Defence Personnel

Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr James Arbuthnot (North East Hampshire) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of defence personnel.

If I may, I would like to begin, rather oddly, by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara) on the previous debate, which was outstanding—despite the fact that it has taken time away from the defence debate. I think that it was a really worthwhile way of starting today’s Back-Bench business.

I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting us a debate on personnel issues. We discover that there is a disadvantage in having this debate during the week of the autumn statement, because it has been relegated to the end of a day after not only the important debate we have just had, but important statements that have to be made following the autumn statement. Because there is less time than there might otherwise have been, I will take as little time as possible in order to allow everyone who wishes to speak to do so.

There will inevitably be subjects I do not cover. I am afraid that I will not cover the important issue of reductions of certain historic and well-recruited regiments, but I hope that, by not speaking about that, I will allow other right hon. and hon. Members to do so, and with greater knowledge than I could possibly show. I shall say little about redundancies or reservists, because the Defence Committee has recently conducted a number of inquiries into those subjects. Yesterday, we took the unusual step of announcing in advance the Committee’s programme for the remainder of this Parliament. It will include inquiries into some of these important matters.

One of the advantages of having the debate today is that it seems to have prompted the Ministry of Defence to produce lots of documents, including its accounts for 2011-12 and the annual report on the covenant. It is always nice to have the MOD’s accounts, even if the auditor qualifies them, as always, by saying that they do not show a true or fair view of the state of the MOD’s finances. It would have been nicer still if we had had the accounts in June or July, when we should have done, but no doubt the accounting officer will be able to give an explanation when he comes before us next week—an event to which I know the whole Defence Committee will be looking forward enormously.

Today’s annual report on the armed forces covenant is welcome. It reflects many of the suggestions made by the Committee in its continuing series of inquiries into the covenant, for example on doubling council tax relief, on the false economy created by the pause in the refurbishment of single living accommodation, on home ownership and on health care, particularly mental health care, for veterans and reservists. Those are not acknowledged as being the Committee’s suggestions, but we know the terms of trade and do not mind that, so long as the MOD from time to time listens to what we say and does something about it.

The relationship between the MOD and the Select Committee needs to contain an element of constructive tension—almost scratchy; never cosy. Sometimes there is more tension than constructiveness, but I tell the Minister that the more open his Department is with the Committee, the more we can help to get his policies right. We shall shortly be producing a report on the Service Complaints Commissioner, who, as usual, gave us most helpful evidence a couple of weeks ago. I hope that the Minister will listen and respond positively to what we will say on Dr Atkins’ extremely valuable role.

The MOD does sometimes help us. Last week it helped the Committee to have an extremely valuable visit to Afghanistan as part of our normal programme of visiting our armed forces wherever they are deployed. Several issues arose, and they are what I want to concentrate on for the remainder of my short remarks.

I will touch first on welfare matters, starting with decompression. At the end of a six-month tour, we consider it essential to ensure that our troops are provided with a period of what is known as decompression. Often that takes place in Cyprus on the way home, when the returning troops, over a few kegs of beer, are reminded that their spouses will have been living their own lives while they were away and will not necessarily understand exactly what they have been through. These are absolutely essential reminders.

However, apparently, decompression is not considered essential when our forces return for a two-week break in the middle of a tour. That suggests that we need to rethink the entire concept of the two-week break, not of decompression itself. Is the two-week break necessary or a good thing? For example, when our troops are working alongside the Americans, who, unlike British forces, get travel time taken off their break but get only a two-week rest and relaxation break in a one-year tour, does that create resentments on either side? Is the entire concept of a break destabilising? If, for operational reasons, someone’s break comes very near the beginning or end of their tour, what good does it do? The armed forces and the Ministry of Defence need to begin to think about these things very seriously.

The armed forces sometimes need to make serious and difficult choices between welfare and operational output. I suspect that in 2014 the welfare of our troops in Afghanistan will be pretty minimal, frankly. We will have drawn down and taken away much of their support system, and, as we were told, they will be living out of the backs of their vehicles. The troops and, just as importantly, we need to know that, think about it, and accept it now. This is not about stopping looking after the armed forces who do so much for us; it is about putting it in the context that their primary task is operational, and that when they signed up they also signed up to an element of austerity when necessary.

