Queen’s Speech

Lord Craig of Radley Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Craig of Radley (CB)]

My Lords, our current front line lacks resilience, with too few fighting ships, inadequate numbers of operational aircraft and reduced army manning—a legacy of years of underfunding. Our forces have not been exposed to serious enemy capability in conflict, nor experienced significant losses in men and materiel, since the Falklands conflict nearly 40 years ago. We had resilience then: sufficient strength in depth to cope, and to fight the first Gulf conflict in 1991 with sizeable forces—now way beyond our reach. Resilience in conventional power is gone. If the credibility of our nuclear deterrent is to stand, conventional forces must have hitting power and sustainability to first resist aggression and demonstrate national resolve. Without this, the Prime Minister would face the starkest of choices: rapidly to go nuclear or to surrender. I therefore welcome the uplift in the defence budget, but it must be sustained and increased.

I turn to two issues facing forces personnel that have troubled me and many others for some years. The first I brigade as the fog of law. In the past decade, we have seen more and more examples of the impact of differences in the laws of conflict and human rights legislation for service personnel engaged in combat or peace enforcement operations. When this House considered the Bill that became the Human Rights Act 1998, I argued that its provisions and those of the services’ Armed Forces Acts were incompatible, and that it would be better to incorporate into service legislation aspects of human rights that the services must follow and, in times of conflict, have pre-prepared derogations that could and should be observed. The then Lord Chancellor, in charge of the Bill, refused to countenance the concerns that I and others expressed.

I cannot claim to have had any detailed foresight of what has brought such legal trouble to many operating in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in Northern Ireland during Operation Banner. Those problems have been exacerbated by the way the courts, in particular the European Court of Human Rights, have chosen to extend the reach, both temporally and territorially, of the Human Rights Act 1998 well beyond what was envisaged to retain human rights legislation in national courts.

Only recently have the Government shown determination to tackle this problem. I welcome the consultation, just completed, on whether to introduce a statute of limitation. I welcome the setting up of an office and two Ministers for veteran affairs. I welcome the various statements by successive Defence Ministers in recent months and the Conservative Party 2017 manifesto commitment to protect our Armed Forces personnel from persistent legal claims, stating that our troops will be subject to the laws of armed conflict, not the European Court of Human Rights.

These are all welcome signs of intent, but there is regrettably no mention of them in this gracious Speech. I hope that this time the Government’s determination and resolve will be sustained, but if new legislation is required—I suspect that it will be—I strongly plead that it form part of the next revision of the Armed Forces Act and not be a stand-alone one which, like the Human Rights Act, may end up lacking compatibility with the Armed Forces Act.

The second personnel issue is the complex and indefensible treatment of Armed Forces pensions. By 2010 a common new pension scheme for all public servants, introduced by the Finance Act 2004, had a lifetime allowance—an individual’s pension pot—of £1.8 million and an annual pension input allowance of £255,000. The Treasury has since drastically reduced these sums to around £1 million and just £40,000 respectively. Breaching the annual allowance incurs a significant—for some a multithousand pound—tax charge. This must be paid forthwith, unless, by using irrevocable scheme pays, it is off-set by a pension reduction for the rest of life. Last year almost 4,000 people, including some 400 non-commissioned ranks, breached their annual allowance.

Of further concern for Armed Forces medics working alongside NHS colleagues, as many do, is that the Department of Health is seeking flexibility to adjust the annual allowance taper for NHS clinicians who have opted to work less to abate their tax liability. It would be unacceptable to have differing tapers for service and civilian personnel. Pay review bodies have also been critical of these pension arrangements.

Treasury vacillations over allowances and tax clawback arrangements smack of serious mismanagement in setting up the scheme. It cannot be defensible morally, let alone fair under the military covenant, to seek to recoup large sums either through a tax related to pensions yet to be paid or by a lifetime reduction in pension. Heads the Treasury wins, tails the pensioner loses.

There will be great pushback from the Treasury, but it should be held accountable for a botched scheme that is having adverse stress effects on some and a premature loss of experienced others in undermanned public services. The Chancellor of the Exchequer must review this nonsense—or, to use a now Oxford English Dictionary-approved word, this omnishambles.

Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 2018

Lord Craig of Radley Excerpts

Thursday 22nd March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Craig of Radley (CB)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Geidt, on a most insightful maiden speech.

