HMS “Endurance”

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I should like to associate these Benches with the condolences offered to the family and friends of Lance Corporal Liam Tasker, Lance Corporal Steven McKee and Private Daniel Prior. I should also like to associate these Benches with the very thoughtful tribute that the Minister has paid to the wounded.

Such a satisfactory Answer raises serious problems when asking a further supplementary, but this has been a very sad affair. It is more than two years since “Endurance” was damaged beyond repair and it will not be replaced until May. I gather that in the mean time the task is being carried out by HMS “Scott”. Does the Minister agree that that is not satisfactory since “Scott” is not an ice-breaker, does not carry helicopters and is not armed?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his kind words. As he said, HMS “Scott” is not an ice-breaker and she was only able to undertake operations in areas clear of significant ice risk. We have yet to determine whether the long-term solution for delivering the ice patrol ship capability will be better met through replacing or repairing HMS “Endurance”.

Armed Forces: Redundancy

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I join the Minister in offering condolences to the families and friends of Private Dean Hutchinson and Private Robert Wood. It is right that the Minister draws attention to the wounded, some of whom will carry the price of their bravery for the rest of their lives.

I thank the Minister for repeating the Secretary of State’s response in another place as a Statement in this House and I thank him for giving me an early view of the Statement. This Statement, together with the Written Ministerial Statement yesterday, is about cuts in manpower and how they are to be achieved. It is extremely precise: it talks of 344 pilots who will continue training, another 170 who will not and so on. Sadly, we learn that even more precise details were supplied to the press yesterday at a conference at 2 pm—which was before this House received details, before we had details in the Written Ministerial Statement and before the details that came out today in the other place. Can the Minister tell me whether in fact such a detailed briefing did take place yesterday at the Ministry of Defence? I am sure that it did. I will not comment on whether that is a good thing—the House must comment on that. However, I am sure that Members of the House would wish that details had come here or to the other place first.

The Statement has to be taken together with yesterday’s Written Ministerial Statement. The essence of the two documents is that there is some detailed grand plan of what we are trying to achieve. It refers to Future Force 2020 and the SDSR as the basis for this. It speaks with such precision that you would think there was a precise description of where we are trying to get to with this grand plan. I can only assume that, within the Ministry of Defence, there is a clear view of what the force strength will be in 2015 and what the force strength will be in 2020. I can assure the Minister there are no figures in the SDSR to enlighten us and there are no figures I know of in the public domain. The Royal Air Force and the fast jets in particular are in the top of our minds and the Statement is principally about redundancies in the Royal Air Force. Can he give us some statement or indication of what front-line force these manpower adjustments are designed to yield in 2015 and what front-line force we are looking for in 2020? Can he also assure us that this Government, if elected, will provide funding from 2015 to 2020 to deliver the so far undefined Future Force 2020 promise?

I am sorry that these days one has to read the press to keep up to speed with the Government’s thinking on defence. In today’s Times, it is suggested that a further £1 billion of cuts will be needed between now and April. Is that true? Is it likely that he will be coming back to the House to tell us about more cuts, and will those cuts involve additional manpower losses or additional losses of capability?

I turn to what may be one of the most crucial elements of this Statement on redundancies: what I call the Afghanistan promise, which was made in the other place by Dr Fox on 8 November 2010. He said:

“It would not be possible for the Government to say that no one who had ever served in Afghanistan in any way, shape or form since 2001 would not be made redundant”.

At the end of the day, one accepts that there has to be a little more flexibility than something as extreme as that. But he went on to say:

“I reiterate what I have said: that because we need to maintain the Afghan rotation, no one currently serving in Afghanistan, or on notice to deploy, will face compulsory redundancy”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/11/10; col. 13.]

Can the Minister confirm that anybody serving in Afghanistan on 8 November 2010 will not be made redundant under this? I believe that would be a perfectly reasonable interpretation of that promise. Unfortunately, yesterday’s Written Ministerial Statement was much softer. It said it would be those who had “recently” served in Afghanistan. Can the Minister confirm that “recently” means 8 November 2010 and if not, and he is actually resiling on the promise made on that date, can he define what “recently” now means?

