Queen’s Speech

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I hope I speak for all sides of the House in saying how much we appreciate the openness of the Ministers from the international departments to Members of this House interested in international affairs. It makes for a more informed debate, and I hope that it helps Ministers that there are so many people in the House who go to very many parts of the world and come back with their own impressions. We do not take this for granted and are very appreciative.

Britain’s foreign policy is shaped much more by events beyond our borders—“Events, dear boy”, as Prime Minister Harold Macmillan once said—than by government Bills set out in the Queen’s Speech. The speech itself touches on,

“climate change and … major international security, economic and humanitarian challenges”,

that we face, with specific references to the Middle East and to the pursuit of sustainable development. However, it does not place these remarks in the context of the relatively peaceful and prosperous 20 years that we have enjoyed since the end of the Cold War, and the much darker economic and security prospects we now face. Looking back, I am afraid that our historians may see the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century as a happy interlude of liberal internationalism, under largely benign American leadership, before the world returned to greater global disorder. My noble friends on the Liberal Democrat Benches will touch on other issues, in what will be a long debate, but I want to stress some broader themes.

First, whoever wins the American presidential election, it seems clear that the United States is no longer capable of playing, or inclined to play, a central role in maintaining global order or, in particular, in providing a security umbrella for Europe. When people in Washington now refer to NATO, they seem to mean the European allies rather than the American security commitment—Donald Trump has even suggested he might want the United States to withdraw from the alliance. US attention is fixed on east Asia, above all on China, and on Latin America. The US looks to the Europeans to play a larger role in coping with regional disorder across north and central Africa and the Middle East—we have to do more ourselves.

What we face across Africa and the Middle East, stretching into south Asia, is a long-term crisis resulting from the exposure of traditional societies to very rapid modernisation and from the consequent retreat to fundamentalism and authoritarian government, compounded by climate change and—above all—by the unsustainable growth in their populations. The noble Lord, Lord King, remarked last Wednesday that the population of Kenya has multiplied since he was a young Army officer serving there from 5 million to 45 million. The population of Africa as a whole has trebled in 60 years, and across the Middle East it has grown only a little more slowly. There is not enough water, not enough jobs and often not enough food, as well as often only corrupt and brutal government. So frustrated young men, without the prospects of work or marriage, fall prey to radical ideologies or struggle to reach the richer and safer countries of Europe.

This is the long-term migration crisis with which we will have to struggle over the next 10 to 20 years and more: not the hundreds of thousands who travel across Europe to work in each other’s countries, many of whom eventually return, but the millions and tens of millions who see no hope in staying in their homelands and push north across the Mediterranean. Migration Watch has its emphasis wrong: it is not European migration that is the problem; it is global migration.

That is what justifies the development spending to which we are committed and which we rightly use to co-operate with like-minded Governments—the French, the Norwegians, the Danes, the Dutch and so on—to moderate the social and economic tensions from which developing countries are suffering. We have learnt that focusing on the role of women, as the Minister said in her opening speech, and improving their economic and social position, is key to slowing the growth of population and promoting sustainable development.

I hope, after the anti-corruption summit, that we have also learnt that allowing those who have captured control of such unstable states to hide their wealth in London, or in offshore centres under British sovereignty, contributes to the flow of the desperate and the poor. I look forward to seeing the detail of the criminal finances Bill to tackle corruption and money laundering promised in the Queen’s Speech.

Then there is the puzzle of Russia: a weak economy with a declining population puffing itself up by threatening its neighbours and Europe as a whole. Its aircraft test our maritime borders, its propaganda efforts reach into our media and its intelligence services murder Russian citizens on British soil. We have no choice but to work with our neighbours and allies to contain the Putin regime.

Liberal Democrats in the coalition Government welcomed the growing foreign policy, security and defence co-operation between the UK and our partners across the channel, and fought hard to persuade our Conservative partners to inform Parliament and the public about how close that had become. We strongly support the analysis of chapter 5 of the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review that the EU and NATO make “complementary” contributions to European security and that:

“We will also continue to foster closer coordination and cooperation between the EU and other institutions, principally NATO, in ways which support our national priorities and build Euro-Atlantic security”.

We also strongly support the developing UK-France defence and security relationship, which involves all three services and which plans to have a combined joint expeditionary force operational by the end of this year. Conservative Ministers seem shy of telling the British public—or even Parliament—how valuable this co-operation is to British security, let alone about the work to which the SDSR refers in chapter 5, paragraph 37,

“to intensify our security and defence relationship with Germany”—

and with other European partners. Perhaps I can persuade the Minister, in summing up, to tell us a little more about that, without upsetting the Daily Telegraph and the Europhobes within his party.

We cannot manage any of the difficult international issues that we face without co-operation with our European neighbours. I emphasise that co-operation is impossible without trust and mutual respect or in an atmosphere of suspicion, hostility and accusations of conspiracy. That is why the decision on 23 June about whether we remain in the European Union or leave is central to British foreign policy and British international interests, and to all of those networks within which we work multilaterally, from the EU itself and NATO to the G20, the OECD, the OSCE and the United Nations and its many agencies—no European policy, no foreign policy; no trust in our democratic partners, no capability for promoting British interests abroad.

As the newly elected leader of the Conservative Opposition said in the Commons in April 1975, looking ahead to the previous EU referendum,

“I believe … that the paramount case for being in is the political case for peace and security … I think that security is a matter not only of defence but of working together in peacetime on economic issues which concern us and of working closely together on trade, work and other social matters which affect all our peoples. The more closely we work together in that way, the better our security will be from the viewpoint of the future of our children”.—[Official Report, Commons; 8/4/1975, col. 1022.]

I like to think that was drafted for Margaret Thatcher by the young Michael Forsyth—perhaps I am mistaken. Margaret Thatcher was right then and remains right now.

Immigration Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 12th April 2016 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

9: Clause 96, page 75, line 38, leave out subsection (4) and insert—
“(4) Section 87 shall not come into effect—(a) before 31 March 2018; and(b) until transitional provision has been made for institutions in the public sector.”

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, last week, the Centre for Policy Studies, a respected Conservative think tank, published a paper entitled Dangerous Trends in Modern Legislation. It warns that,

“the length of new Bills and the number of clauses they include is becoming so great that Parliament is unable to properly scrutinise them … There are often lengthy and significant parts of a Bill that receive no detailed scrutiny at all at any point in its Parliamentary passage”.

Clause 87 of the Immigration Bill provides a prime example of this problem. In the Commons it had five minutes in Committee and none at Report. We reached it late in Committee in the Lords, where the Minister was unable to answer the questions raised, telling us that,

“there will be an opportunity for an informed debate on the details”,

when the regulations—that had not yet been drafted—would be laid before the House. He specifically stated that,

“no decision has yet been made”,—[Official Report, 9/2/16; col. GC 174.]

as to the impact on healthcare of the imposition of the charge.

Those of us who took part in that debate received no further communication from the Government between Committee and Report, unlike the usual custom, and no invitation to discuss the issues raised. We reached this clause on Report at 12.30 am on 21 March, at the end of a very long day. The Minister did make a significant concession in his reply on exempting university-level appointments from the new levy, but he declined to tell us when the Government’s response to the report from the Migration Advisory Committee, on which these proposals rested, would be published or to answer other questions raised. The noble Lord, Lord Bates, did at least say that, “Given the hour”, he was,

“happy to put further thoughts in writing … if that would be helpful”.—[Official Report, 21/3/16; col. 2210.]

He then disappeared for a rather long walk. The noble Earl has indeed sent us a letter but it does not answer any of the points on the public sector or public sector training which we had raised. The noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, then moved, I assume on behalf of the Government, to oppose withdrawal of the amendment to shut off further discussion at Third Reading. The chairman of the MAC was allowed to brief parliamentarians on this charge on 22 March, the day after Report ended. The Government then slipped out their response to the MAC report two days later on the Thursday before the Easter weekend—a quiet news day.

This is not the way to make legislation, as the Centre for Policy Studies paper noted. The Government have not explained the implications of this significant new charge, and in particular its likely impact on the public sector; nor have they provided any coherent rationale for imposing it on the public sector. The Minister did, however, in responding to the debate, say that,

“I will give further consideration to when they”—

the charges—

“are introduced”.—[Official Report, 21/3/16; col. 2212.]

He specifically mentioned that they were looking at the issue of phasing in the charges on the public sector. This amendment returns to exactly that issue, asking what further consideration the Government have given this and whether they will now accept that the current provision to rush this charge into operation only two months after the Bill is passed—as Clause 96 states—is mistaken, incompatible with allowing an informed debate on the regulations that will have to be pushed through, and damaging to the finances of schools and hospitals throughout the country.

