The Role and Capabilities of the UK Armed Forces, in the Light of Global and Domestic Threats to Stability and Security

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Grand Committee

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his usual brilliant introduction to the debate. Like the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, I too am double-hatted and was always going to speak in both debates. I listened carefully to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Burnett. I still have confidence in the court martial system, provided that we can put right any mistakes. Who is to say that a civilian court would not be even less sympathetic in all the circumstances pertaining at the time? I think that we should consider and study this matter very carefully in the coming weeks and then, if necessary, put all the pressure that we can on the Minister to reconsider the matter.

I have not been so active in defence in recent years because I have been heavily involved in other matters within your Lordships’ House. I pay tribute to the work of my noble friend Lord Astor of Hever, both for his time as Minister and now as Secretary of the Defence Study Group.

There is good news. Because the SDSR is to be a regular occurrence, we are getting better at doing it and can react in a more timely manner to changing circumstances, as the Minister explained. Even better, the budget for defence has been agreed, even though I still think that it falls way short of what we should be doing and we may yet regret not spending enough. Some might say that one should determine the requirement first and then provide the resources, but I have always felt that one should be honest and determine what funds are available first. That way, the SDSR is much more likely to provide a balanced capability. There is no point in spending large amounts of money on shiny jets and the latest AFEs if one has neglected ISTAR and does not have a clue where one’s opponent is or what he is doing. I do not think that UK defence gets enough credit in the media for getting this broadly right while other states can be appalling in this regard.

In the previous Parliament, the Conservative-led coalition got to grips with the black hole, however painful it was to do so. What assurances can the Minister give me that another black hole will not develop alongside the very expensive exercise of pushing programmes to the right—something that the Labour Government found themselves having to do because of the black hole?

I still believe that the concept for the reserves is completely flawed, as volunteer reserves are not a direct substitute for regulars. Here I declare an interest, as I am still commissioned in the REME reserves but am no longer posted anywhere. I have been in the reserves or TA ever since I was 17 and a half. Next month I will commence my final year before becoming 60 years old. There are some signs that the new policy is coming round but I am not holding my breath. I have some anxiety that some funding lines for the reserves have not materialised in order to meet budgetary restrictions. I take it that the SDSR will correct that by stating what is to be done with the reserves, what facilities they need and where capital expenditure needs to be made, and ensuring that funds are available.

Having smaller Armed Forces has the serious problem of increasing the proportion of resources allocated to the overhead—that is, the staff and civil servants. This is because a lot of functions still have to be undertaken irrespective of the size of the Armed Forces. This is especially so in the process of developing and procuring equipment, since every single piece of equipment has to be specified, developed and procured, whether it is a cooking utensil, a tent or a truck. This is an unpalatable thought and not one for this SDSR but, especially for the Army, would it not be better to draw everything that we can from US ordnance and use our own developed and procured equipment only when we absolutely have to? Of course, there would have to be a formal offset agreement with the US Government to ensure that UK industry still got its fair share of business. The logistical advantages in reduced stockholding and commonality, both at home and when deployed, are obvious. One could ask why we do not do this in Europe. No doubt we are trying to, but the fact is that within Europe there are too many moving parts. I am just suggesting that we draw the majority of our stores from US ordnance.

Much has been made of the fact that we have the fifth largest defence expenditure in the world, but other states have different cost bases. India, for instance, which we are close to but should be closer still to, spends less than us but has about 1 million men under arms and about 3,000 main battle tanks. Of course, they will not all be as good as a European army but, as Napoleon once said, “Size has a quality all of its own”.

As I have indicated, I do not think that our Army is big enough or has enough combat power. That is my perception, but if senior people in Washington get the same perception or worse, we will become militarily insignificant so far as the Americans are concerned. That is not a good position to be in. The recent statement about the 2% is helpful in that regard; it goes some way, but not as far as I would like.

Much attention is being paid to Special Forces and perhaps increasing their size, but, if you reduce the size of the regular army, you reduce the SF recruiting pool. If the ratio of SF to conventional goes the wrong way, there is also the risk of sucking out too many top-class people from the conventional forces. If you think about it, 2,000 out of 80,000 is becoming a significant percentage.

In the last SDSR, we reduced the number of main battle tanks by about 40%, along with the support that they needed. You need very considerable support to run a large fleet of main battle tanks. This is despite the fact that in all the recent major deployments we took main battle tanks. On Op Telic 1 we had 116 of them. Even on Herrick in Afghanistan we deployed T2; that is Trojan and Titan armoured engineer vehicles, which are variants of Challenger. We even had other nations support us with Leopard main battle tanks because, for very sensible reasons, we were not able to deploy Challenger in theatre. I sincerely hope that the capability managers have got that decision right and it was not more to do with the financial issues referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham.

I doubt the wisdom of keeping in service a whole range of land platforms that came into service as an urgent operational requirement. The whole point of UOR equipment is that it is specific to the current operation. Because of this, any weakness in that equipment that is not relevant to the current operation does not matter and no attention is paid to its future sustainability.

I turn to the new Scout armoured fighting vehicle. I can understand the need to replace Bulldog and, at some point, Warrior. However, I understand that Scout is a 40-tonne behemoth. I recognise that the reconnaissance effect of CVRT can be achieved by other means, but CVRT was a very good platform for framework patrols on peacekeeping operations because it only weighed about 10 tonnes. It was not particularly aggressive, but it did still pack a reasonable punch. What will provide that capability in the future other than a few UOR platforms that I have already referred to? I hope that the Minister and his department can provide a comprehensive briefing so that we can better understand the benefits of this important programme.