What of those who are made redundant? The Written Ministerial Statement, at the bottom of page 2, starts to talk about what we will do for them. It starts off with good words about how we have a duty to these people and about how they have served us bravely, and now that they are made redundant they must face a future. It ends up by saying:

“A comprehensive package of support and advice on housing, finance and finding a job will be made available”.

That is starting to sound like something tangible. But it goes on to say:

“Over the coming months, Ministers will scrutinise those plans in detail, working closely with domestic departments, to ensure they are as good as can be achieved”—[Official Report, 1/3/11; col. WS 108.]

What does,

“as good as can be achieved”,

mean?

Surely, this is the moment to meet a promise that I thought I heard the Prime Minister make, to put the military covenant in law so that these assurances are tangible and can be delivered. The Minister has an opportunity, when he brings the forthcoming Bill to this House, to bring forward proposals to give a real, tangible base to the military covenant and I encourage him to do that. Will the Minister give us clarity on what sort of forces we are planning for, will he give us clarity on the Afghanistan promise and will he give us clarity on the military covenant? If he cannot, how does he expect to maintain the morale of our brave men and women?

Armed Forces: Redundancies

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I and these Benches wish to join in the sincere condolences to the families and friends of Private Martin Bell, Ranger David Dalzell, Warrant Officer Class 2 Colin Beckett, Private Lewis Hendry and Private Conrad Lewis. Like, I am sure, everyone in the House, I share the sentiments of the Minister about the grave impact that these operations are having not just on those who die but on those who are seriously injured. They put themselves in harm's way on our behalf.

Yesterday, the Opposition chose not to take a Statement on Afghanistan because we are working in a largely bipartisan way with the Government on Afghanistan. I commend the Minister for the efforts that he makes to keep interested Ministers so well informed of what is happening and I decided that it was inappropriate to take the time of the House on that issue. I can assure noble Lords that we will continue to work with the Government on a bipartisan basis in this important area.

The same does not apply to the events of the past couple of days. I note the Statement that has been repeated in the House. I welcome the fulsome apology about the 38 warrant officers, but I note that we only deprecate the article in the Daily Telegraph. I think the Government should go further. Short of this article being a figment of the Daily Telegraph's imagination—I doubt it can be, given its usual care—the Ministry of Defence is responsible, one way or another, for a leak which will have been profoundly hurtful to the people involved. I hope that the Minister will be able to make a rather more fulsome statement in his response to this event.

What assurances can the Minister give us that this will not happen again? It is important in this difficult period that Ministers take personal responsibility for this difficult area of managing personnel, ensuring that statements are made in an orderly way, that proper discipline of information is maintained, that there is proper support and that people hear bad news from those who should be giving them bad news; for example, those in their chain of command. I hope that the Minister can go further in his assurances about how these events will be prevented from happening in the future.

However, I feel that these events are not just in themselves sad and wrong but that they are actually symptoms of the SDR. It was done too quickly. The document turned out to be a simple Treasury-forced cuts exercise. It was ragged and, if we are to believe newspaper reports, not fully worked through. It is not the job of the Opposition to lay out how we would run the country, but it is our job to comment and to hold to account. We believe that the deficit is being reduced too deeply and too fast. We fear that what we have seen over the past couple of days are symptoms of chaos occurring in the Ministry of Defence. The redundancies of which we have heard seem to have been crudely worked out, inefficient in their long-term effects and, of course, executed in a grossly insensitive way. What assurances can the Minister give us that we are not creating holes in our medium and long-term capability? What assurances can he give us that these redundancies have been thought out with the care that should have been applied to the cutting of resources in the incredibly complicated world of defence? Will he be able in future to make those cuts in a way which assures us of that all round capability?

I hope that the Minister, perhaps repeating a Statement made by the Secretary of State, will be able to come to the House in the not-too-distant future to make a Statement on that very big task: 17,000 service personnel are to go; 25,000 civil servants are to go—that is 29 per cent. Knowing, as I do from my previous experience, the sheer complexity of the Ministry of Defence, I fear for our military capability if that is not done in a thoughtful, careful way. I hope that the Minister can give us some assurance on that and some promise of a future more detailed Statement about how redundancies will occur, how they have been thought through and where they will occur.

