Prorogation Recall

Debate between Baroness Smith of Newnham and Earl Howe

Tuesday 3rd September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

It is very easy in a situation such as this for us to resort to colourful words to describe it. I personally regret the degree of emotion that has entered this debate. It is perhaps not surprising, but feelings run high—my noble friend is entirely right. I do not wish to add any animus to that situation.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, it has been suggested that it would be unfortunate to try to push legislation through Parliament inappropriately quickly, but if the Prime Minister is looking for a deal which would not come until on or after 17 October, would we not need to amend the 2018 withdrawal Act? Is there time for that? Does the Minister envisage an opportunity for Parliament to amend that legislation appropriately?

[Earl Howe]

The technical position would be that, if a deal is reached, a withdrawal agreement Bill would be introduced, hopefully for approval by Parliament. We are absolutely clear that there is time to do that. There may be a need to obtain the consent of Parliament to sit at rather unusual hours to do that, but we are clear that it can be done.

Gulf of Oman and Strait of Hormuz: Merchant Shipping

Debate between Baroness Smith of Newnham and Earl Howe

Tuesday 18th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My noble friend is entirely right. As he may know, the UK is a member of the Combined Maritime Forces, which was created back in 2001 to help counter the threat from international terrorism. It has 33 member states from across the globe, with active support from the Gulf Cooperation Council. We routinely contribute personnel and assets to the CMF to conduct maritime security operations throughout the region.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead, mentioned the danger of escalation. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said:

“We do not want a war in the region ... But we won’t hesitate to deal with any threat to our people, our sovereignty, our territorial integrity and our vital interests”,


US Secretary of State Pompeo has said that the US,

“is considering a full range of options”.

In the light of those comments, what are Her Majesty’s Government doing to de-escalate the situation in the Gulf, and are we working with our European partners to talk to Iran?

[Earl Howe]

Yes, my Lords. Our aim, as the noble Baroness says, is to de-escalate the situation and reduce tensions, and we are acting with our E3 partners, France and Germany, to that end. However, it would be foolish to claim that the dangers have now disappeared: they are still very real and we are alive to the possibility of further incidents.

Defence: Expenditure

Debate between Baroness Smith of Newnham and Earl Howe

Tuesday 11th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

I agree, and am grateful to the most reverend Primate for drawing attention to the point he made so clearly and well in the debate we had a few weeks ago on the theme of reconciliation. This takes a mixture of efforts across Government, not only from the Ministry of Defence but also through DfID and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. All those budgets contribute to doing precisely what the most reverend Primate is advocating. I fully concur with the prescription he laid out.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, it is clear that leadership elections give Ministers the opportunity to stray into other briefs. The Foreign Secretary was obviously talking about defence. There seems to be a lacuna in policy discussion in the current Conservative leadership debate—other than on Brexit. Maybe there is an opportunity for Ministers in the Ministry of Defence and elsewhere to ask the Conservative leadership candidates what their commitment to increasing defence expenditure might be, and who they are likely to have as Chancellor of the Exchequer, because if they do not agree, defence expenditure will not go up.

[Earl Howe]

The noble Baroness speaks wise words, as ever.

Torture Overseas: Ministry of Defence Policy

Debate between Baroness Smith of Newnham and Earl Howe

Monday 20th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness and I align myself completely with the sentiment that she expressed at the beginning of her question. Central government consolidated guidance sets out the principles which govern the interviewing of detainees overseas and the passing and receipt of intelligence relating to detainees. That guidance must be adhered to by officers of the UK’s security and intelligence agencies, members of the UK Armed Forces and employees of the Ministry of Defence. An internal policy document within the Ministry of Defence was prepared to, as it were, make the consolidated guidance more accessible and practical for those implementing it in the field. The MoD concedes that, as currently worded, there is an ambiguity in the internal document. I should stress that this ambiguity has not led to any problem or difficulty in the actions taken by the department, Ministers or members of the Armed Forces. It has been identified that the internal policy document could give the incorrect impression that Ministers could in all circumstances simply choose to accept legal consequences and act illegally. That is absolutely not the case. Ministers may not proceed when it would be unlawful, as opposed to when they would simply be assuming legal risk, which applies to any ministerial decision. I reassure the noble Baroness that, to my knowledge and that of my officials, Ministers have in no circumstances taken a decision which was unlawful in this context.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I too am grateful to the Minister for repeating the Answer to the Urgent Question and for his answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. Today, the Times suggested that the freedom of information request said that the MoD effectively created,

“a provision for ministers to approve passing information to allies even if there is a risk of torture, if they judge that the potential benefits justify it”.

