Defence: Aircraft Carriers and UK Shipbuilding

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, I am saddened but not surprised by the tone of this announcement. My main reason for that is that there is not a single mention of strategic or operational requirements. My noble friend Lord Rosser mentioned that the Statement said that the Government looked at this and asked whether it would cost more to cancel the carriers than to build them. I would absolutely hope that the reason we build something like a carrier is that we need them for our nation’s security, which we do. There is no reflection of that anywhere in the Statement, or of the sovereign requirement for a shipbuilding capability. We do not build ships for admirals to play with in the bath; there is actually a requirement for them. That is why we do it. Was there any discussion in the National Security Council, of any length—I would like to know how long, if the Minister can tell me—about the strategic requirement for a sovereign shipbuilding capability within this country? It is widely understood that the 19 escorts, which is all we have, are too few in number. Therefore, we will hopefully at some stage start to build more. Is one building stream in Scotland enough to cover that? I do not think that it is. Has this been debated and looked at? It certainly was not touched upon in this paper.

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, we must face up to the fact that the coalition Government inherited a much smaller Navy from the noble Lord’s Government. On the operational requirements, the First Sea Lord came to see me this morning and has offered to brief Peers on how he sees these carriers being used. I quite agree with the noble Lord, Lord West, that we need the carriers. They are built to be used.

Armed Forces: Redundancies

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, I had not expected to speak today but, having heard some very good speeches and feeling as strongly about this issue as I do, I had to say something. Our men and women in the forces are amazingly resilient and strong, and put up with all sort of things being thrown at them. Morale in the front line is amazingly high when one bears in mind all the vicissitudes they suffer. There is a crucial element, which the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, touched on: trust. I am sure that the Minister—for whom I have great respect—knows this and I am sure that when he was a subaltern, he would not have dreamt of not looking after his people first. It is imbued in all of us in the military that you look after your people first. That responsibility goes right to the top of the MoD or wherever.

I am afraid that this treatment—particularly of this small group but also more generally with some of these redundancies—is shabby and not what one expects of the MoD and our military. It will have an impact on people, which is extremely worrying. We cannot afford to have that impact put on our people when they are under so many other pressures. We have heard how good some people think the military covenant is, but it makes a nonsense of that covenant if we are willing to do something like this. I hope that the Minister will be able to come up with some form of words and say that something can be done to look at this. I am well aware of where you draw the line and all those difficulties. I have been involved in similar situations. We have done these things in the past and it really is too important just to brush under the carpet.

Armed Forces: Human Rights Legislation

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, we are concerned that the Supreme Court judgment creates uncertainties in the law that could well impair the ability of the Armed Forces to make robust and timely decisions which are necessary to our national defence. We intend to defend these combat-related claims rigorously.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister not think that this is another example of a number of cases where people are looking at combat through the prism of peacetime? We have seen some extraordinary decisions made in coroners’ courts. We have seen some extraordinary things come out about Bloody Sunday, and we are seeing an extraordinary position as regards the issue being discussed today; I agree totally with the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, on the subject. Is it not important that we should get the message across that combat is different? A number of us in this Chamber have been in combat and we know that decisions are made in a matter of minutes, if not seconds. People around you are either dying or are in fear of dying and sometimes information is very scant, whereas those with all of the information are taking hours and hours on a warm and balmy afternoon to come to decisions about our military. When we talk about the military covenant, in the end the most important for our military is to be given the ability and the tools to actually fight and win. All of these things are negating that ability.

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I agree with every word that the noble Lord has said and welcome the opportunity to discuss the issue in much greater detail on 7 November during the debate tabled by my noble friend Lord Faulks.

Ministry of Defence: Dogs

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I am very happy to look at that. The situation in this country is that the decision to put a dog to sleep is taken by a veterinary officer and only after all possible avenues have been exhausted. From 2010 to June 2013, sadly, 300 dogs had to be put down, and the reasons for this included injury, illness and age-related welfare reasons. As I have said, those cases were looked at by veterinary officers and the decision was taken only as a last resort.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that we have a good track record in this country of looking after animals within the military? I am sure he will be interested to hear that when we did Options for Change at the beginning of the 1990s, our one study into animals within the forces, known colloquially as the Winalot study, discovered, to the surprise of the Navy, that Army and Air Force dogs had a higher per diem rate for food than officers and men within the Royal Navy.

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, that is a very interesting question and I will consider it closely.

Armed Forces: Human Rights

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Tuesday 25th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, with regard to making the MoD more cautious, looking around the House I can see noble Lords and noble and gallant Lords who, in their time, had to take very difficult operational decisions on land, at sea and in the air. I am sure that they would agree that we must ensure that commanders have the confidence to take decisions that often must be made in the heat of combat to obtain their objective with the least possible loss of life.

As for the equipment, the most important priority is the protection of our troops. Since this litigation started, the wide range of protective vehicles, including Mastiff, Ridgeback, Husky, Wolfhound, Jackal and Foxhound, have been available to commanders to match the most appropriate available vehicle to a specific task, based on the assessment of operational risk. Every effort is made to bring troops’ kit up to spec for the job they do and continuously to update it as technology advances.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, 31 years ago my ship was bombed and sunk close inshore in the Falkland Islands during the amphibious landings, and its AA weapons systems were totally inadequate in the position in which it was placed. I knew that, as the commanding officer, and my task group commander knew that, but it is the duty of military men to fight the war they are in with the equipment they have. It is clearly a total nonsense that one can use human rights legislation to go against that. Indeed, if we had not done that, we would not have won that war. Will the Minister not agree that it is totally bonkers to apply this sort of legislation to war?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, the noble Lord rightly raises the issue that we are grappling with at the moment.