Finally, I turn to the issue of morale. From this Government, our brave men and women have seen cuts in pensions, cuts in allowances, pay freezes, a most amazing U-turn by the Prime Minister on his commitment to put the military covenant into law and, finally, this fiasco. What is the Ministry of Defence going to do to arrest the inevitable erosion of morale that these events will have brought about?

Armed Forces: Post-service Welfare

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, for securing this debate. I particularly thank him for his opening tribute to the previous Labour Government, which set the right tone for the debate. He had some thoughtful words about the covenant, particularly on mental health. While we have known about the problems of mental health in combat for many years, only now do we understand the depths of the problem.

The previous Government had a good record on the military covenant. We published the service personnel command paper—a first in government strategy—and made substantial investment in facilities such as Headley Court, including a new cognitive and mental health unit. We started community-based mental health pilots to provide veterans with expert assessment led by a community veterans’ mental health therapist. We started a number of initiatives on mental health, particularly with New Horizons: A Shared Vision for Mental Health, published at the end of 2009, which contained seven action points for the MoD and the Department of Health, particularly to look after support for veterans.

We also made commitments during our election campaign to continue with those strategies, particularly on developing pilots to deal with combat stress, which we signed up to in January 2010. They would improve veterans’ access to mental health facilities. If successful—and I hope they will be—we would have carried them forward. I hope that this Government will do so.

I move now to what the present Government are doing. There was an important commitment in the SDSR to:

“A dedicated 24-hour support line for veterans … and … 30 additional mental health nurses in Mental Health Trusts”.

That commitment was made as a result of the Fighting Fit report by Andrew Murrison. I should like to know from the Minister just how much progress has been made in securing those resources.

The interesting Fighting Fit report built upon New Horizons in its opening section and made 13 recommendations, of which only a couple have been clearly signposted and committed to. Perhaps we saw some progress today from Dr Liam Fox when writing in the Sun. He said he would be,

“working to implement them to provide much better and wider mental health support”.

That is good news. I hope that the Minister can report on progress. The Secretary of State also committed to changes in compensation. He said:

“Changes will be put into law next month to increase payment. They will nearly treble the maximum compensation for those suffering the severest mental health problems, and increase the amounts they are paid for life on leaving the forces”.

I hope that the Minister can give us more detail on what that commitment in the Sun from Dr Liam Fox actually means and to whom it will apply. Can the noble Lord confirm that the provisions will be introduced next month, how much it will cost the MoD, how many people will receive these higher payments, and what the exact scheme payments are that are being increased?

Looking further into the report, there are two particular recommendations on which, so far, there seems to have been no progress. They are a,

“Trial of an online early intervention service for serving personnel and veterans”,

and,

“Incorporation of a structured mental health system inquiry into existing medical examinations performed while serving”.

I hope that we can have some indication that these recommendations, together with the other recommendations in the report, are about to be implemented.

This has been an important debate and the areas in which improvement is necessary are understood. The Government have made some commitments to make these improvements, but I really need to know what the pace and future commitments are. My knowledge might have been illuminated by an article in the News of the World, which I would like the Minister to confirm or not. Not everyone will have reached as far as page 36 of last Sunday’s edition, but there was an interview with Mr Nicholas Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, by the paper’s chief political editor. He reported:

“Nick Clegg is to spearhead a huge drive to give better care for troops traumatised by war. The Deputy PM will soon unveil a ‘health for heroes’ service … Under the scheme, millions of pounds of extra money will be pumped into the NHS to fight battlefield stress. A new screening programme will identify victims … family doctors will get special training while an army of therapists will be drafted into hospitals to spot post-traumatic stress disorders”.

If all this is true, it is to be welcomed. However, it does not seem to relate to the more incremental and steady progress reported elsewhere. It has not been mentioned in Parliament and does not seem to accord with the plan in Fighting Fit. It is news to us and to the forces’ charities. If the Minister is aware of the details of this programme, perhaps he could give us some indication of what extra money there is, where the millions of pounds will be spent, the timescale for implementation, and why it is to be announced by the Deputy Prime Minister, not the Secretary of State for Defence.

