Defence Capabilities: EUC Report

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Gilbert]

My Lords, I am afraid that I am going to be in a very small minority today, probably not for the first time, which gives me no tremors whatever, as I am unable to add to the fulsome welcome that this report has received.

Before I turn to the substance of the report, I wish to draw the Committee’s attention to some of the stylistic matters that caught my eye. I do not normally care to read reports, but I intended to read this one from cover to cover. However, I gave up on page 10, actually only the fifth printed page of the report, where there is a misplaced apostrophe. Noble Lords will ask, “Why am I wasting the Committee’s time on a misplaced apostrophe?”. On the previous page, page 9, there is one of many subordinate clauses without any commas at either end, so you have to read the sentence over and over again to find out what it actually means. On page 8, going backwards, there is an egregious spelling mistake that any child of 15 would be punished for making. On page 7 we have a sentence starting with a conjunction.

The real blow, though, comes on the very first page. I am now going to read out to the Committee a direct quote from the middle paragraph of the summary:

“By better coordination of forces and most of all by ensuring that forces are capable of, and willing to, deploy Europe can achieve this now”.

I will happily buy lunch for any member of this Committee if he can show me how to parse that into an English sentence; it is not capable of being made into a sentence. It really is disgraceful.

This accumulation of grammatical solecisms, misspellings and punctuation errors says to me one of three things: that the members of the committee read the report and did not notice these things, which I find unbelievable, seeing how talented they are; that they read the report and did not give a damn about them, which I do not think would be the case; or, much more likely, they never read the report. That is the most charitable explanation. The noble Lord, Lord Roper, may frown, but his name is on this report. He is chairman of the committee and is responsible for putting the report in front of us with the House of Lords imprimatur on it.

[Lord Radice]

I am loath to intervene on my noble friend’s speech because I am sure that it is going to be extremely good, but I suggest that the noble Lord reads the sentence before the one that he has criticised. He might then find that it was more intelligible. It is a good thing to read a couple of sentences rather than just taking one on its own.

[Lord Gilbert]

Of course, I read the whole page. The noble Lord is right, but that sentence is rubbish. It is not even a sentence and it should not be in a House of Lords report. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Roper, to ensure that in future any reports from any sub-committee of his committee are written in decent English. I have got that off my chest, but I stand by what I said. It seems to be perfect evidence that the people who wrote the report did not read it before it was printed.

Now we come to the substance of the report. Of course, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, has been overwhelmed with congratulations at how wise and timely it is, but I am afraid that I am rather bored with this report. Why am I bored with it? Because it does not say anything new. Why does it not say anything new? Because I have heard the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, say it 16 times before. He told us himself that he had, over and over again. What is in this report? It is in the speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Robertson.

I hesitate to point this out to my noble friend, who was my boss at one time, but I think Albert Einstein pointed out that to say the same thing over and over again and expect a different result is a higher form of lunacy. Why has the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, had to make the same speech over and over again? For the very simple reason that everybody ignores him. They all say, “What a wonderful speech”, but the continentals do not do anything and are never going to. That is the point. All the Eurofanatics sitting on this side of the Room are in denial. They think by saying that Europe has to do this or that, Europe might do it. However, Europe has never done it. It is not going to do it and has no interest in doing it—and we all know it.

It is high time that the House comes to recognise what I have said many times: this country’s friends are not the other side of the North Sea or the English Channel but in the English-speaking world. We have talked about taking the lead in cyberdefence, but we are doing that with the Americans and the Australians. As you would expect, that is where our friends are—in the English-speaking world. I am afraid I have no great enthusiasm for this report.

Coming to a subject close to my heart, I draw your Lordships’ attention to paragraph 93, on page 42—

[Lord Radice]

The noble Lord said he did not get beyond page 10.

[Lord Gilbert]

I dipped into it. Of course I did not read through it. The noble Lord, Lord Radice, is very active on this. I am very interested. They found some idiot called Pierre Vimont—what a lunatic. This is what he is summarised as saying:

“Despite the limited success of the A400M”.

