Armed Forces

Lord Walker of Aldringham Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Walker of Aldringham (CB)]

My Lords, I also join in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Soames, for leading this debate so powerfully.

In a generation, the British soldier has fought across the Falkland Islands, delivering the combat power carried on his shoulders. He has steadfastly, and without favour, absorbed bullets, bombs, fire and venom in Northern Ireland for some 32 years. He has driven massed armour into the depths of a fortified enemy in a Middle Eastern desert, having calmly waited for it for 40 years on the north German plain. He has hunted terrorists in the Hindu Kush. He has kept his reputation in the Balkans, while others have lost theirs. He has snatched hostages from the swamps of Sierra Leone and the embassies of Kensington. He has fed refugees, slaughtered sheep, put out fires, guarded prisons, cleared domestic rubbish, driven tankers, built hospitals and fought floods.

That CV shows that our Armed Forces are required to support a wide range of national policies, from fighting a well-equipped army—such as that of Saddam Hussein—in high-intensity conflict, through counter insurgency and terrorism, to peace support operations and humanitarian relief. There is no reason to believe that these types of demands being placed on our Armed Forces will not continue. We cannot predict what the future will present us with but, as history demonstrates, it will certainly be unexpected.

Unfortunately, there is no one size fits all for equipping, manning and training an army for such a wide span of commitments. Our Army has been one optimised for the most difficult and complex form of warfare—we call it war-fighting. By this, I mean that it has been structured and trained to fight a war, equipped with the firepower, mobility and protection that is needed on the high-intensity battlefield and continually seeking the best available technology to ensure that it can orchestrate all these measures and exploit them to best effect, and having the resilience to provide for sustained losses.

War-fighting has been our Army’s engine; other operations are about gear selection. That means tanks, artillery pieces, armoured personnel carriers and attack helicopters, last used for real 10 years ago when we fought Saddam Hussein and very nearly used against the Serbs in Kosovo. There is no clearer demonstration of this potential need than the war between Russia and Ukraine. It is worth remembering that there remain some 80,000 operational tanks in the world, of which we have fewer than 160.

I have three final points. First, our seat at the highest political and military tables and the influence that we may wish to bring to bear on world events are absolutely predicated on our credibility as a nation that has serious, balanced, expeditionary war-fighting forces. Our capabilities, as we have heard, have already been called into question by many commentators and American generals. It will be no good preparing for the war that we want to fight; we should prepare for the war that we have to fight.

Secondly, the price of failure in a peace support operation in some far-flung place, as we have seen, will be painful but probably containable. The price of failure in something such as the Gulf War would most likely be catastrophic for the nation. This price would certainly be out of all proportion to the price of proper preparation beforehand.

Thirdly, in the United Kingdom , political will continues to be manifest in a policy-driven defence review—integrated, strategic or whatever—with a deliberate, judgment-based and scientific estimate of the level and range of military capability required to meet the extant will. The weakness of our Armed Forces lies not in their design but in the level of resources applied to them, as we have heard. Political will, force design and resource levels are simply not aligned. Defence bureaucracy is psychologically inclined to short-term pragmatism and does not invest sufficient energy in competing for the necessary resources. It is culturally adept at blurring the distinction between affordability and military efficacy.

We must establish a pure and simple method of gaining real visibility of this predicament and be prepared to expose the true military consequences of a failure to invest properly in our Armed Forces in a politically effective way. The existing processes, attitudes and schedules are not optimised to do this. Instead, they are geared to managing decline. We see this day by day and, if it continues, it will take a great deal of resources, time and money to regenerate our forces to the right level.

Veterans Strategy

Lord Walker of Aldringham Excerpts

Thursday 15th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Walker of Aldringham (CB)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my charities as listed in the register of interests, and congratulate the noble Earl on setting this debate in motion at a time when we have been focusing on the Armistice and remembering those who in the last two great wars gave their lives for our freedom. Of course, the numbers—about 2.5 million today—are rather different: far smaller than those of the two wars. It is very important in talking about our veterans to get the numbers in clear perspective. I also welcome the Government’s Strategy for Our Veterans and its associated consultation document.

The issues surrounding our veterans are far from straightforward. They range across a spectrum that includes mental health problems, including depression, suicide, poverty, debt, unemployment, relationship breakdown, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, offending, violence and homelessness. Overwhelmingly, our observations and research show that most veterans in the United Kingdom are fine—but in the media, particularly, the practice has developed of portraying veterans as a homogenous damaged group. It is almost as if everyone who has served has been damaged in some way. This leads to a widespread public perception that is both wrong and harmful. It is important that we in this House do not add flames to this non-existent bonfire.