Defence: Procurement

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Tuesday 25th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, as the noble and gallant Lord knows, Bernard Gray was appointed CDM last week. This is a very important step for the department; it is a sign of our commitment to drive through further change. The previous Government published the Gray review of acquisition, which examined the way in which new equipment is purchased for the Armed Forces. In February this year, the MoD published a strategy for acquisition reform that outlined a number of measures to improve defence acquisition. Implementation is going well and is now part of the wider defence reform agenda. A key part of the work is to look at how acquisition is managed and structured. We are looking at various operating models to determine the most efficient and effective way of designing our acquisition system.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, a National Audit Office report of 15 October last year, and the year before, found that Bernard Gray’s department was ever improving. Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, said that,

“central departmental decisions were taken to balance the defence budget which had the effect of driving very significant additional cost and delay”.

The same report stated:

“The Strategic Defence and Security Review should provide an opportunity for the Department to re-balance its policy intent and the available funding”.

Can the Minister assure us that funding balances the policy intent in the SDSR and does not leave the great gap that many of the heavyweight newspapers are predicting?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, the noble Lord is obviously referring to an article in the Daily Telegraph this morning. SDSR implementation work is ongoing and the MoD is also undertaking its annual planning round. This is used routinely to look forward over 10 years and ensure that the department’s commitments are in line with available resources. We keep under consideration at all times a range of options on future capabilities, but no final decisions have been made. Premature speculation is not helpful to that process, to our Armed Forces or to the defence industry.

Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I join these Benches in paying tribute to Ranger Aaron McCormick, Guardsman Christopher Davies, Private John Howard, Corporal Steven Dunn, Warrant Officer Class 2 Charles Wood, and Private Joseva Vatubua. Our condolences are extended to their families and friends.

Turning to the Question, the support of these Benches for Headley Court when we were in government was admirable. In recent years we spent £27 million and matched Help for Heroes’s £6 million pound for pound. The important idea, which I think that the Government have grasped, is that Headley Court is not a building, it is a concept. It is a concept about supporting our troops when they are injured. The last Government set up a scoping study under Sir Tim Granville-Chapman, former Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff, to look at whether the building was the way forward or whether a separate establishment was right. Could the Minister report on the progress of that report and, in doing so, give us a total commitment to the Headley Court principle and concept continuing into the future, which I think he is very happy to do?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

I agree with the noble Lord about the concept. Of course I can give him the commitment that he seeks.

The study he mentions is nearly completed and we anticipate being in a position to make a statement some time before the summer Recess. This was set up to build on the success of Headley Court. Any new facility would have a military rehabilitation centre at its core. There was wide consultation across the Government, including the NHS, the charitable sector and military rehabilitation experts, and MoD trade unions were fully consulted. In the mean time we shall continue to invest in Headley Court to ensure its provision of world-class care. We would only envisage leaving if there was an ensured level of future care at the new centre that surpassed Headley Court’s current and planned capabilities.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

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Friday 12th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this debate. I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham and my noble friend Lord Hutton of Furness on their maiden speeches. I now know more about Birmingham. I have a colleague from Birmingham; we know that it is the greatest place on earth. I thank my noble friend Lord Hutton for his thoughtful remarks and look forward to his contributions, particularly on defence, in the months to come.

I also pay tribute to the front-line troops. Tonight I will dine with a friend whose son died in a bomb clearance operation in Bosnia. Last weekend I met his colleagues. I am in awe of those young men, who do tasks that I could not imagine myself doing. I am sure the sympathy of the whole House goes to my friend, those like him and the friends and relatives of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice.

Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition will work with the Government as closely as possible in matters of security and defence. They are too important for us not to co-operate wherever we can to secure the best possible security and defence capability for this country. However, quite properly, just as the Government did in opposition, we will be holding them to account. There has not been much comment on Afghanistan in this debate. That is probably because of the clear assurances given in both the White Paper and by the Minister at the beginning of this debate. Nevertheless, we will watch carefully to make sure that every part of those assurances is delivered. Our troops in Afghanistan need all our support to finish the brave operation in which they are involved.