I would like to hear anybody else in your Lordships’ committee talk to me about the “limited success” of the A400M—it is a disaster, but there is not a word in this report saying why it is a “limited success”. The paragraph goes on:

“We also heard evidence that money could be saved by collaboration”.

That is a deep insight. Before that, the report notes that Pierre Vimont also suggested that,

“it was important to continue with such projects”

as the A400M.

For the benefit of noble Lords who do not keep up to speed on logistic arrangements, the Americans have found the combination of the C130 and the C17 quite capable of satisfying all their airborne logistical requirements, as have the Canadians, the Australians and the Indians—and so, up to now, have we. When we finally procure this A400M, we will be abandoning the C130 and so will lose interoperability with the Indians, the Canadians, the Americans, the Australians and, by that time, quite a lot more people.

I have been told by a former Conservative Defence Secretary that the Americans were going to close down the C130 production line. That is rubbish, and simply not true. If you read the most recent edition of Defense News, you will see that they are going to go on with more and more sophisticated C130s. The C17 has also proved itself capable of undertaking tactical missions. The A400M is a complete, absolute wanking disaster, and we should be ashamed of ourselves. I have never seen such a waste of public funds in the defence field since I have been involved in it these past 40 years.

I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, takes this all in the spirit in which it is offered. It is not a personal criticism of him, but this report is nothing new. My noble friend Lord Robertson has said this many times before, and nothing is going to happen from it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Rosser]

My Lords, I listened to my noble friend Lord Gilbert with interest since his contributions are always enjoyable. I have been called a fanatic before, but not, I think, a Eurofanatic. That is the first time.

[Lord Gilbert]

I assure my noble friend that I was not referring to him.

Defence: Trident Replacement Programme

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, what consideration has been given to—

[Lord Gilbert]

My Lords, is it not the case that, in order to be credible, any deterrent has to be simultaneously invulnerable and undetectable? That is clearly not the case with any Cruise system even if it is supersonic—

[Noble Lords]

Order!

[Lord Gilbert]

I am sorry. It is also clearly not the case with any of the extraordinary arrangements that the Liberal party seems to be contemplating at the moment.

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I do not want to be drawn into an argument with my colleagues but I can say that the first duty of any Government is to ensure the security of their people. The nuclear deterrent provides the ultimate guarantee of our national security, and for the past 42 years the Royal Navy has successfully operated continuous deterrent patrols to ensure that. I pay tribute to the crews and support staff who ensure the continued success of deterrent operations and to the families of all those personnel, many of whom are regularly away from home for long periods.

Defence Budget

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend. He has asked quite a few questions and I will not be able to answer them all here, but I will write to him. He asked first whether I think it is a good idea for all the parties to get together. I certainly have very good relations with my shadows and I am very happy to take this back to the department and come back to my noble friend. It is an excellent suggestion, and it is one that he has made in the past. I shall let him know how I get on.

I cannot give my noble friend an instant answer to his questions about profit margins and reductions in the civilian and Armed Forces staff. He also asked whether we are leasing any other vessels which might be bought. Off the top of my head I think that HMS “Protector” might fall into that bracket, but I do not want to be held to that answer and I will write to my noble friend. I am not sure how long the NAO report will take, but I am happy to write to him about that as well.

[Lord Gilbert]

My Lords, when I first was lucky enough to join your Lordships’ House some 15 years ago, and I was already appointed as the Minister of State for Defence Procurement, I held strongly to the view that defence matters are far too important to be treated in a partisan way. I was extremely flattered and gratified that when I was introduced into the House, one of my two sponsors was a distinguished Conservative former Defence Minister and former Secretary-General of NATO. The Statement I have heard today is replete with political self-justification of a sort that should have no place in a Defence Secretary’s Statement. I am very sorry for our Minister because he has had to read it out. The last defence Statement took 13 minutes to repeat, and this one took 15 minutes, with large parts of it just as odious as the previous one. Again, I am sorry that our Minister has to come out with all this stuff because he is a thoroughly decent man. It has no place whatever in a Defence Secretary’s Statement, and if he wants to bandy about political remarks, I would ask him to look at who it was that saddled this country with the F35C—Dr Liam Fox—and he can put that in his pipe and smoke it.

