Armed Forces Act (Continuation) Order 2017

Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this debate. I would like to interpret in that also his support for its taking place, as it would be a foolish Chief Whip who listed a debate without the Minister saying, “Yes, let’s go for it”.

I would also like to say how pleased I am that the noble Lord, Lord Astor, is back with us, debating defence issues. This House has been blessed in the past 10 years with two Front-Bench Ministers, the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and the noble Lord, Lord Astor, as defence spokespeople whom we have respected and certainly find most helpful in the work that we are trying to do.

I declare an interest. I chair the House of Lords defence study group, an informal grouping of about 60 Members, comprising experienced former military Members, politicians who have worked in defence and the MoD, and also lay Members, such as myself, who, while not working in either of those areas, have had some experience. I was chairman of the Armed Forces’ Pay Review Body. For the rest of my life I will carry with me a recognition of the huge debt that we as a nation owe to our Armed Forces, young men and women, day in and day out, year in and year out, often without being thanked for it.

A member of that group, possibly one of the oldest in it—not in years but in service—was Lord Lyell. I think that this is the first main defence debate that we have had since his passing. On behalf of the group I would just like to pay our respects and thank him for the work that he did over many years.

In their assessment, National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015, the Government said that they had concluded that the threat to our nation had not significantly changed. That is a view that many would challenge—and indeed it has been strongly challenged in this debate. A number of noble Lords have dealt with it quite factually, about how actually the threat has increased. The Minister alluded to it, even if he was not blunt about it. I suggest that, were it not for the distraction of the media with Brexit day in and day out, we would be seeing security issues much more on the front pages of the press than they are at the moment.

Introducing the debate, the Minister referred to the 2% contribution to NATO, as a number of other noble Lords have, too. One of our House of Lords study group Members, who is absent—a number have written to me to apologise and express regret for not taking part—was the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Richards of Herstmonceaux, recently the Chief of the Defence Staff, as we all know. He wrote:

“I am sorry to report I am abroad until 24 March and therefore will not be able to take part. What I would have emphasised is that while hitting the 2% target is a good thing, it has become a veil behind which Her Majesty’s Government is obscuring the true state of the UK’s defence capability. In itself the 2% target means little if a country’s ambitions, or the perceived threat, require more, as would appear to be so in the case of the UK”.


I think that that is view with which many of us would agree. The noble Lord, Lord Empey, who I think is not in his place at the moment, said that he did not agree with the 2%, that we should not have it there and that we should pay what we need to. I agree with the 2% as a base and a minimum entry to NATO. Certainly we need to pay more.

My noble friend Lord Touhig said in his excellent opening address that the most valuable asset was the people. Obviously I agree with that, having chaired the Armed Forces’ Pay Review Body. Two days after the strategic defence and security review in 2015, the Government announced in their spending review and Autumn Statement that they had included in that Statement a decision to spend £11 billion on new capabilities, innovation and the defence estate. Good—but where was the money coming from? Well, £7.2 billion of it was from efficiency savings, including military and civilian pay restraint. That restraint continues—the restraint, as I mentioned in our last defence debate, of a 1% maximum—yet other areas of public service, including MPs, were not limited to it. It also included a cut in the civilian headcount in the MoD of some 30%. So how can it be extra expenditure when it just shifts the deckchairs on the deck—and the people paying for it are, in my view, the least able to do so—at a time when as a nation, we face a higher security threat?

It is no wonder that the Armed Forces’ Pay Review Body talked in its last report about morale dropping, as has been mentioned in this debate. I am not at all surprised about that. Members of the Armed Forces see the statements that are made and what they themselves experience. The reality is—we have probably been too small-minded to say this out loud as we are now—that we need to spend more on the defence of our nation because of the state of the world today. The chairman of the Defence Select Committee in another place, who was sitting with us until a short while ago, has called for 3% expenditure. He reminded us that when we were last in a period of major terrorism and security threat—the 1980s, as has been referred to in this debate—defence expenditure varied between 4.3% and 5%. I do not think anybody is being so bold as to suggest that. The noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, another member of our group, has called for 2.5%—which, on nearly £40 billion of expenditure, is a not significant amount.

This is not just about the pounds and pence; it is about what we need for the security of this nation. How do we properly resource our young men and women and our defence capability in a world which is probably less secure now than it has been for many decades? In fact, between 2010 and 2016 defence spending reduced in real terms by 6.9%. We are still clawing that back. We also face the drop of 15% in the value of the pound since 23 June last year, which is having a negative impact on the MoD budget of around £700 million. I hope that the Minister will be able to confirm in his response that that will not come out of the set budget and that the Treasury will find that money. Talking of resources, is the Minister able to inform the House how progress is being made on an issue which was very topical a short while ago but has gone quiet recently? I refer to the recruitment of reserves, up to the total of 35,000 that was talked about.

Many Members of the House have taken part in this debate today and I respect hugely their expertise and experience. I say to the Minister, as gently as I can, that there has not been one demurring voice in this debate on the assertions, first, that we are in a more insecure world and, secondly, that we need to look at our defence budget. That voice has come from across the House, irrespective of party or which Benches we sit on. Can the Minister please pass that message back? I hope that a similar debate will take place in the House of Commons, because only by raising our voices in this joint, across-the-House way will we stand any chance of being listened to. We are not warmongers or people who call for expenditure because it is politically convenient to have a go at the Government. If we had a Labour Minister sat on those Benches now to answer the debate, my contribution would be exactly the same. I hope that that message can be carried back to the Government.