often come to the House and say, “It’s all right. We are covering the gap with the use of other assets”. I have heard that phrase so many times and it is complete nonsense. You cannot cover the gap with the use of other assets. No helicopter has the range or endurance required to do that job and we do not have any other fixed-wing aircraft in the British Armed Forces capable of dropping buoys, let alone with the electronic equipment required to handle the output from those buoys. So there is a very serious capability gap.
I gather that there have been occasions when, because there has been an intrusion into NATO waters—not territorial waters but NATO waters—of an Akula class submarine or other sinister intruder, we have had to call upon the French and the Americans to help us out and to deploy a P3 or something of that kind to locate the submarine. I do not think any great damage has been done, as a result of the co-operation that we have been able to call upon. I ask the Government to state this afternoon or subsequently in a letter where we stand with filling this important capability gap. I do not want to hear that it is the sort of matter that will be considered in the defence review. It is a very urgent issue. I particularly want to know how many times we have had to call on French or American allies. I pay tribute to them—of course, the whole country should be grateful to them for coming to our aid. We cannot really call our independent deterrent “independent” if it requires another country such as France or America to carry out the necessary maritime surveillance to uphold the integrity of that deterrent.
Secondly, I come to the carriers. I thank God for this and take personal pleasure and pride in it because when the Government came to power, they wanted to cancel the carriers but found that it was practically impossible to do so. I am glad to say that they have now made a virtue of necessity and have moved away from their idea of not commissioning the “Prince of Wales”, and we are going to have two carriers. That is extremely good news and I am grateful to the Government for that. I genuinely congratulate them on that very encouraging turnaround.
A carrier is merely a platform—albeit a very impressive one—and it is as much use in defence terms as the systems or aircraft that are carried on it. Can I ask therefore how many F35s we are going to procure? This is an essential question. The number of Force Elements at Readiness that we were planning was confidential under the previous Labour Government and perhaps I should not mention the figure now, but what is known is that each of these carriers has a maximum capacity of 18 F35s. That means 36 F35s could be theoretically deployed. If we cannot deploy as many as 36, what we are doing is reducing the return on capital and on investment in the building of the carriers, which is unfortunate. If we put ourselves in the position where we can sustain the deployment of 36 F35s, how many F35s do we require in inventory to provide that? I suspect that, taking account of the need to recycle machines as well as men in operations, the need to maintain training so that the aircraft can have a flow of pilots—otherwise we run out of pilots—and taking account of attrition and so forth, we are talking about something like 120 F35s. Is that the order of magnitude that the Government are looking at or is it something much less than that? It is time that we as a country should be quite clear where we stand on that and on what kind of capability we are going to get from the massive investment we have made, correctly in my view, in the carrier programme.
I want to come on to other future combat aircraft. In my time in the MoD, we realised that the F35 and the Typhoon were probably going to be the last manned combat aircraft that the RAF would have. I do not think that other NATO countries have made a very different assessment of the prospect of the continuation of manned combat aircraft in the future, but I know that the matter is controversial in certain areas. However, we were determined to make sure that the British aircraft industry maintained its capability to produce UCAVs and UAVs and continued with its effective project management, with research in new materials, new stealth techniques and the essential techniques of aerodynamic design, so that we had the capability to provide the generation of unmanned combat aircraft to replace the Typhoon and the F35 in due course in 20 or 30 years’ time.
We were working on two projects. They were of course not aircraft. One of them we called Mantis, which was an air superiority capability, and the other we called Taranis, which was a deep-penetration bomber. Can the Minister let the Committee and therefore the public know exactly where we stand with those two programmes? Have they been continued, perhaps under different names or with different objectives, and what changes have been made? I brought the French into the Mantis programme, which seemed sensible to get the benefit of their skills and particularly to make sure that if we went ahead with the programme, we had a larger potential market for the resulting vehicles than we would otherwise have had. I would be interested to know how that co-operation has fared.
I want to ask the Minister about a sensitive matter but I think I can remain within the rules of confidentiality when I mention it. It is about tactical anti-ballistic missile capability. There is of course no suggestion of producing strategic anti-ballistic capability in this country. The Americans have been working on that for 25 years, and sometimes parking the project for a long time. That is a different story but a tactical capability is technically feasible and seems essential in the medium term. If we engage in concentrated operations such as amphibious landings or deploying extremely expensive major assets such as carriers, we want to make sure that they cannot be taken out by a ballistic missile. We know that the technologies of this world are such that they not only exist in one or two other countries—anybody can guess where I am referring to—but sometimes leak out of the countries which have developed them, so this is a matter to be taken seriously. There again, I initiated a dialogue with the French on that matter but I would be interested to know what the Government can tell us in public about their thinking on tactical anti-ballistic missile theatre or capabilities.
I will just mention the Scout vehicles—another of the vehicles which you would have thought from listening to the Minister, if you did not know about it, had been launched by this Government, but where almost the exact reverse occurred. I was determined that we should get it through in time before the election, in case that produced some hold-up. It would have been held up anyway because of purdah; we would not have been able to place contracts for the month or so before polling day. Thanks to the two teams in the DE&S working literally through the night and at weekends, we got the development contract through just a few weeks before the election.
I see that the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, is speaking immediately after me in this debate. He may recall a conversation we had about a range of potential armoured vehicles—fighting vehicles, communication vehicles, command and control vehicles and so forth—under what was called at the time the FRES programme. I said to him: “Look, let’s be serious about this. Which do you really want most?”. He said, “What we need most is a reconnaissance vehicle to replace CVRT, which has been there for a very long time”. It was about 40 years, as I recall. I said to him, “Richard, you will get it”, and I think I was as good as my word. So we launched that programme and we were afraid that it would not continue, but I am delighted that it has. However, I would very much like to know the potential in-service delivery date of the Scout armoured vehicle programme.
I repeat that I am not expecting the Minister to give me detailed answers this afternoon. I would not like him to try to do so because it would be impossible to cover those subjects in sufficient detail in his wind-up speech, where he has to deal with remarks made by a great many noble Lords. However, I would be deeply grateful for a letter setting out systematically the progress on these and any other capability equipment programmes which he thinks might be relevant, so that the House can see the position in black and white.
