Royal Navy: Frigates

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord West of Spithead]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the publication of the National Shipbuilding Strategy, when they intend to replace the Type 23 Frigates.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe) (Con)]

My Lords, eight Type 26 global combat ships will be built to replace the current eight anti-submarine warfare Type 23 frigates on a one-for-one basis. The build schedule for the Type 26 is being addressed as part of ongoing contractual negotiations. As announced in the SDSR, the general purpose Type 23 frigates will be replaced by a new class of lighter, flexible, exportable general purpose frigates. This project is in its pre-concept phase.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

I thank the noble Earl for his Answer. He has told me on the Floor of this House on at least two occasions that a report on shipbuilding would come out this autumn which would lay down a steady drum beat of orders. Sir John Parker’s report has no financial basis—there is no detail there of a drum beat of orders—and now, as I understand it, the shipbuilding report will come out next spring. I know from my time in government that spring can be as late as July. Is it still our Government’s intention to increase frigate numbers by the 2030s, which is not far away in shipbuilding terms, and how will they achieve that with regard to these general purpose frigates? How quickly will they need to be built to achieve that figure?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, yes, it is the Government’s intention to increase the size of the fleet through the general purpose frigate. We are talking now in the long term, but that is our intention. As the noble Lord is aware, we published Sir John Parker’s report on 29 November. It contains 34 detailed recommendations, and it is not unreasonable that the Government should take a little while to give those recommendations due thought. Some of them are pretty adventurous, but all of them are designed to ensure that we can in the long term deliver growth to the fleet, which we all want.

Brexit: Armed Forces and Diplomatic Service

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, we will all have seen the Prime Minister aboard HMS “Ocean” earlier this week in Bahrain. Did she know, as she spoke to the assembled ship’s company about the Navy and the importance of its global role post-Brexit, that that ship will be paid off in 2018, after a recent £65 million refit, with nothing to replace her? It is yet another cut to our perilously reduced fleet.

We inhabit a dangerous world in which illiberal power is growing and liberal power declining. It is a world made dangerous by Europe’s retreat from power and its wilful refusal to invest in power. The Brexit decision compounds the problems relating to the UK’s defence and security. The dramatic rise in numbers of migrants either fleeing war and persecution or economic hardship is a stark reflection of all these pressures. In addition, we cannot be sure how much longer the United States will remain the ultimate guarantor of a rules-based international system. Russia is a particular concern, after events in the Crimea and Ukraine, cyberattacks across Europe and threats to the Baltic states. What is it doing? President Putin is a revisionist. He believes in areas of control and he understands and respects power.

In this highly dangerous world, we also have responsibilities for our 14 dependencies and for global shipping run from London. Post-Brexit, we will have to enforce our sea borders and exclusive economic zone much more fully than in the past. We have five Border Force vessels for about 8,000 miles of coastline. To give an example, the Netherlands has 16 for 280 miles of coastline. Perhaps we have got it wrong.

Faced with these global challenges, what are the Government doing? SDSR 2010 cut our military capability by 30%, as has been mentioned, and it has not recovered from that. It is no use pretending otherwise. There is not enough money in the defence budget. In particular, the Navy has too few ships and men, and is having to make incoherent cuts to keep within its budget; for example, paying off “Diligence” and “Ocean” and not having any surface-to-surface missiles. Far from increasing in numbers, as was stated by both the Prime Minister and the Defence Secretary in 2015—they said it would increase in numbers by 2035—the Navy is actually shrinking. I fear the Royal Navy is not capable of doing what our nation expects it to do.

We have only 19 escorts, which is a national disgrace, as I have said before. Two of these are tied up alongside because of lack of manpower due to the cuts made by the coalition in 2010. Of the 17 remaining ships, five destroyers have major intercooler problems and there is no rapid programme fixed for exactly when they will be repaired. The reality is that we have 12 escorts fully capable of operations, of which at least one will be in major repair. These 12 are Type 23 frigates. The oldest is 25 years old and the youngest 14; the ships were designed for an 18-year life. The Ministry of Defence has yet to explain how it will replace these ships, which are due to leave service at the rate of one per year from 2023 onwards, let alone increase the total number of escorts by the 2030s, which the noble Earl kindly confirmed is the Government’s aim.