It is also somewhat bizarre that many people think that nothing is done for veterans. We have a good NHS service, and some fantastic charities support our veterans. Sometimes they fail, but, overall, if a veteran is in some sort of social crisis, he or she will get the help they need. Clearly, if veterans are to be helped, as we have heard, data on them needs to be robust. Here, I commend the Defence Committee’s recent report, which recommended that the MoD, with the appropriate departments of the four nations, works with the charity sector to agree a shared set of methodologies for collecting and analysing data. The strategy has recognised that need, so I hope that it will happen soon.

The two areas which seem to receive most attention in the public debate are homelessness and mental health. The evidence we have suggests that homelessness affects a considerable number after they leave the forces, especially younger people and the so-called early service leavers. The figure suggested is 3%, which means that each year more than 1,000 people require urgent support to find accommodation. Others experience crises in their lives which require action to prevent homelessness later in their lives.

There is still no mechanism to identify those transitioning from the Armed Forces and at risk of homelessness, or the ability to support them effectively. The Joint Service Housing Advice Office is understaffed and provides only a template briefing and no bespoke advice. The Career Transition Partnership works well for most, and best for those who have served longest, but there is no equivalent resource to support the minority of serving personnel who leave with no clear pathway to housing.

Once a veteran becomes homeless, there is little knowledge in the civilian world that there is an enhanced offer for veterans. Local authorities and homeless charities still do not “think veterans”. That is why many veterans become homeless every year and are not getting help quickly enough—although it is also worth pointing out that just over 3% of rough sleepers are veterans, whereas about 7% of the population qualify as veterans, so they remain underrepresented overall.

Despite apparently being a priority group, there is almost no statutory revenue funding for homeless veterans from local or central government. Veterans are the only supported housing sector in the UK where the majority of support costs are paid by charities, whom have to fundraise to get the money. This is unsustainable and almost unheard of anywhere else in the wider homelessness sector.

Three significant actions could improve the situation, and I should be grateful if the Minister would take these back to the MoD. First, the transition process should be altered to try to prevent any serving personnel becoming homeless after service. Every leaver, including those who leave during basic training, early service leavers, longer-serving leavers or those discharged from a military corrective training centre, should be asked about their housing options after leaving. Those identified as at risk should be given the best advice to a pathway away from homelessness.

Secondly, local authorities and other agencies in the civilian housing sphere should establish whether a person seeking housing support is a veteran, and then ensure that the veteran has a clear pathway to housing. This would be very much in line with the intent of the covenant. Thirdly, supported housing for veterans should be put on a sustainable financial basis once and for all, preferably on a national basis. A recent piece of research conducted by York University, with a number of charities, concluded that if these three changes were made it would be possible to reduce the incidence of homelessness among veterans to close to zero.

With regard to the mental health of the Armed Forces, the Defence Committee found that is very difficult to prove whether the mental health conditions that some personnel develop are caused by their military service. Non-military factors or underlying mental health conditions exacerbated by military service could all contribute to an individual’s mental health. Further, military service could have a positive effect on an individual’s mental health, although for some this positive effect merely serves to delay the onset of mental health issues when they depart the service.

On the other hand, probable PTSD is a condition, as we have already heard, that affects the Armed Forces in particular, largely because of the intense, violent and traumatic nature of warlike operations and other things that the Armed Forces get up to. At first sight, the numbers seem quite small, at between 3% and 7%,—but the true figures are quite difficult to establish. Alcohol misuse and poverty are far more prevalent, both of which have mental health implications as well as all the other social issues that I mentioned earlier. It goes to show what a complex area veterans’ mental health is.

If the Government’s strategy is serious about helping to build on the Armed Forces covenant, to show that its commitment to our brave men and women lasts long after they have left service, it needs to do more. In my view, it should establish a department of veterans’ affairs so that there is one organisation with clear ownership of our veterans and their future. It should follow the Canadian example of establishing a veterans’ ombudsman and draw up a charter of rights for veterans which would define what their entitlement was in the National Health Service and other relevant areas of our society. Veterans should not have to beg or argue for support in the 21st century; nor should they end up as objects of pity.

Realistically, however, I cannot see such a radical change being introduced. So we are left with the Armed Forces covenant—that promise from the nation that those who serve, or have served, and their families will be treated fairly. It establishes veterans as a very special group. Wonderfully well-intentioned though it is, and even though local authorities and many others have signed up to it, there is no standardisation, no clarity about entitlement and no monitoring. The strategy and the covenant will need more teeth if they are to deliver for our veterans. I very much hope that this new strategy, improved by the outcomes of the consultation document, will provide those teeth.

Armed Forces (Flexible Working) Bill [HL]

Lord Walker of Aldringham Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 11th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Walker of Aldringham (CB)]

My Lords, I strongly support this amendment as well. Life in the military world is divided into two distinct types. The first is when folk are deployed on operations, normally in some far-flung place. Working days are often 18 to 20 hours long, sometimes longer. There are no weekends, no bank holidays, no serious recreational time and very little time for individuals to have to themselves. Focus is on the job in hand, you have to be ready to react at a moment’s notice, and the pressure is on you 24 hours a day. There is no way that could be described as part-time and no way that people could be part-timers in that sort of scene.