However, today I have only one question for the Minister, who I regard as a good friend and hold in great respect. I hope that he does not consider himself tainted with the remarks I have found it necessary to make. What assessment has been made in the MoD of our ongoing loss of the C130, which is going to be kept by the Americans for many years? We are going to lose interoperability with around a dozen of our closest allies—the Australians, the Canadians, the Americans, the Qataris and many others. I think that this is going to be one of the most damaging consequences of these so-called reviews, and I should be grateful for the Minister’s views on the subject.

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, does not feel that I approach matters in a partisan way. I do not use this as a criticism, but I try to go out of my way to invite Members of all parties in this House into briefings. This is indeed a very complicated Statement so I shall be happy to lay on a briefing in the Ministry of Defence on all these issues. However, I hear what the noble Lord says.

With regard to the C130, the problem as I understand it is that the production line is going to close quite soon. I did have a flight in the A400M the other day—it was its first flight. I did invite the noble Lord and I had hoped that he would join me—and I think I very nearly got there. It is a wonderful plane and the Royal Air Force, which was originally very much against it coming into service, is now absolutely delighted. I think it makes a very good addition to the Royal Air Force.

Defence: Carrier Strike Capability

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and gallant Lord for his support. He and I sat through all the SDSR meetings and had to make the original decision. I can confirm to him that the first B-variant will be delivered in July this year and that the second one, I understand, will be delivered in October this year. They are both B-variants and both test aircraft. The third one, which will be delivered within 18 months, is also a B-variant—so all the first three aircraft are B-variants.

The noble and gallant Lord then asked me to confirm that the first carrier was being built without cats and traps and that the time when it would come into operation would not change. I can confirm that that is the case.

[Lord Gilbert]

My Lords, I, too, welcome this Statement, which must have been very difficult for the Minister to deliver. It took him 13 minutes to read out the Secretary of State’s Statement, and all he had to do was get up and say, “Sorry, you were right; we were wrong”, but he did not do that. But that is where we are.

Leaving aside all that fog about changed circumstances, I was very interested in what he said about a refuelling study. Why on earth did the Ministry of Defence need to engage in a refuelling study? It was buying the plane from the Americans. Why did not just ask the Americans what arrangements they had or did not have? I suspect that the plane will not have any refuelling capability because it will probably do damage to the stealth of the aircraft.

While I greatly welcome this decision, I still do not think that we out of risk and danger completely with the B version of this aircraft. Less than a year ago, Rear Admiral Venlet, the officer in charge of the whole programme in the United States, said that, so far, the F-35B is using more runway than desired in its short takeoffs and landings and that it cannot land vertically with as much payload as customers would like. I would be grateful if the Minister could speak to those two points. I am not too concerned about the second one, because you can always drop off fuel and ordinance that you have not used when you are trying to land, but concerns about the takeoff distance need careful attention and the Minister should explain to the House where we stand.

[Lord Astor of Hever]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his measured welcome of the Statement. I have far too much respect for him to criticise him for his subsequent comments. I am not briefed on the refuelling study with the Americans; I will write to the noble Lord and put a copy of the letter in the Library of the House. I am not aware of the problems of runway and takeoff associated with the B-variant. All the briefing that I have had on that from Royal Naval officers and civil servants has been very positive. They are all very happy with the plane’s performance, but, again, I will write t the noble Lord on this issue of runway and takeoff.

Mull of Kintyre Review

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

Again, I am grateful to my noble friend for this all-party support for the decision. Of course I understand the anxiety. I clearly remember that terrible, terrible day and I quite understand how it must have felt in Northern Ireland. As I said earlier, the Royal Air Force has learnt lessons from this disaster and its safety standards are higher than those of any other air force in the world.