The noble Lord, Lord Bates, reiterated that the aim of this charge is,

“to bring about some behavioural change in the way that people think about recruitment”,—[Official Report, 21/3/16; col. 2210.]

encouraging employers to look for recruits from within the UK rather than from outside, and to invest in training those recruits in the skills needed. That is fine for the private sector. However, the Government are the employer in the public sector: they set the quotas for teacher and nurse training, and they encourage—or discourage—doctors to stay and work in the NHS rather than going abroad. So here we have the Government encouraging themselves to expand training to fill skills shortages in schools and hospitals by fining those schools and hospitals—out of government funds—for recruiting from outside the UK and the EEA. That is absurd.

There have been a succession of announcements of government policy that the likely impact of this charge will undermine. There are plans to expand and extend maths and technology teaching in schools, but no mention of the existing shortage of maths teachers in this country and of the active efforts that schools are making to recruit from Australia, Singapore and elsewhere. Hospitals have announced that they need to recruit some 15,000 nurses a year from abroad to fully staff their wards, from the Philippines, South Africa and so on. We have just read that the NHS is planning to recruit 4,000 doctors directly from India. These are large numbers of predicted immigrants, recruited to fill avoidable skills shortages within the UK—significant numbers pulled into the UK by our failures in skills training: 30,000 or so a year. The Government should therefore act to provide the training to reduce the necessity to pull such numbers in.

We have asked repeatedly what plans the Government have to increase incentives for maths teachers and to launch crash courses to train them, but there appear to be no such plans. We have also asked about rapid expansion in nurse training and efforts to improve retention of nurses in post. Again, there are no plans to do so yet. So within the next 12 months the Government will start to fine schools and hospitals £1,000 a year per skilled person recruited from outside Europe—fining them from the funds that the Government have just given them.

The noble Lord, Lord Bates, suggested on Report that,

“schools … can seek maths teachers from the whole European Economic Area market”,

to avoid the charge for recruiting them from outside that market—to do that, it was implied, rather than to have to train more of our own or to pay British teachers well enough to stay in post. The Daily Mail will love that as a proposal from a Government who are supposed to be trying to reduce the pull factor in immigration from within as well as outside Europe, but I leave that to the Government to answer.

We were assured on Report that:

“The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has confirmed that it will continue to consult with stakeholders”,—[Official Report, 21/3/15; col. 2211-12.]

which in this case presumably means to negotiate with the Department of Health and the Department for Education on how to limit the damage to school and hospital budgets. But BIS, the Times told us last Saturday, is planning a major cost-cutting exercise, shrinking the staff of the Commission for Employment and Skills and the Skills Funding Agency by 40% to 50%. So it is likely to lack the capacity to manage the expansion of training schemes which the Government have promised us, either for the public or the private sector.

In short, the Government have failed to make any case for their proposed rapid implementation of this ill-thought-out scheme. Their failure to answer legitimate questions raised in Committee and on Report, in spite of promises so to do, has fallen well below the normal standards of this House. I hope that the noble Earl, Lord Howe, gallantly stepping into the breach, will concede that this has not been well done and will accept the rationale for delay which justifies our amendment. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I attended a meeting of maths teachers earlier this year in Parliament and was sad to learn of the serious shortage of maths teachers in this country, of so many of our children being taught by people with very low qualifications in maths, and of physical education teachers trained up to teach maths desperately trying to fill the gap. The recent concerns expressed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that our children should have a good understanding of maths brought home to me the real concerns raised by those maths teachers about the inadequacy of supply of maths teachers. So it concerns me to hear the noble Lord say that schools will be penalised for the shortage of maths teachers. I am afraid it does not seem to be the schools’ fault but somebody else’s. This is not a Department for Education debate, but my experience in this matter coincides with what the noble Lord has expressed. Certainly, one should not penalise schools for a shortage they are not responsible for.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am a little reassured but I have to say that I am still left in much confusion as to how the Government intend to get from here to where we all wish to be. The ability of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, to raise a very large number of fair questions about what is intended by all this simply demonstrates how unclear many of us in this House and outside are about how the Government will ensure that the extra skills are provided from within this country. I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Green, that there is a long-term problem of companies in Britain finding it cheaper and easier to recruit direct from abroad rather than spending money on training their own employees. That applies not just to the Indian IT sector but also to long-distance truck drivers and all sorts of occupations in the private sector.

However, in the public sector the Government are responsible for training. As regards when we introduce this charge, I simply point out that it takes two or three years to train a nurse and longer to train a doctor, let alone a good maths teacher. Therefore, a year is not enough. We will find in the interim period that schools and hospitals will pay sums out of their flat budgets, out of which they are already paying for additional pension increases—so budgets are being squeezed—before any new training schemes have provided the additional skilled recruits from within the United Kingdom. That is part of the argument we are making about phasing in for the public sector.

I very much hope that we will have Labour support on this occasion. As I understand it, the Labour Party supports the public sector. I have heard reports that the Labour Party in the Commons has instructed the Labour Party in the Lords not to support this measure because it is a Liberal Democrat amendment and it is a bit queer about supporting Liberal Democrat amendments. I very much hope that the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, will be able to bring his party along. However, I appreciate that sometimes in the Lords the Labour Party Front Benchers have to defend positions they are not entirely happy about, as, indeed, do the Conservative Party Front Benchers.

[Lord Rosser]

I reassure the noble Lord, who is clearly very concerned about my present state and what I have had to say on this amendment, that I fully support an agreement—obviously, to his surprise—regarding what I said from this Dispatch Box. Interestingly enough, the noble Lord has not responded to the objections that I raised on his amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord has not yet got out his walking maps, but we shall see. I conclude by pointing out that the phasing argument is about the time it takes to train the people from within the United Kingdom who we need to supply skills in our schools and hospitals. We have not yet been informed about the new schemes which the Department of Health and the Department for Education will undertake to provide. However, we know that from April 2017 schools and hospitals will pay an additional £1,000 per person per year for everyone recruited from outside the European Economic Area, although I think I may have heard the noble Earl say that independent schools will have to pay only £330 because they are charities, which raises some interesting questions to which we may also wish to return.

[Earl Howe]

It does not apply just to independent schools, some of which are charities and some of which are not. However, the lower figure is £364 for charities.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

We are reassured by that, but I may wish to take it up further with the Minister. Meanwhile, we are not satisfied. This imposes additional charges on the public sector which is already hard pressed. We have not yet heard sufficient about the additional training which the Government, as employers, need to provide from departments other than the Home Office. We are depressed by the news that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is cutting the staff it has to promote skills and employment within the United Kingdom. We therefore wish to test the opinion of the House.

Europe: Renegotiation

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Courtown]

My Lords, the noble Lord mentioned treaty change, and of course it will eventually have to be made in various areas. As for the first part of the noble Lord’s question, I will write to him.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, in these negotiations, will the Government be sure to look after the interests of the 2 million British citizens living elsewhere in the European Union? As the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, reminds us so frequently, people like him who are residents of other EU countries would be adversely affected if we were to leave, and we would naturally wish the interests of the noble Lord and others to be fully protected in these negotiations.

[The Earl of Courtown]

My Lords, this has also been debated during the course of the European Union Referendum Bill. The noble Lord is quite right, of course—the interests of 2 million citizens have to be protected.

Counter-ISIL Coalition Strategy

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement already made in the other place by the Secretary of State updating the position in Iraq and Syria in respect of action against ISIL. The Secretary of State has also issued a Written Statement today on the subject of UK embedded forces in which he confirms that,

“up to 80 UK personnel have been embedded with US, Canadian and French forces”,

since the international coalition commenced military operations against ISIL last year. The Secretary of State went on to say:

“A small number of embedded UK pilots”—

I think it was five—

“have carried out airstrikes in Syria against ISIL targets”,

although,

“none are currently involved in airstrikes”;

and:

“Ministerial approval is required for UK embeds deployed with allied forces on operations”.

The House of Commons voted against military action in Syria in 2013 and parliamentary authority has only been given to UK air strikes against ISIL in Iraq. The Prime Minister told the House of Commons on 26 September 2014:

“I have said that we will come back to the House if, for instance, we make the decision that we should take air action with others in Syria”.—[Official Report, Commons, 26/9/14; col. 1266.]

That undertaking has clearly been broken, unless the Minister is going to tell us that neither the Prime Minister nor the Secretary of State for Defence knew what was going on with UK pilots carrying out air strikes in Syria. Can the Minister tell us, therefore, if the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Defence knew? If they did, when did they know, and which Minister gave the required approval, and when, for these UK embeds to be deployed with allied forces on operations? Were they aware that in so doing, they were authorising UK pilots to carry out air strikes in Syria against ISIL targets?

Did the Prime Minister know that embedded UK pilots had carried out, or had been authorised to carry out, air strikes in Syria against ISIL targets when he made his statement on 26 September last year? If the authorisation for UK pilots to carry out air strikes in Syria against ISIL targets was given during the time of the previous coalition Government, can the Minister say if the then Deputy Prime Minister would have been advised of, or his approval sought for, a small number of embedded UK pilots carrying out air strikes in Syria against ISIL targets?