The second type is what one might call the routine, more normal life in barracks. This is all about training, career development, ceremonial, military aid to the civil power and similar activities, as well as getting a better work-life balance for service folk with their families. This is much more the sort of life that other professions might recognise. In this style of life, breaks from service are entirely possible, entirely sensible and entirely warranted, and, as we have already heard, it happens on the ground as we speak. But, again, “part-time” is not the right way to describe such breaks.

The very word “part-time” implies a long-term arrangement and, for the Regular Forces, carries a stigma that damages the self-esteem of the individual, makes others question an individual’s commitment and, indeed, damages the self-esteem of the institutions that are the services themselves. Moreover, the word “part-time” could be lighted upon and magnified by the media to further exacerbate a notion that we were indeed a part-time set of forces—to the very dismay of our services and particularly our personnel. If they were so to do, we would have only ourselves to blame by enshrining these words in law. Therefore, I very much support the amendment and hope that it will be accepted.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I have listened carefully to the case presented by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, for changing the words of the provision. I agreed with everything that the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Boyce, said, apart from his remarks about the merits of the amendment. I particularly agreed with his comments about morale and funding the Armed Forces.

My first thought is that, if we were in a situation where the Armed Forces were fully funded and recruited, we would probably not be going down this route. However, our current situation gives us the opportunity to give defence HR a good wire-brushing. I strongly agree with the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Walker, that service life is not employment or a job; for me, it is, or was, Her Majesty’s service, which is very different.

If I were the Minister faced with this problem—or, rather, opportunity—my first thought would be to encourage service people who would like some flexibility or stability to go on to the reserve and then make an additional duties commitment. There would have to be some pension considerations and some certainty that the service personnel could get back into regular service, but I do not think that would require primary legislation. During the briefing sessions that the Minister organised, we asked about that, but apparently the Bill route is the optimal solution. Given the well-known difficulties with primary legislation, which we are experiencing now, we can be reasonably confident that this is the best course of action.

The noble and gallant Lord made a very good point about the possible public and service perceptions of part-time Regular Forces. Unfortunately, nothing we can do will stop the media running a story from a negative position. The noble and gallant Lord will also know that it is very hard to get the media to run any good defence news story. If they want to run this particular development negatively, nothing in the drafting of the Bill will prevent that.

I was in a similar position to the Minister when the Opposition Front Bench favoured slightly different drafting for a particular clause in a Bill that I was handling. However, I was in the fortunate position that my officials were able to advise me that I could accept the revised drafting if I wanted to, and of course I did. My noble friend is a much more experienced and, most importantly, much more senior Minister than I was. However, my suspicion is that he is simply unable to change the drafting for legal reasons.

When the noble and gallant Lord comes to decide what to do with his amendment, I think he will be wise to exercise caution. First, I do not expect that he will be carrying that magic slip of paper from the clerk to the Lord Speaker. Secondly, if we make too much of a meal of this Bill, we run the twin risks of, to some extent, deterring the MoD from running a similar small, discrete and desirable Bill and of making the government business managers equally cautious of such a Bill in the future, even if it were one that found favour with noble and gallant Lords.

Armed Forces (Flexible Working) Bill [HL]

Lord Walker of Aldringham Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 11th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Walker of Aldringham (CB)]

My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Earl the Minister for giving us a comprehensive briefing yesterday. However, as we are going to hear from the noble and gallant Lords, Lord Craig of Radley and Lord Stirrup, who know their former services better than me, I will focus my comments on the Army perspective, and I hope to be brief.

I am very uncomfortable about this Bill. On the one hand, as we have heard, it is proposing to introduce a form of flexibility which is modern, is in keeping with more enlightened businesses and institutions and will be welcomed by those who can take advantage of it. It has the potential to keep within the service high-quality people who need a break or geographical restrictions to their deployment for the very human reasons, which we have already heard about, that family life often throws at us. It is only natural that folk should seek stability in their lives when they have young families or if they have seen a great deal of separation from their wives and partners. It gives them a chance to recharge their batteries, which can be good for them and for the Army.

On the other hand, as is becoming clear, the devil is going to be in the detail of the regulations drawn up to operate the system. There are many unanswered questions to be resolved. Part of the contract between the individual and the Army is that he or she must be prepared to deploy to some far-flung place at a moment’s notice, for it is always the unexpected that we must deal with. He or she must be physically fit, mentally prepared and properly trained for the particular type of operation that they are going to take part in. They have to fight along the roughest edges of humanity. Being half ready, half trained and undermanned will not do. Reshuffling unit strengths at the last minute damages cohesion, and is unsafe and unfair to our soldiers.