Lord Dannatt (CB)
My Lords, I very much welcome the debate this afternoon, which is very timely in the context of the work being done on the current SDSR. As the noble Earl, Lord Howe, outlined at the start, we are all conscious of the current security situation in which we are operating. Quite rightly, the noble Earl pointed out the wide range of operations and activities that UK Armed Forces are superbly carrying out at present.
I also welcome the commitment made before the Summer Recess to 2% of GDP being spent on defence because that is a considerable help to defence planners as they do their work within the SDSR. I made a side note to myself as the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, was speaking. I do not want to step into the word-eating competition between himself and the Minister, but I would observe that in 1997 when the then new Labour Government began their strategic defence review, I was the director of the defence programme staff, which in simple terms meant that I had some staff responsibility for the allocation of funds. It was actually an extraordinarily good SDR with a good series of policy outcomes which were widely recognised at the time. The sadness about that otherwise excellent SDR was its underfunding almost from the start. Over the next 13 years as I progressed from being a brigadier as the director of the defence programme staff until I retired as Chief of the General Staff in 2009, I watched the cumulative effect of the underfunding of the defence programme. I do not know whether the figure was £10 billion short in the defence equipment programme, or whether it was £35 billion or £38 billion short, but a shortage of funds in that programme undoubtedly accumulated as a result of the underfunding of the otherwise excellent SDR of 1997 through to the culmination of the then Government and the election in 2010 and the SDSR of that year. I shall watch with interest to see what the OBR says about the size of that underspend, but I am in no doubt from my own observation of 13 years in and out of the Ministry of Defence that underspend in equipment there undoubtedly was.
A useful and constructive point to make today is that the commitment to 2% of GDP being spent on defence undoubtedly gives the planners, in the context of this SDSR, a confirmed budget and a firm baseline from which to operate and to counter the wide-ranging challenges we know we are experiencing both at home and abroad. We must make sure that we have the right set of capabilities to deal with them.
Without rehearsing the many positives of the UK Armed Forces, I would like to raise a number of points in areas where I think we could and should do better. One of the principal lessons we learnt from our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan is that we handicapped ourselves at the outset with our poor level of understanding of the culture, history and background of those countries. The current initiative for greater emphasis being placed on defence engagement is hugely to be welcomed: to use some of our existing resources more robustly when exercising in those parts of the world we think we want to understand better and where there is a possibility that we might find ourselves operating in the future. This seems to be an extremely effective and worthwhile use of military capability. The question I would be grateful if the noble Earl would consider answering either today or at another time is whether defence engagement will formally become a military task. It seems eminently sensible to me—it is not expensive and it would authorise the use of much of our existing capability.
A subset of defence engagement is our ability to communicate with the people in the countries in which we are operating. I am talking about language skills and the need for us to use interpreters. I am mindful of the current criticism of the present Government’s policy on Afghan interpreters and whether we are looking after them adequately. I am grateful to the Minister for his recent letter explaining what the Government’s policy is. I regret that I have not yet written to the noble Earl to thank him, but this is advance notice of my thanks. However, I would point out that there is a perception that our policy is ungenerous and mean in some regards. Whether that is true, I am not entirely sure; I discussed it with the Minister for the Armed Forces last week. If it is not mean and ungenerous, there is a perception that that is the case. In my view, I think that it would be sensible of Her Majesty’s Government to mount a proactive campaign pointing out that we are looking after our interpreters properly rather than to allow the alternative narrative to gain credence. If it is thought that when the UK needs language assistants and interpreters in faraway places where we do not have native skills ourselves, then in the global world in which we live, people in other countries will be very wary of taking on employment with us if they think that when we have departed, we will have no further interest in their welfare or well-being. There is a problem. It must be addressed. If it is only a problem of perception, it still has to be addressed.
Also in this further subject of defence engagement on the softer side of defence, I would be interested to hear whether the Minister believes that sufficient effort is being made in terms of co-operation between the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, DfID and the Ministry of Defence in working together to prevent conflict through better integration of our defence, diplomatic and development capabilities. We have talked about this a lot in recent years. I am not convinced that I have sufficient evidence that we are putting substance into the words and there is a lot to be achieved in preventing conflict by better integration of our capabilities in those three areas.
This debate is essentially about capabilities to meet the current security threats that we face. One of those threats is from a resurgent Russia under its current President Vladimir Putin. I have raised before that although back in 2010 and prior to that I was one of those who very much favoured the complete withdrawal of the Army from Germany—in 2010 it seemed to be the right thing and I welcomed that within the context of the SDSR—I believe that we would send a useful and quite significant message if we were to leave an element, perhaps a brigade-sized element, of our Army in Germany. In this regard, is the Minister confident that we will have the funds to complete the withdrawal from Germany in the timeframe predicated in the 2010 SDSR? If, as I suspect, we do not have those funds, it is a consideration that we could turn a necessity into a virtue by deciding to leave an armoured brigade in Paderborn and Sennelagar. That would show solidarity with our NATO allies on the continent of Europe and contribute to sending a message that the UK does indeed take seriously its defence responsibilities in mainland Europe. That would not be an expensive thing to do, but it may be a necessity and I would strongly urge Her Majesty’s Government to consider turning that necessity into a virtue.
Another point that I remain concerned about that I have raised in your Lordships’ House before is the issue of protected mobility. Whether we remain with an element still in Germany or not, our battlefield manoeuvre capability remains compromised by the effective cancellation in 2007 of the Army’s medium-weight vehicle replacement programme. The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, recalled a conversation with me at about that time when he asked me about my priority for the FRES programme, which is the unfortunate acronym for that particular programme. My priority was and is the Scout vehicle, mostly because the vehicle that it was due to replace, the CVRT vehicle, was designed in the 1970s and very light. The concept of its design was to be small enough to go between two rubber trees in Malaya. Clearly, that concept was outdated by the time we got to Afghanistan. Not surprisingly, I said that my priority was that we should have the Scout vehicle. But it was only my priority in a whole range of vehicles that we required at medium weight. The only survivor of that medium-weight vehicle replacement programme is the Scout vehicle, now called Ajax.
Now that we have withdrawn from Afghanistan and the Army is reconfiguring to Army 2020 around several brigades but three armoured infantry brigades, there are battalions within those armoured infantry brigades that do not have the vehicles that were originally intended in the 2001-02 endorsed medium-weight vehicle replacement programme. Those battalions are now equipped with what we salvaged from Afghanistan under the UOR programme—the Mastiffs and the Ridgebacks. Those vehicles have no place on a modern-manoeuvre battlefield. I cannot see where we will fight a modern-manoeuvre battle, but a lot of us cannot see much about the future and at some point we will be required to put one or more armoured infantry brigades into the field, probably in a division, and those battalions and combat support, and combat service support units, do not have suitable battlefield mobility. That remains a major failing.