The involvement of members of our Armed Forces in Syria has come to light only as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request, and the future of that Act is now under threat from this Government. Without that ability to make a Freedom of Information Act request and secure an answer, the involvement of members of our Armed Forces in Syria would not have come to light since it is clear that neither this Government nor perhaps the previous coalition Government had any intention of telling either Parliament or the British people, even though Parliament had voted against military action in Syria and the Prime Minister had pledged to come back to the House if the decision was made that we should take air action with others in Syria.

In his Statement, the Secretary of State said:

“UK personnel have embedded with other nations’ air forces since the 1950s”;

and in the House of Commons today, the Secretary of State sought to say that the Government had actually been quite open about what had happened because they had responded to a freedom of information request. Can the Minister tell us the last time embedded UK forces have been involved in operations and military action in a country when the House of Commons has voted against our Armed Forces being involved in military action in that country and has not subsequently changed its decision?

On the Secretary of State’s claim of openness by the Government because they had responded to a freedom of information request, the reality is that without that request—and most people would have assumed that, in the light of the Prime Minister’s undertaking last September, there would be no British military personnel involvement in operations in Syria—the first the nation might have known about this activity would have been if something had gone wrong. Can the Minister now give an undertaking that there will be no further use of embedded forces in Syria without parliamentary consent, in accordance with the Prime Minister’s undertaking?

We share the Government’s abhorrence of ISIL’s cold-blooded terrorism and we remain ready to work with the Government to defeat ISIL and will carefully consider any proposals that they decide to bring forward. In so doing, we would need to be clear about what difference any action would make to our aim of defeating ISIL, about the nature of any action, its objectives and legal basis. But going behind the back of Parliament and keeping it in the dark, as it is clear the Government have done with the forced disclosure that UK pilots have carried out air strikes in Syria against ISIL targets contrary to Parliament’s decision, does not help.

Somebody in government has tried to be too clever by half by maintaining, as the Secretary of State for Defence has done in his Written Statement, that the Prime Minister’s undertaking excluded UK personnel embedded within other nations’ armed forces operating in Syria, on the basis that it applied only to the deployment of UK forces. The Prime Minister certainly did not make that exemption, and neither did Parliament in its decision. That somebody has done a disservice to the nation, to Parliament and to our Armed Forces—which have served, continue to serve, and will always serve us with great bravery and commitment.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I am most worried about the statement in this Statement:

“There is a well-planned, integrated strategy to defeat ISIL”.

That is not what it looks like to many on these Benches and elsewhere. We are in an extremely complex situation in the Middle East in which some of our partners are on our side in some respects and on the other side for other purposes. I was being briefed at lunchtime today about the complexities around the Kurdish forces which are involved in the conflict both in Syria and in Iraq, and the deeply ambivalent attitude of the Turks and of the Iraqi Government to their activities. That is merely one of the many complexities that we face.

The coalition, after all, includes Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and many others, many of which have reservations about how we see the conflict. For many purposes, Iran is effectively now an additional member of the coalition, and one of the strongest forces opposing ISIS. I wish I could see a well-integrated strategy. I fear that it is not possible to have one, given the complexity of the situation facing us.

We are talking about local forces that are engaging ISIS. Jabhat al-Nusra is one of the forces that engage ISIS but I am not entirely sure that we want to support it or provide it with more assistance. Some of the Shia militias in Iraq are not as easy as we would like, and sadly the Free Syrian Army, which we have been training, is not one of the strongest forces in the land. I was also worried by what the Prime Minister said at the weekend about domestic radicalisation and counterterrorism because we are all clear that there are direct links between domestic radicalisation and the actions of some of our allies and partners in promoting radical and jihadist versions of Islam against moderate Islamic practices.

We recognise that the Government are edging towards asking for British planes to be involved in bombing in Syria. A small number of British planes bombing ISIS in Syria is no more likely to resolve the multiple conflicts across the Middle East than bombing Damascus would have done two years ago. There is no shortage of aircraft in the Gulf states and Turkey that are quite capable of bombing ISIS from the air. It worries me that we are told that 30% of the surveillance activities over Syria are being conducted by British planes. That suggests that not many other planes apart from American ones are flying over Syria.

Sadly, some of the Governments have themselves supported radical Islamic groups and are still ambivalent about attacking Sunni groups, however radical or brutal, such as Jabhat al-Nusra. It is not in Britain’s interests to cling to the hard-line Sunni side of a developing Sunni-Shia conflict. Nor is it in our interests to present ourselves to ISIS as an existential enemy—I note that the Statement downgrades “existential threat” to “direct threat”, which is perhaps a little better—when ISIS is a much more direct threat to moderate Muslims and to regimes across the Middle East. We should be working with others to promote a coherent response from the neighbours of Syria and Iraq, which we can support, not repeating the mistake of the 2003 Iraq war when we followed the Americans into bombing and then occupying an Arab country.

Some of Britain’s allies in the Middle East have actively funded radical Islamic mosques and movements in the UK and elsewhere. The Prime Minister’s commitment to combat radicalisation within Britain would be more persuasive if he spelled out to the Saudi Government, in particular, our condemnation of Saudi money funding radical groups, and that the Saudis must now themselves take responsibility for containing violent jihadism among Sunni Muslims.

The Prime Minister responded positively to a request from our Middle East partners that we should conduct an inquiry into the Muslim Brotherhood. It is now time for the Prime Minister to ask them in return to conduct an inquiry into the funding of radical Islamic groups in our territory.

I have some questions, if I may. Which local forces are responding? Do they include Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq? Do they include the Shia militias? What is their attitude to Jabhat al-Nusra? How many of our Middle Eastern partners are currently flying air strikes over Syria? I was told the other day that only one was doing so—Jordan. In terms of embedded personnel, how many RAF pilots are embedded in US drone units, which are flying drones, including armed drones, over the Middle East? How many embedded personnel from other states are currently embedded in British forces? I have been told that French pilots are flying in RAF strike fighters, for example. We, of course, know about the Dutch in the UK/Netherlands Amphibious Force. Are there others? Would it not be proper, either now or later, to give us at least a Written Statement telling us what the position is the other way round as well?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Lords for their comments.

The implication, if not the overt proposition, of the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, was that Her Majesty’s Government had been guilty of bad faith towards Parliament. I ask him to accept that there has been no bad faith towards Parliament. Indeed, that is the last thing that Ministers want.

I take the House’s mind back to the vote that took place in the House of Commons on 29 August 2013. The context of that vote was a proposal to approve UK military action to prevent and deter the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime. The Motion before the House was not about, and significantly did not cover or forbid, anything else. It explicitly did not recognise the rise of ISIS, which had not by then occurred. What has ensued from those votes?

At no time have British pilots or British aircraft been involved in strikes against the Assad regime under the British flag. The will of Parliament has, therefore, not been flouted in that sense. Indeed, the United States has not been involved in air strikes against the Assad regime. In accordance with a decision of the House of Commons on 26 September 2014 we have been involved in coalition operations against ISIL in Iraq, and we have supported our allies in their operations against ISIL in Syria—notably in surveillance operations. There have not, on the other hand, been any UK airstrikes over Syria. What we are talking about now are US airstrikes against ISIL in Syria, which have included some embedded UK pilots over the last few months.

Embedded personnel are not acting under a UK chain of command. That is why Ministers did not think it incumbent on them to report to Parliament about the potential use of those embeds. I was asked when formal authority was given. I understand that it was given in early October last year by the Secretary of State for Defence and the Prime Minister. Operations conducted by the United States did not in our judgment fall within the scope of the Government’s commitment to return to Parliament if the UK were ever to propose to take military action in Syria.

I naturally regret it if the noble Lord feels that he would have taken a different view. However, it has been long-standing practice by Governments of all colours not routinely to publicise embeds, as they are not our forces or indeed our operations. Those operations are a matter for the forces concerned. The view of Ministers was and remains that there was no need to change that position as these pilots were operating as members of the host nations’ military, so the House should be clear that this is not Britain conducting airstrikes in Syria. However, of course, we confirm the position, if asked. When my department received a request we were happy to set out the position.

I can say, too, that there is a clear legal basis for coalition operations in Syria, which governs any activity that takes place in that country. Any activity by UK personnel embedded within US or Canadian forces will be conducted in accordance with the UK’s interpretation of international law, and of UK law and the appropriate rules of engagement.

With regard to the future, the House will be aware that we do not regularly update either House of Parliament on this routine area of defence activity. As I said, we respond to parliamentary inquiries when those are put to us. UK forces are regularly embedded in the forces of other nations. They have been for many years, and we have a long-standing exchange programme with allies, meaning that there will always be a small number of UK military personnel operating under the command of foreign nations. It would be quite impractical to have some kind of unwieldy, running commentary on military operations conducted by other nations.

I turn to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, many of which I welcomed and agreed with. ISIL cannot be defeated on the battlefield alone. We continue to work to support the kind of inclusive political settlements that would help to deal with the causes of ISIL’s rise. In Syria, this means that we are working to support the moderate opposition and to push for a political settlement.

