(6 years, 2 months ago)
Lords ChamberThe noble Lord is right: Airbus provides the majority of police and emergency services helicopters and has the largest share of the UK’s civil and military market. Its main base is in Oxford, where it modifies and customises helicopters, although the design and manufacture is completed in France, as the noble Lord is aware. We are in regular contact and have regular discussions with the company. The aerospace growth partnership, in particular, enables the industry and Government to engage on a formal basis to tackle the barriers and unlock market opportunities across these sectors of the economy.
I know it is not my noble friend’s responsibility but does he have any idea when the Metropolitan Police will start using unmanned aircraft for surveillance over London rather than flying helicopters, which is the most expensive form of aviation?
(7 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, a study was done in 2011 substantially to rectify the propulsion problems in the Type 45. Those problems have largely been addressed, although not completely. We will initiate Project Napier, which will deal with the propulsion problems once and for all. However, my advice is that the Type 45 destroyers are not now encountering the difficulties that they were.
Can my noble friend tell us how many frigates and destroyers will be needed to escort one of our aircraft carriers when it is finally deployed?
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, I too congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, on his maiden speech. He complains that this place is very difficult to find one’s way around, being something of a rabbit warren. I have very bad news for him: they are going to spend billions of pounds revamping the whole place, but as far as I can gather, it will still be a rabbit warren when we all get back. I do not think that that will include me. I am grateful that, as all rumours have it, we will move to the Westminster conference centre. Maybe it will be rather easier to find one’s way around there. We very much look forward to the noble Earl’s future contributions on defence debates and the expertise that he brings to them.
I congratulate my noble friend Lord Sterling on giving us the opportunity to discuss these important issues. We have just had the presidential elections in America, and there are many similar issues of populism involved in both that vote and the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom. My noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral has already referred to the sweep of populism, which may not be confined to the Anglosphere and which looks as though it could well spread across Europe as well, where a number of elections are being held: a general election may be held in Italy next year, the Dutch will have one in March, the French in April, and of course the Germans in November. Is there not quite a large possibility that one of those elections will produce a populist leader, who may well decide to hold votes on whether their country should remain in the EU? By the time we reach November next year, the EU may be completely unrecognisable from the EU it is today, which puts the question of our negotiations in a rather more interesting light.
Let us look at the promises that President-elect Trump made during his campaign. Some of them struck most of us as being somewhat over the top. However, a very easy one he can fulfil is the question of the defence of Europe. By “easy” I mean that he is pushing at an open door when it comes to Congress—the Senate and the House of Representatives—if he suggests that the Europeans should play a much bigger role in defending their own borders. When the NATO Parliamentary Assembly was in Istanbul, we were addressed by Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary-General of NATO. It is interesting that he pointed out to us that once the United Kingdom is outside the EU, 80% of NATO expenditure will come from countries outside the EU and 20% from those inside the EU. Therefore when the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, goes on about European defence and how important it is, it is 20% of NATO’s expenditure.
What form does European defence take? It means the French and the Germans getting together—naturally, because they are the only two members spending serious money on defence—but do they have similar political objectives? As we know, it is no good getting together as a defence unit unless your political will is aligned as well. The Germans will be keen on confronting Russia—it is the old enemy—but the French are less keen on that. The French are keen on expeditionary forces and taking on ISIL, and they are playing a big role in Mali as we speak. But are the Germans keen on doing that? The answer is that there is very little alignment of political will between the French and the Germans, which is why the whole concept of European defence is distinctly faulty. We must rely on NATO, and European NATO, for our future. However, of course the Americans are pivoting away, looking much more at China as a future enemy, and in those circumstances it is up to the United Kingdom to lead NATO in Europe. That means spending a lot more money than 2% of our gross national product on defence. We have to spend more; this is the future of this country.
I have a confession to make. At one stage, I was rather dodgy about renewing Trident, not because I do not believe that the United Kingdom should have an independent deterrent but because I thought that we could do it much more cheaply. The fact is that I was completely wrong in every conceivable way. My argument was: could there ever be a moment when we would fire a nuclear weapon and the Americans would not? However, with President-elect Trump’s attitude towards Putin, it seems essential that we maintain our nuclear deterrent, because—let us face it—it may come in very useful in the future.
(7 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, I always listen carefully to the noble and gallant Lord, as I do to the noble Lord, Lord West. There are always difficult choices to be made within a fixed budget, and that applies to any government department. However, last year’s strategic defence and security review announced an increase in the size of the Royal Navy of 400 personnel—to 30,600—by 2025. That represents an uplift of 1,600 over the 2010 SDSR position. Of course, there are manning pinch points; we acknowledge that and the Royal Navy is addressing them. But we have to live within the means that we have and address the capabilities we need, and I believe the Navy is doing that.