[Lord Gilbert]

My Lords, it fell to me, rather sadly, on 22 May 1997 to make my maiden remarks in your Lordships’ House on this very subject. What we have heard today is a lawyer telling us that he disagrees with a decision of another lawyer. This is not a criticism, as I fully understand the deeply held emotions of people on this subject, but we have not heard a thing today about how the crash occurred. I refer noble Lords to col. 559 on 22 May 1997. The pilots elected to fly under visual flight rules, which state that one must at all times be in visual contact with the ground. We know that the highest point of the Mull of Kintyre is 1,463 feet above sea level. About 40 seconds from impact, the aircraft was flying at a height estimated at between 200 and 400 feet. It flew from visual meteorological conditions into instrument meteorological conditions. It was approaching the Mull of Kintyre at least 2,000 feet below the height at which it should have been under instrument flight rules in order to clear the Mull.

I am afraid that I will upset a lot of my friends when I say that there is no doubt whatever in my mind that the crash was down to pilot error. We have not heard a thing today about the plane being unsafe—not a word. That is because it was not: it is a brilliant piece of kit. I am a sorry that I have to disagree totally with this decision. I support the air marshals in the decision that they came to.

Libya

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gilbert]

My Lords, no one would criticise this Minister for failing to keep colleagues informed of what is going on in Libya. The decision about the Apaches is clearly taken above his pay grade; no criticisms attaches to him for our not being told about that. However, I do have some other questions to which we need some answers.

First, it seems sad that, once again, we are being led by the French. I do not think that is doing our standing in the world any good at all. In addition to the list of questions that my noble friend put so succinctly to the Minister, I would like to know when we are going to have an explanation of that brazen breach of the no-fly zone by some of Gaddafi’s helicopters a few days ago. On whose watch did that happen? Who is responsible for it and why have we not had an explanation? Finally, will the Minister tell us how many working helicopters are available to Mr Gaddafi at this time?

Nuclear Deterrent

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, my noble friend makes a good point in recognising that we live in a totally different world. I agree with him that the policy of the coalition Government is the long-term goal of a world free of nuclear weapons. We will do all that we can to work towards that goal. We will constantly keep under review the number of warheads that we require. As my noble friend said, it is a dangerous world and I do not see our long-term goal happening in the near future.

[Lord Gilbert]

Perhaps I may make it absolutely clear at the beginning that there is at least one Member of this House who has no desire to live in a world without nuclear weapons—no, it’s not funny. I believe that nuclear weapons are a deterrent and I never want to see another battle of the Somme, or of Stalingrad, or of Okinawa, or an invasion of any other country. I therefore want us to keep nuclear weapons and I welcome the Government’s Statement as another step forward in the maintenance of our nuclear deterrent.

However, I found one thing in the Minister's Statement absolutely deplorable. He did not say a word about whether, in the context of the reduction in our existing stock, he has made any agreement with any other nuclear state that it should reduce its weapons stock in exchange for the reduction in ours, or whether he has attempted to. My experience is that we have, as my noble friend pointed out, reduced our weapons stock by something like 75 per cent and have not negotiated a single reduction in any other country's weapons stock, nor tried to do so. This Government, like the previous Government, are simply following the policies of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord that we live in a very dangerous world. That is why we are renewing our nuclear deterrent. I very much welcome the noble Lord’s support for what we are doing. In response to his last question, obviously we will keep this under review and do all we can.

Armed Forces: Redundancies

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I share the noble Viscount’s views 100 per cent about the importance of commanding officers. I can give him the assurance that we do not intend to do anything to undermine that position. The investigations are matters for the Army and the Royal Air Force. It would be quite wrong for the Secretary of State or me from this Dispatch Box to make any promises or decisions and try to micromanage what the Army and the Royal Air Force do.

[Lord Gilbert]

Perhaps I may make it clear that I—and I am sure that I speak for most Members of this House—attribute absolutely no blame in this matter to the Minister. He is in a very unfortunate position at the Dispatch Box today and he is handling himself with great dignity. However, on the recruitment of fast jet pilots, given the number of years that it takes to train one of these brave young men to the height of the necessary skills, and given that this Government’s policies are supposed to come to fruition in roughly the same amount of time, how are we to have any confidence that the Government have confidence in their own economic measures when they are laying off those people? They will have investment and talents that will come to fruition at just the time that they claim their economic policies will succeed.