The noble Lord said that, in his perception, there was no visible sign of a strategy. However, I bring his attention to the fact that there is a very concerted political mechanism overseeing the campaign against ISIL, of which the military component is only one part. That strategy involves a number of key nations. There have already been two significant meetings, at Lancaster House and in Paris, to draw up and take stock of the strategy. It has five strands, as the Statement indicated: counterinformation, the flow of fighters, the humanitarian dimension, countering the financial flows that ISIL receives, and military operations. We are supporting the Iraqi Government in their commitment to inclusive governance and reconciliation between communities, particularly as they re-establish security and governance in areas liberated from ISIL’s control. We are also pressing Prime Minister Abadi to progress his national guard law to strengthen the Iraqi security services’ accountability.

The noble Lord asked me what the value-added of a UK component in offensive operations in Syria would be, were we ever to come to Parliament to seek permission for that. He asked me a number of detailed questions. If he will allow me, I will reply in writing to the extent that I have the information, but the United Kingdom can and does offer some unique capabilities that would undoubtedly be seen as extremely helpful if we were to join offensive operations over Syria, not least a capability for precision bombing.

I also ask the House to reflect on the overall context of what we are talking about. ISIL is a ruthless organisation. It has murdered several of our innocent citizens in Tunisia and in other parts of the world very brutally. It is right that we support our United States allies in what they are doing to counter ISIL. As the Statement made clear, ISIL’s centre of operations is in northern Syria. While we are not proposing ever to flout the will of Parliament in terms of conducting offensive operations against Syria ourselves, nevertheless we will continue to play our part in what has become a very effective coalition.

Defence: Budget

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I want to follow the line that the noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham and Lord Luce, have taken and focus on long-term foreign policy and national strategy—because we are not at all clear on what either of them are. In the course of this debate, it has been mentioned that we should provide military force against China and build up our forces in the Gulf. I am very surprised that noble Lords have not spent more time talking about the problem of Africa, where we are going to have to be engaged in conflict prevention, state rebuilding and active peacekeeping in the next 20 years, partly because as those states collapse their desperate people will try to flood across the Mediterranean to Europe.

We do not know what our foreign policy is about, and that means it is very difficult to have a coherent defence policy. A Conservative MP of my acquaintance said in a private meeting some months ago, “Of course, our problem is that we don’t know who we are and we don’t know where we want to be in the world”. That is a huge problem. We have lost our standing in Washington over the past five years. There is a strong perception in Washington that we are, as the noble Lord, Lord Luce, suggested, withdrawing from a wish to be a power in the world.

We are also renegotiating our economic relationship with the rest of Europe without recognising that the European Union was always a security system as well as economic arrangement: that our Foreign Secretary negotiates and consults on foreign policy and security policy with his opposite numbers within the European Union framework much more frequently than in any other multilateral framework; and that in Washington NATO is regarded as “the European allies” and the message from Washington is that NATO and the European Union should work more closely in containing Russia and dealing with Ukraine. The question of whether we wish to be involved in containing Russia and dealing with Ukraine is there in the Foreign Secretary not being present when our German and French counterparts negotiate with the Russians on Europe. That is as visible a sign of lack of cohesion, lack of coherence and withdrawal as one could possibly have.

The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, talked about the 200th anniversary of Waterloo. Waterloo was Britain with our allies: the Germans, the Dutch and the Belgians. The question of whether we are standing alone and how far we are working with others is also fundamental to our defence policy. I welcome the extent to which over the past 15 years we have built a close defence relationship with the French, reinforced our relationship with the Dutch and helped the Nordic countries and now also the Baltic states. I deplore the extent to which Conservative Ministers have attempted not to tell the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail or Parliament the extent to which we now co-operate with them.

I agree strongly that sharing facilities, assets and procurement is one way to make short defence money go further. That is an important part of where we should be. However, unless we know what our relationships with France, Germany and the Nordic countries are, we will not go far enough. So, yes, we need a coherence defence budget—but first, we need a coherent national strategy and foreign policy.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 28th May 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, back to her seat. I am deeply grateful to have had a very professional and constructive relationship with her in the last Government. She is a very good Minister; it was a very good coalition in that respect. I compliment her in particular for maintaining the important work on interfaith relations, both domestically and internationally, which her predecessor—the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi—undertook. I hope that that will also continue under this new Conservative Government.

I want to talk about the area of the Queen’s Speech on international affairs and the insistence that,

“my Government will continue to play a leading role in global affairs”,

with specific references to remaining,

“at the forefront of the NATO Alliance”,

to maintaining pressure on Russia over Ukraine, to an active role in international efforts on combat terrorism in the Middle East, and to pursuing,

“an enhanced partnership with India and China”.

It goes on to say, as the noble Earl remarked, that they,

“will undertake a full strategic defence … review”,

within the next year. In a separate section of the Speech, the Government promise to,

“renegotiate the United Kingdom’s relationship with the European Union and pursue reform of the European Union for the benefit of all member states”.

I leave to one side the underlying contradiction in this sentence, between “renegotiation”, in which the UK faces the other 27 member states and asks for a series of special concessions and opt-outs for ourselves alone, on the Danish model, and,

“reform … for the benefit of all”,

in which the UK works with like-minded Governments to achieve common objectives. You cannot do both at the same time, and the Prime Minister remains deliberately ambiguous as to which he intends to pursue.

I want to focus on the assumption that there is little connection between our relations with the EU and its other member states, our foreign policy, and our role in the world. Many members of the Government are in denial of the reality—that Britain does not have a foreign policy, or a role in the world, unless it has a European policy. One of the established myths of the Eurosceptic media and political right is that we were never told when we joined the European Community that it had implications for foreign policy, and that it was just a common market, a trade arrangement without political implications. That is a convenient myth, but it disregards what Harold Macmillan as Prime Minister made clear to his colleagues when the question of membership was first raised; he recognised that it was a major shift in our international role, a commitment to European security and closer co-operation, which the United States was pushing the British to accept, and which in particular necessitated closer co-operation with France and Germany. Edward Heath spelt out the same message clearly, most explicitly in his Harvard lectures in 1969, well reported in the United Kingdom, and so did Sir Alec Douglas-Home, as he took the accession Bill through the Commons as Foreign Secretary. Jim Callaghan as Foreign Secretary was one of the first enthusiasts for European foreign policy co-operation; in 1980, the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, drafted the London report on strengthening foreign policy co-operation. The EU was always about security as well as trade, about containing Germany and Russia, and about resolving competing nationalisms among European states.

British foreign policy for centuries has been about competition and co-operation with France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain; that has shaped our national identity and history, and it is the continuing reality today. William Hague has negotiated with Iran and on other Middle East issues in the forum of the E3+3: Britain, France and Germany, together with the United States, Russia and China. Britain, France and Germany are clearly more closely aligned with each other than with any of the three others. In containing Russia over Ukraine, the European members of NATO have worked closely together, imposing EU sanctions to parallel NATO measures. I took part earlier this week in a NATO conference in which the constant message from Americans and Europeans is that, if we are going to cope with the Russian pressure on Ukraine, the EU and NATO have to work closely in harmony, using all the measures at their disposal. They are not in entirely different worlds. The UK appears to have opted out in many ways from relations with Ukraine, so that it is Germany above all, with France, that is leading the negotiations with Russia and is the United States’ leading partner in Europe.

One recent academic study of 25 years of voting in the UN since the end of the Cold War shows that the French have voted in the same way as the British in 95% of UN votes and the United States has voted together with the British in 65%, which suggests perhaps that French and British interests are more closely aligned than those that we have with the United States. In containing disorder across north Africa and the Sahel, we already work very closely with the French in Mali and elsewhere. In containing disorder and piracy off the Horn of Africa, the European headquarters for the operation is in Northwood, in spite of the fact that very often the British have not contributed a frigate to that joint operation. The Franco-British defence co-operation arrangements launched in 1998 under the Blair Government and renewed in 2010-11 under this Government have become the core of where we are going, but the Government have always been deeply resistant to Liberal Democrat pressure to tell anyone in Britain about it for fear of the Daily Mail. We also work closely with the Dutch and the Nordic countries in pursuing closer defence co-operation.

We hear a lot of noise from leading Conservatives about what sort of future relationship they would like us to have with the European Union and its leading member states. For example, last weekend, Owen Paterson suggested that Switzerland or Norway are the models we should follow and that we should focus instead on reviving the Anglosphere. That brought back memories of my first visit to the United States when Eisenhower was President and white Anglo-Saxon Protestants still ran the United States from the east coast. That has gone. When we first negotiated to join the European Economic Community, we spent a lot of time defending New Zealand butter exports and Australian pineapples. That has also gone. We are in a different world. The United States has Korean and Hispanic congressmen and the Republicans will not win unless they have Spanish-speaking voters. The world is no longer the Anglosphere.