Will my noble friend confirm that one of the pressures on the naval procurement budget results from the ordering of two aircraft carriers by the noble Lord, Lord West, which still do not have enough aircraft—the F35, at £100 million apiece—to fly off them?
I am sure my noble friend will be pleased to know we have already taken delivery of five of the F35s and have announced an accelerated buying programme to allow us to embark up to 24 of these fantastic fifth-generation aircraft by 2023. When my noble friend sees the “Queen Elizabeth” coming into Portsmouth, as it will next year, he will be very proud of the capability that this country can offer in terms of naval power.
(8 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberThe strategy will cover all those topics. It is very much about looking at how many ships we wish to build and in what order; looking at the question from the industry perspective as well as the customer perspective; how many we can afford; and what the productivity rate should be. As the noble Lord rightly said, this regular drumbeat of production is the way that we can maintain not only the manufacturing flow but the skills as well.
I am so sorry to interrupt the noble Lord but it is the turn of the Conservative Benches. We will then have time to come through to the Labour Front Bench.
Does my noble friend agree that however wonderful the two new aircraft carriers are, they are too big for the jump jets that we are putting on them?
(8 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, we have not yet heard from the Conservative Benches.
As my noble friend will know, the Royal Air Force turns dumb bombs into smart bombs by the use of technology. Is it not possible for the Russians to do the same?
(10 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberI absolutely agree with my noble and gallant friend Lord Craig on that point. On reading the Defence Committee report, Future Army 2020, I was concerned to note two statements:
“We are surprised that such a radical change to the Army’s structure … was not discussed at the National Security Council”,
and,
“We note that the Secretary of State for Defence accepts that Army 2020 was designed to fit a financial envelope”.
The financial envelope includes not just the Army but the other two services. If we look at history, an annual debate was held in both Houses on the estimates for the Navy and the Army. We are therefore putting back history, as it were, if we have an annual estimate. Particularly in this case, I note the suggestion that the first discussion should be in January 2015 because, of course, when the strategic defence review 2010 was introduced it was clear that its achievement was dependent on the money that would be available in 2015. Looking around, it seems pretty obvious that that amount of money may not be available—in which case, all three services will have to face a review of the current plans.
My Lords, I very much echo the sentiments of my noble friend Lord King. I think there is a general feeling that in the latest cutbacks in the forces the Army seems to have taken a rather greater cut than the other two services. Considering that the Army has been deployed almost continuously since the Troubles began in Northern Ireland in 1969, one has slightly to question the wisdom of the Army seemingly taking rather more punishment than the other two services.
However, I do think that the Opposition have a bit of nerve in tabling this amendment, which somewhat echoes the amendment withdrawn by the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, because, at the end of the day, we are paying now for the legacy that this Government inherited when they took power at the beginning of this Parliament. If you have £40 billion of procurement that has not been funded, you obviously at that stage have a serious problem. Something went badly wrong. When the aircraft carriers were ordered by the previous Government the roof had fallen in on the economy and there was clearly no money to pay for them. It does not matter whether they were a good idea, the money was not there and the Defence Council went ahead and ordered them. For some extraordinary reason, there was no ministerial override from the Permanent Secretary saying that the money was not there. That strikes me as a very serious shortcoming in the way in which our affairs are being run. Let us face it, there is always a temptation for politicians to order things that they cannot afford. On the other hand, we look to our civil servants to preserve the integrity of the finances of the department, and that did not seem to happen. I consider that the Army is suffering from some very bad decisions that were taken in the previous Parliament and the legacy of an overhang of unfunded procurement. Savings had to be found somewhere; and it is the Army. It is extremely regrettable that the Army has to take the punishment in this way.
My Lords, I was not intending to intervene in this debate but feel that I must, in order to correct some of the myths—which is a polite way of putting it—just purveyed by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton. I was of course the Minister responsible for defence reform in the last three years of the last Government and, indeed, possibly the Minister to whom the noble Lord was referring when he talked about ministerial responsibility. I must tell him that during that time we always stayed within our annual cash limits. So far as the longer-term financing programme was concerned, we were fully and adequately funded on the basis of a 1.5% real terms increase in the defence budget, which was our policy at the time. It was a correct policy and I wish that it had been continued. It was very regrettable that this Government came in and made excessive cuts in public spending, which drove the economy down. The economy was reviving before we left office. The House will recall that in the first half of 2010 the economy grew, at first, by 0.3% and then by 0.7%. When this Government came in with their excessive spending cuts, the growth fell away again. The economy has been in the doldrums, more or less, ever since. That was a mistake made entirely by this Government.