At the end of the last century, the Army used to have what was called a manning margin. This allowed individuals to go away on long-term educational courses and be replaced in the unit so that it would not be under strength. As efficiency savings have bitten over the years, that manning margin has dwindled to nothing. Units are therefore routinely under strength because people are away taking various courses. If the units now lose a percentage of that strength through the introduction of this Bill, as well as a further 4% reduction as of May this year in strength, which is the undermanning of the Army as a whole, we are beginning to talk about serious undermanning, with all the consequences that that means for preparedness and levels of training.

So the questions are mounting in my mind. Will there be a cap on the percentage of strength that may take advantage of this new proposal? Do we have any idea of the impact that geographical restrictions will have on unit cohesion and deployability? We have heard that the pay arrangements will mean a pro rata reduction against full-time pay. What will prevent the individual taking up other employment while away from his unit, and is that viewed as acceptable? Will it become a soft landing into other employment? Is this just another means, although the noble Earl declares that it is not, of reducing manpower costs, because it is buried in the wider new joiner effort which claims to have to reduce the sums spent on manpower so that we can be sustainable into the future?

Who is going to recommend an individual to the approving or denying authority? I assume that it will be the commanding officer of the individual, but instinctively he is going to want to keep his unit as well manned as possible. Will those who are covering for the absence become disaffected and choose to go? Notwithstanding an appeals process, are we opening a door to legal claims for discrimination from those who are told that they cannot have a break or that they must deploy outside their geographical area more than a certain number of times?

In recent operations, we have seen severe pinch points in the manning of certain specialist roles, such as petroleum operators and human intelligence resources. Will those roles be exempt? It seems to me that role dependency should be a critical element of the proposals. If so, are we going to include it? To lighten things, it is not just the front line we are talking about. I was talking to the director of the Corps of Army Music last week. He told me that if he loses his bass drummer his band is hors de concert. Folk in the Army are often tasked to do things they would prefer not to. Is it just possible that this new-found flexibility might be used to escape some unpalatable task?

I risk being accused of failing to enthusiastically espouse a modern practice that is shown to work well in other professions. My defence is that the Army is not like other professions. It is about people having to put their lives on the line in the most extraordinary circumstances. It is the Government’s responsibility that they are as best equipped, well trained and well manned as possible, and psychologically prepared for the horror of death on the battlefield. Initiatives such as this have often had unintended consequences, and I fear this may be one, particularly if we do not have an assurance that it has been analysed from every possible angle.

I understand the Australian and New Zealand armies have embarked on this policy but that it has not been long for either of them. Even so, I was told anecdotally last week that those of our own officers working with the Australian army see that it is already beginning to lose its operational credibility. If this is so, would it not be sensible for us to have more time to examine the Australian experience? It would be a crying shame if we were to find our Army losing its world-class operational credibility and its self-esteem because we had failed to carry out a sufficiently rigorous analysis of the likely impact of this Bill. We owe our men and women better than that.

Armed Forces Act (Continuation) Order 2017

Lord Walker of Aldringham Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Walker of Aldringham (CB)]

My Lords, as we have heard from many noble Lords who have spoken, we are living in a very troubled and insecure world— militarily, politically, economically and socially. Everything seems to be in turmoil. It does not matter where you look, the landscape is littered with issues that Governments and international institutions are finding it increasingly difficult to handle. In this Chamber, we pray daily for peace and tranquillity in the realm. But we are clearly not doing enough.

So what does all this mean for our military in the second decade of the 21st century? The most pressing item on people’s agenda is Brexit. At first sight it seems to us that Brexit itself is unlikely to have a vast impact on our Armed Forces—certainly on their roles and tasks. We are firmly attached to NATO and expect to be able to continue to co-operate with our European allies. More indirectly, there are big unknowns. What will happen within and to our defence industries? How will a change in the value and exchange rates of the pound affect our ability to fund the ever-increasing costs of procurement of military equipment and manpower?

Added to that is the spectre of the Scottish independence referendum. Should it become a reality, there will presumably be a requirement to give Scotland her share of the combat units and vehicles, aircraft squadrons, warships, intelligence, logistics and maintenance assets, and of course to sort out our nuclear base at Faslane. That will all take some doing. I wonder whether the Minister will be able to give us a view as to the Government’s thinking, should that happen.

The central lesson of our experience of the last 60 years is that forces equipped and capable of prosecuting warfare at the highest-intensity level are absolutely capable of less demanding operations. But the reverse is not true. That is why our national engine is and must remain warfighting. Indeed, the Minister referred to it as full-spectrum capability, so that we can change down through the gears when demands require it. This equation is as much about organisational attitudes and methods as about the physical fabric of our capability, although the former is nothing without the latter. To use an Army analogy, the sort of mentality that can position an armoured division tactically in an area equivalent to that inside the M25, supply it with 70 tonnes of food and 1,600 tonnes of ammunition on a daily basis and then use some 30,000 to 40,000 men and more than 10,000 vehicles to destroy or defend against an enemy at night, should be able to burn a few sheep when everyone else is panicking.