The Foreign Secretary appears to prefer the Danish model with a formal opt-out but following most EU legislation. The Danish Foreign Minister made a speech yesterday warning the United Kingdom against it, saying: “It has given us nothing but problems”. Daniel Hannan and UKIP would really like the UK to leave the EU completely to pursue closer and separate relationships with China, Russia and other Asian powers and to have an enhanced partnership with China and India separate from European relations with China and India. I suggest that that is not the way to get the attention of senior Chinese or even, these days, Indian leaders. There are, of course, issues of national identity behind all this. I note that the campaign for Britain now has a subgroup entitled “Historians for Britain”, some of whom will be familiar to noble Lords. They want to promote the Michael Gove version of national history. I once saw a Conservative memo that said, “We must at all costs avoid any indication that World War 1 or World War 2 has any relevance in terms of pursing European co-operation”. That is the part of the argument about national identity and national history.

None of these alternatives offers us a coherent foreign policy let alone a credible or hard-headed approach to what our role in the world should be, to quote the noble Earl. It is a foreign policy with a hole at its centre where we have left out those countries with which we most closely share democratic values: our neighbours in the rest of Europe. If we have no European policy, we have no foreign policy, so how can we set out a strategic review of defence and security before we have concluded what future relationship we wish to have with our nearest neighbours? The SDSR will list the major threats facing the UK over the next 10 years and more. None of them is a threat to Britain alone. They are all, to one extent or another, shared with our neighbours: migration, cross-border crime, Russian subversion, pandemics and international terrorism. Our natural partners in facing them are our neighbours. If we do not recognise that, we end up sending HMS “Bulwark” into the Mediterranean when it is unclear what it is there to do, what rules it is operating under or what it does with the migrants it rescues. We have a determination to renew our continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent, but we are not entirely clear why. If we aspire to a Danish role in the world, Denmark does not need a nuclear deterrent, and neither does Switzerland. Our nuclear deterrent was a contribution to the defence of western Europe against the Soviet threat. We have to put it in its European context for it to make sense.

When she winds up, will the noble Baroness say whether in making the SDSR proposal we will follow the example of the last French White Paper and invite French participation as they invited British participation—Sir Peter Ricketts—in the process of developing their defence review or whether we think that is not something we should reciprocate? Do we intend to deepen European defence co-operation, in particular with France, or do we think now is the time to step back? If we intend to deepen it, do the Government intend to inform Parliament and the British public about how far that has got?

I am told that over the past five years the National Security Council spent more time discussing Gulf strategy than European strategy. Some of us have some doubts about the preferred Gulf strategy of the current Government and their predecessor. We have a close relationship with Sunni monarchies, looking for investment in Britain, pursuing arms sales—above all, aircraft sales—and have set in train an investigation into the Muslim Brotherhood because the Saudis and Emiratis pressed us to do so, without thinking through the implications for British foreign policy or British domestic politics. Thus we are in danger of ending up on the Sunni/Salafist side of a Sunni-Shia divide.

I note a number of comments about “increasing our footprint in the Gulf” as we withdraw from Afghanistan, in particular about expanding our base in Bahrain, which is close to the American Fifth Fleet. Will the Minister tell us who is paying for the expansion of the Bahrain base? I have heard some suggestions that the Bahrainis are paying for it, not the British Government. If that is the case, what conditions have the Bahrainis put on paying for that expansion, and what conditions in return have we put on the Bahrainis for the future development of that rather authoritarian monarchy?

Over the next year we will have to discuss Britain’s role in the world and what that requires as regards responding to future threats. The noble Earl promised a “hard-headed appraisal” of the role we want to play. In a discussion a few months ago on the context of the SDSR I heard a rather senior Conservative MP say, bluntly, “Well, we don’t know who we are as a nation, and we don’t know where we are in the world”. That is close to the bone as regards the confusion within the Conservative Party. Liberal Democrats understand that the British identity is compatible with the European identity, that Britain shares values and interests with our European neighbours, and that any coherent British foreign and security strategy has to be founded on a European strategy.

Armed Forces Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 4th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

I am sorry to persist in this but the Companion to the Standing Orders, as I understand it, states that there should be no votes on matters that have been discussed at Report. I cannot understand why the usual channels can be allowed to override what is already in the Companion. It is the Companion and it does not matter what the usual channels say about what they want or see as convenient. They cannot be allowed to override the Companion to the Standing Orders. We are progressing along a dangerous road. If it can be done in this instance, surely it can be done in any instance as the precedent will be set. The Government ought to take the advice of the Clerks and others before they pursue this.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord is familiar with the often-used phrase, “It may be for the convenience of the House”. This was an arrangement agreed for the convenience of the House as we were meeting in a week in which one of the parties is holding its conference. This was of course discussed not just by the usual channels but with the Clerks.

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

It is for the convenience of the annual conference, not for the convenience of this House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, this amendment has been rewritten in the light of the debate we had in Committee. It has, I hope, addressed the criticisms of the previous wording. It is about the procedure on arrest of somebody for substance abuse, violence against the person or damage to property. This relates quite specifically to alcohol-fuelled aggression, a problem that sadly is increasing, and possibly to drug-fuelled aggression. The alcohol-fuelled problem is much greater. The aim of the amendment is simply to bring into line the military court system with the civilian court system.

The Police and Criminal Evidence Act, known as PACE, set out criteria for the police station in civilian life which present an automatic safeguard that does not exist in the military court system as PACE does not apply. Some of these safeguards include: access to a forensic medical examiner, addiction and arrest referral and mental health liaison and assessment teams. I am most grateful to the Minister and to officials who met me and spent some time discussing the details of this amendment. I draw noble Lords’ attention to the wording just after the proposed new subsection (1)(b), which says that,

“prior to any decision being made as to charge, consideration shall be given and the conclusions recorded as to the possible diversion of the person for specialist services”.

All this amendment is asking is that it is considered. It is not asking that any more than that happens. It does not mean that there has to be detailed testing. It simply means that the person making the arrest should have a prompt to think about the problem.

I understand that probation trusts are going to become increasingly involved in the assessment of Armed Forces personnel when they are up for charges. Indeed, Hampshire Probation Trust has been named as one. One of the difficulties, of course, is that like other areas it is facing stringent budget cuts, including front-line cuts. I would be concerned as to how a probation trust is going to have probation officers in areas such as Newcastle or Yorkshire or wherever there are other barracks because they are quite far-flung. I note that there has been a recent advertisement for probation officers to cover the whole of Germany. It is for two officers. It is a very large area for just two people to cover. There is concern about the level of training and support that these people will have. Therefore, I hope that the Government will be able to provide some reassurance that the prosecuting authority will seek to engage with local probation trusts, wherever appropriate, because a local probation trust will be familiar with local issues and local diversion projects both in the community and in barracks.

Any probation officers dealing with people from the military need to have proper training to identify underlying mental health and substance misuse issues. The way that such cases present in the military may be different from how they present in what one might call the purely civilian population.

The idea of an intervention before charging is precisely to avoid stigmatisation and to avoid court proceedings when other interventions would be more appropriate and, indeed, perhaps less expensive. In the civilian justice system there are many intervention and diversion possibilities before a person is charged. For example, if the custody sergeant or arresting officer suspects drug and alcohol or underlying mental health issues, he will, in fulfilling his duty, call in a police doctor. Under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 there are triggers to look for evidence if drugs or alcohol are suspected. I quote from the guidance:

“The drug test is a screening tool only and the result cannot be used … against the detainee ... The result of the test can lead to referrals for treatment and can also be used to inform court decisions on bail and sentencing”.

If that guidance were adopted for military courts, we would certainly not run the risk of any results being used against a detainee but an intervention might provide the support needed to deal with the fundamental problem behind the offending behaviour.

The problem of stigmatisation is particularly marked in the Armed Forces. In medicine there has been, and perhaps still is, a somewhat macho culture in terms of coping with very traumatic situations. People suppress their feelings and have a drink, and it is quite a macho thing to hold your drink or to cope with drugs. When you fail to hold your drink and maintain that bravado, you are stigmatised as being weak because you have failed the alcohol or drugs test. People’s inhibitions about admitting to having a problem or a trauma is therefore perpetrated by this macho culture.

Early detection and intervention is extremely cost-effective and was monetised by the New Economics Foundation. I have the figures relating to women, although I do not have them for men. The cost of incarcerating a woman for a year is £56,000 and the cost of locking her up for 10 years is £10 million. Therefore, on those figures, early intervention with someone for whom such incarceration had no benefit at all could certainly quickly be seen to be very cost-effective for society. There is simply a need to ask whether the person misuses substances and whether he wishes to self-harm or has ever tried to self-harm or commit suicide. That opportunity for self-disclosure in a safe setting prior to charging must be encouraged and nurtured by the Ministry of Defence, as opposed to the current culture of shaming a person and heaping punishment on them. With the help of outside lawyers, I ran the Minister’s Committee stage briefing past former service personnel. I am afraid their response suggests that the impression that a lot is already in place may be a sign of slightly misplaced faith in the current system, and it reinforced my resolve to bring forward this amendment.

