Order of the Companions of Honour

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Order of the Companions of Honour is only one of the orders of honour in the British honours system. Service to the state is, after all, one of the central principles under which the various orders have been created. Politicians who belong to the Order of the Companions of Honour have all provided considerable service to the state. Indeed, 16 of them are Members of this House. However, as the noble Lord has also noted, there are a number of people who have made considerable contributions in the fields of music, theatre, fiction writing, history, science and elsewhere. I am happy to say that David Hockney, with his very close connection with Saltaire, is also a member.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, talking of honour and recognition, I am sure the Minister is aware that, 69 years ago today, some 6,800 warships, auxiliaries and merchant ships landed British, American and Canadian forces in Normandy, and that 5,500 of those ships were British. I have to say we are not quite in that position today. Four years before—some 73 years ago this week—Operation Dynamo finished, in which we had expected to manage to withdraw some 80,000 troops of the beaten British Army from Europe, but ended up taking out more than a third of a million. In the context of honour and recognition, I am sure that the noble Lord would like to give the thanks of the House for all those people who were involved in those two operations.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, that is a little wide of the mark. It is appropriate to pull the subject back towards the Question by saying that the Order of the Bath has a particularly strong military connection, as the noble Lord well knows. Every time I give a tour of the Abbey, which I do from time to time as a former chorister, I remark that one sees the military banners up in Henry VII’s chapel.

Drones

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, there are some benefits from unmanned drones, particularly in terms of reconnaissance—maritime reconnaissance off Somalia and so on—because these aircraft have much longer endurance than manned aircraft. I would add that the question of whether distantly controlled aircraft encourage people to be less careful in their use of military weapons is one which I have spent some time studying. I am rather reassured that, because of the ability of unmanned aircraft to loiter over the site, not only is target acquisition more carefully attended to than if you are in a fast aircraft but you are asked to look at what happened afterwards. I am told that this means that those who are controlling these aircraft have a thorough sense of responsibility for what has been done.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, following on from the Minister’s previous answer, whenever one makes war less horrible—war is horrible, death is horrible and being involved in the risk is horrible—and kills people remotely from some leafy suburb in the middle of one’s own country, it makes it remote, which has huge implications and is very worrying. It needs a lot of control. Does the Minister agree?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Armed Forces are well aware of that and that matter is under active discussion at the present moment.

Electoral Register: Young People

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, can the Minister clarify whether young Scottish men and women in the Armed Forces will be disfranchised in the context of the vote for the separation of Scotland from the United Kingdom?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I understand that that question is under active consideration.

Spencer Perceval

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Wednesday 25th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I have to admit that that was not in my brief. Perhaps I might add that Spencer Perceval was, like Wilberforce, an evangelical, and having read a little about him, I have to say that he was something of a prig. Included within his entry in the Dictionary of National Biography is the fact that in 1800 he wrote a pamphlet on Biblical prophecy in which he referred to the French Revolution as,

“a divine instrument destined to destroy popish superstitions”,

and identified Napoleon Bonaparte as the woman in Revelation, chapter 17,

“who [sits] upon a … beast … the mother of harlots … drunken with the blood of the saints”.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that a suitable memorial to the 23,000 Royal Navy sailors who died stopping the slave trade might be more warships for the Royal Navy?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I note that the noble Lord makes a very strong point, which I have no doubt he will make again on a number of occasions.

Armed Forces: Redundancies

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I think noble Lords will understand why continuing recruitment at a lower level needs to continue in order to maintain the correct balance of age groups and skills in the Armed Forces, even as they are reduced. There are opportunities for those selected for redundancy to apply for other skill training within the armed services, so it is not simply one out and another person in.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the current machinations about aircraft for aircraft carriers bring to mind the maxim, “Order, counter-order, disorder” and, rather more coarsely, the ouslam bird? Does he not agree that getting rid of the seed corn now will mean that the generation of the carriers will be rather more expensive and far more difficult than it need be?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we all recognise that we are not in an entirely happy situation as far as the carriers are concerned. That is part of the problems which this Government inherited with very large carriers already under way. The question of how far we maintain and renew the skills involved is under active consideration. Our American and French partners will, no doubt, be willing to assist in this. Indeed, discussions are already under way.

Pakistan

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

My Lords, the Government have expressed their deepest condolences to the families of the 26 young men who were killed in that incident. However, we also recognise that, despite our special relationship with Pakistan and our special relationship and friendship with the US, it is for the US and Pakistan to resolve their relationship.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, I welcome the focus on education because that is clearly so important within Pakistan, but is this money and support for education going down through government routes or is it going out separately to educational institutions? When I was the Security Minister, I was somewhat appalled that money seemed to get diverted and that the amount of money that actually got to the schools and to where it was required became very small compared with what was injected at the top.

[Baroness Warsi]

My Lords, the commitment is to educate 4 million children. It is a very specific commitment. It is not to give an amount of money but to ensure that 4 million additional children are put into education as well as providing training for a specific number of teachers and a specific amount of resources for schools. That money is channelled through the Government, predominantly on a provincial basis, but it is also channelled through NGOs—about 40 per cent of it passes through the provincial Governments and about 60 per cent passes outside.

Armed Forces: Housing

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, in furtherance of what the Minister said about people owning their own accommodation, it became very clear to us at the MoD that the benefits of people having their own homes were huge. Are the Government now ensuring that there are mechanisms in place to make it easier for our people to own their own homes if they need to, rather than investing in married quarters, which can be awfully expensive in comparison?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I visited Sandhurst the other week, and noted that one of the first things that they had done there was to build houses for some of the staff, which they could buy. It is very much part of what is intended under the new employment model that this will make it easier for service staff to buy their own houses.

Small Businesses

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

The right reverend Prelate raises some important points. As your Lordships may be aware, one of the first vanguard areas for the big society was in Cumbria and it dealt with that very point: the extension of broadband to rural communities. However, I take on board the other concerns as well.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the secretary of the micro-business APPG. I became very aware as a Minister of the value of SMEs, VSMEs and micro-businesses to the security environment. Today, almost 105 years to the day since the launch of the “Dreadnought”, built by British workmen and enterprise in 12 months, can the Minister please assure me that we will reduce the red tape that is between those small companies and the Government? That is across government but particularly with the MoD, where it damages the ability of those companies to really help us.