Our forces are underfunded. There is no new money—it is, in theory, being produced by efficiencies. These efficiencies are impacting on the lives of our sailors, soldiers and airmen. I was given a recent example of an Army football team which could not go to a match because there was no bus because of the efficiency measures. This is unacceptable for a nation such as ours.

The Royal Navy has ensured the survival and wealth of our nation over several hundred years. We need to wake up to the fact that successive cuts have gone too far. No matter how stalwart the people—and, my goodness me, they are stalwart—or their professionalism, and we have the most professional forces in the world, without sufficient ships, it is as nothing. We are taking risk upon risk and suddenly, quite unexpectedly—because that is what happens in this chaotic and nasty world—it may affect our nation’s survival.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (LD)]

My Lords, it is a privilege and a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Robertson. I look back with great affection and gratitude at the work that we did together and the way he helped me when he was Secretary-General of NATO and I was the high representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

One thing seems crystal clear: having taken the decision to Brexit, Britain is now much more alone and our defence choices are far starker than they were in the hours before President Trump was elected one month and one week ago. Before, during the Brexit debate, we argued that we did not need the European Union because we had NATO, but we will now have an isolationist American President who has made it perfectly clear in his speeches that he does not much believe in NATO and would not even mind seeing it unstitched.

I have a suspicion that in the next few weeks words will be dragged out of Mr Trump’s mouth, saying he did not really mean that and that he does believe in NATO, but NATO and alliances do not depend as much on words as they do on will. No one can doubt that the will of an isolationist American President who admires President Putin will not be the same as the will we have experienced before from our partners across the Atlantic by any measure. The reliance we have placed on NATO in its present form has to be weaker than it was before.

We are left with two very stark choices: either we find a means to work with our European partners to integrate as far as we can; alternatively we will have to be more dependent on the United States, led by a President in favour of isolationism. The effect of his election, and that decision, and the effect of Brexit, taken to improve our independence, has, on the contrary, made us more dependent on the United States. Is that what we really want? Do we believe that that is right?

There is a way round this, of course. The Government can declare that while we will follow through with the Brexit decision and withdraw from political and economic co-operation in Europe, we will nevertheless deepen our integration on defence. If the Minister says that, I will feel comforted, but I do not believe for a moment that that is a spirit of the Government or that they will say that. In that case, we will be increasingly dependent on America led by an isolationist President, whose relationship with Britain might well be judged from the fact that he now believes he can appoint our ambassador in Washington. That does not seem to be any other than a relationship that in its end will turn out to be one of subservience, if not something worse, for our country. I do not believe that that is the right way to go, and I do not believe anyone else can either.

Let me widen the debate a little to a second issue which now confronts us, which depends on us having friends and contacts. Here is a little bit of history. When the Wright brothers turned up in London and sought to sell to the Admiralty their new invention—the design for their aeroplane—the Admiralty was somewhat shocked and perplexed and had an inquiry The inquiry went on far too long—it took two years—and on 7 March 1907, the First Lord of the Admiralty wrote to the Wright brothers, saying,

“I have consulted my expert advisers with regard to your suggestion as to the employment of aeroplanes, and I regret to have to tell you, after the careful consideration of my Board, that the Admiralty … are of the opinion that they would not be of any practical use to the Naval Service”.

That was a mistake and we soon recognised it. But we then made a second mistake, which was that we believed that these were add-ons that we could put on to the Army and the Navy.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords—

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

The time is limited. I know that the noble Lord wants to defend the Admiralty.

We discovered during the Second World War that they were not add-ons but an entire new theatre of war—not only a theatre of war but the vital ground in winning a war. In the first 3,000 years, the winner was who won on the land; for the next 100 years from Trafalgar, the winner was who won on the sea; since Guernica to the present day, who wins in the air wins the war. Now I believe that he who wins in cyberspace wins.

