Defence: Military Covenant

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, when he was Leader of the Opposition, the Prime Minister David Cameron made this assertion:

“Everyone should know what an enormous priority the Conservative Party attaches to our Armed Forces and to keeping Britain safe, and we will always make the spending necessary to deliver that”.

I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield for initiating this crucial debate at this time.

All jobs are important, but the military are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, so they are always a special case. There has to be a special arrangement to compensate for that sacrifice. I always thought that the special arrangement ought to be delivered through government. I always thought that it was through government that the gratitude of the people could be expressed, and servicemen and their families looked after and remunerated well, and their equipment, clothes, weaponry, accommodation at home and abroad and trauma care supplied and subsidised at the best possible level by a nation that is committed for a lifetime. This is where we as a country have gone down a slippery slope. In India, my father was General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Central Army Command. There I know a soldier’s family is cared for for life, well after the death of the serviceman, as my grandmother and my mother have experienced. There is a commitment, a strong bond, that holds the soldier to his country, and the soldier’s family is born into the military family, as I was. This trust and care encourages camaraderie, morale and esprit de corps, which you cannot buy.

The previous Government got the balance between the public and private sectors completely wrong. I have said this before a number of times. Public spending went up to nearly 50 per cent of GDP when it should be nearly 40 per cent. As for the Armed Forces, we have got it the wrong way round. Public pay is not high enough, and we are making further cuts, as we have heard. Cuts worth £250 million are being made to servicemen’s allowances. Surely these are the people who should suffer last at a time of economic austerity, given what they are sacrificing. We must view the NATO level of 2 per cent of GDP on defence expenditure as a base, not a ceiling. While defence expenditure is set to go up over the spending review period in cash terms, as a percentage of GDP it is actually going to go down. Over the past three decades, our defence expenditure as a percentage of GDP has halved from 5 per cent. In 2009, it was 2.5 per cent. We are at war at the moment and, if you do the sums, you could argue that we are already at 1.5 per cent of GDP.

Our Armed Forces are spread too thinly. The SDSR is all about means, it is not about ends. We have aircraft carriers without aircraft and nuclear submarines without AWACS, and I fear that that is where the covenant is heading. It is now written in law for the first time in the Armed Forces Bill, but there is little action to justify those words. I just heard first hand a story from my son at boarding school. His friend’s uncle is a commanding officer and has recently had to use his own money to buy clothing and boots for his troops. Are we really stooping to this level? This parsimony reaches well beyond equipment. I am sure that most of us remember that in June 2008 the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Dannatt, who is in his place, pointed out that the starting salary of a new recruit was, on average, £16,000 compared, at that time, with the basic salary of a traffic warden of over £20,000. The pay scale has risen, but in line with inflation. It has not risen in line with the level of sacrifice that these men and women are making.

This SDSR has been drafted in wartime. We have to keep in mind the future. People’s memories can be short, especially when we enter a peacetime period. Our Armed Forces need to know that the covenant will be honoured in peace and in war. To protect the needs and interests of our Armed Forces, including our reserve forces, at home and abroad is not a choice the Government must make. It is compulsory. It is required because the Government are not just making good on their own commitment, they are holding true to the promise of the people. I do not think that any of us can question the strength and emotion of the people of this country. We see it expressed time and again. Just look at the support garnered through charities and the private sector. This is the big society at work. We have Help the Heroes, the Army Benevolent Fund, the Soldiers’ Charity and the Royal British Legion. I could go on.

It is very good to hear that the Government plan to start to right the discrepancy between compensation for physical injuries and for mental illnesses. For too long, the mental stresses and strains of our servicemen have had to be endured. They have not been recognised and have been undercompensated. Just this month, a professor at the Department of Psychology, Harvard University, told me the harrowing fact that in January 2009, for example, more United States soldiers committed suicide after returning from the battlefield than were killed in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

It is the people’s promise to repay the tremendous debt of gratitude that this nation owes to its Armed Forces. We know that soldiers attempt to fulfil their duties, whatever the circumstances; it is the commitment that they have made. But soldiers’ confidence and morale reaches much higher levels when they know that they have the support of the people back home, and the trust and support of the Government. They must know that the country can trust that the Government will take care of them while they are fighting, that they will take care of their families, that that is a priority, and that they will always show that commitment.

How can they feel that it is a priority when they see the way in which so many veterans are treated and some of the appalling accommodation that is available during peacetime and wartime? How can they feel that it is a priority when they are worried about the well-being of their families? In India, after my father died, my mother was, and still is, given the utmost level of care, affection and respect by the Indian Army. It is a lifetime commitment. We need to guarantee that veterans never feel as though their sacrifices have been forgotten.

The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, suggested that we should have an independent commissioner. I believe that we should have an independent veterans’ commission. A veterans' commissioner would co-ordinate outside the MoD and look at pensions, social security, prisons, health and charities to ensure that our veterans are protected and cared for because of the incredible contribution that they have made. There needs to be a balance between the MoD and the Armed Forces. The NHS has scared me greatly because doctors and nurses are often overshadowed by NHS managerial staff. In the MoD and the Armed Forces, is the tail wagging the dog?

In conclusion, the services are called the services because they serve our country. The right reverend Prelate spoke about leadership. Last week, this was explained to me by Professor Ranjay Gulati at Harvard Business School as a tripos: logos—the knowledge and experience needed to garner trust and respect from those who follow you; pathos—the emotional intelligence and understanding needed to form bonds with those who follow you; and ethos—the possession and adherence to a set of moral and ethical values that are important to those who follow you. The Armed Forces epitomise service leadership.

At Sandhurst, where my grandfather was commissioned, the motto was “Serve to Lead”. At the Indian Military Academy, where my father was commissioned, the motto was:

“The safety, honour and welfare of your country, come first, always and every time. The honour, welfare and comfort of the men you command comes next. Your own ease, comfort and safety comes last, always and every time”.

The Army is keeping its side of the covenant. I know that the Minister believes in the covenant. Unfortunately, the Government do not, and we as a nation should be ashamed of this.