It comes back to this issue of: was there a deficit in the defence budget building up towards 2009-10? Yes, there was. The competition in the Defence Board in 2007 was between two major programmes, of which there was money only for one. One was the carrier strike programme and the other was the Army’s medium-weight replacement vehicle programme. A debate was had, a decision was taken and the carrier strike programme was funded. It would be churlish of me to be anything other than welcoming of the two new large aircraft carriers, in which we can all take pride in the future. However, I am in no doubt that the casualty of that success was the Army’s medium-weight vehicle replacement programme, which leaves our Army hobbled in the future. I have a question for the Minister.
Lord Davies of Stamford
I do not think there is much difference between us on this issue. I am prepared to agree with the noble Lord; I am sure it is still correct that we could have, and probably should have, spent even more money implementing the 1998 White Paper, which, as he said, was an excellent White Paper. That, however, is not what is referred to when the black hole myth is mentioned. The black hole myth implies not that we did not contract for enough military equipment—you can always usefully buy more military equipment and, of course, there are other things we could and would have liked to have done if we had had the money to do it—but that we could not pay for the equipment that we had contracted for. The programmes the noble Lord is talking about—the rest of the FRES programme, apart from Scout and so forth—was not something we ever contracted for or pretended that we had contracted for. There is a real distinction here and I do not think there is any difference between my perception of that period of our history and that of the noble Lord.
Lord Dannatt
I am very grateful for that information. I do not want to extend this debate unduly other than to observe that at the time when the Army endorsed the requirement for what became the FRES programme in 2001-02, the money for that programme was available because we had cancelled two other programmes, TRACER and MRAV, and the production money sat in the budget for the years 2007, 2008 and 2009. We could have paid for it if the money had not been reallocated by the Defence Board to the otherwise very welcome carrier strike programme. However, I do not want to go any further down that track other than to observe, without being unduly lengthy, that I attended the Welcome to Norfolk party for the Queen’s Dragoon Guards last week—a reconnaissance regiment which previously had been equipped with CVRT and might have been expected to be equipped with something like Scout, but discovered that they have four-wheeled unarmed Jackals and their combat boots in which to conduct their reconnaissance. They have less capability than they have had over the last 30 or 40 years and this, I am afraid, illuminates the fact that, if we had more money, we would have done more things that we needed to do. We did not have that money: therefore, we have gaps in our capability.
I am conscious that I have taken far too much time, for which I apologise. However, I have a wider concern about our national defence industrial capability. It is something that we are right to worry about. We are told that European collaborative ventures, while superficially attractive, are the way forward, but experience has shown that many of them are costly and slow. We often do not get what we want when we want it and in a manner that we want. The alternative is that our national industrial capability is protected and preserved. That, of course, is good for jobs and apprenticeships in this country, and is good for giving youngsters coming out of education hope for decent employment in the future. However, I accept that bolstering, if you like, the national industrial capability is more expensive. Perhaps less expensive is not to go down the multilateral European route but to adopt some bilateral options. Some very good examples exist of bilateral arrangements between the French and the United Kingdom at the present time and, indeed, of course, with our well-known partner, the United States.
There is a current debate about Apache attack helicopter replacement: should we buy Boeing off the shelf or Westland, as we did last time? It does not have to be an either/or debate: we could buy the aircraft from Boeing and Westland could undertake to do the maintenance and upgrade. However, I worry that if we go too much further down the European collaborative track we will not get what we want when we want it and it will cost an awful lot more.
Finally, I am suspicious—maybe overly so—that those who are keen proponents of European defence industrial integration see it as a stepping stone to European armed forces integration, ultimately providing a unified set of European armed forces, which is an essential element for those who wish to see full European political integration. I may be overworrying here, and there is a wider issue at stake, but I would not want to see defence used as a Trojan horse in a wider political argument.
Earl Howe
My Lords, I think we would all agree that we have had a very constructive debate. I am exceedingly grateful for the contributions from all sides of the Chamber. I will try to deal with some of the points raised by noble Lords and noble and gallant Lords but I am conscious that I will probably be kept very busy writing letters for the next week or two as I do not think that I can answer in my closing speech every single question that has been put to me today.
The title of this debate asked us to take note,
“of the role and capabilities of the UK Armed Forces, in the light of global and domestic threats to stability and security”.
As all noble Lords are aware, that is a rather large field. We live in a world where, to use that almost eloquent Americanism, there are known unknowns and unknown unknowns. In looking at the ongoing strategic defence and security review, we are peering into a very dark glass indeed. However, we know for certain that this SDSR should be different from the last. Given the 2% commitment, it is certainly not about cuts. That enables me to start by addressing the defence budget.
My noble friends Lord King and Lady Fookes picked up on the sentence included in my opening speech which reinforced the Government’s recognition that defence must always be the Government’s number one priority. Lest there be any doubt on the matter, I re-emphasise that this is the view of government as a whole. The Summer Budget document published by the Treasury said:
“The first duty of government is to ensure the safety and security of the country and its people”.
That document formalised our commitment to spend 2% of GDP on defence until 2020. My noble friend Lord King questioned whether that would be enough. However, I remind him that that same document also committed to raise the MoD budget by 0.5% per annum in real terms over this Parliament. There will also be an additional £1.5 billion a year by 2020-21 in a new joint security fund.
The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, took us to the issue of strategy and rightly challenged me on our thinking. The SDSR will be framed in the context of the national security strategy. The strategic context is fundamental to the work now under way. Our analysis suggests that the 2010 national security strategy judgment that we were entering an age of uncertainty, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, mentioned, has been thoroughly vindicated in the intervening period. We anticipated that international terrorism would remain a major challenge and expected to see a range of domestic resilience challenges. Our decision to configure our Armed Forces to be flexible and adaptable to evolving threats has been proven correct.
However, we recognise that we have moved beyond the era of uncertainty to a period characterised best by heightened competition, instability and insecurity. I can tell the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, that resilience is very much a principle that we are factoring into our deliberations. In general, procurement levels are set to allow for operational losses and sufficient reliance. I take his specific point about the need for credible, conventional combat power in addition to the deterrent. We are confident that the deterrent itself remains capable and effective and that we maintain sufficient and capable conventional forces.