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I share 100 per cent the noble Lord’s views on fast jet pilots. Last week, I was fortunate enough to go to RAF Coningsby to see the hugely impressive work of the Typhoons. But, due to the reduction of the RAF’s aircraft fleet, the number of student pilots in the flying training pipeline will unfortunately be reduced by about 170 personnel. We will endeavour to find alternative positions, where available, within our branches, such as personnel support, engineers or logistics. However, I must make clear that there will be the need for redundancies. As these pilots are under training, it will not impact on operations.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Friday 12th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gilbert]

My Lords, I ought to start by declaring a couple of modest interests. First, I am a trustee of the All-Party Armed Forces Group, to which the noble Lord, Lord Sterling, made generous reference earlier in the debate. Secondly, I am chairman of a small IT company that has a contractual relationship with a major MoD contractor in the field of information security.

I wholeheartedly welcome the two noble Lords who made their maiden speeches today: the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham who, as I was Member for Dudley for 27 years, will no doubt have taken care of the interests of some of my constituents in the past, and above all, if I may say so, my noble friend Lord Hutton, who I am delighted to welcome to your Lordships’ House. I know that I am going to make some enemies of some of my noble friends but I consider him not only one of the most intelligent but certainly the most courageous Defence Minister I have had the pleasure of knowing, and I hope to hear his contributions many times in the future. I was delighted to hear what he had to say today.

I should disclose some of my prejudices for the benefit of those of your Lordships who have not heard them before. First, I believe that we can and should spend a lot more money on defence. The stories that are being put about at the moment are absolute nonsense. I should like to see us spending at least 2.5 per cent of our gross domestic product on defence. Secondly, in contradiction to some of the things that have been said recently—I shall refer to this later—I do not believe that our closest neighbours to the east or to the south are our best friends. I make that clear. The best friends of this country are to be found in the English-speaking world, wherever it may be and however many thousands of kilometres away. I do not resile from that and I never have done.

I shall touch briefly on one or two things that have been mentioned, which was not part of my original intention. I welcome the Government’s emphasis on cyberwarfare. It is long overdue that the House has started to pay attention to these matters. I welcome the commitment to Trident, which I think will be for four boats—it had better be, or I shall withdraw my support. I am rather unhappy about this business of delaying Trident. That is probably a false economy. In fact, I think it will end up with us spending a lot more money than we started off having to spend. I welcome the decisions on the Chinooks and on the tanks as well as the theoretical decision on the Special Forces, although I have to say that some of the Government’s decisions seem to run contrary to their professed support for Special Forces.

I have one note of criticism before I get down to the subject of procurement. I was moved to hear my noble friend Lady Dean telling us how this Government were apparently going to treat widows. I could hardly believe my ears. I confess that I had not read the relevant passage, but I give notice to the Minister that he is going to suffer a strong campaign from all parts of the House unless the Government change the way that they intend to treat war widows.

I come to one or two more controversial matters. Of course, the Ministry of Defence has wasted an awful lot of money; it is still wasting it today in a lot of the things that it is buying. I am afraid that I do not share the universal welcome that is given to Eurofighter. You will never have seen a letter signed by me saying what a wonderful plane the Eurofighter is. It is only a fourth-generation plane, for God’s sake. It is a very agile fourth-generation plane, but that is all it is. Its radar cross-section is similar to that of a London double-decker bus. I am not giving away any state secrets; everybody knows that. Who would want to fly in a London double-decker bus against a Russian S-600 surface-to-air missile system? I certainly would not want to fly in a conflict where I knew that that sort of surface-to-air system was available.

