Queen's Speech

Baroness Taylor of Bolton Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton]

My Lords, I start by paying tribute to those in our Armed Forces who do so much to command our admiration and respect. I pay particular tribute to those serving in Afghanistan and, most of all, those who have made the ultimate sacrifice on our behalf. We must never forget them, or indeed their families.

Several people have commented that debates in this House on foreign affairs and defence are always extremely wide-ranging, knowledgeable and—speaking from experience—very challenging for the Minister, who aims to reply to the many and varied points that have inevitably been raised. It is, I must acknowledge, an almost impossible task. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Astor, on his appointment; I welcome him and wish him well in the future. I also thank him and the House for the tolerance and assistance that I received when I was in his place at that Dispatch Box. We will continue to have differences of opinion but I think our objectives, particularly in foreign affairs and defence, are the same. We may disagree on the means, but our objectives are to promote national security and our national interests. The good will that should go with that common objective should see us through some of the disagreements that we will have.

It is right that I should start with Afghanistan, an area that has such a high priority in the Ministry of Defence because of operations. Mention has already been made in today’s debate of the recent visit by the new Secretary of State for Defence and the Secretary of State for International Development. As has been mentioned, that visit seems to have led to some confusion about whether we need to redefine or clarify our roles. That was not a particularly auspicious start. I hope that the Minister this evening will ensure that he clarifies exactly what happened and, perhaps more importantly, will use his good influence to make sure that stories like that do not appear again. It cannot be in anyone’s interests—ours, those of our Armed Forces, or those of the people in Afghanistan—if the Government send out mixed messages about our mission there.

I said repeatedly in government, and will continue to say in opposition, that we are in Afghanistan for the sake of the security of people here in the United Kingdom. The danger of Afghanistan once again becoming a safe haven for terrorists is very real and it is not just the UK that believes that. We are there under successive UN resolutions and with more than 40 other countries. We will achieve our objective partly by beating the insurgents and partly, and essentially, by creating the conditions for stable government and development to be established. Some may try to divide these objectives but we have to get Afghanistan into a position where it is no longer a threat to us in the long term. That is the challenge that we face.

I have seen the Statement by the Secretary of State today—I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Astor, for sight of that—and I am glad to say that I did not detect a new strategy there. I am pleased about that because we need to consolidate and build on the progress that we are making. We have to be clear that Afghanistan has been challenging to all of us all through. It will continue to be challenging and it is not a static situation. One of the frustrations of being a Minister in the Ministry of Defence is the simplicity with which some in the press seem to present complex issues.

I noticed that during his visit the Secretary of State made some general but rather sweeping statements about equipment. Indeed, my noble friend Lady Dean pointed out that he made a general statement about operational allowances. I give a friendly word of caution that we will be looking at all the details that will come from this. There are no panaceas, easy solutions or decisions that can be made at one time which will see you through the whole of the rest of that situation. We are fighting an insurgency where there are ever changing tactics and challenges and we have to work very hard indeed to be able to retain the upper hand and make the progress that we want. We cannot always anticipate what the next priority will be, so Ministers are wise to be cautious about any solutions which are offered.

I wish to say a few words about the Strategic Defence Review. A lot of work has already gone on in preparation for this, but I should like to make a few points. I was interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Owen, and others said, much of which could be very constructive in terms of the way forward. I hope that the SDR—or the defence and security review, whatever we call it—will be policy-driven and not cost-driven because otherwise I do not believe that we can get the right answers. What we do in defence is based on our view of the world and the threats that we perceive exist out there which could be damaging to us. It is about our security and our foreign policy and it has to involve the whole of government.

The Green Paper Adaptability and Partnership, which we published in February this year, was well received on all sides of the House. Its analysis of global trends and its questions about the role that the UK must play to protect our interests is a very good basis on which to conduct the review. I am not pretending that affordability is not an issue though I remind the House that we have just seen, under Labour, the longest period of sustained real-terms growth in the defence budget for decades, and that is before we add the Treasury money that has come from the reserves for operations. What I am saying is that policy must be determined by threat analysis and then we must work out how we counter those threats, what we can do alone, what we have to do with others and in what circumstances. We cannot just say, “This is the equipment we have or we want, and so this is what we will do”. When I was in the MoD, I said that the SDR had to be policy-driven, and I say it again.