I accept that no torture has been undertaken and that nothing so far has been illegal, but does the Minister not agree that, in line with Kantian imperatives, we should not treat people as means; we should treat them as ends in themselves? Surely a potential benefit cannot outweigh the human rights of individuals.

[Earl Howe]

I entirely take the noble Baroness’s point. The consolidated guidance is clear that, where Ministers or officials know or believe that a particular action will lead to torture being administered, that action may not be proceeded with. The difficulty comes where the state of knowledge may not be sufficiently high to act as a legal prohibition. In that event, were a Minister to be called upon to take a decision whether to release intelligence, that decision would be informed by detailed legal and policy advice. It is not possible to make generalisations in this context on what that advice might comprise because it would be highly fact-specific to the individual case. However, I emphasise that Ministers may never act unlawfully and officials must never advise Ministers to act unlawfully, and I am confident in saying that Ministers have not acted unlawfully.

Defence: British Steel

Debate between Baroness Smith of Newnham and Earl Howe

Tuesday 30th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I am afraid I cannot entirely agree with my noble friend. It is undoubtedly true that the Armed Forces benefit from the UK acquiring military capability from an open market. Competitive procurement ensures that we drive innovation and efficiency into our industrial base. UK suppliers’ drive to be competitive in their home market will ultimately secure their prosperity, not only in the UK context but in the global marketplace as well.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, in the light of the Financial Times report that the company British Steel is pleading for carbon credit loans to tide it over Brexit, will the Minister explain what efforts are being put into defence procurement contracts to ensure that steel is being decarbonised as far as possible?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the industrial strategy challenge fund, which I mentioned earlier, is there to help industry drive innovation in its manufacturing processes. As I also mentioned, we have supported the industry with the costs associated with carbon reduction, which can in some cases be substantial. In those two ways in particular, we are doing our best to recognise the challenges that industry faces.

Aircraft Carrier Task Force

Debate between Baroness Smith of Newnham and Earl Howe

Wednesday 13th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My noble friend is absolutely right. We do not comment in detail on operational matters.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister has on several occasions talked about working with our allies, as he has in the past in the context of the escort ships alongside the Queen Elizabeth class. What additional work are the Secretary of State and the Ministry of Defence doing to ensure that we have stronger bilateral co-operation, particularly in the context of Brexit, to strengthen our resilience?

[Earl Howe]

There is a great deal of interest on the part of our European allies, in particular, in working more closely with the Royal Navy once the carriers come into service. The carriers will enable the UK to make an unparalleled contribution to NATO, not only through the carriers’ own capability but also as a means of coalescing European naval effort alongside that of our close partners the United States.

Royal Navy: Type 31e Frigates

Debate between Baroness Smith of Newnham and Earl Howe

Wednesday 6th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My noble friend draws attention to something very encouraging. The UK shipbuilding sector has been able to compete in the world market for very high-end specification frigates—it is the Type 26 frigates which he was referring to. This aids the issue of interoperability between allies, which he also highlighted. We welcome the fact that Australia and Canada have entered the fold of nations which will operate this vessel.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, in light of the National Audit Office’s November 2018 report, which suggested that the MoD’s equipment plan remained unaffordable, falling about £10 billion short over the next 10 years, will the Minister explain to the House what plans the MoD has to ensure that the Type 31e frigates are delivered on time and, crucially, on budget? Are the new procurement arrangements intended to deliver that?

[Earl Howe]

The noble Baroness is quite right: in April, the forecast cost of the equipment plan exceeded the allocated budget of £7 billion over 10 years, which is the central estimate. Indeed, if we took no action, the plan would not be affordable. However, based on past experience as well as what we are doing, we are confident that we will successfully deliver the plan within budget, both this year and next year, through effective management, by monitoring and controlling costs as we go, and with the benefit of the additional money secured in the Budget.

Modernising Defence Programme

Debate between Baroness Smith of Newnham and Earl Howe

Tuesday 18th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, if it is possible for the Ministry of Defence to share that document, I will certainly do as the noble Lord asks. In answer to his first question, there are two things to say about the MDP. First, this has been a major and very thorough piece of work. Secondly, the document is essentially strategic in its nature; it focuses on key defence capabilities and has affirmed the central elements of our strategy as articulated in SDSR 15, from which, as the noble Lord is aware, it emerged. It has also guided our investment decisions on capabilities, announced at the Budget, and updated our key policies. It is designed to keep us on track to deliver the right defence for the UK, and does so in what we see as a challenging decade ahead. As noble Lords read and reread the report, I am sure that it will make clear a lot of detail underlying the general proposition that I have just articulated.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, as the noble Earl has just said, the present document is very detailed, yet in many ways it appears to be a glossy brochure with a lot of aspirations. These remind me rather of the vagueness that we get on what Brexit might look like. There do not appear to be clear strategies for where the Government want to go. Can the noble Earl explain what £160 million might actually be able to deliver? I think it is about the equivalent of two F35s, and I am not quite sure how will keep this one step ahead of our adversaries. I also come back to the question raised by my noble friend Lord Campbell about the exchange rate because hedging is one thing, but we are moving towards a one-for-one rate in the pound to the dollar. Is it really credible to say that the Government have hedged all of our defence budget in that way?