However, you cannot hope to keep the peace if those who threaten doubt your will or your ability to wage war. They will laugh in your face. Contingencies in which the enemy is an abstract noun, such as famine, terror, poverty and disaster, may be more likely at present, but we must never forget that we still have potential enemies whose senses are stimulated only by the weight of conventional force brought to bear on them—and there are more than 120,000 main battle tanks out there. High-intensity warfare is, thankfully, relatively low on likelihood, but we should not forget that we used a version of this capability as recently as the Gulf War in 1991 and again in Iraq in 2003—although thankfully both times against a very weak enemy. But the risk level has gone up a notch or two, as we have heard, particularly in the last couple of years. We have seen the sabre rattling of Russia with its latest modern battle tank and enhanced capabilities across the board—and only the other day Iran announced the development of its own version of the Russian tank.

We currently claim to have a set of forces structured to be capable of high-intensity warfighting as part of an alliance. In this type of warfare, operations are conducted in five dimensions: in and from the air; in and with the electromagnetic spectrum; on the land; and, if sea is involved, with both surface and subsurface operations. Our contribution would in effect be a one-shot weapon which would consume most of our available resources.

In a recently leaked memo, the last commander of our Joint Forces Command cast grave doubts on the efficacy of this capability. Even if only part of what he claims about the shortcomings in our strategic thinking, cybercapability and fragile naval, air and land capabilities is true, our ability to fight a conventional war must be in doubt. At the same time, there is much uncertainty about all our allies in NATO increasing their defence spending, as we have heard from so many noble Lords, and the impact that it might have on our US ally’s intentions. Were we to engage in an endeavour requiring us to deploy this capability and fail, we would be faced with one of two very unpalatable options: either accept defeat or resort to our nuclear capability.

A capability for high-intensity warfare is high on cost—and getting higher by the day. Once that capability is lost, it takes a long time, a lot of money and a lot of training to reconstitute it. Moreover, if Scotland votes for independence, the repair bill will be large and could come sooner than expected. Everybody agrees that the defence of our nation is the first duty of our Government. I believe that that duty to maintain such a capability should be followed, whatever the future costs may be.

I will talk briefly about one other aspect because it has been touched on by a number of noble Lords. It is about our people. Being a service man or woman is not better or cleverer, or necessarily braver, than being in another occupation—but it is different. That is because we require our youngsters to be sent off at a moment’s notice to a place they may have difficulty finding on a map, where they are required to risk life and limb alongside an ally whose language they may not be able to understand and in defence of an issue that they may not even have begun to grasp. In this distinctive chemistry of the military world, men and women, as we have already heard, wish to be valued. They wish to be valuable as well. They are paid folk and they have a contract that takes them to the door of death.

Nothing about the future suggests that tomorrow’s service men or women will have to be any less brave, less physically and mentally tough or less resilient than their predecessors. There will continue to be a premium on the men and women who are prepared to put up with the dreadfulness of an environment that is at best exceptionally unpleasant. There will be an equal premium on those leaders capable of persuading others to accept that dreadfulness.

These folk have hardly been highly rewarded by the nations they have defended. The New Model Army of the 1640s—the most reliable force to emerge from the English Civil War—was eventually driven to oppose the Parliament for which it had fought so well by the fact that its pay was in arrears. Time and again, servicefolk, who have been perfectly prepared to face physical risks, have sulked, grumbled or even mutinied over pay and conditions. The feeling that their country is not honouring its part of the contract or the fear that the well-being of dependants is threatened, strikes at the very basis of their loyalty. It is indeed ironic that our country has oft been best defended by those who owe it the least.

In 1957, when conscription ended, the Regular Armed Forces were some 700,000 strong; the defence budget was some 7% of GDP; and the average per capita cost of a service man or woman was some £41,000. By 2011, we had shrunk to186,000; the defence budget was just over 2% of GDP; but the average per capita cost was some £220,000. The full-time trained strength as of December last year had dropped to just over 139,000—some 4% below establishment. The jury is out on whether full manning can be achieved.

Today, after the last SDSR, one of the main areas in which savings are being sought is in personnel. Military pay will increase by only 1% over the next four years—well below projected levels in the private sector. For a private soldier this is 1% on £18,000—some £7,000 below the national average. Service allowances are being targeted for savings, and the 30% savings in numbers of MoD civilians could well require backfilling with military personnel. There are, too, concerns about the legal pursuit of 60 year-olds in Northern Ireland, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Astor, the damage done by the IHAT allegations, and concerns about service accommodation and work/life balance. I believe that we need to do better for our people, for it seems that our country still seeks to be best defended by those who owe it the least.

Armed Forces: Reserve Forces

Lord Walker of Aldringham Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Walker of Aldringham]

My Lords, after many years of involvement with and command of the TA, I have always held our reserves in singularly high regard, but that regard is dosed with a good dollop of realism and an understanding of the art of the possible for Army volunteer units. I stress Army because I do not know the Royal Naval and Royal Air Force Reserves as well.