The fifth-generation plane is another matter. It is probably the best fast jet that the Royal Air Force has ever had. It will not be nearly as good as the joint strike fighter, but it has marvellous agility. I do not know whether the figure is classified, but its ability to pull G-forces has measurements for agility somewhere in the middle teens. That would be marvellous, except that we have yet to invent a human being who can sustain G-forces above about eight and a half to nine. So what would the pilot be doing? He would be singing Hail Mary while the plane was pulling 14. It is absolutely ridiculous. With every single plane that we buy, we are wasting a hell of a lot of money. Everybody knows it and they are laughing at it. I do not find it funny at all; I have a sense of humour failure. I do not find it funny that we are spending this sort of money on a plane which has a totally otiose capability that nobody can use. Right, I have got that off my chest.

We are going to sell them. The trouble is, we are going to be selling Tranche 3, not Tranche 1. We are keeping Tranche 1, the clapped-out ones, while we flog off the really good, modern new ones to somebody who has got the sense to buy them. India says that it will no longer buy clapped-out planes from us. My view is that we should give away the Tranche 1 and keep the Tranche 3. Right, I have got that off my chest.

Now we are really getting down to the nitty-gritty: I want to talk about the A400M. It will come as no surprise to your Lordships that I regard the decision on the A400M as the most bone-stupid in the 40 years that I have been at one end or other of this building. It is an absolutely idiotic decision. We have a military airlift fleet of C-17s and C-130s. We have total interoperability with the United States, which flies the same combination of airlift planes, apart from a few clapped-out Galaxies. It is also getting something called the C-27, which is replacing the C-23 or C-25—I get mixed up with figures these days. Basically, we have total interoperability with the United States. We have total interoperability with the Canadians. We have total interoperability with the Australians, with the Indians, with the UAE and with the Qataris. This week, I put down the following Question for the Minister:

“To ask Her Majesty's Government with which countries the Royal Air Force will lose its interoperability as a result of the forthcoming replacement of the C130 by the A400M.[HL3190].

I received this absolutely unbelievable Answer:

“The Royal Air Force will not lose interoperability with any countries as a result of the drawdown of the C-130J Hercules and entry into service of the A400M”.—[Official Report, 9/11/10; col. WA 46.]

I am almost tempted to read it again because I am sure that your Lordships could hardly credit it. We are acquiring a plane for which only the manufacturing consortium has placed orders. The South Africans cancelled an order, and only one other country outside the manufacturing consortium has an order on the books at the moment. That means that six or seven countries altogether will be flying the A400M. Flying the C130, which it is intended to replace, are 60 countries, with 2,600 or so C130Js currently being used. That is the interoperability that we are losing. Noble Lords will be glad to know that there is another question on the Order Paper for the Minister. How do Her Majesty’s Government define interoperability? It probably has not reached his desk yet, but I shall be interested to see the Answer.

Why on earth are we doing this? I once described this rather vulgarly as a Euro-wanking make-work project and I do not resile from that. I hope that this time Hansard will leave that in and not take it out. It was in the next day’s version but Hansard funked it and took it out of the Bound Volume. I hope that this is all on the record.

I can tell your Lordships why we are buying the A400M because I want to pay special tribute this afternoon to the defence Minister of France, who is our new best ally in Europe. The New York Herald Tribune on 6 November states:

“The A400 M is an emblematic program which Europe could not abandon”,

Monsieur Morin said at a news conference on Friday.

“Giving it up would have meant Europe saying it wanted to be dependent on the United States in military transport”.

How pathetic. We are spending hundreds of millions of pounds on a plane just to make sure that nobody thinks we are dependent on the United States for military transport.

We are told that the new arrangement we will have with our friends across the Channel will in no way dilute our relations with our best friends the Americans. Yet the defence Minister involved in our new great alliance with the French has this attitude. Another question is coming to the Minister asking whether Monsieur Morin has many other emblematic symbols in the field of defence procurement that we will have to acquire just to prove that we are not dependent on the United States for transport.

Your Lordships will be familiar with the phrase “barking mad”. A few years ago, some wit invented the phrase “Dagenham mad”. When asked what it meant he said it was three stops beyond Barking. This is not “Barking mad” nor “Dagenham mad”: it is “Upminster mad”. It is at the end of the line. You cannot go any further: it is sheer madness. The Minister responsible is sitting here. He is carefully not identifying himself and I am not going to be so cruel as to identify him either.