In my view, the decisions of the previous Government on defence procurement were thoroughly responsible. It was very necessary to provide for two carriers; it is an essential arm in our ability to intervene around the world, irrespective of whether we have friendly powers that are willing to provide us with airfields a suitably close distance to where our troops might be deployed or where we need to bring influence or physical power—kinetic power, if necessary—to bear. That was a right decision.
It was a crazy decision to cancel those aircraft carriers—or, at least, to cancel the carrier strike capability of the nation for 10 years. Of course we need two aircraft carriers, because otherwise we cannot be absolutely certain that when we need an aircraft carrier it will be available and will not be in refit. The decisions of the last Government on defence procurement were thoroughly responsible. They were certainly funded. I am sorry to see that, after all the denials that have been made over the last few years by everybody who actually knows the facts, the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, should still be purveying a completely untrue account of events.
(10 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Faulks, who described himself as “a mere lawyer”. I know him to be more than a mere lawyer; he is an extremely good one, and therefore he must be well aware that, with this debate, he is stepping into a serious legal minefield.
The report by Tugendhat and Croft, to which reference has already been made, has made it quite clear that they do not consider that the military should be in any way above the law. It does present us, however, with enormous problems. I am not a lawyer, but I would like to divide the two activities of the military into two separate categories. One I would describe as the heat of battle and the other is cold blood.
I will deal with cold blood first. I do not think there is any excuse for an armed serviceman to murder a helpless prisoner. I do not think that the brutal treatment of detainees who are completely helpless victims in the hands of those who are supposed to be looking after them can be defended in any way. I remain to be convinced that any serious intelligence got through torturing detainees has actually saved British lives. On top of that, we leave the moral high ground when we descend into this sort of behaviour, and, inevitably, it gets out. What is almost beyond doubt is that when this stuff does get out, the effect it has justifies the actions of terrorists to carry out even more atrocious acts which put British lives at risk. So, in the category of cold blood, I do not think that anything other than the ruthless application of the law should be applied.
The heat of battle, though, is very much more difficult. The problem is that the law deals in facts; it does not deal in context. Let us face it, the military are the only people who are in the business of actually having to kill people. That puts them in a unique position in our society. If a soldier shoots a civilian, and that civilian is subsequently found to be unarmed and going about his lawful business, it sounds as though he has committed an unforgivable act, but if the context is one of ambushes, sniper fire and suicide bombings, the whole context changes that act. We have to accept that the pressures our military have been under in Helmand province, for instance, where they are dealing with a population some of whom are more than happy to kill them while others are not, completely changes the context in which acts like that are carried out.
I remember reading in the paper about the US Marine Corps in Helmand a few years ago. Some US marines were watching a rather distinguished looking Afghan man standing some way away in a field. They had him in their binoculars and they were wondering what on earth he was doing. This went on for some time, but eventually, they gave up, saying, “We won’t bother”. One marine turned around to walk away, whereupon the man picked up a rifle and shot him in the back. If you are dealing with that sort of environment, it is extremely difficult to bring the courtroom into the actions that soldiers take in such circumstances. If you are on live round training in the military, where you walk down a theoretical alley and targets pop out all around, I have to tell noble Lords that it is very difficult not to shoot the nun straight through the head because your reactions have to be very quick, and sometimes people get it wrong.
With the wisdom of hindsight, the military could have avoided practically every disaster that has ever happened, but the problem is that good armies are trained to take the fight to the enemy. The British Army in particular specialises in the friendly approach of winning hearts and minds, but that does not come without risk, and it is certainly very difficult when you are dealing with people such as Afghans.
On a totally separate issue, I turn to the question of civil liability. I have to say that during my military career, comprising a rather undistinguished three years, I never heard a shot fired in anger. However, I was nearly killed twice while training in Thetford in Norfolk. The first time was when my platoon was acting as the enemy at night. I was running ahead, because the platoon was behind the rest of the battalion that we were supposed to be attacking, when I fell into a bomb crater. Very luckily, I turned completely head over heels and landed on my back at the bottom of what was really quite a deep crater. If I had not done so, I might have broken my neck and died. Later on in our training we were training with live rounds. I inspected the Bren gun of the guardsman who had been firing and it was clear. I walked forward. He put the magazine back on to the gun and pulled the trigger. Those who know about Bren guns will know that that means that the thing goes off. The butt of the gun was on the ground and the bullet went straight over my head.
