Explosive Ordnance Disposal Community

Debate between Calvin Bailey and Mark Francois

Wednesday 11th December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Mr Francois]

Perhaps I should begin by declaring a personal family interest in this subject. My late father, Stoker First Class Reginald Francois, served on a minesweeper named HMS Bressay from 1943 until the second world war ended, so he was involved in bomb disposal of a sort. Perhaps more accurately it was mine disposal, but nevertheless he personally faced a threat from large explosive devices, albeit in a maritime context. As his son, I am proud to speak on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition on this very important subject this morning.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) on securing this important debate and, if I may say so, for introducing it so ably. She made a very knowledgeable contribution, no doubt drawing on her own military experience. In particular, she illustrated the challenge posed to the international community by the sheer scale of this problem around the world.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) spoke powerfully about the threat from terrorist bombs in Northern Ireland, which is a subject to which I would like to return. The hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Calvin Bailey)—an RAF veteran, if I may call him that—also addressed the international scale of the challenge. Last but not least, I am supported by our shadow Defence Parliamentary Private Secretary this morning, my hon. Friend the Member for Exmouth and Exeter East (David Reed), who as a former Royal Marine, like the Minister, understands quite a lot about the subject.

I would like to begin my own contribution with a historical perspective on bomb disposal operations in the British armed forces, before moving on to address both military and, increasingly, civilian operations in this crucial field of activity, right up to the present day. Bomb disposal, or, to give it its more formal title, explosive ordnance disposal—EOD for short—can be traced back for over a century. During the first world war, squads of men were assembled to help deal with unexploded bombs left after raids on London and the south east by German zeppelin bombers and their Gotha Giant aircraft counterparts—a bombing campaign that was very well summarised by Neil Hanson in his book “First Blitz”.

In addition, with the advent of truly industrialised warfare in the first world war, teams of engineers were needed to dispose of unexploded munitions, particularly high explosive shells that had fallen among the allied trenches on the western front but failed to detonate. Even at that time, this was highly skilled and extremely dangerous work—a characteristic that has remained true right through to the present day.

By the time of the second world war, although the need for bomb disposal on the battlefield was undiminished, with the advent of the mass bombing of civilian targets, the need for bomb disposal on the home front expanded accordingly. This led to a high death toll among those brave enough to undertake the task of dealing with unexploded bombs—or UXBs, as they were characterised at that time. Juliet Gardiner, in her book entitled simply “The Blitz”, describes the losses in the following terms, which I think are quite evocative:

“Sometimes a UXB might embed itself a few feet in the ground, or fall into a static water tank or a gasometer but many penetrated deep below the surface and were difficult to get at. The defusers’ survival would have depended on staying one step ahead of German technology, since as soon as they learnt how one time delay mechanism worked, it would be replaced by another. By the end of 1940, 123 officers and men of the bomb disposal squads had been killed and 67 wounded. The deaths did not cease with the end of the war, as UXB’s continued to be uncovered. By 1947, 490 had been killed in the battle to extract these great torpid iron pigs from their holes and render them harmless.”

The need for EOD workers continued as a facet of British military operations since the end of the second world war, right up to the present day. For instance, dealing with both republican and so-called loyalist bombs was a key facet of Operation Banner, the British Army’s campaign to support the civil authorities during the period of the troubles in Northern Ireland. A number of bomb disposal officers were killed and many were wounded during the course of the troubles, as the hon. Member for Strangford rightly reminded us.

The scale of the task that they were up against was well summarised by Desmond Hamill in his book “Pig in the Middle” about the British Army’s role in Northern Ireland. He summarised the challenge as follows:

“Over the years the Provisionals have become expert at designing and manufacturing booby-traps. Only the week before, a bomb disposal sergeant had been killed by a bomb within a bomb in County Fermanagh. It had been packed into a milk churn, and when the sergeant had cleared the timing device and was lifting it out, a detonator underneath set off the second bomb which exploded.”

As the author went on to explain:

“The bombs were often very simple and very deadly. The components were readily available—a few pounds of explosives, a detonator, a battery and a couple of feet of wire. The triggering device could either be a plate buried in the ground or even a clothes peg.”

As the Minister will be well aware, hundreds of thousands of British soldiers served on Operation Banner during the troubles. Hundreds were killed, not just in bomb disposal, and many thousands were maimed or had life-changing injuries, from both republican and so-called loyalist terrorism. Perhaps when he sums up, the Minister could say a few words about why the Government still intend to abolish the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023, which will leave many Northern Ireland veterans open, yet again, to an endless cycle of reinvestigation, much of it politically motivated at the hands of Sinn Féin. Our veterans, who faced the threat of terrorist bombs every day of their service in Northern Ireland, really do deserve better than this from their Government.

Let me turn to the Falklands. Diffusing unexploded bombs is not just a challenge on land, as pointed out by Lord Ashcroft in his book “Falklands War Heroes”. During the 1982 Falklands war, chief marine engineering mechanic Michael Townsend was awarded the distinguished service medal for his role in assisting with the disposal of two bombs that had hit his ship, HMS Argonaut. The principal bomb disposal task with which he assisted was undertaken by Staff Sergeant Jim Prescott and Warrant Officer Second Class John Phillips, both of the Royal Engineers.