In the civilian justice system there is a fairly new joint initiative between the Ministry of Justice and the Department of Health to identify people known to the community mental health team as suffering from mental health issues or as being treated for substance misuse so that they can be dealt with fairly and appropriately. I would hope that the same could be put in place for the court martial service and the defence community mental health teams, and I think that this amendment would help to stimulate such collaboration.

In Committee, objections were raised about the pressure on the military court system to deal with every case through psychiatric reports and drug testing, but the wording has removed the obligation. As I said before, it simply makes it a consideration which lays some, although not an onerous, measure of legal responsibility. The wording creates a consideration, not an obligation, and leaves room for discretion. Some important current initiatives could certainly be built on and would, I think, be completely compatible with the wording of the amendment. For example, it looks as though the Trauma Risk Management programme, which is a peer-review support programme used in Afghanistan, will be a very effective way of supporting deeply traumatised members of our Armed Forces.

It is important to remember that many service personnel are very young indeed and do not have the emotional infrastructure behind them to help them to cope with the traumas that they encounter. Their repeated infractions are often symptoms of far deeper problems, some of which may have occurred before they ever joined the Armed Forces. When the revealing of those multiple traumas is alcohol-fuelled, it can result in the injury of and violence towards people around them, particularly within the personnel’s own family.

I suggest that lower welfare costs and the effect on budgets across all government departments will come about by dealing with the underlying issues through early intervention. That is the spirit behind the amendment. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, who regrets that he is unable to be here at the moment, feels that the amendment should meet the criticisms made in Committee, and it should also help to turn around the existing attitude within the military court system, bringing it into line with the civilian court system. I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I recognise the noble Baroness’s concerns, which form the background to her amendment and to the way in which she has responded to points made in Committee on her earlier amendment. She wishes to bring awareness of and investigation into potential links between substance abuse, mental disorder and the committing of offences within the Armed Forces as close as possible to what is now required within the civilian justice system.

My understanding is that alcohol abuse is currently a much more common problem in the forces than drug abuse. Mental health issues—particularly those associated with post-conflict trauma—are, however, a wider concern.

I recognise the noble Baroness’s concern that there are insufficient and insufficiently trained staff to provide the examinations and reports that are needed. I reassure her that the MoD will look again at the level of provision, but I am informed that there have not been recent complaints from within the military that resources are inadequate.

She raised the question of Germany. I have just checked again my previous understanding that UK forces remaining in Germany are now concentrated in two geographical areas and are not spread across the whole country. The appointment of two probation officers therefore seems appropriate.

There remain some real problems with the exact terms of the amendment as drafted, which make it impossible for the Government to accept. However, we do accept and share the underlying concern that the noble Baroness is addressing. The importance of the psychological state of an offender and the appropriateness in some cases of a specialist social or mental health approach instead of prosecution is well understood in the service justice system, as in the civilian system. However, the framework within which the forces operate is not, and cannot be, identical to the framework within which civilian offences are handled. None the less, the MoD and the Armed Forces are conscious of the importance of recognising at an early stage those who may need specialist attention. If possible, this must happen before offences are committed or prosecutions are started. That is part of the service support system.

Baha Mousa Inquiry

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord for his support for the Statement and for the report. I can confirm that the noble and learned Lord’s Government acted at all times in a very proper and correct way in this matter.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am conscious that we are running rather ahead of time and that not everyone is here for the next debate, although I note that the Leader of the Opposition is. I suggest that we adjourn for five minutes to enable everyone to join us.

Armed Forces Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I will add one thing to what the noble Baroness has said. One of the bodies taking most action against the Government as regards the Chief Coroner is the Royal British Legion. It has worked with the charity Inquest, which looks after bereaved families, and has presented a powerful case. That case would be a great deal more powerful if the Ministry of Defence took as strong a line on behalf of serving people affected by this matter as the Royal British Legion is taking on behalf of veterans.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, inquests are a crucial part of how we now support those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of their country. Previous generations had to make do with a letter which said little about what happened. Over the past 30 years military inquests have evolved. It is fair to say that they are still evolving. A decision has been taken not to go down the road towards separate military inquests but to allow inquests on deaths in the Armed Forces abroad to be conducted by the civilian coroner service.

It is fair to say that the majority of inquests have been very well conducted and have been very helpful to the families concerned; those families have made that clear. Inquests, of course, bring very mixed emotions. On the one hand, it is right and proper that families have the opportunity to learn in detail how their loved ones died, hear witnesses and ask hard questions. On the other hand, each inquest brings home to the family and to everyone else the tragedy of loss and the human cost of the operations on which we have embarked. As noble Lords have remarked, the change in the character of warfare means that the technical details that inquests now have to go into are also evolving. Ensuring that the inquest system is fit for purpose in meeting the needs and expectations of bereaved service families is an important responsibility for any Government. The Joint Ministerial Statement on military inquests made to Parliament each quarter—the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, referred to this—bears this out and provides valuable information.

We recognise this topic as an important element of the Armed Forces covenant, particularly in the current sad circumstances where in recent years we have suffered a substantial number of casualties in Afghanistan. In current circumstances, we therefore fully expect it to be covered in the annual report. However, noble Lords can also imagine a happier time when the operation of the inquest system will be of less concern to the Armed Forces community because we might not then be involved in deployed operations or suffering fatalities. It is not a perennial issue like healthcare or education. The amendment would, however, force the Secretary of State to examine it in those circumstances as well as those of today. We would lose the flexibility to focus the report on the key issues of the day. Our concern with key issues changes over time, so our argument for flexibility in the report is precisely not to enshrine in statutory form today’s definition of what the most important issues are.

I therefore suggest that our own approach, giving the Secretary of State the discretion to decide which topics should be covered, is a better one. However, in no way does this fail to recognise the importance of the good conduct of inquests for the families of those who have died on active service abroad. It is an extremely important topic which the Ministry of Defence recognises and which will, under the current circumstances, clearly form an important part of any report. Having said this, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, will not press his amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Rosser]

Amendments 20 and 21 relate to the powers of the Service Complaints Commissioner. In her 2010 annual report, the commissioner said that while real progress had been made over the past three years in the new system for handling service complaints, delay remained the key area of weakness in the system, with delays particularly problematic in cases of bullying, harassment and discrimination. The commissioner said that many complainants simply give up and choose to drop their unresolved complaints after lengthy delays, which can and do lead to service personnel leaving prematurely. Justice delayed is justice denied.

The commissioner concluded her report by saying that her priority was to ensure that the Armed Forces had a complaints system that they deserved; namely, one that is fair, efficient and effective. However, she went on,

“For the third year running I have not been able to give Ministers and Parliament the assurance that the service complaints system is working efficiently, effectively or fairly”.

The commissioner called for a fundamental review of the service complaints system and for the powers of the Service Complaints Commissioner to be included in that review. Currently the SCC has no powers to ensure that complaints are dealt with properly and without delay, and in her report she states that the lack of a power to make recommendations in individual cases under the Service Complaints Commissioner’s oversight has led to inefficiencies and injustice in a number of cases.

The purpose of these amendments is to address key issues raised in the commissioner’s 2010 report. The first amendment makes it clear that the report of the commissioner can include the results of any investigation made by the SCC into potential defects in the service complaints system and any recommendations flowing from such investigations. The second amendment seeks to address the issue of the time taken to respond to issues raised in the Service Complaints Commissioner’s report by providing for the Defence Council to respond within six months of it being laid, and within three months if the report makes recommendations on an individual case.

The 2010 report does not paint a happy picture of the present system, albeit that it does say that real progress has been made in the last three years in the new system for handling service complaints. I hope that the Minister will be able to indicate in his response what action the Government are taking to address the concerns that have been raised as well as respond to these two amendments. I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, noble Lords may be aware that the post of the Service Complaints Commissioner was established under the Armed Forces Act 2006 in December 2007 to provide independent oversight of the service complaints system, with one of the statutory functions of the role being to report each year to the Secretary of State on how fairly, effectively and efficiently the service complaints system is working. Three annual reports so far have detailed the work of the commissioner’s office. They have been thorough and critical in their assessment of all aspects of the complaints system.

The commissioner has commented and reported in detail on specific areas where progress has been made or where further improvement is required. Indeed, where the commissioner has investigated and identified areas for improvement, recommendations as to remedy have been made in her reports. A total of 27 recommendations were made in her first two reports, and this year she has made a further 20 recommendations, as well as four three-year goals setting out her vision of how the complaints system should be operating by 2014. This is therefore a new system, one that is still developing but, we would suggest, making good progress in changing the culture of the complaints process within the armed services.

--- Later in debate ---

Clauses 15 to 23 agreed.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

It may be convenient for the Committee to adjourn until Thursday at 2 pm.

