Armed Forces Commissioner Bill

Lord Shinkwin Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 19th March 2025 Grand Committee

I guess I am thinking of some personal relationships that I have known of, which are not necessarily military. Sometimes marriages or civil partnerships break down, but that person still retains a close relationship with the person whom they have divorced or from whom they have split. We can imagine situations that are still very reasonable; they are all still part of a family, in a direct way. I wanted to put that on the record. I do not necessarily expect the Minister to respond now, but I wanted to raise my concern about that word “immediately” in those draft regulations and whether it is something that we need to think about.

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendments 8 and 9 in this group, in the name of my noble friends Lord Minto and Lady Goldie and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich. I am really grateful, as I am sure a lot of members of the Committee are, to the Royal British Legion for its briefing on this. I speak as someone who was privileged to lead the legion’s public affairs team when we persuaded the noble Lord, Lord Cameron—David Cameron as he then was, the Prime Minister—to enshrine the covenant’s principles in law. I am particularly proud to have played a small part in that. I also very much welcome the consensus that now exists, both in this Committee and, I believe, across the House, on the commitment to ensuring that the principles of the covenant are honoured.

I wonder whether we can simply consider these amendments to be, as I think they are, self-explanatory and logical. The issues they relate to are the provision and operation of the continuity of education allowance and tuition for children with SEND, which, as my noble friend Lord Minto mentioned, is so important and is related to an issue on which your Lordships’ House voted so overwhelmingly to ask the Government to think again—specifically in relation to non-domestic rating and private schools—only yesterday. These are important and crucial welfare issues, and they should be explicitly included within the provisions of the Bill, as should provisions for pensions and death-in-service benefits to serving and former members of the Armed Forces and their dependants.

I hope very much that the Minister will listen to the Committee—and also to the legion, as the voice of the Armed Forces family—and accept Amendments 8 and 9 in this group.

[The Lord Bishop of Norwich]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, and the reflections that he has offered the Committee. I rise to support Amendments 8 and 9. I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Minto, and the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, for outlining their thinking around this issue because it goes to the heart of how we as a nation care for and see the well-being of our Armed Forces and their families, as part of the whole package that we offer to them.

As I think noble Lords know, I speak as the father of a member of the Armed Forces. It is often said that a parent is only as happy as their least happy child. On one level, I can imagine that it is also true that a member of His Majesty’s Armed Forces is only as happy as their least happy family member. So there is a pastoral duty here—one that is supported by many in the Armed Forces, including welfare organisations and our military chaplains—but both these amendments would help us really state the pastoral support that we as a nation feel is important for not only our Armed Forces personnel but their children, their families and their dependants.

As has already been said by other noble Lords, continuity of education is vital for a family that may often move around a lot during the career of service personnel, when one or both of the parents may be on deployment. We must not forget the small number of wonderful state boarding schools that offer important support for service families.

Moving on to tied accommodation, as somebody who has lived in tied accommodation all my professional life—most of it much more modest than what I live in at the moment—I know that the maintenance of tied accommodation and responsiveness to its condition and repairs has an impact on the state of morale of a family, and I am pleased to see that that is also mentioned, as are special education needs. Such needs are an issue not only when forces families move between different places and between different local authorities; this is also about CAMHS—child and adolescent mental health services. Often, the waiting list is two to three years. Moving out of an area has a profound impact on families in terms of getting crucial support for young people who are often in a very difficult state and who need support as soon as possible.

On Amendment 9, the reality is that many Armed Forces families live with, right at the back of their minds, an ongoing sense of, “Will I get a knock in the middle of the night?” The noble Earl, Lord Minto, has already spoken about the injustice of what is being built in here. We significantly need the Minister to look at this—I urge him to do so—so that that injustice is removed. If you go to the National Memorial Arboretum, there is an incredible memorial right in the centre where the names of those who have lost their lives are carved into the Portland stone, and then there is a part of the wall that is totally flat and bare; it is very moving to move your hand along it and on to that flat stone awaiting, God forbid, future names.

We owe to the Armed Forces and their families a sense of care if there is a need for a death in duty payment. So I am really grateful for the way in which the Minister has engaged around the Bill and engaged us in a really thoughtful discussion and debate about it. I look forward to hearing his comments.