Against that background, I have a number of concerns about the proposals in the report, Future Reserves 2020. Of course, there is not time to discuss them all today, so I will confine myself to just two: recruiting and roles. These are self-evidently linked because if we do not recruit sufficient volunteers there will be gaps in the Army’s order of battle and if the roles are not exacting, exciting or attractive enough then volunteers will not bother to join.

Recruiters for the Regular Army judge that about 20% of recruits are so-called “army barmy”. In other words, these are people who have passionately wanted all their young lives to join the Army and have done so. Clearly, a number of territorial reserves feel the same. These are not the people I am talking about because they will probably join whatever the Government of the day do to reform the service. The fact is that there will never be enough in this category alone to fill the ranks of either the regular or the TA elements of the Army.

To my knowledge, since the 1980s the Territorial Army has never been recruited above 80% of its full established strength. Indeed, its current unreformed strength is well below that at around 50%. There is as yet little evidence to indicate that this phenomenon will be different whatever the size of the force. Indeed, the smaller the critical mass, the less likely it will be able to keep its strength up. Nor should we underestimate the extent of the disincentive from the rationalisation—in other words, the significant reduction—of the TA estate. I would compare the impact of that on recruiting to what would happen if coffee drinkers found that Starbucks reduced its number of coffee outlets. If a Starbucks is to hand, people will go and buy their coffee there. If they have to travel some 10 miles to get to the nearest Starbucks, they will go somewhere else. That is also the case for those who might join the TA but take proximity to one of its centres into account. It is particularly the case for those who live in rural areas and may have to travel 20, 30, 40 or more miles to attend an evening or weekend session.

There is then the paradox of why people join the TA. Some who join are used in their professional specialisation. Doctors, dentists and chaplains are classic examples and there are many others. But many join to have a complete change from their professional skill. Lawyers, teachers and bankers love being riflemen, gunners and engineers, for example. They genuinely do not want to be used in their professional capacity and would probably not join if they were forced to do so.

However, my experience has been that we have gained the most effective use of the territorials by employing them in uniform to use their specialist professional skills. In Bosnia, I had a TA infantry officer who was, in civilian life, a High Court judge. He was an absolute wizard at translating the small print of the Dayton agreement into practical instructions for the warring factions. In that capacity, he made a far greater contribution to the overall operation than he would have done in his capacity as an infantryman. In Iraq, several teachers and bankers were diverted from their primary roles to help develop schools and banking systems. Indeed, our experience on recent operations is that we need people who understand the media, construction, politics, law, economics and all manner of areas for which the Army is never the first port of call. Balancing this with those who aspire to be straightforward soldiers and the needs of the total force is a delicate task: get it wrong and the volunteers will vote with their feet, even more so than the regulars because for them it is by and large a secondary job.

We also need to look at the terms of service for these folk. The EU part-time workers directive makes it clear that a part-time worker must be treated no less favourably than a comparable full-timer. That means that unless employers can objectively justify exclusion, part-time employees have to be provided with access to pension schemes on a basis no less favourable than for their full-time counterparts. I have no doubt that the clever clogs in the MoD will find some objective justification to gain derogation from this and there is no mention of it in the report. But if it is to be an integrated Army, and on moral grounds, surely we should make volunteer service to the Armed Forces of our nation pensionable. Of course the smaller the Army, the more often its component parts are likely to be used. Employers, as we have heard, are generally good people and their track record in supporting the deployment of their workforces to operations is commendable, but we must ask ourselves whether, if such deployments become routine rather than in the event of national crisis, this willingness to be supportive will continue.

Finally, my purpose in identifying these issues is not to kick dust in the face of the reforms, for I very much hope that all comes good, but it would be wrong of me to say that I agree with the outcome of the latest defence review. I regard it as a dangerous dismantlement of our Armed Forces for short-term gain in the face of years of historical evidence and at a time when global instability is rife and there is a plethora of asymmetric risks to our national security. The report Future Reserves 2020 recognises that there is risk in the proposals it contains for our part-time force. My own experience tells me, sadly, that that risk is highly likely to materialise.

Armed Forces Bill

Lord Walker of Aldringham Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Walker of Aldringham]

My Lords, in the Sunday Telegraph was an inspiring article about four young soldiers who intend to row across the Atlantic. You might say that there is nothing remarkable about that, but these are four young soldiers who have been badly injured, maimed by bombs in Afghanistan, and between the four of them they can muster only three complete legs. Their plan is to enter the Woodvale Atlantic rowing race, which begins in December, and none of them has any experience of the sea. They hope to raise £1 million to share between Help for Heroes, ABF The Soldiers’ Charity and SSAFA. Their endeavour is both inspirational and highly laudable and I am sure that all of us in your Lordships’ House wish them every success.

