King’s Speech
Lord Naseby Excerpts(2 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Naseby (Con)
My Lords, I was born in 1936, so I had the privilege of entering national service at 18. I did two years, as we all had to do, because the Act passed by the Labour Attlee Government in April 1947, supported by the other political parties, decided that that was the ideal length, after considerable discussion about whether it should be one year, which the RAF said was hopeless, or 18 months, which I think the Navy said was hopeless. We ended up at two years.
Those two years were for me the experience of a lifetime. I had a place to go to at Cambridge, but that was put off. I joined a whole bunch of other young men from all walks of life. My goodness, what a joy it turned out to be. You learned to mix—I had been a boarder at school, but most of them had lived at home and never lived with anybody else. You had to learn to live with others.
Initially, we were at RAF Kirton in Lindsey. The first thing you got shown was how to make a bed. I still remember that, because the sergeant came around and ripped off most of the sheets because we had not done it properly. We had three months there, then I was privileged to be chosen to train in Canada with people from 10 different countries right the way through NATO that Canada was supporting—from the obvious ones such as us and Canada to the far less obvious ones such as Turkey. I got my wings. After that, I had hoped to carry on for the remaining six months, but that was not possible.
I believe we should seriously look at a modern national service for all our young people. Among the number of young people who are at the moment unemployed, either those who are unable to work altogether or those who choose not to work, there is a core sitting there doing nothing. That is not good for them or for the economy, so there is a huge opportunity.
I took the trouble to find out what the rest of NATO is doing. It is too complicated to cover in a five-minute speech today, but the UK and Belgium are the only two countries in NATO that have nothing. That is not good enough, in my judgment. The enemy, to put it that way, is ever increasing, which is hugely worrying. Against that background, we cannot just sit back and not do something.
I pay tribute to His Majesty’s Government on what they have done, or tried to do, to begin to build up the CCF and one or two of the youth movements et cetera. I respect and welcome what they have done. But there is now the need to be more positive.
Then, there is the issue of how we are going to pay for it. I remember, when I was a small boy in Pinner, Middlesex, outside the library was the Spitfire Fund. Every week, they would adjust by how much it had gone up. Maybe a spitfire is not the right aircraft to choose now, but why can we not have an ISA geared to defence matters? People would respond much more to that than many other issues. I say to your Lordships and to the Government in particular: can we please look hard at this opportunity? I am pleased to see the Minister in his place, and I know he will look hard at it. I have written a book about national service; it will save him a lot of work, because I have been through all the National Service Acts.
Finally, I have two other points which have nothing to do with national service. First, I hope we put real money behind the ELSA project, because the Tomahawk situation does not seem to be as good as it should be. Lastly, there was also an opening speech earlier on from somebody I know pretty well, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, and there was a lot of wisdom in his speech.
Defence Industrial Base
Lord Naseby Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
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Noble Lords
Lord Naseby (Con)
As the Minister must know, there are a number of former RAF stations that, until the defence review, were not required; I mention particularly the example of RAF Scampton. Will the Minister now have another review of those airfields to see which are appropriate to meet the new defence requirements? As a former pilot, I would have thought that there were two or three that would fill that category.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
The defence review will require us to look at what bases we have in order to deliver the defence review, whether they are RAF or other facilities. Of course, we need to do this in a sensible way and one which delivers value for money. The number of bases and where they are is important, whether they are RAF or other bases.
Drones: RAF Bases
Lord Naseby Excerpts(1 year, 8 months ago)
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Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, the House will hear from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
The Gold Command for the sites in East Anglia is the Ministry of Defence Police. That force has the ability, knowledge and expertise to deal with some of the threats that the noble and gallant Lord has pointed out. His question demonstrates the need for the Ministry of Defence Police to work closely with Home Office police forces and other agencies to defend those sites.
King’s Speech
Lord Naseby Excerpts(2 years ago)
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Lord Naseby (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, on his appointment, and the team that he will be working with. He is someone I listened to when we were on the Government Benches, and I will listen with even more interest now that he has some ability to change things.
I will start off with the foreign affairs aspects, of which I would like to raise three. First, many years ago I wrote a pamphlet, Helping the Exporter, and my goodness, our exporters today in relation to the EU do need help. I have one concrete example about which I will write in detail to the Minister. Basically, I am talking about international transportation of goods and the 90-day rule that there is at the moment, which, as it stands, will just about make all those international companies unable to undertake the work they do today.
Secondly, Chile. We very rarely debate South America in this Chamber, but I have taken an interest in Chile for some 15 years now. I believe that it is a country of great opportunity. Our trade with them has been at around 5% for the last 10 to 15 years. Now, there is a new Government. Let us treat Chile as an opportunity and look at the minerals that are available—copper, lithium—which are all part of net zero. Let us also look at products such as wine. I declare an interest as the chairman of the Cofradia del Vino Chileno. There are enormous opportunities there.
Lastly, Sri Lanka. Most colleagues in the House know that I have been deeply involved in Sri Lanka for the last 60 years. I started the all-party group in 1975 when I first arrived in the other place. They have been through a huge number of difficulties: internal incursions, tsunamis and Covid, alongside everything else, virtually bankrupting them. But we should remember that they were a founder member of the Commonwealth. They came to our help in the Second World War and they were the only country from the non-aligned movement that supported us over the Falklands—quite brave decision-taking.
There is a report out now, it is on the president’s table, about a truth and reconciliation commission. There are elections for the presidency in September. I hope His Majesty’s Government will read that report carefully—I am afraid there are 600 pages of it—and recognise that this is the equivalent of South Africa and Colombia.
On defence, I have the privilege to be, I think, the only person in either House who was a national service jet pilot; I trained under NATO. I believe that national service is a fundamental need today, and I am prepared to put a lot of effort behind it to get it moving. We forget just how many countries kept on their national service. I am not going to list them here on a busy afternoon, but some of the key countries, perhaps slightly unexpectedly, are Greece, Turkey—I trained with the Turks under NATO—Austria, Switzerland and Denmark, which has a brilliant scheme. They are there. Now, we need to think very seriously about it in the face of the threats that we know so well.
Personally, I think that it should be for men and women. I have two granddaughters in the CCF at Bedford Girls’ School: one is second-in-command and the other is in the naval section. They want to be considered alongside the boys. It is timely, because sadly, 12.4% of our 16 to 21 year-olds are unemployed. That in itself suggests that there is an opportunity.
His Majesty’s Government need to remind themselves that it was a Labour Government under Attlee who passed the first National Service Act on 17 July 1947—77 years ago, almost to the day. On top of that, we have a defence review, for which I say thank you. We should have had a defence review rather earlier than we got it, but we have got one now and I am pleased that our dear colleague is able to run it. He was sitting there all day, but I see that the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, is understandably elsewhere now. I say to the Minister that I shall take part and help in any way possible in reviving national service.