Ukraine (International Relations and Defence Committee Report)

Lord Shinkwin Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, I start by echoing the praise of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, for our hereditary colleague and my noble friend Lord De Mauley. I thank him and his committee for producing such an excellent report, and I wonder if anyone has ever thought of such a painfully prescient title.

The report’s recommendations are surely all the more pertinent precisely because they have been overtaken by events. Their validity, even poignancy, is being borne out as we speak. Indeed, I am not sure that I have ever spoken in a debate in which I have been so keen to be proved wrong and for my fears to turn out to be groundless. The ground, as others have said, is shifting beneath our feet. Even though I agree with it, I fear that recommendation 2, particularly that the Government should articulate how much money will be available to UK defence, has to be seen in the highly fluid context where there is a risk that it means it sets a limit and creates two risks: first, that it signals to the mass murderer Putin that there is a point beyond which we shall not go and thus risks emboldening him, and, secondly, that it fails to take into account the rapidly shifting dynamic of what was, until a few weeks ago, a secure transatlantic relationship for, as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, suggested, spending will be crucial to retaining US support.

Recommendation 8 highlights the importance of

“understanding the human aspects of war”,

the

“failed assessment of Putin’s will to fight”

and the need for the UK and NATO to

“focus on developing a better understanding of Putin’s strategy and intentions”.

Central to that, I suggest, is recognition that Putin is a professional liar. As a former KGB operative, as we have already heard, it was in his job description. It would also appear to be, regrettably, in his DNA. I am not suggesting that we do not appreciate that, but I am not sure that the bromance between Putin and Trump indicates that the US President does. Trump is no fool, but I share the fear of other noble Lords that he is being played for a fool by a master of the art.

The committee is right to mention in conclusion 9 the

“human aspects that determine the outcome of wars”

and the relationship to “deterrence, defence and de-escalation” because they have huge ramifications for the future of NATO and global security. This is especially important because as the renowned journalist Bob Woodward implies in his excellent book War such vital considerations seem to be playing second, if not third, fiddle to Trump’s very human desire, even determination, to exact revenge on Volodymyr Zelensky for failing to do his bidding nine years ago. The consequence seems to be a personal vendetta that rivals that of only one other man: Putin. In only such a scenario do I begin to find it possible to understand how the supposed leader of the free world can betray an ally fighting for its life, literally on the front line of freedom. Conclusion 31 surely contains perhaps the most poignant understatement of the entire report that:

“The war in Ukraine has thrown the role of alliances at a time of war into the spotlight”.


How true that is when one considers the grotesque spectacle of the supposed leader of the free world treating Ukraine almost as a vanquished enemy whose resources are to be seized as reparations for a war that it did not start and which it is determined to end.

I finish by thanking His Majesty’s Government and the Prime Minister for acting on the basis of the report’s conclusion 61:

“Developments in Ukraine are relevant to UK national security and, in particular, the protection of its critical national infrastructure”.


This of course includes the NHS.

My question to the Minister is: can the two words “trust” and “Trump” belong in the same sentence? Can we rely on a previously steadfast ally? I desperately want to be proved wrong, but the jury is out. It is beyond doubt that Ukraine is proving to be a wake-up call to a far greater degree than most of us could possibly have imagined.

Defence Spending

Lord Shinkwin Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Trenchard on securing this debate and his powerful opening remarks. I completely agree with other noble Lords that making rapid progress in laying out the road map to spending at least 2.5% of GDP could not be more important.

The Budget states that the Government

“will set a path to spending 2.5% of GDP on defence at a future fiscal event”.—[Official Report, Commons, 30/10/2024; col. 822.]

I think this misses the point. The point is Putin. He has to be the starting point because, ultimately, it is not a future fiscal event that is going to determine UK defence spending—it is a future military event, orchestrated by Putin and his allies.

So the question is: how committed are we to ensuring that that military event is not a third world war? As noble Lords have said, it surely depends on the extent to which we are prepared to invest now in defence and deterrence as a means of averting war.

I do not question the sincerity of the Minister here and the Secretary of State in the other place, John Healey, but I fear that yesterday’s Budget will be interpreted by Putin as confirmation that we intend to continue living in a never-never land. That is reinforced by this sentence in the policy paper on the Budget:

“This underlines the government’s commitment to strengthening the Armed Forces and protecting national security during a period of geopolitical instability”.


