Queen’s Speech

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gilbert]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Wood of Anfield on taking up his new responsibilities, on which he made a very distinguished “maiden speech”. I sincerely hope that we will hear more from him in the future, as our debates will be enriched by his contributions.

I wish to tackle only two issues, one of which I have not talked about before in your Lordships’ House. International terrorism constitutes a threat to all of us. It is a threat to Shi’ites, Muslims, Pakistanis, Arabs, Mr Putin and to every civilised country. So far as I know, outside South America it has spread almost everywhere. However, I am concerned that up to now I have seen no concerted attempt on the part of international Governments to take on this threat. We spend a huge amount of money on physical protection at our airports and that sort of thing and on making sure that we can deal with any suicide terrorists—it is the suicide terrorists that I am talking about—before they detonate their weapons, but we do nothing to prevent their being poisoned into believing that suicide terrorist acts are worthy things to do. These terrorists are not just indifferent to death; they actually welcome it because they are taught to do so by some very evil men. I do not for a moment think—I am sure that neither do your Lordships—that all mullahs are tainted in this way but quite a lot of them are. It is high time that we organised the international community to tackle this issue. I hope that this Government will take a lead in letting the world know precisely who are the mullahs responsible for indoctrinating young men and women into the belief that suicide terrorism is an admirable thing that will produce material rewards for them and their families. It is up to us as an international community to try to silence them by whatever means necessary—I would not be too squeamish about that myself—and I do not see any sign of it. We should also make sure that the message they put out is countered by the whole international civilised community.

The other matter that I want briefly to talk about is aeroplanes—the C-17—which should not surprise those noble Lords who have heard me speak before on defence matters. A couple of days ago, the Minister teased me, quite fairly, about the A400M. I am quite happy to be teased by him about that, but he should do so on the right grounds. I have no objection whatever to the A400M in terms of its capability; I am just absolutely convinced that it is not the plane that this country needs and, much worse, if we have it, we will lose the C-130 and our interoperability over a whole range of air transport capabilities, as he knows.

More importantly, I want to draw your Lordships’ attention to the fact that the C-17 is a remarkably capable aircraft that is now being run by Australia, Canada, India and this country—to say nothing of the United States. It is a remarkable plane, in that it has an excellent short-field capability and can get into airports that are quite inaccessible in mountain areas. It has a very good turning capability on the ground, and is also good at handling non-tarmac runways. All in all, it is a piece of kit that would go down extremely well in international aid missions.

I have said privately to Ministers in the past—and I am now saying it publicly—that they should talk to our Commonwealth friends to see if we can get a group together, consisting of all the countries I mentioned that fly the C-17, including Australia, India, ourselves and Canada. It is admirably available for dealing with natural catastrophes, and we are shortly about to acquire our eighth C-17. I think the last one is being delivered in response to what the noble Lord, Lord King, talked about earlier, regarding whether or not we would be able to get all the kit that we want out of Afghanistan. I am delighted that we are acquiring the plane for that. If we get the kit out by C-17, there is nothing that the Pakistanis could do about it, even if they wanted to. That is a wholly admirable development.

I suggest that the Minister holds talks with the countries that I have named. Although I have not counted them, they cover many degrees of longitude on this planet and, for that matter—with Australia in the southern hemisphere—many degrees of latitude. That is the footprint of where these planes are based. Not only are they enormously valuable in themselves, they are extremely well placed to run international aid missions after catastrophes. I very much hope that the Minister can tell the House that he would be prepared to talk to his colleagues in other Commonwealth countries to see if we can set up a proper group based on the C-17 to engage in that sort of activity.