Committee adjourned at 7.44 pm.

Armed Forces Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I am very well aware of that. The Armed Forces Bill is designed to give the Executive branch the right to have our Armed Forces. We therefore need, before we give them that right, to discuss how they are treating our Armed Forces at the present time, and what they propose to do with them in the future. It is absolutely elemental. I cannot imagine why there should be a constitutional requirement for Parliament to give this power to the Executive branch unless we discuss those two very important matters, so I do not in any way regard myself as being offside in the matters that I have decided to raise in this debate. I can well understand the Conservative Party feeling embarrassed by some of the things that I am saying. That is not my fault; that is the fault of the Government that they support.

As I said, the situation is worse because of the hiatus in procurement at the present time. All of us who have been defence procurement Ministers—there are several in this House, and at least one who I can see in the Chamber, the noble Lord, Lord Lee—have always taken great pride in delivering what is required today for our Armed Forces. However, we know that during our time in office we will be procuring some long-term things, and that although we will not be around in the MoD when they are required, they are vital for the nation’s future. None of these decisions has been taken at all over the past 14 months. I cannot remember how many major projects I was responsible for—I suppose I could if I thought about it—but my successor has not had any at all. It is not his fault. Indeed, I can all too well understand the frustration and pain he must feel about the situation. This means that we are simply not providing for the future in this way. The Prime Minister has recognised that in order to deliver the capability that the strategic defence and security review promises in 2020—even the limited capability, greatly reduced from our own White Paper of 1998—it will be necessary to increase defence expenditure in real terms from 2015. But the Treasury has not been told that is the case and is not allowing the MoD to make any of the long-term procurements which would be necessary to achieve that capability goal and would assume an increase in availability of resources from 2015. The Government have to make up their mind; the Prime Minister has to play straight. Are we going to have more for resources after 2015 and are we going to take seriously the capability projected in the defence and security White Paper, or are we not? Let us be honest. At the moment, the Government are not being entirely straight with the public about this very important matter.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I apologise for interrupting but I would simply like to point out, although I know this is rather off the subject of the Bill, that after 2015 we may have another Government, and committing ourselves to long-term defence commitments beyond 2015 is something that we have to consider in rather a different way. Perhaps the noble Lord is assuming that it will not be a Labour Government after 2015, or he is committing a Labour Government to increasing expenditure substantially after 2015. I was not aware that that was yet Labour policy.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

The noble Lord will know, I am sure, that defence procurement requires spending money now for capability that will come forward in 10, 15 or 20 years’ time. If you do not spend money now, you do not get that capability coming forward. We spent a lot of money exactly on that basis, as the noble Lord should know, in a naval building programme, in projects for which I was responsible—the A400M and the Typhoon tranche 3, and so forth. That continuum has now stopped. It is exactly like a business that needs to invest every year, which suddenly stops investing. It will pay the price for that five, 10 or 15 years down the road.

Finally, I want to say a word or two about operations and about the use by the Government of the Armed Forces that Parliament allows them to have. I am not going to say anything about Afghanistan, as we have had a Statement on that very important subject this afternoon and I have expressed myself on one aspect of that. But I shall say a couple of words about Libya. First, it appears that the cost of keeping our Tornados in the south of Italy some hour or two away from their targets, with a requirement to provide in-flight refuelling is at least as great or maybe greater—perhaps the Minister will answer the question and tell us which it is—than the cost of continuing with the Harriers and “Ark Royal”. We all knew that the decision would be disastrous over the long term, but it looks as if it may not have been a very clever decision in the short term. The French are using the “Charles de Gaulle” air carrier and they are only half an hour away from their targets. As a result, they do not need any in-flight refuelling capability. The Harriers did incredibly well, as the Minister knows—he knows a lot about these things—in Afghanistan, in ground support and ground attack roles, and could have done extremely well in Libya. That is my first point; I would be grateful if the Minister could respond to it.

Secondly, I am very much afraid that in Libya our Armed Forces are being asked to undertake an operation in which they are being denied all the traditional military means for success. They are operating under two resolutions, 1970 and 1973, which we of course promoted and which mean that we cannot provide arms to the rebels or opposition—our side, apparently the good guys, whom we are trying to support. They cannot put troops on the ground and they cannot provide any support to the operations of the rebels or the opposition—fire support of anything of that kind. It is a strange and worrying situation when we find ourselves asking our military to perform operations in difficult circumstances, although circumstances are almost always difficult when Armed Forces are deployed, but when the obvious military means are not available to them. I simply point that out. I am a great believer that once our forces are engaged, we should support them, and I am not querying this operation. But I would like the Government to think very carefully about undertaking operations under the aegis of resolutions from the Security Council of this kind, which so inhibit our own flexibility and our ability to deliver the desired result.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who took part in this extremely constructive and largely non-partisan debate. We are all concerned to provide the best possible support to serving and former members of the armed services and their families. The coalition Government are conscious that we are building on work that our predecessor in office undertook and which Liberal Democrats and Conservatives in opposition supported in their turn. I very much look forward to an examination of the Bill in that spirit. We are all united in wanting to get the best possible system of support for those who are serving, or who have served, and whose families have been affected by their service in the United Kingdom.

The Bill covers diverse subjects, as so often service law and service welfare need updating in a range of different areas. Expectations about the quality of service justice have risen over the years—human rights considerations have happily been transformed since service punishments included flogging. My noble friend Lord Burnett raised the question of the position of other countries as to the application of the European Convention on Human Rights to their armed forces. On that specific question I will have to write in more detail, but I can assure him of the general acceptance across Europe of the European convention in relation to the treatment of members of their armed forces, including in those countries which formerly lay behind the iron curtain.

My noble friend Lady Fookes regretted that the Bill contained so many amendments to earlier Bills, rather than consolidating existing law. I remind her that the 2006 Act, which many of us here took part in parliamentary scrutiny of, was itself a major consolidation of the separate service disciplinary codes. The Bill is more modest and is explicitly concerned with revising and updating an existing corpus of service law. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, rightly raised the question of whether we had found an appropriate peg on which to hang the current provision for the military covenant. We will certainly talk to parliamentary counsel about this and see what can be managed.

My father served in the last year of the First World War; I am a late child of a late family. When he was in his 80s I heard many things about problems of discipline—problems of near-mutiny—in the armed services in the early months of 1918, so I am well aware of some of the sensitivities about that period.

A wide range of issues have been raised in the debate, and I look forward to examining them in more detail in Committee. I confirm that the Government plan to calendar the Committee stage during our two-week September session. The exact dates will be announced as soon as they have been agreed through the usual channels.

Clause 2, on the military covenant, has attracted most attention, and I expect that it will be the main focus of our discussions in Committee. There is a delicate balance, as a number of people have recognised, between setting out rights and weakening service discipline. Writing a code into statutory form would risk inflexibility, demand regular revision and open up the services to endless litigation. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, that fundamentally the military covenant is a moral issue, not a legal document.

Careful negotiation in the House of Commons led to an amendment. I quote a letter on this from the Royal British Legion to the Prime Minister:

“I fully anticipate that the climate which the amendments to the Bill create will further emphasise the government’s continuing commitment to ensuring that the nation, not just central government, delivers the covenant”.

I think that we would all agree with that sentiment. This is not simply a government responsibility. It is a matter for all of us—local authorities, health clinics, hospitals, devolved Administrations and ordinary people across the country.

On the timing of the annual report, which the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, raised, we have not yet decided on the timetable beyond the provision in Clause 2 that there should be a report in each calendar year. We will take account of his desire to have a report to scrutinise as early as possible next year. A number of noble Lords have raised the question of how this will be prepared and whether or not parliamentary scrutiny is sufficient. The Government’s intention is that it will be Parliament that will hold the Government to account on their contribution to fulfilling the military covenant. Scrutiny is a process, not just an event. We hope that the annual report will be the peg on which the continuing process of scrutiny will hang, but it will be up to the other place and to us to consider whether we wish to have an annual debate or whether from time to time there should be a more detailed committee inquiry. That is part of the process by which we fulfil our functions, with which I am sure all noble Lords here are familiar.

The annual report will be a written report and a substantial document. The Armed Forces will certainly have an input through the chain of command. They will also give feedback thorough the continuous attitude surveys that have been mentioned. I also confirm that the report will also address the problems faced by our Reserve Forces.

My noble friend Lady Fookes wanted to put the covenant reference group in the Bill. I recognise her concerns but, as always, one is cautious about the inflexibility provided by writing things into statute law. We recognise the importance of the covenant reference group and we have no doubt that Parliament will continue to ensure that it plays a major role, but we do not see that writing it into statute would necessarily help further.

Several noble Lords have raised questions of implementation and enforcement because central government does not have the power to enforce this, and I think that most noble Lords would agree that it would be inappropriate for it to interfere in as much detail as in our local provision of health, education and other elements of welfare. This has to be a matter of dialogue and influence. The devolved Administrations, local authorities and others have to work with central government and have to be held to account informally through the media, the service charities and others.