We have to recognise that this is not just an add-on; it is not just a gadget. We have to recognise it as the new theatre of war. Unless we do, dedicate a service to that and commit resources to it we will not be able to succeed where we need to in any future conflict. Unless we look at it in that synoptic fashion, in that same way that we understood about air, then I fear that if our Armed Forces are weak in that arm, however strong they are in all other arms, we will find ourselves crucially weakened. The whole point about winning in cyberspace is that we have to have a policy that crosses borders, links up with others, and which cannot be conducted in isolation because our enemy is now inside the gates as well as outside. That means that if you deliberately remove yourself from a framework for active co-operation with your neighbours and with those who share your interests, you are bound to diminish and weaken your own nation’s defence. The consequence of Brexit, by removing that possibility with our European partners, and with a NATO now weakened by an isolationist US President, cannot other than mean that the long-term defence of this country will be weakened. The measure of the modern age is that what you do is less important than what you can do with others, and we have just deliberately decided that what we can do with others is less than it was previously—and for that I fear we shall pay a very heavy price.

Multilateral Disarmament

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, does the noble Earl agree that this resolution is not very helpful at all? As he says, there are other areas that we need to focus on such as: reactivating some of the existing agreements; trying to take weapons off immediate readiness for release, which our nation does not do but some countries still do; getting rid of short-range missiles; holding a debate about ballistic missile defence; and finding methods of talking immediately with the Russians and others about de-escalation where necessary.

[Earl Howe]

The noble Lord makes some very good points. Among the actions that the UK has recently been taking is work with Norway on disarmament verification, as my noble friend Lord Trefgarne referred to. We initiated the P5 process in 2009 to bring together nuclear weapons states to build the trust and confidence that I referred to. We proposed a programme of work at the conference on disarmament held in Geneva in February this year with the aim of reinvigorating the conference’s work—in fact, that was eventually blocked but we made a good attempt at it—and we continue to press for the entry into force of a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty. So there is work that we are trying to push along.

Royal Navy: Harpoon Anti-ship Missiles

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord West of Spithead]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what intelligence assessment they conducted before making the decision to withdraw the Harpoon anti-ship missiles from Royal Navy service at the end of 2018 without replacement.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe) (Con)]

My Lords, the Royal Navy continuously reviews the capabilities it requires. Inevitably, this means choices must be made on where to invest. Work is ongoing across the MoD to consider options for Harpoon replacement. It has long been the established practice not to comment publicly on intelligence matters, as to do so would likely prejudice the capability, effectiveness or security of the Armed Forces.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

I thank the noble Earl for his Answer but it fills me with despair. We are paying off HMS “Ocean” and HMS “Diligence” early. We are paying HMS “Bulwark” into reserve for five years. We have 19 escorts, which is a national disgrace, two of which are tied alongside because of lack of manpower due to cuts made by the coalition. Six destroyers of the 19 have major intercooler problems and there is no programme for exactly when they will be repaired. The House of Commons Defence Committee said it is appalling that we have no real replacements for the ageing Type 23s, and now we are removing Harpoon. This is not an abstract issue. For a number of years we will have ships deployed that might suddenly come across an opponent and have to fight—as happened to me and others. We will have ships sunk and people—boys and girls, as mine were—killed. That is not a good thing. Is it possible to look at having available, on standby, some Block II Harpoons, ready to be pulled out very quickly should we need them for our ships? If not, we are standing into danger.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the noble Lord paints a false picture of the Royal Navy, which for the first time in a generation is growing. We need to be aware of that. He asked a specific question about Harpoon. The current batch of Harpoon missiles we carry has now reached its natural end of life. To replace it would require significant investment in a new missile stockpile. It was the Royal Navy’s judgment that that would be a less than optimal use of its budget for future investment.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

It is too early for me to answer the last part of the noble Baroness’s question, but I acknowledge that the last few percentage points in that 30% target are challenging—there is no doubt about that. At the same time, what we are impressing on our people is that to the extent that they are able to save money from a reduction in the Civil Service headcount, all that money is to be ploughed back into the defence budget under the efficiency agreement with the Treasury.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, I am afraid that the comfortable words about our defence forces just will not wash. I am delighted that, in this Chamber and in the other place, there is a growing ground-swell of people who understand that we have not got sufficiently strong defence forces. That awareness is now growing in the public at large. This is a real concern, bearing in mind the risk. Is it possible to get the NSC to have a half-day’s discussion, or ideally a day’s discussion because it always meets for such short periods, to look at what capabilities we have—and my goodness me, they have been suffering death by a thousand cuts—and what that means for our position in the world and what we can do about the threats that are all around us?