The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth and other noble Lords questioned whether it was the Government’s genuine aim for the UK to remain a major global player. We are clear that there will be no reduction in Britain’s influence overseas. Our military, security, diplomatic and development capabilities are respected globally. Our diplomatic network spans 268 posts in 168 countries and territories and nine multilateral organisations. The UK has world-leading intelligence agencies and Armed Forces, a strong police force and an impressive National Crime Agency. The UK led the EU’s response to the crises in Syria and Iraq, including responding to the threat from ISIL. The Government will continue to do more on forward defence, reducing the threats before they reach our borders.
The right reverend Prelate and the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, raised the issue of the SDSR process itself. In developing the NSS and SDSR, the Ministry of Defence, alongside the Cabinet Office, the FCO, DfID and the Home Office, has engaged with a broad range of internal and external stakeholders. We have met groups of external experts; hosted academic engagement sessions across the UK; participated in meetings with NGOs and industry round tables; we have briefed Back-Bench MPs, the House of Commons Defence Committee, interested Peers and the devolved Administrations. In total, we have discussed the review with more than 100 experts from nearly 40 different organisations and institutions. I can tell my noble friend Lord Selkirk that we have also engaged with international allies and partners and welcomed the public to write in with their thoughts. The right reverend Prelate, in particular, will wish to take note of the online poll that was conducted recently. We are serious about open policy-making. We have sought comments over the summer, as this gives us the time to analyse the results and feed them into the review process in a meaningful way. The poll is only one of several ways of engagement and offers the public another avenue for comment.
The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, my noble friend Lord Selkirk, the right reverend Prelate and other noble Lords spoke about the capabilities that we are reviewing in the SDSR. The SDSR is clearly an opportunity to re-examine our capability choices. In 2010, we highlighted that we would return to some questions in this review. Maritime patrol aircraft, ballistic missile defence and future combat aircraft fit into that category and they will all be considered. We also committed to considering NATO’s capability shortfalls and which ones we could help to mitigate. I am afraid it is too early to discuss options and decisions in detail, although I will comment on particular questions that noble Lords have raised in a second. The noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, asked whether defence engagement would become a formal military task. The framework by which defence activity is directed is currently being revised as part of the review. Defence engagement is clearly a very important defence function and is likely to be very prominent in the future framework for defence. I am afraid that is as far as I can go at the moment, but I hope he will take comfort from the fact that it is in our sights.
The noble Lord also asked me about army basing. The army basing programme enables the Army to reorganise into its new Army 2020 structures, and delivers the Government’s 2010 SDSR commitment to bring all UK military units back from Germany by 2020. The programme has been delivered jointly by the Defence Infrastructure Organisation and the Army. Although some units have already withdrawn from Germany to the UK, the majority of the 30 moves or re-roles conducted in 2013-14 were inside the UK. In the summer of this year, some 5,200 service personnel and their families, totalling 10,000 people, will have returned from Germany to the UK.
The final phase of the army basing programme involves the remaining units in Germany, principally 20th Armoured Infantry Brigade based in Paderborn, and completes a number of residual internal UK moves. The whole programme is still scheduled to complete by 2020. There are sufficient funds to complete the programme and it is on track. We were considering bringing it forward but have decided instead to leave the plans in place. There are no plans to leave any units or force elements in Germany.
The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, posed the question of why we are in Iraq and whether it was just because we had been invited by that country to provide assistance. Let me make it clear: ISIL threatens the people of the Middle East and poses a threat to our own national security. Defeating ISIL will take time and patience but it is a fight that we must win. The UK is part of a global coalition of over 60 countries, including Iraq, Arab nations, European partners and the United States, united to defeat ISIL. The UK contribution to the coalition effort is significant. We provide capability across the full spectrum of air power, including niche and highly advanced intelligence surveillance, reconnaissance and airstrike capabilities, and in many other areas. ISIL, as has been said, cannot just be defeated by military action. The underlying causes must also be addressed, which is why we are supporting inclusive governance in Iraq and political transition in Syria.
My noble friend Lord King rightly emphasised the importance of maintaining NATO as a strong and credible alliance to deter and face down any possible aggression. As I am sure he knows, the UK has made a significant contribution to NATO’s reassurance exercises since they came into being in May last year. NATO’s readiness action plan provides a comprehensive package of measures, including the development of the very high readiness joint task force and assurance measures to respond to changes in the security environment on NATO’s borders, including challenges posed by Russia. In my opening speech I mentioned the contribution that we were making and will continue to make in future. However, it is fair to say that the NATO summit in Wales in September last year demonstrated alliance solidarity at a time of tension on NATO’s borders, a tension that continues. It saw agreement on a number of key objectives, including NATO’s readiness action plan, which seeks to increase the responsiveness of allies through the development of the very high readiness joint task force, and by conducting assurance measures, particularly exercises in the eastern and Baltic states. Those exercises of course provide valuable training opportunities as well as contributing to the reassurance of Eastern allies.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, took me somewhat to task on several matters, including the so-called funding black hole in the MoD budget. I have no wish to irritate the noble Lord in the slightest. First, I readily acknowledge that many of the programmes that we are currently pursuing were initiated by the previous Labour Government. Ministers in that Government would perhaps not have been exposed to the £38 billion number, as it became apparent only during SDSR 2010 costing. The Government reported to the House of Commons Defence Committee on the figure of £38 billion in 2012. I am happy to write to the noble Lord with the figures that we provided to the committee at that time.
My noble friend Lord Attlee asked how we would ensure that no black hole would occur in the future. It is the job of Ministers to ensure that the MoD budget is in balance with its spending programme. The public spending envelope across government is now so strict and disciplined that it cannot be otherwise. It is our duty to report regularly and transparently to the Treasury and to account for our spending and our spending plans. Of course, we receive the benefit of its close oversight.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies, my noble friend Lord Selkirk of Douglas, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, spoke about maritime patrol aircraft. We have acknowledged that we have a maritime surveillance capability gap following the decision not to bring the Nimrod MRA4 into service. However, we have also made it clear that it is one that we have chosen to accept. We have not sought to pretend otherwise. It is a gap that we have been able to mitigate through the employment of other assets, as noble Lords have mentioned, particularly also through co-operation with our allies who have deployed maritime patrol aircraft on several occasions.
