National Security Situation

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Thursday 19th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Ahmad for introducing this debate today. It goes without saying that I fully support the recent military action, and we should be proud of and grateful for our Armed Forces’ efforts.

There has been much talk about war powers. Even before 2010, I always thought that having a vote in the Commons was foolish in the extreme. Of course debate, where possible, is essential. There are international conventions and treaties such as the Geneva Convention. Then there are our own parliamentary and constitutional conventions such as the Salisbury/Addison convention and the more recent but well-established Carter convention. They have all stood the test of time and seem to work in a variety of circumstances. Unfortunately, this new so-called convention has provided the wrong answer every time it has been used.

In 2003 the House of Commons authorised the illegal and unnecessary Operation Telic to invade Iraq, which was based on flawed intelligence not tested by proper debate in Cabinet, and, so far as I can determine, not tested by very senior Privy Council members of my own party either. I remind the House of my interest: I served on that operation. The noble Lord, Lord West, reminded us of how poor the strategy and how disastrous the history of that operation was. Interestingly, in your Lordships’ House we asked, “But what about the post-conflict plan?” Your Lordships were entirely confident that we would have the necessary military superiority over our opponents, and we got the normal platitudes, but, as the noble Lord, Lord West, told us, there was no proper post-conflict plan.

One of the unfortunate effects of the 2003 experience is that it has made the public and parliamentarians less willing to trust the Prime Minister and Government of the day on matters of national security—a point made by my noble friend Lady Neville-Jones. Therefore it was not surprising that in 2013 the House of Commons made another duff decision by declining to authorise military action in Syria, with all the adverse effects that we know about, touched on by many noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts.

The 2003 vote was both pointless and damaging to morale in theatre. I know because I was there at the time. In the division alone we had 25,000 people on the ground who were vulnerable to a legal pre-emptive attack, provided it did not involve prohibited weapons. This is because Iraq had no WMD and we had no UN mandate. Fortunately, the Iraqi armed forces also had no suitable capability to make a first strike. The point is that the then Government had already taken military risks and exposed our forces to attack by authorising the deployment long before any vote took place in the House of Commons.

On morale, in 2003 the vast majority of the deployed force had never been in an operation where they were to make a deliberate large-scale attack on the enemy. Those young men and women needed to know that Parliament and the British people were right behind them. Of course, in a democracy there will be some contrary views, and servicepeople know that perfectly well. Nevertheless, it was deeply disturbing to many on that operation that the Commons was voting on the matter just hours before they were due to cross the start line with the possibility that they might never come back home. The other difficulty about any such vote in the Commons is that MPs are whipped on party lines. I think all noble Lords will agree that authorising or acquiescing to military action is strictly a matter for the House of Commons, although we can express a view.

Many noble Lords opposite who are so keen on a war powers Act were also kind and courageous enough to support me and the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, in our amendments to the Data Protection Bill. I am now trying to convince just a few Conservative MPs to support us or at least to abstain on the Lords amendments. I am claiming to my colleagues that this is a matter of the first order of importance. However, thanks to the efforts of the Whips in the other place, I have managed to discuss the matter with only two MPs. The usual reply is that it is not something they know anything about and, by implication, they will vote with the Government and are not interested in what I have to say, or they even try to persuade me that I am wrong, which is always a possibility. But only a certain proportion of the membership of the Commons has a knowledge of defence, security and international relations, and even if most Members were at the level of many noble Lords who have spoken today, they still would not have the benefit of the JIC reports or a relationship and deep discussions with CDS—a point well made in general terms by my noble friend Lady Finn.

Another problem with the so-called convention is that it does not include Special Forces operations, for obvious reasons. Quite properly, it is very likely that political authority for most SF operations will be vested in no more than one of three very senior Ministers. If one of these operations went badly wrong, however, the strategic repercussions could be very serious indeed.

I believe that the old system was the correct one. The leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition and perhaps two other shadow Secretaries of State should take a briefing on Privy Council terms. If Her Majesty’s Opposition absolutely needs to, a vote of confidence in the Government can be called, either before or after the event, although that of course would run the risk of a general election. If the Government lost the vote of confidence, the operation would surely stop immediately. Therefore, the Commons always has the ability to stop an operation if it wants to, but it has that capability without the serious disadvantages attendant on a prior vote.

Much has been said about China. The reality is that, given the size of its economy, the number of well-educated people and its productive capability, it is catching up with the United States and will overtake it, just as the United States did to us. The reasons are exactly the same. The educated population in the United States overtook ours, and the same thing is happening in China: its educated and productive population is overtaking that of the United States. There is little we can do about that. We just have to manage it.

Our priority is Russia. The United States’ priority is dealing with China, and we understand that. However, we can help the United States by being able to deploy with a comprehensive capability. By that, I mean that we can offer a carrier battle group and an amphibious task group, and we ought to be able to deploy at divisional or large-scale level anywhere across the world, except for the Arctic. Partially in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Birt, we need to be able to run a medium-scale operation anywhere with our own carrier battle group capability. If we can do that, we will always be important to the Americans and will maintain that close relationship.

The consensus seems to be that we need to increase our defence expenditure to at least 2.5% and possibly 3%. I remember being somewhat surprised when the noble Lord, Lord Soley, suggested 3% in a relatively recent debate, but I now think he is probably right. However, there is a problem with increasing defence expenditure rapidly. It is not easy to do so without wasting the money. If we increase our capabilities, we need to ensure that those capabilities are balanced, and we are quite good at making sure that that is the case.

We also need to demonstrate that the capability that we already have works. That is why it is essential that exercise Saif Sareea is at least of medium scale—that is, that we deploy at least a brigade. We also need to show as soon as we can that we can deploy at large scale—in other words, a whole division—on an exercise overseas. It is a very long time since we have exercised a fully bombed-up division in the field. If I am not convinced that we can do it properly, I doubt that a peer opponent believes that we can do it, and that is very serious. The Minister may tell the House, as he has told me before, that we can test our capability with computer simulation, but that does not demonstrate to the outside world that we can do it; nor does it fully cover any weaknesses that one might discover in the logistics. I am particularly concerned that we have hollowed out our logistics, and I wonder whether that was what the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton, was referring to. The cost of a large-scale deployment exercise is much lower than the cost of drastically increasing one’s capability.

On Assad, I do not want to be unhelpful to my noble friend the Minister, but has he any evidence to suggest that Assad will not win?