[Earl Howe]

Again, my Lords, I am sure that that message can be conveyed very easily to the National Security Council. I recognise the concerns that the noble Lord has. It is no use denying that we live in a more dangerous and troublesome world. I come back to the Joint Force 2025 concept. It is a long-term programme, but it is designed to enable our Armed Forces to respond to a wider range of more sophisticated potential adversaries and complex real-world challenges. I believe that that is the right direction in which to go.

Defence Contracts: British Steel

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, we have a policy to build our warships in British yards. Defence requirements for steel in that context are usually sourced by our prime contractors, taking into account—as the noble Baroness rightly said—value for money, quality and the time factor. We remain engaged with our prime contractors to ensure their support in implementing our policy guidance on steel procurement. That emphasises the importance of pre-market engagement activities to facilitate access to supply-chain opportunities for UK suppliers.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, at the risk of a cull on admirals, surely a good way forward would be to order more ships; you would then need more steel. Will the noble Earl confirm that the new solid support ships to be built will use British steel and not be built somewhere abroad? If they are built here with British steel, that helps British shipbuilding and our steel industry, which is a strategic necessity for a nation such as ours, the fifth richest in the world. We need that capability in our country.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the ambition of Sir John Parker in his national shipbuilding strategy is for UK shipyards to be in an excellent position to compete internationally for procurement opportunities such as the fleet solid support ships. The emerging principles of the strategy should be applicable to those ships without the need to restrict procurement to the UK.

HMS “Ocean”

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord West of Spithead]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how the amphibious helicopter lift capability provided by HMS Ocean will be provided after she is paid off.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe) (Con)]

My Lords, following the decommissioning of HMS “Ocean” and prior to the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers being brought into service, a combination of the existing amphibious ships of the Royal Navy and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary will provide the lift capability for our amphibious forces.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer, which I find very disappointing. I have commanded task groups and amphibious assault groups, and it is clear and well known that the only way of providing simultaneous two-company lift is to have a large deck with at least six spots that can be operated simultaneously and a hangar that can carry up to 12 or 14 helicopters. Anything else will not achieve the amphibious capability that is laid out clearly in our doctrine. What worries me is that this is yet another cut to our Navy. There seems to be cut after cut. Some £65 million has just been spent on refitting this ship in order to run it until 2025, and it is suddenly being laid up in 2018. “Diligence” has just been laid up. Saying we are ordering eight frigates—which I am sure is the sort of response we will get—is great, but they are years late, and there are eight rather than 13. In this highly dangerous world, the most chaotic I have known in 50 years on the active list, can we not put “Ocean” into reserve status, as we will with HMS “Bulwark” next year, and keep her until 2025 when the carriers are online and she can be replaced, and therefore have that capability if it is needed?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, as the noble Lord knows, the specified service life for HMS “Ocean” was 20 years as from 1998, and we announced in the SDSR 2015 that she would be taken out of service in 2018. The Royal Navy has been clear that, following the decommissioning of HMS “Ocean”, its priority was to maintain surface lift capability using “Albion” and “Bulwark” while preparing to bring the carriers into service with a smooth sequencing programme. I do not share the noble Lord’s perception of the Royal Navy as suffering cuts; if anything, it is very much on the up. We have the arrival of the two Queen Elizabeth-class carriers to look forward to, which will provide immensely greater capability than we have at the moment.

Defence Estate

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, the place for the Royal Navy is at sea, and for that you need ships and submarines. I welcome this rationalisation, but can the Minister confirm that this new money, particularly the capital side of it, will be used to run on ships that have already been refitted, as we have discussed in this House, and maybe to buy new ships, and that it will not be used to disguise what is actually a systematic underfunding of defence for Joint Force 2025 because there is insufficient money there to achieve that?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I can confirm that. One of the plus points of the strategic defence and security review, if I can put it that way, was an agreement from Her Majesty’s Treasury that by creating these efficiencies—for that is what they are—we can plough the money back into defence. Some of the money will go back into the defence estate, but in the round it will enable our money to go further. Additionally, we have the promise that during this Parliament the defence budget as a whole will increase by 0.5% in real terms every year. So this is not a plan to somehow secrete money away into areas other than the front line; it will in fact boost the front line.