We are conscious that this issue is in the sights of many people. It is very much in ours. It has been the subject of recent studies by the Ministry of Defence. We have received representations from a number of industrial organisations and those have allowed us to understand better the nature of the platforms currently in existence, as well as the timeframe in which novel technologies are likely to mature. I mentioned the support of our allies. Incidentally, that is not a one-way street. We supply support to our allies in return, such as air-to-air refuelling, surveillance and transport.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies, mentioned the F35 joint strike fighter. That is the world’s largest single defence programme. We have played an important role in the system design and demonstration phase, as he knows, resulting in significant contracts and jobs for UK industry. To date, we have taken delivery of three F35B aircraft. A further five for the UK are in production and are scheduled to be delivered in 2016 and early 2017. UK F35 initial operating capability is scheduled for 2018 and remains on track.
Earl Howe
I am coming to that. The F35 programme has been established as an incremental acquisition programme with production contracts being led initially on an annual basis. We will order sufficient lightning aircraft to build up our initial carrier strike capability, but the overall number of joint strike fighter aircraft to be purchased will not be determined before the strategic defence and security review at the earliest.
The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Boyce, referred to the Type 26 global combat ship, which will progressively replace Type 23 frigates from 2022 onwards. We are implementing an incremental approach to approvals and commitment on the T26 global combat ship programme, with separate approvals covering demonstration and manufacture phases. On current planning and subject to a main gate decision, the manufacture phase will begin in 2016. He asked about the national shipbuilding strategy. The strategy announced by the Chancellor on 30 January this year is progressing well and its conclusions will form part of the forthcoming strategic defence and security review later this year. The aim of that strategy is to help deliver world-class ships for the Royal Navy while ensuring the best value for money for the taxpayer. It will also ensure that the Navy continues to have the capability that it needs to protect our nation’s interests and ensure continued investment in UK warship production.
The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, referred to cyber. I readily agree that, in defence, cyber is essential to preserve our freedom to operate despite cyber threats and to achieve military effects through and in cyberspace. The whole of the defence supply chain also faces cyber threats. In 2013, the Defence Cyber Protection Partnership was launched as a joint government/industry initiative to increase the resilience of the defence sector. Our Armed Forces depend on equipment and services provided by industry. In government we face similar challenges, and we believe that that partnership will be of considerable value; indeed, it is already proving to be.
I will write to the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, on the issues around industrial policy because they are very important. I would simply mention in particular the Defence Growth Partnership, which I believe will see us achieve a more thriving defence sector in the UK underpinned by work to improve international competitiveness and to target research investment more efficiently and effectively.
I cannot finish without referring to personnel issues, which my noble friend Lady Hodgson and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, among others, emphasised with considerable persuasiveness. The Armed Forces are changing to meet the Future Force 2020 structure, which requires reductions in some capabilities and the growth of others. They are actively recruiting to sustain manning balance across all skill sets, preserve future operational capability and support regular and reserve manning ratios. Recruitment continues to be supported by significant marketing activity in the current financial year. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, that we need to increase attraction rates for a number of key trades such as medics and cyber engineers, nuclear, maritime and aviation. These are a particular issue due to national skills shortages. The latter issue is being explored in collaboration with other government departments. A joint team with industry has now been established and is undertaking a pathfinder project to allow the movement of skilled people across the defence sector.
With regard to the reserves, the new employment model that emerged from the 2010 SDSR aims to produce a modernised offer that reflects modern society. This is a wide-ranging review of the terms and conditions of service for service personnel, both regular and reserves, covering four broad policy areas: pay and allowances, accommodation, training and education, and career structures and career management. I will write further on where we are on recruitment and retention but I believe, as a result of a short brief I received this morning, that we are heading in the right direction.
With time moving on, with the leave of noble Lords I will cover just a few more issues. The right reverend Prelate raised the matter of women in ground close combat roles. That is not strictly an SDSR issue, as I expect he knows, but, following a review of the exclusion of women from ground close combat roles, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence announced at the end of last year that defence welcomes the prospect of opening ground close combat roles to women subject to the outcome of further physiological research before a final decision is taken in 2016.
The noble Lord, Lord Burnett, referred to the much discussed case of Sergeant Alexander Blackman, and I listened carefully to all that he said. There is a proper limit to what I can say in my ministerial capacity, as I know he recognises. But it is common knowledge that Sergeant Blackman appealed to the Court Martial Appeal Court, which incidentally is a wholly civilian court made up of the same judges who sit in the civilian Court of Appeal. The fairness and objectivity of that process was reflected by the decision on 22 May last year by the Court Martial Appeal Court, chaired by the Lord Chief Justice himself, which decided not to overturn the conviction of a life sentence. The court did reduce the minimum term Mr Blackman must serve from 10 to eight years. The full reasoning behind that judgment was published on the Ministry of Justice website, and it was based on the consideration of a range of factors that I will not go into. The MoD has, and can have, no view on Sergeant Blackman’s guilt or innocence. It would be improper for us to express a view. There is a legal process to determine that question. The MoD will however of course fully co-operate with the judicial process.
The noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, referred to the issue of Afghan interpreters and locally employed civilians. Our policy offers a redundancy relocation option that does not require local staff to prove that they are at risk. The policies of other NATO nations are largely based on asylum criteria. I would just say that the way that the Government’s policy and the implementation of that policy have been portrayed in the press has been wrong and misleading. We are the only nation with a permanent team of trained investigation officers in-country to investigate claims of intimidation. These experts have provided support to over 200 former local staff. A total of 500 local staff are eligible for relocation to the UK under the redundancy scheme, out of whom 170 have already moved to the UK along with their families, bringing the current total to 400. I am happy to write further to the noble Lord but I would add that the intimidation policy, which is quite separate from the ex gratia redundancy policy, allows for all current and former local staff members, regardless of dates or length of employment, whose safety has been threatened to approach us to consider relocation.
I have been advised that I have overshot my time. I will write to noble Lords about the other subjects that I have not been able to cover, notably the Armed Forces covenant. I listened very carefully to the comments from my noble friend Lady Buscombe on the Border Force command and listed buildings in Portsmouth.