Are we saying that, if I had been killed in either of those circumstances, it would have been right for my family to have sued the Army because of something it had done wrong? Come on, let us live in the serious world. My noble friend Lord Faulks compared training in the Army to the Factories Acts and so on, but I do not believe that life is like that. You have to train in reasonably extreme circumstances in the military, and you run risks when you do that. Regrettably, people die quite regularly when training with the British military. If they all sue because someone did something wrong and someone died, where on earth will we end up? It strikes me that we are moving into very difficult territory if we do that.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, referred to Snatch Land Rovers. We deployed Snatch Land Rovers not because we had much more sophisticated vehicles that we could have used instead, but because we had nothing else at the time. The military has a great habit of being equipped to fight the previous war, never the current one. Eventually Snatch Land Rovers were replaced, but the fact is that we did not have the option to use anything better. This is another thing that is almost inevitably going to happen with the military. On day one of any conflict, it is never going to have the right equipment to fight that particular war.
We have to be very careful that we do not go down the same road as the National Health Service, where everyone now sues if something goes wrong with the result that it costs the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds a year. It would be regrettable if the military suffered the same fate.
(11 years, 2 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, I encourage noble Lords to keep their questions brief. We have only 20 minutes and quite a few people want to speak.
My Lords, I very much welcome my noble friend’s Statement. GOCO will certainly introduce commercial disciplines and the incentives that can be provided by the private sector.
I have two questions for him. How long does he think these contracts will run for? How many years are we talking about? Will a GOCO address the question of the affordability of major projects? As we know, in the past we have seen enormous amounts of equipment ordered, particularly by the previous Government, although clearly there was not any money to pay for it. Will this introduction of a GOCO improve that situation in the future?
My Lords, the answer to my noble friend’s first question is nine years. The answer to his second question is yes. We are determined. We feel that the discipline that will be brought in by a GOCO will make everything much more affordable and we will not have the kind of fantasy world that defence procurement has had in the past.
My Lords, on the last point, I arranged a briefing—I am not sure whether the noble Baroness was there—at which the Minister for Defence Equipment, Support and Technology briefed noble Lords. He was hugely impressed by the depth of experience on all sides. He came to see me afterwards and asked if it would be possible to brief either individually or as a group. He is very keen to hear any suggestions and observations, and is aware that I am looking at noble Lords who have had huge responsibilities on this very subject in the past and know a great deal about it—a great deal more than I do. We are in the assessment phase. We are listening and learning and want to hear any suggestions. No decision will be made until next summer, so there is still plenty of time to hear what any noble Lord tells us.
Picking up on what the noble Baroness said, we obviously want to keep skills as far as possible and we feel that the GOCO would do that. We feel that of all the disciplines that it would bring to this, it would help to cut down the time taken for procurement. Taking the carriers as an example, with all the disciplines that it could bring, and being able to employ higher-paid people, it may be able to do things quicker. I do not want to take anything away from what DE&S has done—the noble Lord mentioned that—and I pay tribute to all the very hard-working civil servants and members of the Armed Forces who have worked there. However, they are constrained by Civil Service restrictions and we need to get more discipline and more incentive to get equipment for the Armed Forces quicker and more efficiently.
Following what the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, said, we are proposing a GOCO that may or may not turn out to be a monopoly. If it did turn out to be a monopoly, does my noble friend not agree that you are better off with a private sector monopoly than with a Civil Service one? Also, the prospect of competition being introduced after nine years will always be there, whatever happens to that GOCO.
My Lords, we are talking about two things. We are talking about the GOCO but also a single-source regulation situation. We feel that the disciplines that we would place on the GOCO would ensure that there is not a monopoly.
(11 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, I agree with everything that my noble friend says about the Royal Marines. The Secretary of State was telling me last night how impressed he was when he visited them on winter training in Norway earlier this week. I agree with my noble friend that remaining in Arbroath will be good for the Royal Marines and for their families. As I said earlier, 45 Commando Royal Marines will remain in Arbroath for the foreseeable future. We investigated the feasibility of the move to the south-west but that option did not, at this stage, represent value for money and Arbroath is not needed for Army basing in Scotland. It is my understanding, as my noble friend said, that 45 Commando is very happy with this decision.
My Lords, I noticed that the Statement includes a proposal to sell off Hyde Park barracks, presumably because it is so incredibly valuable. Does my noble friend have any idea where the Household Cavalry would go if that was done?
My Lords, that is a difficult question for me to answer. Of course, if the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment was ordered to leave, it would have to go. However, as the Statement made clear, a lot of research needs to be done before it can move out. Suitable barracks would need to be found within the centre of London for it to move to, with all the costing worked out. It would be very complicated, but we would be irresponsible not to look into it.