Turning to the rest of the review, we have had a long and interesting debate. Realistically, I recognise that noble Lords are not waiting for my comments about their speeches but for the Minister’s response. Nevertheless, a preponderant number of noble Lords expressed concerns about the review. The phrase that struck me most came from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Inge, who said that he had “deep, deep concerns”. Indeed, according to the Royal United Services Institute survey, 68 per cent of those in the defence community have concerns that this was a lost opportunity for a more radical reassessment of the UK’s role in the world.

It was very easy to pick up comments from around the defence community and elsewhere in Parliament about the review but I thought it sensible to read the source documents—the two volumes. You can, I hope, only do so by reading the national security strategy before going on to read the strategic defence and security review. I got as far as page nine of the first volume and read what, at first sight, was an extraordinarily reassuring statement. The document stated at the bottom of page nine:

“The National Security Council has reached a clear conclusion”—

there is no ambiguity in that statement—

“that Britain's national interest requires us to reject any notion of the shrinkage of our influence”.

I hope that the noble Lord will explain to me how he can stand by that statement given the 14 per cent reduction in the Navy, the 7 per cent reduction in the Army, the 13 per cent reduction in the RAF, the 29 per cent reduction in civilian staff, the ability to undertake an enduring operation reduced from 9,500 to 6,500, our surge capability reduced by a third to 30,000, the abandonment of carrier strike for a decade and the permanent abandonment of our maritime reconnaissance capability.

Nevertheless, despite that setback to my enthusiasm for the document, I pressed on. Indeed, to read the two documents as a whole is an interesting experience. You would think that the first document would finish with the last page; in fact, it finishes on page 12 of the next document. It is an interesting narrative. I am not sufficiently professional to be able to criticise it in any detail; that needs to be done over time. However, at least I accept that it is an attempt to work from the risks towards a series of strategic tasks. Those strategic tasks are listed on page two of the Strategic Defence and Security Review. That document then goes into the consequences. I was hoping to see an analysis of those tasks with military content, what scenarios related to those tasks, how the newly shaped Armed Forces would fit with those scenarios and how they would work together. However, you do not see that. You move on to page 15, which really says nothing about defence, except that there is a £38 billion hole. I was not going to cover this point in any depth but the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, did, so I must return to it. Will the Minister tell me where the £38 billion figure came from? I have searched what is available in the public domain and the nearest figure that I can find is £36 billion in the Major Projects Report 2009, published on 15 December 2009. The £36 billion figure is contained in one of the most irresponsible sentences I have ever seen in an NAO document. It states:

“The Department estimate, however, that the Defence budget remains over committed by £6 billion over the next ten years; this assumes an annual increase of 2.7 per cent in their budget after the end of the current Comprehensive Spending Review settlement in 2010-11”.

It then goes on to speculate:

“If the Defence budget remains flat in cash terms after this time”—

that is, for the next 10 years—

“then the extent of the over commitment widens to £36 billion”.

If there is no better source than that, I put it to noble Lords that the source is false. Even this Government in what they are putting forward are not suggesting 10 years with a flat cash budget.

When one goes back to the review, the document moves rapidly to principles. The principles on page 17 say things which are a little bit like motherhood in the sense that you could just as easily have said it last year as this year. I think that all but two paragraphs would be more or less identical to what one would have said last year. The two paragraphs in question say that we are to have smaller Armed Forces and that they are to be more selectively used. That is the only bridging interpretation between the tasks set out on page 12 and the cuts that start on page 19.