Armed Forces: Redundancies

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Thursday 20th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I think I covered the question of morale in my previous answer. As to redundancies in the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force, in tranche 1, 2,800 personnel—just over 1,000 Royal Navy, 920 Army and 920 RAF—were selected for redundancy, of which 62% were applicants. In tranche 2 of the Armed Forces redundancy programme, 3,760 personnel—165 Royal Navy, 2,880 Army and 750 RAF—were selected for redundancy. Achieving the reductions required to bring the Regular Army to a strength of 82,000 is expected to require a further redundancy tranche, which may also include medical personnel of the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. However, at this point, no decision on this has been taken.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, the Minister is aware that the Chief of the General Staff and the Secretary of State for Defence are both on record as saying that any further cuts would dramatically impact on our military capability. All of us who have any knowledge of the MoD know that there is insufficient funding for Future Force 2020, to which the Minister referred. Notwithstanding this and assuming that there will be further cuts, have we conducted a detailed analysis—rather like the highly regarded global strategy paper that was produced—looking at the true impact of these forced reductions on our Armed Forces’ ability to conduct the military operations that our nation has a right to expect of them?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, on the first part of the noble Lord’s question, as he would expect, I agree with the Secretary of State. On the issue of detailed analysis, as the noble Lord knows there are some very bright people in the Ministry of Defence and I can assure him that endless meetings are taking place to discuss the way forward.

Royal Navy: Escort Vessels

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Monday 17th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for his compliment about the carefully crafted response. SDSR set out how the Government would secure Britain in an age of uncertainty. Central to this is maintaining the trade routes and access to resources and protecting United Kingdom citizens, territory and trade from terrorism, piracy and unlawful restrictions on freedom of navigation. My noble friend mentioned Crow’s Nest. The final assessment phase was approved in January and is due to come into service in 2020, with a deployable capability shortly afterwards. Navy Command and Defence Equipment and Support is exploring whether funding can be made available sooner, to bring forward the in-service date by up to two years.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, the Minister, for whom I have great admiration, knows that we have insufficient escort hulls and need more. Nineteen are simply insufficient for our nation and paying off four Type 22 escorts in the strategic defence and security review—since when £12 billion of underspend has been created—was a terrible error. However, one must not dwell on these mistakes of the past. Does the Minister not agree that the £250 million per annum that we will pay BAE Systems not to build warships should perhaps be used to build escorts?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I cannot comment on what the noble Lord says about BAE. However, I compliment him on his resolute lobbying for the Royal Navy to attend the Royal Australian Navy’s 100th anniversary. The noble Lord has had a word with me two or three times about it. I can now assure him that the Royal Navy has responded to his request and will attend the 100th anniversary. HMS “Daring”, a Type 45 destroyer, will also be out there.

Afghanistan: Interpreters

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Wednesday 27th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, 24 LECs have been killed while working for UK forces and 122 have been injured since 2006. As I said, we are in close contact with our NATO allies about how to take this matter forward.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, the Minister must, I am sure, believe that this is weasel wording and not good enough. How we behave towards these people is a question of trust and honour and this really is not good enough. It gives a very bad message for any of our forces in future operations about whether people should help them. We have to move forward rather faster and more certainly on this issue.

[Lord Astor of Hever]

As I said, my Lords, we will not abandon these people. It is a very complex subject. I have met a number of these people, as I am sure a number of other noble Lords have, in Afghanistan, and this relates not only to interpreters but also to people with other skills. Not all of them want to come to this country. Afghans are a proud people and some want to stay and use their language skills to help their country. If possible, we want to help them to do that. The Afghans will not thank us for removing some of their most able people.

Armed Forces: Autonomous Weapon Systems

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I cannot answer the first part of the noble Lord’s question, but I will write to him about that. As I said in my original Answer, these issues are very carefully considered, and what the noble Lord suggested is unlikely to happen.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, the Minister slightly confused me with one of his answers. Will he confirm that for anti-missile, close range anti-aircraft, and anti-torpedo reaction systems, there is considerable merit in going for an autonomous system, even if it has a manual override? From what he said it sounds as though we are not continuing to develop that capability. Is that correct?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, in essence, an automatic system reacts to a limited number of external stimuli in the same way each time, just as automatic transmission changes gears when a car gets to a certain speed. Fully autonomous systems rely on a certain level of artificial intelligence for making high-level decisions from a very complex environmental input, the result of which might not be fully predictable at a very detailed level. However, let us be absolutely clear that the operation of weapons systems will always—always—be under human control.

Armed Forces: Pay

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Wednesday 20th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I said that the decision is in line with the Commissioner for Public Appointments’ Code of Practice for Ministerial Appointments to Public Bodies. The Government believe that the habit of automatically renewing those appointments has to stop. We need to bring fresh blood into jobs such as these.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on the Government’s decision to send HMS “Daring” to Australia for the centenary of the Australian Navy. That leaves us with 18 escorts for the rest of the world. Does not the Minister agree that 18 is far too few and that we need to get going on the order for the Type 26 ship?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, the noble Lord has used great imagination to bring HMS “Daring” into this Question. I have been preparing for the X-factor this afternoon, not HMS “Daring”.