I am conscious that I am in danger of exhausting the Committee’s patience, if I have not done so already, so I conclude by thanking all those noble Lords and noble and gallant Lords who have taken part in the debate. I look forward to writing to them over the next few days.
Defence: Budget
Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
My Lords, it is customary to begin an SDSR with an analysis of the threat, but we should never forget that capability and threat are not independent variables. There is a direct and inverse relationship between the two, and the situation with Russia and Putin is a very good example of that. It is quite incredible to believe that a serious factor in encouraging Mr Putin to become much more aggressive in trying to retrieve parts of the former Soviet and Tsarist empires was not that, over the last few years, we and other European members of NATO have been steadily cutting our defence expenditure and our defence capabilities. What an appalling signal to send—I am afraid that we bear some of the responsibility for the deterioration of the international situation and the threat to world peace that has ensued.
What do we do about it? First, we must support, more than we are already doing, the Ukrainian armed forces. What they need most at present, as I have discovered in my visits there, is anti-battery radars and drones. We should supply those sorts of things and the training that goes with them.
Secondly, we need to prepare sanctions to deter Putin if he goes any further; if, for example, he decides to seek to grab a land bridge between the areas he occupies in eastern Ukraine and the Crimea. I think I was the first person anywhere to suggest, after the invasion of the Crimea, that we should contemplate depriving the Russian banks of access to the SWIFT interbank system. The suggestion has been taken up by other people since then, particularly in the United States, and we should explore it further.
Thirdly, and very importantly, we must make a commitment to the 2% defence spending target. We look perfectly ridiculous with the Prime Minister having had the effrontery to lecture other NATO members on the need to respect that NATO guideline when we are not doing so ourselves. Quite apart from the important signal we need to send to the Russians about this, it is vital that we do it for our credibility with the United States, which has become rather frayed. We cannot simply wait for the SDSR to achieve that because in our relations with the United States, the scepticism that it feels about our defence capability and commitment is increasing the whole time.
Finally, we should be taking forward the development of a common foreign and security policy within the EU; but the Government will of course not do this, because their Eurosceptics will not allow them to do it. First, nothing would be a more effective signal to send to the Russians of our joint commitment. It would involve not merely the existing NATO members within the EU but the five members which are currently outside NATO. It is very important to involve them. Secondly, it would be the only way to get a joint commitment to a realistic level of defence spending and deal with the free-rider problem, which has always existed, where the smaller countries have spent much less of their GDP on defence than larger countries, believing that they would always be defended by others. That is a very unhealthy and unsatisfactory situation. Thirdly, if we want to get value for money, it will be absolutely important to eliminate the waste and duplication in the armed forces of NATO and EU countries. That can be done only by a greater degree of specialisation and, therefore, of policy and decision-making integration. Finally, in procurement it is vital that we have much longer production runs, and gain the kind of economies of scale which the Americans achieve through those means, by joint procurement operations with our European allies. Again, that can be done only in the context of a distinct strengthening and improvement of a common foreign and security policy.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe) (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Sterling for giving us the opportunity to debate a topic of fundamental importance for the security and prosperity of this country. He brings to our deliberations a wealth of experience in both business and politics, and I listened to him, as I always do, with the closest attention. However, he has also enabled me, as the new Minister on the block, to benefit from the wisdom of the other speakers here this evening, and I am grateful to all of them for their contributions. I shall of course write on those questions that I am unable to address tonight.
As this debate has shown, the House recognises that the first duty of government is to protect its people and promote our interests around the world. Therefore, I preface my remarks by making clear that the influence that this country continues to exercise globally and the respect that we command through our military, diplomatic and development capabilities are major national advantages that the Government are committed to maintain.
The defence budget, and the way we use that budget, are of course key components in the way we achieve this. Listening to noble Lords this evening, I cannot fail to be aware of the anxieties that exist in some quarters about current and future defence funding. At the same time, I suggest that we need to take a realistic and measured view, both of what we are doing currently and of what we plan to do. At present, the UK has the fifth-largest defence budget in the world, the second-largest in NATO and the largest in the EU. That budget has enabled us to commit our Armed Forces, as we speak, to 21 operations in 19 different countries. It has enabled us to achieve genuine global reach in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Baltic, west Africa and, most recently, Nepal and the Mediterranean, to name only a few examples.
In Iraq we bring niche capabilities such as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, air refuelling, counter-IED, and command and control to the US-led coalition which few other nations can replicate. We are the US’s largest partner in the coalition air effort against ISIL.
In Afghanistan we can be proud of what we have achieved in our largest coalition operation of recent times, Operation Herrick. We have helped to set the conditions for a more viable state, improving the lives of ordinary Afghans, while substantially reducing the terrorist threat to the UK from this region.
This year, our contribution to NATO assurance measures will be as significant as last year, with more than 4,000 UK personnel set to deploy on various reassurance exercises, including a number in eastern alliance territories.
In Nepal we demonstrated our disaster relief capabilities when we deployed one C130 Hercules transport aircraft, two C17 transport aircraft and more than 250 personnel to the region to support relief efforts, on top of our existing Gurkha presence. In Sierra Leone we led the fight against Ebola, committing 900 troops. In the Mediterranean we have demonstrated other elements of our naval capability, deploying HMS “Bulwark” along with three Merlin helicopters to rescue—so far—2,900 migrants in difficulty.
These are our Armed Forces as they are today—capable of responding to a complex variety of challenges quickly and effectively. But, as my noble friend has emphasised, we need to pay equal attention to the defence needs of the future. That is indeed why the Government are in the process of carrying out a full strategic defence and security review, along with a refreshed national security strategy. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, that this is not prevarication. The SDSR will take as its starting point a hard-headed appraisal of our foreign policy, our security objectives and the role that we wish our country to play on the world stage. It will be informed also by a full evaluation of the risks and challenges facing us as a country.
Not all these risks can be foreseen but, through the work of the National Security Council and by ensuring that the national security strategy builds on the progress made since 2010, we will be well placed to define the military and other capabilities we need to ensure that Britain has the broad range of capabilities and strategies to respond to threats and maintain its position as a global leader. The noble Baroness, Lady Dean, can be reassured that this will indeed factor in the well-being of our personnel.
