Royal Marines

Debate between Earl Howe and Lord Stirrup

Tuesday 4th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord and the House know that the carriers, when they arrive, will be fully manned and have British aircraft on them before they are brought into service. I can assure him that we will make sure that the Royal Marines are properly trained and equipped to perform the vital tasks we ask them to undertake.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, I listened very carefully to the answers the Minister has given. If there is a key strategic judgment to be made about the balance of capabilities between the surface fleet and the Royal Marines, surely the last strategic defence and security review was the time and opportunity to do that. It was not done then, so is not the only conclusion we can draw from the current situation that there is insufficient funding in the Ministry of Defence to afford what was decided upon at the end of the last SDSR?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, we set out our key priorities in the 2015 strategic defence and security review. At that time we announced an £11 billion investment package towards our highest priority defence equipment needs over the course of this Parliament. We have been quite open that some of the funding for this is contingent on delivering efficiency savings. I concede that the savings are challenging, but we are working very hard to deliver them.

Refugees and Migrants: Royal Navy and NATO Interception in Mediterranean

Debate between Earl Howe and Lord Stirrup

Monday 7th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My noble friend is absolutely right. This is why NATO is in a support role, as I emphasised, to alert the authorities in the Turkish coastguard and FRONTEX, which is the EU border control agency, to intercept the ships. It is not our role to intercept those ships; it is for the Turkish and, if need be, the Greek coastguard authorities. They have assets in the area which are well placed to do that.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, what degree of co-ordination will be maintained between the NATO mission and the EU’s anti-people-smuggling mission in the Mediterranean, Operation Sophia? While the two have separate areas of operation they will both require access to strategic capabilities such as surveillance, reconnaissance and helicopters, which the noble Earl has mentioned, and which are in short supply. It would seem essential that a high degree of co-operation is maintained between these two operations if those scarce resources are to be used as effectively and efficiently as possible.

[Earl Howe]

The noble and gallant Lord is absolutely right. As he knows, the UK has provided a significant contribution to the EU naval force operation countering migrant smugglers in the Mediterranean off the coast of Libya. We have been doing that since July last year. HMS “Enterprise” remains committed to that operation over the winter, identifying potential migrant-smuggling vessels off the coast of Libya. He is also right to draw our attention to the whole of the Mediterranean as an area of concern. We must not forget that Operation Sophia is just one part of the overall, comprehensive approach to tackling the migrant crisis. The migrants who come up from sub-Saharan Africa are, by and large, those who leave the Libyan coast. In the main, those arriving at the Turkish coast stem from Afghanistan and Syria.

Syria: Brimstone Missiles

Debate between Earl Howe and Lord Stirrup

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. There is no question that Russia is actively targeting civilians and is almost certainly in breach of international humanitarian law in the process. That has to stop. Russia cannot continue to sit at the table as a sponsor of the political process and, at the same time, bomb the civilian areas of the very groups of people whom we believe will form the backbone of the new Syria, once Assad has left.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, is the Minister able to give the House figures for the number of civilian casualties in Syria caused by the action of ISIL on the ground?

[Earl Howe]

I do not have precise figures, but as the House will know the vast majority of civilian casualties in Syria have been caused by the regime itself and also as a result of Russian actions.