[Earl Howe]

We have not hedged all our defence budget, but we have hedged a substantial proportion of it, particularly that which is payable in dollars. I was speaking to our finance director last week about this. Although she could never be sanguine about the way the pound is moving, she is much clearer now that we have an affordable equipment budget over the next couple of years, which is the period over which she aims to hedge. I have already made it clear to the noble Lord, Lord Browne, that it is, unfortunately, impossible for me to enumerate at this point those projects which will come under the umbrella of the transformation fund. It was said that £160 million is not a great deal of money—it sounds like a great deal of money to me, I must say—but one should not think of transformation simply in terms of platforms and assets. One has to think of it in terms of different ways of working and of modernising practices within defence. That is where this fund will score most heavily.

Armed Forces (Specified Aviation and Marine Functions) Regulations 2018

Debate between Baroness Smith of Newnham and Earl Howe

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, the background to this statutory instrument is as follows. At the moment, a commanding officer can require a person to take an alcohol or drug test if the commanding officer has reasonable cause to believe that they are committing a service offence by performing a safety-critical duty while over a set alcohol limit, or impaired by drugs or alcohol. A commanding officer has similar powers if they believe that a civilian subject to service discipline has committed similar offences under legislation relating to safety in shipping and civil aviation. This power and the linked offences help deter or detect the misuse of alcohol or drugs by those performing safety-critical duties, and so help prevent accidents. However, these powers are aimed at gathering evidence for a possible prosecution, hence the need for a commanding officer to have “reasonable cause to believe” that an offence has been committed.

When an accident happens, it may be important to determine whether anyone involved had been misusing alcohol or drugs, even if the commanding officer does not have any immediate cause to believe that an offence has been committed. Section 2 of the Armed Forces Act 2016 amends the Armed Forces Act 2006 to allow a commanding officer to also require a member of the Armed Forces, or a civilian subject to service discipline, to co-operate with a preliminary test for drugs or alcohol after an accident. Importantly, in these circumstances a person may be tested without the need for suspicion that an offence has been committed. This gives commanding officers the power to test those who performed aviation or marine functions relating to an aircraft or ship involved in an accident. They also apply to anyone who performed a safety-critical function connected to any serious accident. “Serious” in this context means an accident which resulted in or created a risk of death or serious injury to any person, serious damage to any property or serious environmental harm. This will improve our investigations of such accidents.

It is important that accidents in the military environment are investigated thoroughly with a view to contributory factors being identified and appropriate punitive or remedial action being taken. The test will be carried out by the service police, and the results of a preliminary test can be used in support of criminal and non-criminal investigations. The tests will mainly support service inquiries, but they may be used in any type of investigation arising from an aviation or marine accident or any other serious accident. The relevant aviation and marine functions must be specified by regulations made under the amendments in the 2006 Act. The safety-critical functions are already set out in the existing offences and powers that I mentioned.

The draft regulations we are considering today specify these aviation and marine functions and are based largely on existing safety-critical duties relating to aviation or shipping. The duties specified in the regulations reflect the wide range of duties undertaken in a military environment that are linked to aircraft or ships: for instance, maintenance; acting as crew on an aircraft or ship; loading and unloading fuel, cargo and weapons; and conducting hazardous operations such as parachuting or diving. The duties specified in regulations include similar functions carried out by civilians subject to service discipline. This would include, for example, any civilian working on an aircraft or ship overseas.

In the event of an accident, a commanding officer may require a person to co-operate with preliminary testing if he or she was carrying out, or had carried out, a specified function at the time of—or in some situations before—the accident. As I said, the testing will be carried out by the service police. It will be an offence for an individual without reasonable excuse to fail to provide a sample when required to do so. Reasonable excuse could include, for example, a medical condition that prevented a person from providing a breath sample.