However, on a slightly different matter, I hope that it will be possible for the Government to continue what was started with the Green Paper—namely, to widen the debate—because these issues are important and deserve widespread consideration. The work of the Defence Advisory Forum, set up during the construction of the Green Paper, was extremely useful, and the themes in that Green Paper, including adaptability and partnership, will stand everyone in good stead when they are looking to the future and to the review.

I mentioned affordability and I want to say a few words about equipment procurement as a process. There is no doubt that a great deal of work has been done to improve procurement processes within the Ministry of Defence. There is also no doubt that the National Audit Office will still produce reports that are critical of certain projects for being over time and over budget. Some, although by no means all, of that criticism will have some justification. However, some developments within the MoD in the past few years have been helpful and we should build on them. The move to through-life capability management has been a good thing and must be developed further. There is still some way to go, but some progress has been made in terms of thinking about capabilities rather than platforms. Not everyone is totally sold on that idea, but it is there to stay and should be built on. There is greater scope not just for open architecture in design—with the concept of “fitted for”, not “fitted with”—but generally for a more incremental approach to procurement. All these, together with what we learnt from the very successful urgent operational requirement procedures, mean that we can move forward. I should be interested to know what the Government’s line will be on the commitment to transparency which the Labour Government gave in terms of future defence procurement plans.

However, I have one concern which I wish to share with the Minister at an early stage. I sometimes thought that if a project had enough noughts on the end of it, it was safe and could not be touched, but that projects with small-scale budgets were all too vulnerable. If we are to look at everything that is costly, we need also to look at some of the big projects.

While on the subject of small-scale budgets, I want to make a plea for proper consideration and priority to be given to what is generally called soft power. This area will be increasingly important, and we will pay a very heavy price in terms of all our interests if we neglect it. Future threats are not predictable. They may come from terrorism, failing states or, indeed, international crime. What we can assess, and what we said in the Green Paper, is that they are most likely to involve distant places, asymmetrical methods, complex political situations and complex security environments. The situation we face will be ever changing and ever challenging. Moreover, personally, I think that the public threshold for military intervention will be even higher. Therefore, we need even greater emphasis on conflict prevention and security promotion—which means soft power. It must be a mainstream part of defence activity, but we actually spend less than 0.5 per cent of our defence budget in this area. We get a tremendous return for it in terms of influence throughout the world, but soft power is so important and has so much potential that we would do well to consider what more we can do in this area. It is not a substitute for hard power—they complement each other—but we must ensure that we give soft power sufficient priority in the future.

Finally, I must say that it was a great experience to work within the Ministry of Defence, with so many professional and dedicated civilians as well as military personnel. I was also proud to work alongside my colleagues, in particular Bob Ainsworth, who, as Armed Forces Minister and then as Secretary of State for Defence, did so much for those in the Armed Forces. The service personnel Command Paper was the first time that any Government had produced a document, given undertakings and done such detailed work to improve the lot of those in the Armed Forces and their families. That work made great strides forward, as did our spending, referred to by my noble friend Lady Dean, on the backlog of housing problems.

We also introduced the compensation scheme, which has been criticised and improved—but we should remember that it did not exist until a Labour Government introduced it. It was right that we made such improvements, but a little acknowledgement is perhaps in order this evening. We created a strong basis in that area for the Government to build on. I do not expect us to get all the details this evening. I do not even expect the Minister to answer all the questions that have been raised on important issues such as mental health. However, I hope that he will continue the tradition of writing to those Members whose questions he cannot answer.

Ministers have big and significant responsibilities, and there will always be new challenges. I am proud of what the Labour Government did. As the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, pointed out yesterday, we will assist this Government whenever we think that they are doing the right thing. Perhaps there will be more examples of that in foreign and defence policy than in some other areas. We will also be rigorous in holding the Government to account. We wish all Ministers well in their new responsibilities.