Is this a good package of cuts? Once again, I do not know. To know this, I would have to see the logic that led from the assumptions on page 12 of the first volume to the forces that we can now deploy. Certainly, the Treasury must feel that it is a satisfactory set of cuts. One assumes—because none of them has resigned—that the defence chiefs think that it is a satisfactory set of cuts. However, I say that it is as yet unproven. Certainly there are surprising elements, such as the carriers that will be delayed for four years from 2016 to “around 2020” to fit a catapult and some arrester gear. That is a lot of years to fit a catapult and arrester gear. There is also the decision on Harriers. I have heard the argument for scrapping the whole fleet, but we in this House have asked what would be the cost of a modest core fleet to maintain the capability on our current carriers in the mean time. We are looking at retaining “Illustrious” or “Ocean”. Why can we not retain “Illustrious” and a modest fleet to maintain a deployable capability to put what history teaches us can be very small numbers of fast jets over a battlefield? We need to know the figures to know whether or not to consider that was a good decision.

Many speakers have treated the civilian staff of the Ministry of Defence as if they are fat, lazy, ineffective and inefficient, and can be slashed at will. I declare an interest: I was employed as a non-executive director on the procurement side of the Ministry of Defence before I joined the Front Bench. Noble Lords should understand what an enormous range of tasks civilians perform in the Ministry of Defence. The ministry must be congratulated on the way in which, over the past decades, it has got people out of uniform. It has had the courage to persuade service personnel that, once they are no longer needed for fighting, many can sensibly become civilians and still be employed by the ministry. These people are frequently the repositories of, for instance, safety knowledge. They man the specialist teams that keep our equipment safe. They go head to head with defence contractors, who employ extremely able people to make sure that the last penny is screwed out of every contract. These are the people that we are talking about cutting by 29 per cent, when the overall size of the services is going down by only 10 per cent. What mechanisms will we put in place to make sure that this cut is made in a way that does not seriously weaken our capability, that does not put safety at risk, that does not put our procurement capability at risk, but does allow people who in the past have served on the front line to continue to provide a service to our soldiers, sailors and airmen?

On the face of it, this is not a strategic defence and security review. Perhaps, when we have probed it, it will emerge that the theme started in the first volume and developed through it sensibly translates to the force that is described in the second volume. We the Opposition will probe this over the months ahead. We hope that we will be part of a wider debate that will be much more inclusive than it has been so far of the defence community. For our country's sake, I hope that we will find that it all fits together, and that, if it is proved that in some places it does not, the Government will have the courage to change their mind.

Defence: Treaties with France

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating to this House as a Statement the Answer given in another place. I start by associating myself and those on these Benches with the tribute paid to Sapper William Blanchard of the 101 (City of London) Engineer Regiment. I see once again the words in brackets “explosive ordnance disposal”. The bravery displayed by those who do that job is, frankly, beyond my comprehension, and I greatly admire them.

Turning to the Statement, I protest once again that we in this House and in Parliament in general are the last to hear about this treaty being signed. The media, the French public, our allies and enemies and, I understand, the French Parliament have heard about it first. Everybody has. I will not go on about it, but we must get to a situation where we and the other place are the first to hear these things. Having said that, we welcome the general direction of what we hear so far. Co-operation with the French is the only practical co-operation that can make a significant impact on our defence capability. Taken intelligently and effectively, it has the capacity significantly to increase the ability of us both to make an impact, particularly in co-operating on defence equipment and its research and development.

Having said that, because of its suddenness and brevity this Statement raises an awful lot of questions. First, there is the very ratification process. The processes for ratifying treaties in Parliament—international treaties which have no impact on domestic legislation—are extremely poor. The previous Government brought forward proposals to improve that, as the present Ponsonby convention is extremely weak, and I see some hint that we are going to do something more. I see that although two treaties have been signed, we are to have an opportunity to consider them as part of the process towards ratification. That seems rather fuller than the convention and I invite the Minister to write to me—or, indeed, to produce a Written Statement—setting out exactly how we are going to have the opportunity to debate this extremely important convention or treaty, whatever the right term for it is, because so many important matters are opened up by the very concept.

The words flowing around in the media are of a 50-year “binding agreement”. Now, what does a binding agreement with the French mean? How are we going to adjudicate when we disagree? Is there going to be some supreme court for us? The history of the French nation over the past few centuries shows a chequered record on binding agreements. Indeed, there is a somewhat dark side to some of it. Of course, that will not be the case in future, but any concept of “binding agreement” has to have behind it some meaningful process otherwise, sadly, it will be just words. It is particularly difficult to envisage—I am not saying that it is impossible—how a binding agreement will survive the five-yearly defence reviews that we support. We think they are a good idea, but what will be the mechanism for those reviews?