I should like to speak about an organisation that I have been associated with for the past 20 years: the Commonwealth Partnership for Technology Management, more conveniently referred to by the four initials CPTM. Let me elaborate on that title. First, why Commonwealth? CPTM owes its foundation and continuing existence to CHOGM. It was set up by the 1995 CHOGM in New Zealand to replace earlier Commonwealth-wide consultative arrangements for technology management. It was formed as a company, limited by guarantee, in England to act as a co-operative organisation dedicated to bringing together elements of Commonwealth Governments, the private and public sectors and individual professionals on an open networking basis. The Commonwealth secretary-general appoints a liaison officer. The organisation is mandated to report biennially on its activities and achievements, latterly to the pre-CHOGM Foreign Ministers’ meetings. The report to this year’s ministerial meeting covers a wide range of activity in the past two years and sketches out CPTM’s intentions and ambitions for the future.

Partnership is a key word in CPTM’s title. Unique to this organisation is a code of practice—indeed, a philosophy—that the most valuable form of partnership is one that stresses and strives for win-win solutions and outcomes, rather than beggar-my-neighbour or confrontational exchanges. The values of tolerance and co-operation are equally prized. It has proved its worth as an organisation that relies totally on being able to bring together groups and individuals from around the Commonwealth—and beyond—to work, discuss and engage co-operatively together. A whole variety of topics has been addressed over the years, ranging from agriculture to tourism, from industry to academia and from disruptive digital technologies to programmes for national vision ambitions. The spread of interest that this has generated in the Commonwealth nations of Africa, Malaysia, the island communities of the Caribbean, Mauritius and elsewhere is impressive. So, too, is the level of engagement. One of the key features of CPTM over the past two decades has been its ability to bring together large, 500-plus groups from many Commonwealth countries, including up to a dozen Heads of State or Government prepared personally to devote considerable time and effort to the dialogues that take place. I have attended or spoken at a number of them.

Another key development in this partnership has been the growth of a younger element of participants, known colloquially as the 29ers. Their interest and enthusiastic engagement gives me confidence that the work of CPTM will be taken forward by new generations of participants. That confidence is further enhanced because, over the years, I have seen that many of today’s heads of participating countries, like their predecessors in office, have been attracted to CPTM and are actively pursuing their involvement. This partnership is encapsulated in the phrase “smart partnership”, and it is proving to be just that—smart in achievement, smart in bettering human relations and smart in striving for win-win outcomes and understandings.

Technology is the third word of CPTM’s title. It is perhaps hard to recall now that, 20 to 25 years ago, the buzzword for covering modernisation and development was just that—technology. It has, of course, been much superseded by the digital language and outlook of today’s fourth industrial revolution. CPTM, in that sense, may best be characterised as a platform for interactions. It provides the lodestone for progressive and interactive developments in today’s ever more integrated global societies. Certainly, CPTM has found that it has become a platform for much interaction and exchanges of ideas on modern developments. A most successful interchange has taken place recently within the CPTM format on disruptive digital technologies and their relationship to new currencies like bitcoins, engaging the active participation of a number of governors of national banks.

Finally, I turn to management, the fourth of the words in CPTM’s title. An important aspect of CPTM’s work is that it brings together individuals and groups with much experience and interest in the methods, theory and practice of leadership and governance, both in the public and private sectors. These are individuals with ideas and experiences to impart to newer and younger generations on how to bring out the best in national or personal endeavours. CPTM itself relies on a minute and dedicated staff. The chairman is Malaysian—indeed, domiciled there. The CEO and “action lady” is Dr Mihaela Smith, who has been with CPTM from its inception. She has a unique and unrivalled ability to connect personally with many of the Heads of State or Government who have played such an active part in the development and encouragement of CPTM in the past two decades. She spent last Monday visiting His Excellency President Museveni in Kampala at his personal request.

While much has gone well for CPTM, it has not enjoyed universal approval in some parts of the Commonwealth. In the UK, FCO interest in particular has been lacking under successive Administrations, in spite of varied attempts that I and others have made to foster it. CPTM’s approach is to bridge difficulties, rather than to hide behind them. I hope that those heads who have benefited from CPTM and are supportive of it will speak up for it next month and encourage greater interest in the UK and older Commonwealth countries that have felt obliged to keep a distance from it.

Time moves on and one individual stumbling block that has been an issue in the past is now behind us. Once again, I encourage the FCO and the Minister in particular, to whom Dr Smith, the CEO, has recently written, to revisit their thinking about CPTM and recognise what a force for good it is, has been and will be in the future. Brexit is with us, encouraging and reawakening interests in an expanding, global future—interests in which the great Commonwealth must have an exciting part to play and in which CPTM can make its own unique contribution.