I can confirm that we support the idea of Armed Forces’ advocates at the local level, if that is the approach chosen by the local authority concerned, and we are very happy that a number of local authorities are supporting the Armed Forces by signing up to the new community covenant.

A number of noble Lords have raised the question of whether the Veterans Minister should be separate from the Ministry of Defence—I might almost say the question of whether we can trust the Ministry of Defence to look after veterans properly; I think that was the subtext to all that. As someone who regularly goes into the Ministry of Defence, I have to say that it is not entirely isolated from the rest of Whitehall. It works on a continuous basis with the Department of Health, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Communities and Local Government. Officials meet their colleagues. There are representatives from those other departments on the external reference group, which will become the covenant reference group. The noble Lord, Lord Touhig, I think wants to move towards an American system, with a separate veterans’ agency. I should say to the noble Lord that my sister is currently writing a history of the veterans’ agency in the United States, with particular emphasis on the long history of corruption within it—partly because she wishes to demonstrate that there has been socialised medicine in the United States since the 1920s. I think the noble Lord will recognise that there are many problems with the very odd collection of different agencies through which medical health support is provided in the United States.

The noble Lord, Lord Lee of Trafford, asked about the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency, which runs Veterans-UK, designed to be the first stop for veterans. In addition, it has a website, an e-mail advice point and a telephone helpline, providing information in one place on services from a variety of organisations. The SPVA also provides the Veterans Welfare Service, a national network of caseworkers to support veterans. It is in a sense a small sort of veterans’ agency. I hope none of us would want to go into the American model and build it up into a much larger form.

The noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, and others, mentioned housing. We all recognise that there have been tremendous problems with service housing, but that it is now improving. That improvement began under the last Government, and we are continuing to work towards it.

A number of noble Lords have clearly read, and referred to, the report from the Howard League on the inquiry into former armed service personnel in prison. I read the report with great interest, and it is attracting a lot of interest in the Ministry of Defence. The Minister for Defence Personnel, Welfare and Veterans has met Sir John Nutting, the chair of the inquiry, and we will review its recommendations in full with the Ministry of Justice and the voluntary sector and community organisations with which we work on these issues. I should say that the report does not entirely confirm the idea that there is a disproportionate number of servicemen in prison. There is a degree of disproportion for some types of offence, and particularly among the over-45s. It is a very carefully researched report and shows us, among other things, how little we know about this area of offending. The evidence suggests that, from some points of view, ex-service personnel are less likely to commit crimes than civilians.

The noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, asked about the US veterans’ courts. I shall read from the executive summary of the Howard League report on this:

“While we have nothing but admiration for the Buffalo court and its remarkable achievement of preventing further offending, we do not suggest that such a court could or should be replicated in the United Kingdom. The lessons we have learned from our experience of the Buffalo court are twofold: firstly, the advantage of maximising the help available to assist in solving whatever problem the veteran has which may have contributed to his offending; and second, the advantage of veteran to veteran contact”.

Noble Lords who have read the report will be familiar with some of the experiments in prisons, including getting prison officers with service experience to advise prisoners who have been in the services. We are attempting to do the same in the probation service.

The question of mental health arose. It is not entirely clear whether there are much higher levels of mental illness among ex-servicemen than in the rest of the population. We should all remember that one in six of our adult civilian population have mental problems at some stage in their lives. The question of whether post-traumatic stress disorder breaks out later in life, and should therefore be watched for, clearly needs further study.

I am aware that ex-servicepeople suffer from flashbacks. In his 80s, my father started to talk about some of his most horrifying experiences, which he had refused to talk about until then. On a lighter note, on the day I was introduced to the House of Lords, my mother-in-law—formerly Lieutenant Robinson, attached to Bletchley Park from 1942 to 1945—realised that the leader of my party in the Lords was the former Sub-Lieutenant Jenkins who had arrived later at Bletchley Park, and proceeded to tear a few strips off him for his behaviour in 1944.

Other Members have raised questions about transition, leaving the services and whether the training provided is adequate. The noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, in particular, talked about tracking veterans when they leave. The real problem is to make sure that we do not lose sight of those who have been severely injured in one way or another. That is certainly something that we need to look at much more actively as a new generation of injured servicemen comes back, first from Iraq and now from Afghanistan.

The noble Baroness, Lady Drake, made an extremely interesting and well judged speech on young soldiers and the under-18s. We see that as a covenant issue. From time to time, it will certainly be one of the subjects that the annual report will appropriately address. We take pride in the fact that the Armed Forces provide challenging and instructive education, training and employment opportunities for young people. We are confident that the recruitment policies for under-18s are fully compliant with the optional protocol of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Defence policy clearly states that no service personnel under the age of 18—unlike the noble Viscount, Lord Slim—are knowingly deployed on operations outside the UK that would result in their becoming engaged in or exposed to hostilities.

The question of the chief coroner came up in several contributions. I remind noble Lords that on 14 June the Secretary of State for Justice made a Statement to the House of Commons, which my noble friend Lord McNally repeated here. It set out the plan to include the office of chief coroner in Schedule 5 to the Public Bodies Act, which will transfer several of its functions either to the Lord Chief Justice or to the Lord Chancellor, rather than abolish them. I hope that will satisfy noble Lords, but if not we shall discuss the matter further in Committee.

The noble Lord, Lord Lee, discussed atomic veteran cases. There will be a hearing in the Supreme Court on 28 July, which will determine whether the cases can go ahead, notwithstanding that they are out of time. The July hearing has been adjourned from an earlier date because the complainants are requesting formal disclosure.

The noble Lords, Lord Palmer and Lord Touhig, raised the question of medals, which is always a very sensitive issue. My noble friend Lord Astor tells me that he has the Malaysia medal, to which the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, referred. I am always conscious that I have a medal, the Coronation medal, which I gained aged 12 by singing as a treble. When I was in my secondary school’s cadet force, visiting sergeant majors were furious to see a 15 year-old wearing a ribbon that he clearly did not deserve in their context. One has to be a little careful. As I am sure the noble and gallant Lords will agree, medals are intended to be deserved, rather than simply put up.

We then considered a number of other issues. My noble friend Lady Miller mentioned Clause 25, to which we may return in Committee. The clause will make the handling of claims easier, in some cases for both the claimant and the sending state, because it will remove the situation in which a British citizen finds themselves directly opposite a representative of a foreign state in a court. I am, however, happy to write about this further to the noble Baroness.

We then came to a number of questions on the reserves, such as the mobilisation of the reserves for natural disasters and the like. I remind noble Lords that the reserves can be mobilised for a number of natural disasters. The intention is to make the mobilisation requirement for our reserves identical to that for our regulars—no more and no less.

Since 2003, we have had some 24,000 mobilisation orders for reservists to serve abroad; noble Lords who watched the lists of each six-month mobilisation to Afghanistan will be familiar with the fact that a significant proportion of those sent out each month have been reservists. We are therefore very much concerned that, when they return, reservists should benefit from the same veteran provision as regulars. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, who talked about the future of the reserves, that the report on the future use of the Reserve Forces will be published in the early autumn.

The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked whether we see the reserves being called out for other foreseeable events. The answer is no, but they might quite possibly be called out for a number of unforeseeable events in the future. I think the American Secretary of Defense once called this the “unknown unknowns”, which we might come to. The noble Lord also asked whether we will use the reserves for strike breaking. No, we will not. The Ministry of Defence would not mobilise a reserve to serve in any such circumstances; we must always remember that reserves are volunteers from all parts of the British national community.

Lastly, we considered a number of questions on service courts, the role of service police and service and civilian prosecutors. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, who is a great expert on all of this, that we believe that the summary jurisdiction as a whole—the commanding officers’ jurisdiction and whether it complies with the European Convention on Human Rights—is compliant with the European Convention of Human Rights because of the right to choose a court marshal, and because there is a right to a re-hearing of a commanding officer’s decision by the summary appeal court.

The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, asked about the removal of a provost marshal. That matter would have to be considered by the Defence Council and approved by Her Majesty, because that is part of how we build in the idea of independence.

I was also asked about the overlap of civilian prosecutors and judge advocates. Given that the size of our Armed Forces, their service police and the judicial branch has shrunk, it seems to us that there is some advantage in allowing judge advocates to sit in civilian courts and some civilian prosecutors to serve in military courts because it improves the quality and experience of all concerned.

This has been a very useful and constructive debate and we look forward to Committee. I heard an undertone of calls around the Chamber for a reversal of the defence cuts and for a sharp increase in defence spending. I would say simply that we all have to do the best we can for our service men and women, for veterans and for their families within the constraints of the budget we now have, and within the constraints of what our public are willing to pay for.

I am greatly encouraged by the welcome for this Bill in your Lordships’ House today, and I look forward to coming back in September to examine the Bill in more detail in Committee and to the exchanges that that stage will undoubtedly bring. I beg to move.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Grand Committee.