Another issue that arose was detention. There is a genuine problem over the legal ability to transfer those whom we detain to the Afghan authorities, which were accused in the past of mistreating one of the people we had previously transferred. We visited the detention facility in question, and we were impressed with the new deputy governor, who has a good international track record in observing and enforcing human rights. Nevertheless, we remain concerned that there should be a speedy solution to this problem. We must not run the risk of being forced to hold on to people whom our troops detain, because that might lengthen our involvement in Afghanistan in certain respects far beyond the period for which we would wish to be so involved. Still less must we put our troops at risk of being subject to any legal challenge regarding a failure to obey international law in what they have done. I suggest that in future there should always be an Afghan element in the capture, interrogation and detention of those suspected of insurgency or dealing in narcotics so that in all cases the detention is Afghan, not British, and the problem therefore does not arise. However, such a solution would require complicated discussions between ourselves and the Afghan authorities, and I appreciate that it will not be easy to achieve.

Our role in Afghanistan now is to step back, and that is a very difficult thing for the British armed forces to do. Their natural inclination, as the sort of people they are with the sort of qualities they have, is to step in and help; that is what they are trained to do. However, we are now reaching the stage in Afghanistan where the best help we can give is not to help. One aspect of this is the insider threat, which is sometimes referred to as “green on blue”. One of the soldiers we talked to in Camp Bastion said that it is absolutely galling that the very people we are there to help might turn on us. The risk is not going to go away; all we can do is minimise it. My own view—I do not know about other members of the Defence Committee—is that we are doing our very best to achieve that. If we draw the conclusion that we cannot trust the Afghan security forces, we will be quite wrong. It is a fantastic country with wonderful people who are, let us not forget, being asked to learn in a few years what it took us centuries to learn. It will still be necessary for our troops to help to use the ISTAR—intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance—assets that we have and to call in the medical helicopters that are so highly regarded, but it will increasingly be less necessary for them to patrol alongside the Afghan patrols, which are becoming more capable day by day.

We came away from Afghanistan with a strong message. At the end of the summer, an instruction went out to the insurgents that they should fight their way through the winter. Despite that, the insurgency dropped away very suddenly. The insurgents are finding it increasingly hard to raise and retain their money and resources. They are also finding it very difficult to persuade their co-insurgents to fight Afghan soldiers, who are becoming increasingly competent. That competence is likely to increase with the advent of the academy for officer training, to be run along the lines of Sandhurst. We went to visit it. It is currently a building site, true, but the Afghans have begun to identify their first training officers and non-commissioned officers, who are clearly of extremely high quality. They have set themselves some enormously high challenges—for example, to have 150 female officer cadets a year passing through the college. In the long run—this point was most validly made to us by President Karzai—the issue of the equal treatment of women is likely to be resolved not by western influence or by the hectoring of countries such as ours but by education and the visibility of the outside world provided by the internet.

We found that security is no longer the primary issue of concern for most Afghans. There is still fear when people travel from one part of the country to another, but the ability of Afghans to farm in peace, and to get their goods to market on an increasingly secure road network, is being greatly improved. This has been achieved by a combination of the actions of our troops and the actions of the Afghan national security forces—police and army, pleasingly—in doing what our troops are training them to do.

Some say that we should leave Afghanistan now. In one sense, that is what we are doing. If we wanted to leave tomorrow, it would in fact take us about 18 months to do so. We are doing it by leaving in place a working security apparatus that will help to ensure that Afghanistan does not again become a threat to this country. By staying involved after the end of combat operations in 2014, we will ensure that there is transition, not abandonment. The strongest message that we received from our personnel in Afghanistan was that we should hold our nerve and stick to the plan, which is a good one.

Here I should acknowledge something: I was wrong. I believed that by setting a date for us to leave Afghanistan we were playing into the hands of the Taliban, who would just wait us out. I told the Prime Minister that if we concentrated on success, we would make it easier for us to leave, whereas if we concentrated on leaving, we would make it harder for us to succeed. It is hard for me to say this, but the Prime Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson) were quite right and I was quite wrong. In practice, the Afghans needed us to step back, and they needed a timetable. Arguably, by setting a date in 2014 the Prime Minister bought more time for the international security assistance force to achieve transition than it would have had if the time scale had been left open-ended.

Finally, I would like to pay tribute to our armed forces. They are going through a tough time at the moment, as is the entire country. They know they are not immune from the financial hardship afflicting us all. They are facing redundancies, reductions in the pensions they can expect and a smaller total expenditure on defence.

[Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that many service personnel want clarity from the Ministry of Defence on what will happen to arrangements for units in which husbands and wives are based? They, like the right hon. Gentleman, perhaps, and me, were under the impression that we might learn that from a statement from the MOD as soon as next Tuesday. Is he aware of reports suggesting that that announcement will not take place next Tuesday and does he know of any reasons why that might be? If not, perhaps the Minister on the Treasury Bench could clarify whether that is correct.