Assisted by Townsend and several of the crew, the two bomb disposal experts succeeded in disarming and disposing both Argentinian bombs that had landed on the Argonaut. Unfortunately, however, Staff Sergeant Prescott, from 49 Squadron Royal Engineers, was killed two days later while attempting a similar task with two further unexploded bombs that had landed on HMS Argonaut’s sister ship, HMS Antelope. His colleague WO2 Phillips was badly injured, losing one of his arms in the latter attempt. I mention that particular example not just to pay tribute to the extreme bravery of all three men involved, one of whom sadly lost his life, but also to point out that dealing with ordnance of this type is not purely confined to the land domain.

[Mr Calvin Bailey]

I would like to link that point back to the right hon. Gentleman’s earlier remarks, when he shared some powerful words about his grandfather—

[Mr Francois]

My father.

[Mr Bailey]

His father’s service—I did not want to age the right hon. Gentleman—in the maritime domain. That example was a powerful reminder that explosive ordnance disposal is not simply confined to landmines or the devices we see as bombs. Building on that, I want to highlight the contributions of the Royal Navy today—its divers in particular and its ongoing mine clearance operations in the Gulf, alongside our US partners and the French navy. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that we must ensure that we continue to highlight such valid and brave contributions?

[Mr Francois]

I thank the hon. Member for his kind words about my father. I absolutely agree with him about the very important role played by the Royal Navy in maritime bomb disposal, including by the brave divers he alluded to. For completeness, as the hon. Gentleman is a former RAF officer, we should place on record that a great deal of work was undertaken in the second world war defusing German bombs that had landed on RAF airfields, perhaps most famously during the battle of Britain—so the Royal Air Force played its part in the battle against bombs as well.

I turn to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As the involvement of Britain’s armed forces, particularly the Army, switched from Northern Ireland through the Balkans and then into the middle east, including the first and second Gulf wars and the war in Afghanistan, again the threat from bombs—often referred to at that time as improvised explosive devices or IEDs—remained ever present. As General Sir Richard Dannatt, a former Chief of the General Staff, recalled in his memoir “Leading From The Front”,

“Initially the Taliban had taken us on with small arms, machine guns and rocket grenades, but as they tired of being killed in large numbers they resorted to the classic insurgent tactic of avoiding direct combat and attacking us instead with IEDs, in exactly the same way as the Iraqi militias and the provisional IRA had done before them.”

The Minister himself served in Afghanistan, and we pay tribute to him for his service. The need to respond to the IED threat, which was eventually responsible for a large number of casualties—both fatal and non-fatal, but none the less in many cases life-changing—was an important aspect particularly of Operation Herrick, the allied campaign in Afghanistan. As Simon Akam explained in his challenging book “The Changing of the Guard: the British Army since 9/11”,

“The IED became the signature weapon of the Helmand Conflict. No longer could troops move freely; instead they adopted the ‘Afghan snake’, painstakingly walking in a line behind a young soldier holding a Vallon Mine Detector.”

Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton, a former Milton Keynes MP and a previous Minister for the Armed Forces, worked on EOD disposal during Operation Herrick. We pay tribute to him and all his EOD colleagues for their service.

Even today, the task of explosive ordnance disposal—now carried out principally by 11 EOD regiments of the Royal Logistics Corps—remains as vital as ever, both in protecting our civilian population from domestic acts of terrorism and in permitting the conduct of military operations. Some of the savage fighting in Ukraine has included the widespread use of booby traps and other IEDs, and therefore the threat remains as live as ever on the modern battlefield. Indeed, in its helpful briefing note for this important debate, the Mines Advisory Group highlights that the Ukrainian Government estimate that about a third of their territory, or 156,000 sq km —an area bigger than England—remains potentially contaminated with explosive ordnance.

For the record, the previous Government invested in the latest EOD technology for our own armed forces, including the Harris T7 bomb disposal robot, which is the successor of the iconic Wheelbarrow from Northern Ireland, and, more recently, the T7’s highly nimble little brother, the Harris T4—a programme that was encouraged by my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) when he was the Procurement Minister at the MOD.

Let me turn directly to the speech by the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell, who summarised very well the challenge still posed by unexplained ordnance in the present day—not just, as she pointed out, in Ukraine, but in a number of other countries around the world, including Laos and Lebanon. We should pay tribute to the work of two UK-led organisations, the Mines Advisory Group and the HALO Trust, which have led the world in seeking to step up and to address the challenge.

Given all this, in addition to responding to my point about the legacy Act, will the Minister answer three specific questions? First, are the Government minded to continue spending at least the same amount on overseas mine disposal in 2025-26 as they are spending in 2024-25? Secondly, much of that spending is deployed via the FCDO’s GMAP and the UK’s integrated security fund; is any of that funding from the MOD budget, and if so, could it be vulnerable to the strategic defence review? The third question is related to the second: when do we expect the outcome of the SDR to be published? I ask that this morning because rumours are now circulating that it could be as late as June 2025. While we have the Minister’s company this morning, could he provide an update about the likely timing of the publication of the SDR? As he knows, it is keenly anticipated.

In conclusion, I pay tribute to all those personnel, be they from the armed forces or civilians, who have had the courage to take part in the extremely dangerous task of explosive ordnance disposal across the decades. It is harrowing work, and not for the faint hearted. In risking their lives, they have helped to save the lives of countless others. Sadly, a number of those employed in that highly dangerous line of work made the ultimate sacrifice, and we rightly pay tribute to them this morning as well. We will remember them.