However, in so doing, the SDSR will need to balance strategic challenge with fiscal realities. It is unrealistic to think that any part of government can operate in a vacuum, without having regard to the resource constraints that the country faces. Economic security and national security are two sides of the same coin. I cannot therefore comment on what our defence spending will be after this financial year. Such decisions, as my noble friend will understand, will be determined by the spending review later this year, running alongside the SDSR. However, he should, I hope, be reassured in one respect at least. By its very nature, the SDSR will look ahead at the longer term as well as the short and medium term. And here, I suggest, we start from a good position. This Government were elected with a mandate to maintain the size of the Regular Armed Forces, to increase the equipment budget in real terms every year and to renew our four nuclear ballistic submarines.
We have committed to spending more than £160 billion on equipment and equipment support over the next decade; including on new joint strike fighters, more surveillance aircraft, hunter-killer submarines, two aircraft carriers and the most advanced armoured vehicles. We continue to spend 20% of our defence budget on major equipment and equipment support—one of only four NATO members to do so.
This equipment will be innovative and high technology, giving our Armed Forces a battle-winning edge. For example, our procurement of the Scout Specialist Vehicle will transform the way that the Army undertakes operations, enabling commanders to engage at ranges and at a tempo not previously possible.
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is a fifth-generation multi-role combat aircraft and marks a step change in capability for the UK. The Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers will be the largest, most capable and powerful surface warships ever constructed in the UK, able to meet the widest range of tasks around the world. All these programmes have a positive impact on the UK’s defence industry, either through their manufacture or through many years of future support.
I assure my noble friend Lord Lyell that the equipment and weapons currently fielded by the British Army are genuinely second to none.
I have read the paper published by King’s College London and mentioned by my noble friend Lord Sterling. We know how important it is to be able to act independently. That is why key principles of the 2012 White Paper, National Security Through Technology, are open procurement and technology advantage. Where essential on grounds of national security, we will do whatever is necessary to protect our operational advantage over our adversaries and our freedom of action. This means being able to conduct combat operations at a time and place of our choosing with the assurance that capabilities will perform as required, when required.
We will spend 2% of GDP on defence in this financial year. But as my noble friend Lord Howell emphasised quite rightly, it is not just the size of the defence budget that is important but also how you spend it. That is why we are continuing with our successful defence transformation programme, which has balanced the defence budget, removing the £37 billion black hole left by the last Labour Government, and committed the department to finding £5 billion of efficiency savings over the last five years, reducing administration costs and critically examining our defence equipment needs, helping us to achieve better deals with our contractors.
Lord Davies of Stamford
I am aware that the Minister is very new to this brief, but I regret very much that he is continuing to mention this complete nonsense and propaganda about a £35 billion black hole deficit. If defence expenditure had gone on increasing at the rate of 1.5% per annum in real terms, which we were committed to, there would have been no such black hole at all.
Earl Howe
My Lords, I totally repudiate that comment. Not only was there a black hole of that size, but I was briefed on it the other day and it is even greater than that figure—but we will not go into that now, if the noble Lord will allow.
There is no point in having a £34 billion defence budget if it is not spent efficiently. That is why it is important that we continue our work from the previous Parliament so that we can maximise defence spending on our Armed Forces. This is demonstrated in our 10-year fully funded equipment plan which we published in January. That plan gives industry certainty over MoD investment in different areas for the next decade, helping us to deliver the equipment we need for our Armed Forces. I say again, the fiscal challenge that has faced defence has not impacted on our ability to conduct operations to support our foreign policy objectives —far from it—as I have already indicated with examples of our many military operations around the world.
As has been said, we are not only using military intervention to protect our interests and promote our values; we have a leading diplomatic network which spans 268 posts in 168 countries and territories, and nine multilateral organisations. These unique capabilities have enabled the UK to play a leading role in talks to address Iran’s nuclear programme, disarming Syria of its declared chemical weapons stockpile and establishing a global arms trade treaty. We are also the only G7 nation to meet the UN OECD target to spend 0.7% of gross national income on international development, building stability and supporting economic growth overseas and contributing, importantly, to the security and prosperity of the UK.
The achievements of our defence and diplomatic services speak for themselves. The UK can be proud to have such world-renowned services to call upon. As my noble friend Lord Glenarthur said, the upcoming SDSR is an opportunity to look again at our foreign policy objectives and ensure that we have the assets necessary to address these in the context of the resources available to us. As I said to this House earlier this month, in the words of Churchill, we will do what is necessary to keep Britain safe and will remain part of the international effort to defeat the adversaries that threaten us.
Gurkhas: Anniversary
Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, on securing this debate, which is an exceptionally well-timed initiative, if I may say so, given that this is the 200th anniversary of the first Gurkha units being recruited by the East India Company and there is the appalling coincidence of the dreadful earthquake from which people in Nepal are suffering so much at present.
I speak both as a former Defence Minister and as someone who knows and loves Nepal, as evidently the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, does. Of course, I was not a Minister for the Armed Forces—I was Minister for Defence Procurement—but no one can be associated with the British Armed Forces without being enormously conscious of the tremendous contribution that the Gurkhas have made to the defence of this country and our people, and to the defence of world peace over the time when Gurkha units have been with the British Army.
I add to the very fine tribute, which the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, has just paid to the Gurkhas’ extraordinary bravery and gallantry and which was not exaggerated in any way, the fact that, to my knowledge, they have never actually participated in an operation which they have not concluded not merely honourably but with the greatest distinction. They are an enormous asset. I do not think that I need to expand on that too much, because I note that two noble Lords are going to contribute to this debate—the noble Viscount, Lord Slim, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham —who probably have direct experience of fighting alongside Gurkhas or perhaps commanding formations, including Gurkha units, which I of course do not have. I think there is a very wide recognition in this country of the great debt that we owe the Gurkhas, which was demonstrated very visibly, and I think quite movingly, by the success of Joanna Lumley’s campaign. I hope that it moved people in Nepal, too. I think that it did.
Nepal is a country that I know personally. I spent several weeks of my life on different occasions walking in Nepal, both in the east of Nepal, going up to the Everest base camp, the Cho La glacier and elsewhere, and in the west of Nepal, going up to Annapurna base camp and so forth. Anybody who does that is entirely dependent for his security and safety on the good judgment and conscientiousness of his guide. On several occasions, I could understand some of the great confidence that British soldiers have always had in having Gurkhas alongside them—confidence in their courage and confidence in their reliability, judgment and great personal loyalty.