We hope, of course, that serious accidents will not happen and that there will be no need to apply these regulations. But the very nature of military activity is, by necessity, dangerous, and our people are exposed frequently to risk. It is important that, in the event of a serious accident, we uncover whether alcohol or drugs may have contributed to the cause of an accident to enable appropriate corrective action to be taken. I beg to move.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I was nominated to speak from the Front Bench this evening and have very little to say on this matter. The regulations seem to be admirably sensible and not overly draconian. In civilian life, if there were an accident in a similar situation, one would expect to be breathalysed. Therefore, we on these Benches have nothing to add.

Afghanistan Update

Debate between Baroness Smith of Newnham and Earl Howe

Wednesday 11th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement, and I echo the words of the Secretary of State and the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, on the commitments that this country has made to Afghanistan and the tributes paid to the service men and women who have given their lives in Afghanistan.

This is clearly a serious decision that is being announced today. As the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, pointed out, 440 service personnel is a significant number. It increases the personnel that we currently have in Afghanistan by two-thirds. It is noticeable that the decision has been made, we are told, in response to a NATO request, at the time of a NATO summit and on the eve of a visit by the President of the United States. What is not clear is when the request was made. When was the United Kingdom asked to make this additional commitment and when was the decision actually taken? Is the confluence of timings just ahead of the NATO summit intentional? Is it intended in any way to send a signal to the President of the United States that the United Kingdom at least is keeping up to its NATO targets?

There is a whole set of other issues associated with the nature of the contribution and some of the key decisions that need to be considered, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, has pointed out, have not necessarily been answered in the Statement. How long is this additional deployment intended to be? We have been told that about half the troops are due to be deployed in August 2018 and the rest by February 2019, but we are not told how long this is intended to last. The more deployments that we have, the more questions there are about the sustainability of deployments and the pressures put on Her Majesty’s services. While we pay tribute to the service men and women who are deployed to Afghanistan and everywhere else around the world, there is a question of the impact that this will have on forces morale. Is the Minister content that the resources are there to ensure that this additional deployment can be managed? Can he tell us a little bit more about what the Government’s exit strategy might be?

Finally, the Secretary of State commented that this shows our commitment to NATO, which,

“must remain the cornerstone of our defence”.

Nobody in your Lordships’ House would disagree with that, but does the Minister think that the President of the United States feels similarly? What discussions might the Prime Minister have with the President to try to ensure that, by the end of this week, the United States’s commitment to NATO is strong as that of the United Kingdom?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for their support for this announcement and, indeed, for their well-directed questions. Some of the questions from both noble Lords coincided, and I shall attempt to address them all in turn.

The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, asked me about the process that led to this decision. He is absolutely right to remind the House of the lessons from Chilcot, and that there needs to be a formal deliberative process across government for a decision as momentous as this—and that is indeed what happened. The UK was initially asked to consider this additional deployment in March of this year—that request came from NATO itself. We subsequently did so; that is to say, the Ministry of Defence considered the feasibility and a decision, following a discussion, was taken formally by the National Security Council on 26 June. It was then endorsed formally by the Treasury and by No. 10.

The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, was again correct to make the point that the decision to do this was based not only on the fact that we thought it was the right thing for Afghanistan, for the UK and for NATO, but that it was intended—as I hope it will—to underline our commitment to NATO and the fact that Britain has particular skills that it can offer in a context such as this. I am sure that that message will not have been lost on any of our NATO partners.

The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, made the perfectly fair point that we will be sending troops into harm’s way. I would, however, just qualify that by making clear, as the Statement does, that the roles that are being and will be performed by our personnel in Afghanistan are non-combat roles. They are therefore quite distinct from the kind of role that we saw being performed under the ISAF banner before 2015, when our troops were very definitely on the front line against the Taliban. Chiefly, our troops will be charged with supplementing the Kabul defence force within Kabul itself. We have to remind ourselves that the NATO mission operates under the banner of “Train, Advise, Assist”. The UK contribution will therefore be to support that NATO mission but—to come back again to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe—the safety and security of our troops remains, as it always will, our key priority. We keep the protection measures for our personnel under constant review and will not hesitate to adapt those measures to the changing threats. They are benefiting from bespoke equipment, such as the Foxhound armoured vehicle, which is suited to the streets of Kabul. Essentially, as far as force protection is concerned, our personnel are equipped and mandated to protect themselves, as well as to protect coalition and diplomatic personnel. It is the Afghan national defence and security forces which are responsible for maintaining security in Kabul.

Both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness asked about the timescale. I hope that they will understand that it is not possible to put a timescale on the deployment of our troops within the NATO mission in Afghanistan. All NATO allies are agreed that we will continue to support the Afghan national defence and security forces until the conditions are right for our collective withdrawal, which includes the ability of the Afghan forces to protect the people of Afghanistan without support from international forces, and when progress has been made on a peace process.