[Mr Arbuthnot]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The Chief of the General Staff was asked a similar question when he appeared before us yesterday. Unsurprisingly, the timing of statements is a matter for the Government. We will have to wait to hear from the Minister whether this has been affected by the changes announced in yesterday’s autumn statement, but he will have heard the hon. Gentleman’s intervention and will no doubt be eager to cover it in his contribution, even if he does not look too eager at present.

As I have said, the Chief of the General Staff appeared before us and he said that this was a worrying and destabilising time for the armed forces. Picking up on the hon. Gentleman’s point, it is certainty that the armed forces want—they just want to know where they stand so that they can plan their lives accordingly.

It is our job as a Parliament to recognise what our armed forces do for us and to thank them for it. I am pleased that the country seems to be well aware of how much we owe our armed forces, and today is our opportunity to acknowledge it and to thank them.

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[Mr Gray]

My hon. Friend never misses an opportunity to speak up for the Royal Marines, and he is absolutely correct. I was not for one second suggesting that the House was silent on these matters during those years; I merely said that their prominence had declined somewhat at various times over the past 50 years.

Into that relative desert of knowledge, awareness and understanding of our armed forces came the figure of Sir Neil Thorne—this is where my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) did me a disservice a moment ago. Realising the shortage of information and awareness in the House, Sir Neil created the armed forces parliamentary scheme 25 years ago this year. Since then, he has run the scheme more or less single-handedly. He has help from a variety of people, but he is the driving force behind it. The scheme has gone through all sorts of changes. When I joined it in 1997, it was extremely small, with one MP from each side of the House attached to each of the four services. This year, there are about 70 people involved, including MEPs, Clerks of the House, Members of the House of Lords and others.

The work of the armed forces parliamentary scheme under Sir Neil has significantly increased the level of understanding and awareness of our armed forces and, in particular, of the work done by our boys and girls on the ground. A significant cadre of Members of Parliament now truly understand what happens on the ground. MPs are embedded for up to 22 days a year, perhaps wearing some kind of uniform, and they get intimately involved with activities of our armed forces on a variety of levels. That is central to the excellence of the understanding that the scheme has brought to this place.

In that context, it is probably known around the House that there will be some changes coming to the armed forces parliamentary scheme. Sir Neil has indicated that he would like to see changes, and the Secretary of State for Defence and Mr Speaker have joined him in that. The scheme will soon be re-established as a charitable trust under nine trustees, and we very much look forward to its continuation under the slightly new format.

Two things are central. First, it seems to me essential that the armed forces parliamentary scheme should remain as it is, or very much like it is, for 25 or 50 years to come. It would be no good at all if we said right now, “That’s it. It has been great, but let’s say goodbye to it.” We must not do that—the armed forces parliamentary scheme plays a terribly important part in all our parliamentary debates. Secondly, there are all sorts of ways of doing this, but on this 25th anniversary of the scheme’s foundation, it is terribly important that we pay due respect to the fantastic contribution to the defence of the realm and to our understanding of it that Sir Neil and his wife have made. He has done a great job; it is right that we should acknowledge it.

[Mr Arbuthnot]

Does my hon. Friend agree that Sir Neil has not only put in a large amount of his own time and considerable expertise but has invested a large amount of his own money into creating the scheme, and that it is has proved so successful that it has been copied in other countries around the world and has given rise to similar schemes for the police, for example?

[Mr Gray]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: Sir Neil’s personal contribution in respect of time, money and, indeed, the excellent Lady Thorne has been significant. A similar scheme has been established in Australia and, as my right hon. Friend says, there is a similar police scheme in existence—in this Parliament, and who knows where else it might spread.

On an occasion such as today’s when we are talking about defence personnel, it is right to pay our respects to and honour those people who do things that we in the Chamber could not contemplate doing, although one or two of us have done them—my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti), for example, who is not in his place at the moment. He has had the great advantage of having spent six months in Afghanistan, with 36 hours of contact, firing a light gun at the enemy. Very few Members of Parliament have achieved anything of that kind; I think we should pay our respects to my hon. Friend for that.

It is right that we should make use of the armed forces parliamentary scheme, the all-party group for the armed forces and the welcome home parades. We should also celebrate the respects paid to the armed forces down the streets of Royal Wootton Bassett—or now in Carterton in Oxfordshire. The people of the United Kingdom and the Members of this House understand what a great contribution our armed forces make to the defence of our realm. It is right that we should convert that understanding into visible signs of it; various organisations do that very well.