What is happening at the present time is a terrible tragedy. The whole world has responded. The Indians and Chinese have particular political as well as geopolitical reasons, but I am sure that they also have very strong humanitarian reasons, for getting involved in helping Nepal. We have a deep and personal historic obligation to do that, as well as a moral one. The Government have responded to that, and I commend DfID for what it has done so far, but I want to ask the Minister a few questions which I think it would be useful to the public interest to have answered in public this afternoon.
First, one hears in the media that the problem is not so much lack of money, because quite a lot of money has been raised from different sources; the problem is one of logistics and co-ordination of the different government departments in Nepal. Could the noble Earl, Lord Howe, say whether that is a correct perception of the present situation? It would also be very valuable if he could give us an update on what the contribution has been from this country. I also wonder to what extent British military personnel have been involved. When I was in the MoD, one thing that I did was to order 22 Chinooks, 10 of which were cancelled by the incoming Government in 2010. We still have 60 in inventory, and just half a dozen of those would be a wonderful asset, particularly in supplying those very narrow valleys, which are otherwise inaccessible. Everything has to be carried in on the back of a man or a yak, often after a trek of days. Chinooks would be wonderful in getting heavier building materials up into those valleys in time to repair or rebuild houses before the winter comes.
On the heritage sites in Nepal that have been so badly damaged, we have all been appalled to see pictures of Durbar Square, which has been almost completely obliterated. As anybody knows who has been to Kathmandu, it is the most extraordinary collection of the most exotic and astonishing Nepalese architecture, going back over 400 years. There are other great sites of the same kind—at Bagan, for example. What is the situation with regard to repairing those, and to what extent are the Government involved in initiatives with UNESCO or otherwise to make sure that something is done to repair them? Somebody has already mentioned the very fine museum in Pokhara, which is both a brigade and a regimental museum. I would be very interested to know whether that has survived unscathed, and if not what is being done to repair it.
Finally, perhaps I could ask a question that is also a suggestion. Has there been a ministerial visit to Nepal since this disaster took place? If not, is one contemplated? If one is not, could one please be contemplated as urgently as possible? For the reasons I have already mentioned, I think it would be particularly effective if it could be a Defence Minister who goes to Nepal, who could show directly by his or her presence there our solidarity with the Nepalese people and would be able to form a personal judgment on the progress of the great international relief effort and come back and be able in a well-informed fashion to take any measures that might be needed in the present circumstances to improve things and make sure that we do not have any further tragedies of people dying because, for example, they cannot repair their houses before the weather deteriorates in the autumn.
Armed Forces: Airborne Maritime Patrol
Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Earl Howe
My Lords, it is important to emphasise that the SDSR will be underpinned by a very robust assessment of the threats that face us and the needs that we have to meet those threats. On the noble Lord’s wider point, the Ministry of Defence is just one organisation with a role in the security of the UK’s territorial waters. Under the UK national strategy for maritime security we have a ministerial working group chaired by the FCO. That has been established to focus on maritime security in its entirety.
Falkland Islands Defence Review
Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his very kind, totally undeserved, words. The Falklands Islands patrol vessel capability will be retained when HMS “Clyde” leaves service in 2017. I assure my noble friend that we always have either a Type 45 destroyer or a Type 23 frigate available to reinforce the Falklands Islands.
Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
I have no idea whether this is the last appearance of the noble Lord at the Dispatch Box—of course, on this side we all hope that the Government are defeated in the forthcoming election—but if it is his last performance in this role, I shall say how much our side have appreciated the courtesy and conscientiousness which he has always shown in fulfilling his roles in this House. The depth of his genuine commitment to our military and to the defence of the nation has never been doubted by anybody.
As the noble Lord knows from many discussions and debates, I have always believed that capability and threat are not independent variables. It is not an accident that since NATO started cutting its defence expenditure Mr Putin has become ever more bold and ever more aggressive. At present, Cristina Fernández is in a very difficult situation and is facing a major scandal and the collapse of the Argentinian economy. She could well be tempted to have a go at some adventure if there was a quick trick to be taken. A strong signal needed to be sent and the Government appear to have done that—that is how I interpret the Statement today. All of us on this side of the House will endorse my noble friend in giving the Government support on that.
There is one question I want to ask. Everybody who knows the Falklands knows that we cannot go on much longer there unless an effort is made to refurbish and rebuild the barracks which were constructed after 1982 and at that time were due to last for 20 years. They are already in a state of embarrassing disrepair. Are there any plans to replace them or to refurbish them?
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his very kind words. I understand that the barracks are going to be refurbished. I can write to the noble Lord with specific details on the plans.
Ukraine
Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)
My Lords, time is up.
Defence Budget
Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Astute-class Submarines
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Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, women officers and ratings will be able to serve on Astute-class submarines from about next year, but this will not be the first class to do so. Seven women officers have completed the submarine officer training course and are now serving in the submarine service on board the Vanguard-class submarines, and in headquarters appointments. Women ratings will commence training this year.
Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
My noble friend and the Minister have already referred to the positive experience effects that one always gets in building any class of vessel, or in any engineering project, but does he recall that in addition to those effects that one can expect, there was a particular problem at the beginning of the Astute-class programme because of the break in continuity and expertise from the previous submarine-building programmes of the Trafalgar class? Does he therefore accept that it is vital that we do not run into those problems again, and those excess costs and wastes of money, and that this time there is absolutely no gap between the end of the building of the Astute programme and the beginning of the successor class programme?
Defence: Type 26 Frigates
Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts(9 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, the Type 26 will be built by BAE Systems on the Clyde. Complex UK warships are built only in UK shipyards and we have no plans to change this. Although the contract has not been awarded, we have been clear that from 2015 the Clyde will be the UK’s only shipyard that builds complex warships.
Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
Will the noble Lord tell the House what the incremental cost is of maintaining and refitting the Type 23s, which would not have been necessary had the Type 26 programme come forward on time? If the reason for the delay in the programme is lack of money, as I suspect, why on earth have the Government underspent in their defence budget in this Parliament—against a much reduced, severely reduced, some of us think irresponsibly reduced defence budget? The Government have underspent by nearly £400 million; the exact figures were given to me in a Written Answer the other day. Is that not a dereliction of duty, both to the country and to members of the Armed Forces themselves?
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, I cannot give the noble Lord the figures that he requires, but I can assure him that we want to get the Type 26s and the capability that the Royal Navy needs, to get value for money for the taxpayer, and to have a very strong British shipbuilding industry.