The noble Baroness—and, I think, the noble Lord—asked what kind of training we are delivering in Afghanistan. As I have already said, the mission goes under the strapline “Train, Advise, Assist”. The UK is mentoring and advising Afghan personnel, helping to develop capable and independent Afghan government and security structures, and working in the mission headquarters and the Afghan security ministries. An example of this is at the Afghan national army officer academy, where we are working alongside our NATO allies and Afghan partners to produce the next generation of Afghan military leaders.

Finally, the noble Baroness asked about the messages that we wish to deliver this week at the NATO summit. We have a number of objectives for that summit. Essentially, they can be summarised as making NATO more modern and adaptable. NATO continues to adapt to ensure that it is less bureaucratic, better at prioritising its activity and more capable of taking and implementing decisions quickly. The principles for all those things were largely agreed at the NATO summit in Cardiff and endorsed at the subsequent summit in Warsaw. We are confident that allies will agree ways to deliver those objectives, with the aim in view of strengthening deterrence and defence against Russia, increasing our efforts on tackling terrorism and addressing the threats presented by cyber and hybrid warfare. That very much relates to how we can improve readiness so that we can make sure that we have the right forces in the right place so that they can act when needed to protect our people. I believe that the UK already has an important part in that process, supporting the design of a new NATO command structure, and I think that we can be very proud that we will be committing an extra 100 posts to that structure, taking our commitment to over 1,000 UK service personnel.

Single Source Contract (Amendment) Regulations 2018

Debate between Baroness Smith of Newnham and Earl Howe

Monday 9th July 2018 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, a substantial proportion of the MoD’s annual procurement spend, amounting to some £8 billion a year, goes on single-source contracts. Given this level of expenditure, it is critical that the department obtains value for money. It is also critical that we protect the long-term future of the defence industry by ensuring that suppliers get a fair return on single-source work.

When the noble Lord, Lord Currie, produced his independent report on non-competitive defence procurement in 2011, he concluded that the arrangements then in place were simply unfit for purpose. The result was a weak negotiating position for the department and poor value for money for the taxpayer.

Following the noble Lord’s report, in 2014 we introduced a new framework as part of the Defence Reform Act. Our intent was clear: the new framework sets out firm rules on pricing single-source defence contracts and puts the onus on suppliers to demonstrate that their costs are “appropriate, attributable and reasonable”. Where there is a dispute, either party can refer the matter to an impartial adjudicator, the Single Source Regulations Office, for a decision.

Since coming into force in December 2014, the new framework has made considerable progress: more than £19 billion-worth of single-source contracts have been brought under the framework, and the benefits to the MoD have been significant.

However, any new regime of this complexity needs to be refined in the light of experience. The Act therefore requires the Defence Secretary to carry out a thorough review of single-source legislation within three years of the framework coming into force. This review was completed in December 2017 and several proposals were identified as potential improvements to the framework. We have incorporated the first of these into the SI under consideration, but we plan to introduce further amendments later in the year.

The main amendments under consideration here relate to those types of single-source contract, known as “exclusions”, which cannot become qualifying defence contracts. Experience in implementing the framework has shown that there is some confusion about how such exclusions are applied and that some contracts, relating to intelligence and international co-operative programmes, are being unnecessarily excluded. We therefore propose a clearer and more precise definition of these two categories.

We are also adding a further category of exclusion to deal with situations where contracts are transferred from one legal entity to another, such as where an internal restructuring of industry has taken place. In such cases, although the legal identity of the supplier may have changed, the contract itself has not otherwise changed in a material sense.

We have engaged extensively in drafting these amendments and believe that the proposals will be generally welcomed by suppliers. I beg to move.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for introducing this statutory instrument and apologise for arriving momentarily after he started. He mentioned that the changes introduced in 2014 were intended to improve value for money and MoD procurement arrangements in general and that, since then, £19 billion had been spent using the single-source procurement mechanism. Will he explain a little more how the changes proposed in the SI will benefit the MoD and the taxpayer? I heard him say that the changes will be of benefit to the supplier. While we do not want to do down the suppliers, it would be helpful to understand how the changes will benefit the taxpayer as well.

National Security Capability Review

Debate between Baroness Smith of Newnham and Earl Howe

Monday 15th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, yes, that is the conclusion that we and previous Governments have reached as the minimum practicable and credible force required to deliver continuous at-sea deterrence.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, the Secretary of State makes a commitment to protecting the north Atlantic. Is he also concerned about the south Atlantic, or should the Falklands be concerned?

[Earl Howe]

Yes, my Lords, and nothing I said should be taken as any indication that we will cease to keep a firm eye on the defence of the Falkland Islands, which we will continue to do.