Russia: Baltic States

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, my noble friend has made some very important points and he is right. The UK is leading the way in defence expenditure. We have committed to the NATO 2% target and, during this Parliament, a 0.5% real-terms increase in the defence budget. However, he is right that spending across the alliance is still too low. Having said that, the alliance is making good progress. There are now five allies spending 2% of GDP on defence, an increase from three before the pledge. Twenty allies have increased defence spending in real terms and eight have put plans in place to work towards reaching the 2% guideline for defence spending, which demonstrates a clear political will. The issue now is to translate the political will into actions.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, Russia is actually running a wartime economy. It has the GDP of Italy. Putin is replacing all his strategic triad of nuclear weapons; he is spending an immense amount on arms. He is a revisionist; he believes in spheres of influence. He has espoused the unbelievable policy that he calls “de-escalation”—in other words, if fighting starts you use a tactical nuclear weapon to de-escalate—which I find quite extraordinary. Does the Minister not believe that in this very dangerous period, we must open every channel we can of dialogue with Russia? We must try to have means of access to Russia in order to talk about these issues and have some dialogue about reducing tension and the escalation that is happening right now.

[Earl Howe]

The noble Lord makes some very telling points. There is a balance here. He is right that it is important that we continue to engage with Russia, to avoid misunderstandings, to make clear where we disagree, to push for change where we disagree, but to co-operate where it is the UK’s national interest. We are committed to building stronger links—in particular, between the British and the Russian people. People-to-people exchanges will therefore remain important. Cultural and scientific exchanges are in our long- term interests, so we have to keep that balance as it should be.

Investigatory Powers Bill

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prescott]

I am here; I am in the other part of Parliament. They did not mention the victims, who were promised justice by every one of us. What do you think those victims feel, reading in the paper now that we are preparing to consult? They were involved in the consultation following incidents in which they suffered press intrusion. I do not believe the situation has changed, and we will have to have a debate about the independence of the complaints system. But I am quite shocked that we are now about to back out of what appeared to be an overwhelming commitment from Prime Ministers and party leaders.

Consultation? It is not consultation. It is leaving via the back door because we do not have the guts to implement a charter that was first agreed to some years ago, and which we all agreed to for good political reasons some months ago. Everybody felt under pressure. Now they feel free to get out of their obligations. That is terrible. It is the start of Parliament reducing its powers. This is a terrible step towards getting rid of the obligation to the individual in our society, who has the right to privacy.

There has been lots of talk about security and about terrorism, but the ordinary person, for whom we all have to be responsible and accountable to, should be protected from such abuse. Frankly, even this Bill is giving more powers to the police. We have seen with the police and the press that it did not stop with Leveson. It is still going on. We have seen what has happened with the police at Hillsborough and Orgreave. All this is a massive way of ignoring our responsibilities in this matter, which we are not carrying out. I agree that it is a diversion, but it is bigger than that: it is a move to get rid of any recommendation to ensure the rights of the individual against the press, in the name of the freedom of the press. I disagree with that, as we all should.

I will support the amendment. If your Lordships really want to settle it, tell the Minister to implement the law and Section 40. That was the will of this House. Let the Government now do what they were supposed to do in agreeing that legislation and carry it out in the name of the freedom of the individual.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, all my experience from three years as Chief of Defence Intelligence and three years as the Minister for Security and Counterterrorism makes me realise how crucial the Bill is for the security of our nation. The Bill has been worked through now over a long period. It has had amazing input, it has amazing cross-party consensus and it is really very important. We have just had 37 minutes of emotive discussion, most of which has nothing to do with the security of our nation. I am very concerned that this amendment might well have an impact against the Bill that none of us intends. I have heard people saying, “There won’t be any difficulty”, but I am worried. If it does, that will be a problem for us. The Bill is too important for it to be delayed to a state where it is not implemented in time. I hear people saying, “That’s not a problem”, but all my experience of government and of life is that things suddenly crop up. I will be much happier knowing that the Bill has been put to bed, because our nation will then be much safer.