I must say, I sense the hidden hand of Sir Humphrey in such an understated, anodyne turn of phrase. I am not sure that it quite captures the urgency of the situations in Ukraine, Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen, Iran—the terrorist puppet master—Georgia, Taiwan and North Korea. The list is long, and it is red hot.

As the excellent report from the International Relations and Defence Committee of your Lordships’ House, Ukraine: A Wake-up Call, makes clear, any increase in defence spending

“should be seen in the context of decades-long defence cuts and recent inflationary pressures on the defence budget”.

However, one thing is clear: it would be unfair to accuse the Chancellor of producing a Budget for defence—including, as my noble friend Lord Attlee alluded to, the defence of items of expenditure such as the NHS, which focus groups say are so important to them, bearing in mind Putin’s fondness for targeting maternity hospitals and other crucial civilian infrastructure. Sadly, yesterday’s Budget was a vital missed opportunity, because it was in no way a wake-up call for Vladimir Putin. In fact, I suspect that he is laughing at us—laughing at our increased indebtedness and our reduced readiness for war.

I conclude with one question for the Minister, who will know that the economic and financial dialogue between the UK and China was paused after the imposition of the national security law in Hong Kong. Since more than 60% of the components used to prosecute Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine come from China, can the Minister assure the Committee that the UK will not seek to deepen trade relations with China, which is making not only the continuation of conflict in Ukraine possible but a third world war far more likely?

Ukraine

Lord Shinkwin Excerpts

Friday 25th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, for allowing me to speak from the Cross Benches while my leg is misbehaving.

I was recently asked by a member of the public, “When are we going to stop giving all this money to Ukraine? Surely we should be spending it on things that matter, like the NHS”. I naturally agreed that the NHS matters—of course it does—but I also said, as my noble friend Lord Banner’s family sadly knows at first hand, that one of the first places that Putin bombed was a maternity hospital. There is no reason to think that St Thomas’, for example, would not be in his sights. What better way to terrorise the British people and make them realise the price of standing up for Ukraine than to bomb a landmark hospital across the river from where we are sitting today?

Does any noble Lord seriously think that that could not happen and that Putin is not capable of such an outrage? Indeed, why would bombing St Thomas’ be any more outrageous than the crimes that his forces have already committed? If ever we need to be educated in Putin’s macabre mindset, we need only remember what his soldiers did in Bucha. As my noble friend Lord Robathan implied, the British public cannot assume that his bloodlust will not be visited on us, even if only by drones, cyberwarfare and missiles rather than by soldiers.

Yet, as the International Relations and Defence Committee of your Lordships’ House has warned, we are underprepared, including as a society. Everyone said “Protect the NHS” during the Covid pandemic, but does the Minister—the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman —agree that investing in the NHS is academic if we have not also invested adequately in the military means to defend it and our other civilian infrastructure? Can she reassure the House that this is being factored into determining the relative priorities of defence versus health and other domestic spending?

Surely the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, and the noble Lord, Lord Spellar, in his powerful maiden speech, are right when they warn that too many western policymakers still delude themselves that a compromise with Putin is possible. Indeed, I agree, as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, reminded us, that following such a futile approach, as we did in 1938, will simply postpone and magnify the pain, as we deluded ourselves that Hitler could be appeased.

Effective deterrence may be expensive, but it is an awful lot cheaper, both financially and in human costs, than war. Yet, despite the horrors visited on Ukraine and the awful scenes from the Middle East following Hamas’s barbaric invasion of Israel from unoccupied Gaza only 12 months ago, I sense that too few outside your Lordships’ House and the other place can compute the devastation that awaits us should Ukraine be defeated. As the Minister—the noble Lord, Lord Coaker —said, Putin must be seen to lose for that devastation to be avoided.

Reports suggest that the goalposts on government debt are going to be moved in a few days’ time. I worry that the net result will be that, just when we need to reduce debt and prepare for war—so as not to have to fight one—our economy will become even more vulnerable to global life shocks. I hope sincerely that the extra £50 billion window that is being reported in the press will benefit defence.

I conclude with one further question for the Minister —the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman—to answer when she replies. She will know that the economic and financial dialogue between the UK and China was paused after the imposition of the national security law in Hong Kong. Since repression there is now so much worse and since more than 60% of the components used to prosecute Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine come from China, can she reassure the House that the UK will not seek to deepen trade relations with China? Not only is China making possible the continuation of the conflict in Ukraine but its illegal sanction- busting involvement is making a third world war far more likely.