However, their endeavour brings into focus the whole question of the funding of the covenant that is addressed in this latest Bill. The Armed Forces have a long and strong tradition of raising money for charities. In the last century the vast majority of such fundraising activity was targeted on charities that were not linked directly to the armed services—they tended to focus on cancer, children and raising money for those charities which were local to units’ bases or linked to their specialist trades.

The service-orientated charities do a remarkable job but in essence they are there to attend to the needs of veterans and their families who have fallen on hard times. However, those who have been killed, maimed and wounded by being sent to war by our country can hardly be portrayed as “falling” on hard times. I believe most passionately that if the covenant is to mean anything at all, when a service man or woman is damaged in any way whatever during their military service, then a clear duty lies with the Government for a lifetime of support.

As the doctrine states, this is about service men and women doing their duty, putting the needs of the nation before their own, forgoing some of the rights enjoyed by those outside the Armed Forces and accepting the grave responsibility and legal right to fight and kill according to their orders and their unlimited liability to give their lives for others. The unique nature of military service means that the Armed Forces differ from all other institutions, as many noble Lords have said.

We should not forget—sometimes I think we do—that during the lifetimes of most of us in this House British service men and women have lost their lives and been maimed and wounded in Palestine, China, Korea, Malaya, Egypt, Kenya, the Suez, Cyprus, Borneo, Aden and Dhofar. More recently, they have died and been wounded as they fought across the Falkland Islands; as they steadfastly, and without favour, absorbed the venom of Northern Ireland; as they have twice driven massed armour into the Middle Eastern deserts. They have snatched hostages from the swamps of Sierra Leone and the embassies of Kensington. They have hunted terrorists in the mountains of Afghanistan and the Pacific Islands; they have fed refugees, delivered humanitarian aid, slaughtered sheep, put out fires, guarded prisons, cleared domestic rubbish and fought floods. That is a pretty impressive CV by any standards, and there can no doubt in your Lordships’ minds about the debt that we owe these people and what we ought to do about it. Even as we debate, our service men and women are at full stretch on operations helping to manage the consequences of, or prevent the intensification of, conflict in various parts of the world.

The covenant that must exist between the Government and the Armed Forces is in my view a simple moral contract which means that, in return for the sacrifices made by those in the forces, the Government will ensure they are treated fairly and they should be confident, as many of the speakers today have said, that the nation will look after them and their families.

Of course, the covenant is wider than just the response to those who are injured. This notion of fairness is, I believe, central to any covenant and must be demonstrated both strategically and tactically. The recent strategic defence and security review committed the Government to being more selective in their use of the Armed Forces,

“deploying them only where key UK national interests are at stake; where there is a clear strategic aim; where the likely political, economic and human costs are in proportion to the likely benefits; where there is a viable exit strategy”.

Just try measuring our latest military adventure in Libya against “key national interests”, “clear strategic aim” and “viable exit strategy”. How fair does that seem, as a use of our military forces, when we are heavily engaged elsewhere and at the same time key elements of our forces are being dismantled? At the other end of the scale, service men and women who have recently served in Afghanistan are being made compulsorily redundant, which is morally indefensible. In this context, one has to ask: what price a commitment to the covenant? My heart sinks at the thought of the recent defence reform proposals which see a defence board, with only a single military member among seven to 10, giving any airtime to developing a covenant which really means anything.

As many noble Lords have already observed, the Bill introduces the requirement for the Secretary of State to lay an annual report before Parliament about the effects of membership or former membership of the armed services on servicepeople. I am not certain that a covenant lends itself in any way to legislation—of course the covenant is not going into legislation, merely the requirement for the Secretary of State to report—but I am certain that the time for reports, of which there has been a plethora in the past five years, is over. The requirement is absolutely clear, as so many have said. What is needed now is action: action to implement the covenant across all government departments and from top to bottom. It cannot be achieved without the necessary funding.

I return to our four brave young men rowing the Atlantic. We should be enormously uplifted by what they are doing and why they are doing it. However, there are too many examples of the third sector being exploited to fill the void of support that in my view is legitimately and morally the Government’s responsibility, and we should be deeply ashamed that the money they raise is going into that void.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Lord Walker of Aldringham Excerpts

Friday 12th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Walker of Aldringham]

My Lords, I very much welcome the profile that the current security and defence debate has given to the whole business of defence over recent months. The national security strategy is a very commendable attempt to look into the future and isolate the threats and risks that we face so that we are in the best place to deal with them. However, like many other noble Lords and noble and gallant Lords, I am quite clear that it is always the unexpected that happens, and it will be the unexpected that happens next time.

The national security strategy states in its introduction that:

“The security of our Nation is the first duty of Government”,

and goes on to say:

“The Coalition Government has given national security the highest priority”.