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[Mr Kevan Jones]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot) and the Backbench Business Committee on selecting this afternoon’s debate. Let me put on record everyone’s thanks and tributes to the members of our armed forces and their families, who are an integral part of the defence of our country. I also agree with the hon. Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) about the army of civil servants and civil contractors, without whose support we could not deploy forces.

There have been 11 very good contributions to today’s debate. The right hon. Member for North East Hampshire talked about Afghanistan. I agree that the deadline has focused minds in Afghanistan; my concern is about what role UK armed forces will play post-2014. There is a naive assumption that a training role will be without its dangers, but the people performing training roles with the embedded teams in Iraq were in harm’s way. We need clarification from the Government on that before 2014, because people will be in harm’s way. We also need to know what our armed forces’ footprint will be in Afghanistan post-2014.

The right hon. Gentleman also talked about the Service Complaints Commissioner, as did the hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt). This was a tremendous success for the Defence Committee, following its report on the duty of care in the last Parliament, although I agree with the hon. Lady that the next step needs to be some type of ombudsman—a proposal that was in the original report to give the post teeth. I, too, pay tribute to the Service Complaints Commissioner, who has done a first-rate job in not only highlighting and dealing with complaints, but getting the trust of senior members of the armed forces.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) raised the issue of medical support for our armed forces. She, like me, was heavily criticised at the time for the closure of Army, Navy and RAF-dedicated hospitals, but in hindsight it was the right thing to do. She rightly paid tribute to the Queen Elizabeth hospital and the investment that has gone into it, as well as the dedicated NHS staff working closely alongside the military personnel, breaking new ground not only with new surgical techniques but by keeping people alive who even a matter of years ago would not have survived, as she rightly said. However, I have concerns about how the NHS integrates with the Army recovery capability—which she also raised—which is something I am glad the Government are committed to. We need to ensure a seamless transition into civilian life for those people, and that they get the appropriate NHS care once they have left the armed forces.

My hon. Friend made some interesting points about finance in relation to the strategic defence and security review. No one will be surprised when I reiterate that the SDSR was not a defence review but a budget-led, Treasury-led review. As a nation, we need to ask what our role is in the world. That was not done as part of the SDSR, as it was led by the Treasury. That led to some of the mistakes that are now being unpicked as the new Secretary of State tries to get to grips with the situation.

The hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) talked about the defence budget. The Government keep pushing the myth that they started with a £38 billion black hole, even though no one has yet been able to explain the calculations behind that figure. The original National Audit Office report said that there would be a £6 billion black hole if the budget continued on its present basis. The only way of arriving at a figure of £36 billion would be to add flat cash over 10 years and to include everything in the equipment programme. That still leaves an unexplained extra £2 billion. Members will be pleased to know that I am now on Twitter, and I had an interesting exchange last night with the former Minister for defence procurement, the hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff), who told me that the figure was even higher than £38 billion. If that is the case, why do we not know what it actually is?

That brings me to the Ministry of Defence’s annual report and accounts, which make great reading. It is interesting that claims by the previous and present Secretaries of State to have balanced the budget are nowhere to be seen in the introduction. It will also come as no surprise that the accounts for this year have been qualified.

[Mr Arbuthnot]

May I gently draw the attention of the shadow Minister to the fact that the accounts were qualified in every year under the last Labour Government as well?

[Mr Jones]

I acknowledge that, but I did not make wild claims about somehow having magicked away a £38 billion black hole in two years, which the Secretary of State is now doing.

The hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke mentioned Defence Equipment and Support, and I agree with him that there is uncertainty in that regard that needs early resolution. He might be interested to know that the accounts show that the average length of time that the MOD equipment programme was delayed in 2010-11 was 0.46 months, and that the figure has now increased to 5.5 months. No great progress has been made in the efficiency of the delivery of that programme.

Another startling fact to emerge from the annual report and accounts is that the Department has not received approval for the remuneration package for the Chief of Defence Matériel, who is earning considerably more than the Prime Minister. It has been suggested that the Department has somehow acted outside its authority in this regard. We need clarification of some of the issues raised in the annual report and accounts.

We keep being promised an explanation of the Secretary of State’s assertion that the defence budget is now in balance. On 14 May and 11 June, he told the House that he would shortly publish the figures, and he told the Defence Select Committee on 12 July that the NAO report would be published in September and that it would explain exactly how he had balanced the budget. The hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) raised an interesting point about this matter.