This is not a party point. Both parties have been involved. When I was a Minister, I was told, “You don’t have to cancel the A400M because the Germans will do it for us. The Germans have a very tight defence budget and cannot possibly buy everything that they say they will buy, so don't worry they’ll do the dirty work for you”. It was a great reassurance to my boss at the time because he was unhappy. We had just cancelled MRAV and a NATO frigate and it was more than his sensitive soul could bear to be accused by our European friends—I hope he does not mind me letting this cat out of the bag—of being anti-European. That is why we are stuck with the A400M. I asked more than one Conservative defence procurement Minister and they told me that they were told exactly the same by their officials. It is a disastrous decision. It is actually a criminal waste of public money. We will have to buy stocks and train crews and so forth, and will lose the worldwide interoperability that we currently enjoy with the C130.

When one criticises, one has a responsibility to suggest a solution. We should get together with our Commonwealth friends, particularly Australia, Canada and India, to set up a Commonwealth heavy lift force that could be available to deal with natural disasters because the C17 has a capability that nobody else has.

I have said what I think we should do about the Eurofighter. I would advise the Minister to think very carefully about the advice—

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I apologise for intervening, but the noble Lord will be aware that the C17 is going out of production and that the C130 does not carry our new generation of armoured vehicles—for example, a Mastiff or a Warrior. In those circumstances, how does the noble Lord expect to replace the strategic airlift which we currently have with the C130J fleet?

[Lord Gilbert]

The C17 is not yet going out of production and, with any luck, the order from the Indians will help to keep it going. I hope that there will be more orders of C17 around the world. The noble Lord is quite right about the Hercules not carrying the latest army kit, but the C17 has an enormously good capability on short-field runways and can be used for that task, as the noble Lord well knows.

I am glad to say that the noble Lord has reminded me of something else which we will lose when we get rid of the C17, which is support for the Special Forces. I hope that the Minister will tell us exactly what discussions he has been having with Hereford on this subject, because it is a very serious matter and the Americans place great weight on our co-operation in the field of Special Forces. We are particularly interoperable with their C130 Talon aircraft, as the Government know.

I hope that the Minister will carefully consider the recommendation that he has received that we should have five-yearly defence reviews. That would be too frequent; once a decade is often enough. We can pull things up and look at the roots far too often, and I think that the Americans suffer from having quadrennial defence reviews.

Defence: Treaties with France

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I am well aware of my noble friend’s views on greater co-operation with the French, which I share. When we were in opposition, I went to France with the Secretary of State. We had a fruitful day’s discussion with French leaders, military and civilian, at the highest level. As far as the unmanned air systems are concerned, these have become central to both our armed forces. We have agreed to work together on the next generation of medium-altitude long-endurance unmanned air surveillance systems. Co-operation will enable the potential sharing of development, support and training costs and ensure that our forces can work together. We will launch a jointly funded competitive assessment phase in 2011 with a view to new equipment delivery between 2015 and 2020. In the longer term, we will jointly assess requirements and options for the next generation of unmanned combat air systems from 2030 onwards, building on work already started under the direction of the UK/France high-level working group. Over the next two years, we will develop a joint technological and industrial road map, which could lead to a decision in 2012 to launch a joint technology and operational demonstration programme from 2013 to 2018.

[Lord Gilbert]

My Lords, does the Minister understand some of the risks involved in what he has just been talking about? It is clear to everybody that our relationship with the United States makes what he has been talking about pale into insignificance. I have two questions. First, President Obama recently fired his Director of National Intelligence because he recommended that the United States should create with France the arrangements that have existed between us and the Americans for many years, whereby neither country engages in intelligence activities on the soil of its partner. Is it contemplated that we will engage in such an agreement with the French? Secondly, will the Minister be so kind as to tell us exactly what arrangements are being made with respect to our access to the research establishments of the American defence industry? This in my view is by far the most important element in the special relationship. I hope that I can have his assurance that nothing at all will be done to weaken that and therefore that the French will have to be told—will they not?—that we are going to share a whole lot of things with the Americans that we are not going to share with them.