BAE Systems: Type 26 Frigate
Debate between Viscount Younger of Leckie and Baroness Smith of Newnham
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
It certainly does remain a priority. Again, I must reassure my noble friend that defence is playing a central role in the UK’s response to the Russian invasion. It is not about funding. We will continue to work closely with our allies and partners to fully understand the rapidly changing situation on the ground. We continue to offer a collective response that is robust and proportionate.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, the Minister in his answers is clearly seeking to reassure the House. However, I am afraid that from these Benches, I am not reassured. His answer to the noble Lord, Lord West, was that the rate of build for the Type 26 frigates was “optimum” given “all relevant factors”. What are those relevant factors, and have they been reassessed since the Russian invasion of Ukraine four weeks ago today?
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
I hope to reassure the noble Baroness because the factors include, as she is well aware, the gearbox delivery issues for the Type 26. Some flexibility on the timing was allowed for. It is unique, complex and built to extremely fine tolerances, but it has been delivered. We are on time for this programme, for both batch 1 and batch 2. There should be complete reassurance on that front.
Shipbuilding: Use of British Steel for Royal Navy
Debate between Viscount Younger of Leckie and Baroness Smith of Newnham
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
The noble Lord makes a good point, and the Government recognise the vital role that the steel sector plays in our economy and across all areas of the UK. We continue to work through the steel council to support its decarbonisation, and it is a core part of our ambitious plan for the green industrial revolution. The net-zero strategy, which the noble Lord will be familiar with, published in October this year, reaffirms our commitment to work and to setting targets for ore-based steelmaking to reach near-zero emissions by 2035.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, I applaud the idea of supporting British steel, but British Steel as a company is owned by the Chinese Jingye Group, is it not? In which case, what on earth difference does it make whether we import our steel from China or it is produced here by a Chinese-owned company?
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
As I said earlier, this Government are committed to creating the right conditions in the UK for a competitive and sustainable steel industry. We publish our future pipeline for steel requirements, enabling UK steel manufacturers to better plan and bid for government contracts.
Chinese Products and Companies: Human Rights Violations
Debate between Viscount Younger of Leckie and Baroness Smith of Newnham
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
We have taken a lot of action in this respect, and at the UN Human Rights Council in February 2021 the Foreign Secretary called on China to allow the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights or another independent expert urgent and unfettered access to Xinjiang. More countries than ever are speaking out about Xinjiang; China has already been forced through our actions to change its narrative about camps, and its denial of these violations is increasingly hard for it to sustain. We believe that the actions that we are taking are having effect, but it is not, of course, always a fast process.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, I declare an interest as an officer of the APPG on Magnitsky. The Minister did not manage to answer any of the questions of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, about lateral flow tests. We are exhorted to take those tests twice a week before coming into the Chamber or into your Lordships’ House. Why are all those tests made in China and what due diligence has been carried out to ensure that none has been made using slave labour?
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, I do not have any information in my pack about lateral flow tests. Picking up on what the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, I will certainly look into that and make sure that I write to him and the noble Baroness on those points.
Ajax Programme
Debate between Viscount Younger of Leckie and Baroness Smith of Newnham
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
I welcome the noble Lord to the House and his position on the Front Bench. I am pleased to answer the questions that he has posed. First, as he will know, in any complex acquisition, there are risks and challenges that must be mitigated against, and, in the case of Ajax, we face different challenges due to the nature of such capabilities. Delays can be for a range of reasons, including the technical challenges and programmatic issues.
On the matters that the noble Lord raised and those relating to speed restrictions—which have been publicly aired—the rear step and the question of firing on the move, I reassure the House that we are confident that these will be resolved very quickly. Those issues have been due to the restrictions that were deliberately put in place because we are in the demonstration phase of this project. On the question of noise, and vibration in particular, there is more work to be done. Although I cannot give a date on this, it is obviously an urgent matter and tests are under way at the moment to try to resolve it.
Finally, we have full confidence in the delivery of the whole project. As the noble Lord will know, full operating capability is not due until 2025. That is not to say that there is not a lot of work to be done before then, but we have full confidence in the main contractors, General Dynamics and GDUK, which were selected after a rigorous process and have 60 years’ experience of developing these advanced armoured vehicles.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD) [V]
My Lords, I also welcome the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, to his place and apologise that I am not in the Chamber personally today. I will follow on from his questions and the Minister’s initial response. The contractor may have 60 years’ experience of delivering for the MoD, but this is supposed to be a modernisation programme. Will the tanks ever be fit for purpose? Is the Minister confident that mitigation can be put in place to ensure the safety of our service personnel and that, in the longer term, there will not be issues of deafness and other associated physical effects on them? If the project cannot be rectified, will it be stopped, rather than there being another £2.3 billion spent on something that may never be fit for purpose?
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
I reassure the noble Baroness that we are confident that delivery will take place. As I said earlier, this is a highly complex programme, and we are working through the issues that have arisen. On the injuries that were raised by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, although I do not have the numbers, I say that, as is the norm for the demonstration stage of these highly complex projects, trials necessarily take place. We are confident that these issues will be resolved. I mentioned the vibration issue earlier, which is the most serious one that we need to address, and it is one of the reasons why we have withheld £434 million of payments that would otherwise have been paid until these matters are resolved.
Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Historical Inequalities Report
Debate between Viscount Younger of Leckie and Baroness Smith of Newnham
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, I have a few questions.
This report is clearly very serious and raises issues that need to be explored, perhaps in a wider context. The work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in the 2020s is hugely important and valuable. I have visited certain Commonwealth war graves that are exclusively linked to World War II in Europe, so I suspect that the memorialisation I saw was a fairly accurate reflection of what had happened. However, if the intention of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission is to reflect everybody’s contribution equally, regardless of rank, nationality or faith, it is absolutely crucial that the war graves actually do that. In particular, if one visits war graves and assumes that what one is seeing gives a full picture of the loss of life that was incurred during the First or Second World War but we then find that that is not the case, it is a problem not just for those who were lost and their families but for everybody seeking to understand the contribution made, particularly in the First World War, by citizens of the Empire.
There is often a tendency to talk about the United Kingdom, or Britain, winning the war; that is, a tendency to talk about British history as if it is about servicemen—it was essentially men in those days—who came from the United Kingdom or mainland Britain losing their lives. However, many hundreds of thousands from across the Empire and the countries that are now part of the Commonwealth gave their lives. It is crucial that they are remembered.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, I welcome the Secretary of State’s apology and this report. However, I also want to know what the Government are planning to do to ensure that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission has the resources to try to rectify some of these inequalities. It goes beyond simply saying, “Have we managed to identify people or are we just going to put up another plaque saying ‘Plus 10,000 others, identities unknown’?” Will the Government help the commission to look for ways of being more creative about how we understand the past, how we acknowledge the gaps in our history and our understanding of history, and how we understand the debt that we owe to so many Commonwealth countries?
The reasons why so many people were not named and not commemorated are particularly shocking. As the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, pointed out, when you get into the depths of the report, it is not 54,000 or 170,000: it is potentially another 350,000 people. If we did not know who they were—if people had been buried in mass graves, for example—that is one thing, but if there was simply a sense that, somehow, some lives mattered less, that is another. Perhaps that was the view 100 years ago but it absolutely should not be the view now.
We need to look for ways to ensure that history, as it is taught in 2021, can be understood in its global context. Can the Minister tell us what the MoD plans to do? There are 10 recommendations, including going beyond statues and stone memorials to film and other things. Have the Government begun to think about how we can look again at our history and ensure that we pay honour to all those who gave their lives, regardless of their creed, colour, country of origin or rank in society? All those lives—all the fallen—matter equally.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, I am standing in for my noble friend Lady Goldie, who is busy with the next piece of business; as noble Lords can imagine, it is taking up quite a bit of time. I am very pleased to answer the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith. I acknowledge and note that they both accepted the apology that the Government have made. They are both right; this is an important report which makes for sober reading. The report of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission special committee makes clear that in the aftermath of World War 1, in certain parts of the world, the Imperial War Graves Commission failed to live up to its core founding principle of equality in death for all, as was mentioned earlier, regardless of status, religious belief or ethnicity. Moreover, while the IWGC itself was at fault, the British Government at that time, together with colonial Administrations, also failed in their duties and were complicit in the decision-making that led to the outcome described in the report.
Both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord mentioned the numbers involved. It is worth my reflecting as well that a further 45,000 to 54,000 casualties, predominantly Indian, east African, west African, Egyptian and Somali personnel, were commemorated unequally, usually in registers or collectively on memorials but not by individual name. At least a further 116,000 casualties—and potentially as many as 350,000—predominantly but not exclusively east African and Egyptian personnel, were not commemorated by name or possibly not commemorated at all. This is sobering and absolutely needs to be addressed, as both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness said. As she also said, we must remember all those who fell fighting for our country in World War 1.
The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, asked about funding. I reassure him that the £52 million per year given by the UK Government via the MoD to the CWGC is in place. The Secretary of State will keep a very close eye on funding; if further funding is required, he will look at that with great care. On the role of transparency, which the noble Lord raised, I reassure him that there is a programme for regular reporting, as the Secretary of State for Defence outlined the other day when he made the Statement in the Commons. There will be quarterly updates to Parliament on progress and, as the chair of the commissioners, he will hold the CWGC to account on delivery.
As we may come on to later, many of the 10 recommendations laid out have specific timelines. This is an important piece of work; each of the 10 recommendations—all of which the Government have accepted, by the way—are rolled out with sunsets and timelines for work to be completed. I do not have an answer to the question on communication and embassy staff, but it is important. I am absolutely certain that those from our country who are based in countries where there is much work to be done, including in Egypt, Sierra Leone, west Africa and Nigeria, will be called on to help with this work and complete the investigations.
The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, spoke about the wider context and she is absolutely right. Going back to the point about equality in death for all, it is important that we remember each individual. This will be done through addressing the 10 recommendations, where there will be openness towards creativity; communities should engage in the areas that we want to look at, and countries themselves should engage with the war graves commission and the special committee to see what can be done to honour those who have fallen in defence of their country. That could be in the form of a physical memorial or—we are looking at this very carefully—a digital means. It is important to say this, and to be sure that we identify these means. One further thing is that certainly schools need to be included in this. Young people must recognise the importance of remembering their ancestors who have fallen in battle.