Yesterday, during the Chancellor’s statement, it was mentioned almost as an aside that defence had somehow got off lightly, given the further 1% cuts that other Departments were being asked to make—but that is not the case. It will have to swallow cuts of its own, and, according to The Daily Telegraph today, that will involve another £1.3 billion coming out of defence. It is important that we get clarification of this so-called balancing of the budget, when it is clearly not in balance. We also need an explanation of where the original figure of £38 billion came from.

The reason that is important is that members of our armed forces and their families know that we are in tough times and that they have to take some share of the pain. What they do not want to see, however, are spurious figures and spurious claims made to justify some of what is being done. There are only two ways of getting money quickly out of the defence budget: either by cutting the number of personnel or by cutting in-year programmes, leaving capability gaps, which is what the strategic defence and security review has done.

The hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) made some points about Germany and rebasing. We have been promised a statement next week, so it will be interesting to see whether that comes forward. I thought it completely bonkers when the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) made the announcement. I looked at the issue when I was a Minister, so I know that four years ago the price tag was £3.5 billion—but where that is coming from, I do not know. It is important to have clarification not only for the reasons that the right hon. Gentleman gave regarding communities and individuals here, but because we must know what is actually happening for our servicemen and women along with civil servants, educationalists and others based in Germany. If the cost was £3.5 billion then, it is surely a lot higher today. It is not just about bringing people back, as it is also about evaluating the costs of withdrawal—environmental and other costs that will be added to the clean-up of those areas. Under the treaty with the Germans, it is quite clear that two years’ written notice has to be given, but I am not aware that that has happened. I do not mind if the Government have changed their policy on this issue, but they should say so, as we do not want the uncertainty.

The hon. Member for Moray spoke about the so-called future Scottish armed forces, claiming that they will comprise 15,000. I am not sure what type of role they will take: if they are to be in NATO, what would they deploy? Will the army act as a border force to stop riotous Northumbrians crossing the border? Will there be a navy of fishing boats? Will the air force be of gliders? In this debate, it is important for the Scottish National party not only to deal with the present lay-down of armed forces, as the hon. Gentleman has, but to be honest with people and say what the future defence structure would look like in an independent Scotland.

I join the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) in paying tribute to Wootton Bassett and to Sir Neil Thorne. I also commend the hon. Gentleman’s role on the marching parades, which have been supported across the parties.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for his quite proper recognition of the contribution of people from Northern Ireland to the armed forces. I visited Northern Ireland when I was a Minister, and I was very impressed by the dedication I found there to all three of our armed forces.

I know that on many occasions the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) adopts a light-hearted approach in his contributions to the House. Today, however, he made a very serious contribution, which I think shows the House of Commons at its best. He paid tribute to the victims of the Droppin’ Well bombing. It must have been very difficult for him to relive some of those experiences today, so I pay tribute to him for doing so. He is right that 30 years seems a long time ago, but not for him and the people who were there. Speaking as he did in this debate greatly honours those people and pays a fitting tribute to their memories. I hope that his contribution gives some comfort to those who were injured in the ways he described and to the families, relatives and friends of those who lost their lives.

The hon. Member for Beckenham mentioned another matter, and his position was the same as mine when I was veterans Minister. It is fine to get things right now for veterans and those injured in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. My concern, in common with the hon. Gentleman’s, is what happens to these people in 20, 30 or 40 years’ time. We, as a society and a nation, owe a great debt of gratitude to those individuals. Irrespective of our political parties, we need to ensure that that remains the case. I hope that the work with service charities in relation to the Army recovery capability scheme, which is in the pipeline, involves something of that joined-up approach, but we shall have to monitor this on a yearly basis. We shall need to look after the people to whom the hon. Gentleman referred—who are already injured as a result of service in Afghanistan and Iraq—when they are older. There can be no if or but; we must do that.

When it comes to housing—the favourite subject of the hon. Member for Colchester—we must ensure that we continue to listen to the views of the British Armed Forces Federation.

Let me end by saying that it is always good to hear such well-informed contributions, and by again paying tribute to our brave servicemen and women.

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[Mr Arbuthnot]

With the leave of the House, Mr Deputy Speaker, may I start my contribution, after a debate in which it has been a great privilege to take part, on a note of disagreement? In a year in which we have celebrated Her Majesty’s diamond jubilee and the greatest Olympics the world has ever seen, I must disagree with the suggestion of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) that we may be losing our sense of self. I think we are a prouder nation now than we have ever been, and we have every reason to be proud. One of the greatest reasons to be proud is our armed forces.

In a few short sentences, my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) reminded us what it is that we owe to our armed forces and of our duty to look after those who have looked after us so well. He reminded me of what a privilege I have in charing the Defence Committee of this House.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of defence personnel.