Set against being a wealthy nation and an SDSR stating:

“The Armed Forces are at the core of our nation's security”,

it seems, sadly, that these notions are patently not carried through, and I cannot help but reflect that as a country we seem to be rather bad at defence reviews. We either get them wrong because we do not resource them properly when we have come up with a good answer, or we do not think about them thoroughly enough in the first place. I fear that this defence review suffers from both those defects, and the distraction of a special alliance with France is no substitute for ensuring that our own military house is in good order.

At first reading, it seems that all three services have lost a similar number of personnel and each has lost a bit of its equipment. In terms of our envisaged deployments, the largest now is a third smaller than it has been until this moment, the brigade-sized force for deployment is equally a third smaller and we have a few less tanks, guns, ships and aircraft. An outsider looking in might well be forgiven for judging that the review is merely a salami-slicing exercise with equal pain for everybody and that same outsider might see it as a touch incoherent. If as a student at staff college I had suggested to my instructor that we would have an aircraft carrier but no aircraft to fly off it, or that we should spend £1 billion or more on a new aircraft carrier only for it to be put immediately into mothballs, or that a minuscule garrison, such as that on the Falklands, would be sufficient to stave off a surprise attack from a determined enemy, I would certainly not be standing before noble Lords now.

However, they are the easy targets. What I would like to do is focus on something that is much less visible to the readers of the SDSR but is more insidious in the longer term. It is about our men and women, who have already been mentioned by one or two noble Lords. I will have to use the Army as the example or it will get too complicated, but please read across for the other two services. The physical effect that an army can have, even when it is constrained by resources, can be multiplied by the reputation that that army has in the minds of its enemies and allies alike. The reputation of the British Army comes from the soldiers who man it, and they exhibit a very particular cocktail of characteristics. The British soldier has always been somebody seeking a bit of roving and adventure, even with the off-chance that he might have to lay down his life for his country. In the past decade alone, we have seen him in Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Sierra Leone, East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan. It is not surprising therefore that this busy little Army is well recruited. But the soldier now reads that,

“we will be more selective in our use of the Armed Forces, deploying them decisively at the right time but only where key UK national interests are at stake; where we have a clear strategic aim; where the likely political, economic and human costs are in proportion to the likely benefits and”—

wonderful—

“where we have a viable exit strategy”.

Oh, that we should be able to achieve all of that when we do everything. But “more selective” than what? We may be more selective than we were about Iraq, but are we going to stop being good members of NATO or deny our friends in need a bit of help? Indeed, we have just made a new French friend. You cannot shape the battlefield from Whitehall and exit strategies will always be contingent upon events in theatre. What is more, idle hands will make Tommy a very dull boy.

The British soldier's sense of professionalism is of central importance to him. Question it, or undermine it, and you upset him greatly. His equipment too is of great consequence to him and adds to his sense of self-worth. The notion of extended readiness, for those noble Lords who read into the review, is not one that brings comfort to him. It smacks of a first and a second XI, and every time there is pressure on the budget the readiness gets extended even further, training opportunities reduce and equipment is in even shorter supply, and the second XI drops even further behind. The British soldier is the first to know that a gas rattle is no substitute for a rifle and live ammunition. He will be the first to seek employment elsewhere if he sees the Army to which he belongs becoming hollow and he seems to be losing the skills and self-esteem.

Financial reward has never been, and today still is not, his mainspring, but he expects to be treated fairly, and he wants and needs to be valued by the nation that he serves. But he now has uncertainties about his terms and conditions of service as he sees the continuity of education allowance, public service pensions, housing and post-service medical care all under pressure. As we have heard already, and as we shall see shortly, Professor Hew Strachan's report will make clear that there is a long way to go before we can be satisfied that the so-called military covenant is properly in place.

Even within the initial reduction of 7,000 in the Army, we will see people returning from operational duty to find that they are being made redundant. Many noble Lords will have seen that unedifying interview on the television of the Harrier pilot at Joint Headquarters who expressed, with suppressed anger and frustration, that he was being done out of a job. What price a fair deal?

On the wider front, the Army is coming home. But we have no real idea of how much leaving Germany will cost us. We will need to leave everything in the exact order and acceptable condition that the Germans want, and we have no real idea of the costs of rebarracking and providing training facilities for 20,000 troops and rehousing their families here. Those costs will lie where they fall, to the detriment of all of us—something that is very apparent to our commanders. We should not underestimate how damaging the cumulative effect of all of this can be on both recruiting and retention, but equally on the quality of those who seek to join the services. It may not be noticeable for several years, but it will become apparent, not least among our special forces.

Like many noble Lords, I too fear that this defence review has failed us again. It has not been sufficiently strategic; it has been done at such a speed that it has not been thorough enough; its outcome is not resourced; and, while I accept that there are some industrial and procurement handcuffs that have had to be considered, it has been driven, rather than constrained by, resources. Only time will tell, but this defence review could well be the catalyst for an irreversible outflow of quality and we may have embarked on a course in which the consequence, unintended or not, will be a steady dilution of the excellence of our Armed Forces.