Finally, can the Minister explain how this will change our relationship with our allies? We have this complex relationship in NATO; we are developing another complex relationship within the EU. We support those, but in among all of that we are going to have some special relationship with the French. How will that be achieved and not weaken those important relationships, particularly the NATO relationship? People—even, I dare say, of our generation—forget just how important that NATO relationship has been over the decades and how important it is that we do nothing to weaken it.

Turning to the nuclear stockpile, I found this somewhat surprising. I do not mean that it is not right but that I was not privy to the extent of this development. My understanding is that the 1958 mutual defence agreement with the US was special and complex, and that the extent of the co-operation between the two countries was extremely different. The French had to work a lot harder on the outside of that agreement. Since we are told that our American allies are content with this agreement, are we to understand that the French, in terms of support for their weapons, are going to receive the same support that we enjoy from the Americans? Are we going to have some sort of trinational bomb?

We are talking about sharing a nuclear facility with the French. I think that I understand what those words mean, but how can we share that facility without sharing nuclear secrets? Do we accept that the French will have effective full access to our nuclear secrets?

The document seems to imply—once again, I am sorry that I have not read it over and over, but I have had very little time to study it—that we are making a financial commitment to the nuclear facility. This is very interesting. Does it mean that the Government, almost as an aside in this Statement, are affirming beyond all reasonable doubt that we are going to have a deterrent? The facility will not open until 2015; if we have a financial commitment to it, we are clearly going to spend substantial money on the nuclear deterrent over and above anything that we understood from the SDSR.

If this is a Statement about the deterrent, does this co-operation in any way reduce the independence of our deterrent? In simple terms, will we continue to be able to target our weapon and fire it unconstrained by any other nation? I should value the Minister’s confirmation of that.

I turn to the more conventional side. To what extent does this weaken our ability to work alone? Mutual co-operation, almost by definition, ends up meaning mutual dependence. Will that dependence mean that we cannot act by ourselves? Will we, in a sense, only ever go to war again—this may be a good or a bad thing; on balance, I think the House would say that it was a bad thing—if we are in agreement with the French? They are lovely people but, over 50 years, will we always have to have their agreement to go to war, and indeed will they have to have ours? Are we in fact going to have a genuine capability for independent operation?

One cannot in these circumstances do other than reflect on the carrier. If I understand the way that the carrier decisions have gone, we are to lose our Harrier capabilities and fixed-wing strike capability, but we are going to build a carrier on which French aircraft can operate until we get our own. That is great if you say it quickly. Does that mean that, when this carrier is in the vicinity of a place where we want to take independent action, the French fixed-wing aircraft on board will go and bomb the targets that we ask them to, or will they have to call Paris first?

I have questions about the whole picture of the interdependence around the carrier. What happens when it is in refit? What happens when we lend the carrier—do we take all our secret bits out or rub all the symbols of Britishness off? It is very complicated.

We feel that the generality of this effort is a good idea, but we will want to hear a lot more about the detail before the treaty is properly ratified.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, we have always had excellent relations with the United States and I know that those will continue. We talk to other countries in the European Union and to our NATO allies at all times, but this Statement was about relations with France, which I very much welcome.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, will the noble Lord promise to put copies of all his letters in the Library?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

Yes.

Armed Forces: Harrier Fleet

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Wednesday 27th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, in a perfect world, no defence Minister would have wanted to retire the Harriers, but this decision was driven by the economic legacy left by the previous Government. Military advice has been that the Tornado is the more capable aircraft. The greater size of the Tornado force allows continuous fast jet support for forces in Afghanistan, which is highly valued by ISAF, and an ability to meet other contingencies. With regard to keeping a smaller fleet of Harriers, the withdrawal of an aircraft type delivers greater savings than partial reductions.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, we on these Benches join the Government in offering our sincere condolences to the family and friends of Corporal David Barnsdale, 33 Engineer Regiment (Explosive Ordnance Disposal).

I am sure that the whole House has sympathy for the Minister when he meets our allies and explains to them that we shall retain one carrier and build some carriers, but that we will not have any aircraft on them. I understand that HMS “Illustrious” may be retained and that we are committing to build two further carriers. Perhaps I can press him on what it would cost to retain a small fleet of Harriers solely to operate from those ships, which would retain our strike skills. We know that one or two fast jets over the battlefield have an enormous impact. We have the spares and we are going to pay the contractors—that is what the weasel word “commercial” means—and the Royal Air Force knows how to manage small fleets. Surely there would be space at one of the Tornado bases. What would it cost to take on board such a sensible compromise?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord to the Dispatch Box as his party’s spokesman on defence. I very much look forward to working constructively with him.

We will add cats and traps to the carriers, and although that will delay the entry of carrier-strike capability by three years, it will allow us to use a carrier variant of Joint Strike Fighter which has a heavier payload and a longer range than the STOVL variant. Overall, the carrier variant of JSF will be cheaper, reducing through-life costs by around 25 per cent over the STOVL variant.

Afghanistan

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement made earlier today by the Defence Secretary, and the Government for giving us early sight of it. I set out from the beginning that we largely agree with the moves announced today: my response will be a number of questions. It is important to recognise that the moves today are part of an ongoing process of deploying British troops as part of the coalition in the most effective way.

Our troops in Afghanistan do a fantastic job every day with resilience and courage in the face of hugely difficult circumstances. They put their lives on the line to protect our national security and we must never forget that. I welcome the commitment that the Defence Secretary has made to making regular updates in the other place, and I look forward to the Minister giving similar updates to your Lordships' House.

I hope that the Minister will take this opportunity to clarify whether there is a timetable for the drawdown of our troops in Afghanistan. It is crucial to the success of our efforts that the Government are clear on this issue. Will the decision on the withdrawal of our troops be conditions-based or will our Armed Forces be out of Afghanistan by the end of this Parliament, as the Prime Minister suggested? Specifically, if in five years’ time the situation on the ground is substantially similar to that of today, will British troops be withdrawn from combat?

The Defence Secretary has said that in opposition both he and the Prime Minister argued that our troops were too thinly spread. Will the Minister confirm that what he announced today is in fact a continuation of a process that we began in government? Does he accept that the uplift of American forces gave us the opportunity to improve force density and that, before that, we were limited in the adjustments that we could make? Will he also outline whether this change will bring us to the same density as our American allies? Can he also set out whether he envisages further changes to areas of operation in the near future? The Statement mentioned the deployment of elements of our Theatre Reserve Battalion to Afghanistan. Can the Minister reassure the House that this will not have an adverse effect on our capability to respond to any new contingencies that arise?

All of us on both sides of the House recognise that Sangin is one of the most challenging and difficult places in which our forces are operating. The number of losses that, sadly, we have suffered there reflect that. There will be mixed emotions from our forces and from those who have lost loved ones in Sangin on hearing the Government’s announcement today. Of course we recognise that. However, crucially we must also recognise that this is a decision made by ISAF commanders, whose responsibility is to ensure that coalition forces are organised so that they can deliver the campaign strategy that we all agree is necessary. We on these Benches will support them and the Government in the decisions that they take which enable our Armed Forces effectively to deliver that strategy.

We all recognise that for Afghanistan this is a vital year, in which we must see real progress. The Kabul conference and the September elections will be crucial for the future of the country. Will the Minister update us on progress in that regard and on discussions that the Secretary of State for Defence has had with the Afghan authorities on their prospects? Stability in Afghanistan cannot be delivered by our military alone. The problems are political and the solutions will be political. Will the Minister recognise that and update us on discussions that the Defence Secretary and other members of the Government have had with both the Afghan authorities and others in the region on the political progress that has been made so far?

As we have always said, the Government have our full support as they proceed to take difficult decisions in the best interests of our mission in Afghanistan and of our troops. Our work in Afghanistan is essential to keep us safe and we must never forget that.