Defence Reform Bill

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Wednesday 26th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

I absolutely agree with my noble and gallant friend Lord Craig on that point. On reading the Defence Committee report, Future Army 2020, I was concerned to note two statements:

“We are surprised that such a radical change to the Army’s structure … was not discussed at the National Security Council”,

and,

“We note that the Secretary of State for Defence accepts that Army 2020 was designed to fit a financial envelope”.

The financial envelope includes not just the Army but the other two services. If we look at history, an annual debate was held in both Houses on the estimates for the Navy and the Army. We are therefore putting back history, as it were, if we have an annual estimate. Particularly in this case, I note the suggestion that the first discussion should be in January 2015 because, of course, when the strategic defence review 2010 was introduced it was clear that its achievement was dependent on the money that would be available in 2015. Looking around, it seems pretty obvious that that amount of money may not be available—in which case, all three services will have to face a review of the current plans.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I very much echo the sentiments of my noble friend Lord King. I think there is a general feeling that in the latest cutbacks in the forces the Army seems to have taken a rather greater cut than the other two services. Considering that the Army has been deployed almost continuously since the Troubles began in Northern Ireland in 1969, one has slightly to question the wisdom of the Army seemingly taking rather more punishment than the other two services.

However, I do think that the Opposition have a bit of nerve in tabling this amendment, which somewhat echoes the amendment withdrawn by the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, because, at the end of the day, we are paying now for the legacy that this Government inherited when they took power at the beginning of this Parliament. If you have £40 billion of procurement that has not been funded, you obviously at that stage have a serious problem. Something went badly wrong. When the aircraft carriers were ordered by the previous Government the roof had fallen in on the economy and there was clearly no money to pay for them. It does not matter whether they were a good idea, the money was not there and the Defence Council went ahead and ordered them. For some extraordinary reason, there was no ministerial override from the Permanent Secretary saying that the money was not there. That strikes me as a very serious shortcoming in the way in which our affairs are being run. Let us face it, there is always a temptation for politicians to order things that they cannot afford. On the other hand, we look to our civil servants to preserve the integrity of the finances of the department, and that did not seem to happen. I consider that the Army is suffering from some very bad decisions that were taken in the previous Parliament and the legacy of an overhang of unfunded procurement. Savings had to be found somewhere; and it is the Army. It is extremely regrettable that the Army has to take the punishment in this way.

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

My Lords, I was not intending to intervene in this debate but feel that I must, in order to correct some of the myths—which is a polite way of putting it—just purveyed by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton. I was of course the Minister responsible for defence reform in the last three years of the last Government and, indeed, possibly the Minister to whom the noble Lord was referring when he talked about ministerial responsibility. I must tell him that during that time we always stayed within our annual cash limits. So far as the longer-term financing programme was concerned, we were fully and adequately funded on the basis of a 1.5% real terms increase in the defence budget, which was our policy at the time. It was a correct policy and I wish that it had been continued. It was very regrettable that this Government came in and made excessive cuts in public spending, which drove the economy down. The economy was reviving before we left office. The House will recall that in the first half of 2010 the economy grew, at first, by 0.3% and then by 0.7%. When this Government came in with their excessive spending cuts, the growth fell away again. The economy has been in the doldrums, more or less, ever since. That was a mistake made entirely by this Government.

In my view, the decisions of the previous Government on defence procurement were thoroughly responsible. It was very necessary to provide for two carriers; it is an essential arm in our ability to intervene around the world, irrespective of whether we have friendly powers that are willing to provide us with airfields a suitably close distance to where our troops might be deployed or where we need to bring influence or physical power—kinetic power, if necessary—to bear. That was a right decision.

It was a crazy decision to cancel those aircraft carriers—or, at least, to cancel the carrier strike capability of the nation for 10 years. Of course we need two aircraft carriers, because otherwise we cannot be absolutely certain that when we need an aircraft carrier it will be available and will not be in refit. The decisions of the last Government on defence procurement were thoroughly responsible. They were certainly funded. I am sorry to see that, after all the denials that have been made over the last few years by everybody who actually knows the facts, the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, should still be purveying a completely untrue account of events.

Armed Forces: Legal Challenge

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Thursday 7th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Faulks, who described himself as “a mere lawyer”. I know him to be more than a mere lawyer; he is an extremely good one, and therefore he must be well aware that, with this debate, he is stepping into a serious legal minefield.

The report by Tugendhat and Croft, to which reference has already been made, has made it quite clear that they do not consider that the military should be in any way above the law. It does present us, however, with enormous problems. I am not a lawyer, but I would like to divide the two activities of the military into two separate categories. One I would describe as the heat of battle and the other is cold blood.

I will deal with cold blood first. I do not think there is any excuse for an armed serviceman to murder a helpless prisoner. I do not think that the brutal treatment of detainees who are completely helpless victims in the hands of those who are supposed to be looking after them can be defended in any way. I remain to be convinced that any serious intelligence got through torturing detainees has actually saved British lives. On top of that, we leave the moral high ground when we descend into this sort of behaviour, and, inevitably, it gets out. What is almost beyond doubt is that when this stuff does get out, the effect it has justifies the actions of terrorists to carry out even more atrocious acts which put British lives at risk. So, in the category of cold blood, I do not think that anything other than the ruthless application of the law should be applied.

The heat of battle, though, is very much more difficult. The problem is that the law deals in facts; it does not deal in context. Let us face it, the military are the only people who are in the business of actually having to kill people. That puts them in a unique position in our society. If a soldier shoots a civilian, and that civilian is subsequently found to be unarmed and going about his lawful business, it sounds as though he has committed an unforgivable act, but if the context is one of ambushes, sniper fire and suicide bombings, the whole context changes that act. We have to accept that the pressures our military have been under in Helmand province, for instance, where they are dealing with a population some of whom are more than happy to kill them while others are not, completely changes the context in which acts like that are carried out.

I remember reading in the paper about the US Marine Corps in Helmand a few years ago. Some US marines were watching a rather distinguished looking Afghan man standing some way away in a field. They had him in their binoculars and they were wondering what on earth he was doing. This went on for some time, but eventually, they gave up, saying, “We won’t bother”. One marine turned around to walk away, whereupon the man picked up a rifle and shot him in the back. If you are dealing with that sort of environment, it is extremely difficult to bring the courtroom into the actions that soldiers take in such circumstances. If you are on live round training in the military, where you walk down a theoretical alley and targets pop out all around, I have to tell noble Lords that it is very difficult not to shoot the nun straight through the head because your reactions have to be very quick, and sometimes people get it wrong.

With the wisdom of hindsight, the military could have avoided practically every disaster that has ever happened, but the problem is that good armies are trained to take the fight to the enemy. The British Army in particular specialises in the friendly approach of winning hearts and minds, but that does not come without risk, and it is certainly very difficult when you are dealing with people such as Afghans.

On a totally separate issue, I turn to the question of civil liability. I have to say that during my military career, comprising a rather undistinguished three years, I never heard a shot fired in anger. However, I was nearly killed twice while training in Thetford in Norfolk. The first time was when my platoon was acting as the enemy at night. I was running ahead, because the platoon was behind the rest of the battalion that we were supposed to be attacking, when I fell into a bomb crater. Very luckily, I turned completely head over heels and landed on my back at the bottom of what was really quite a deep crater. If I had not done so, I might have broken my neck and died. Later on in our training we were training with live rounds. I inspected the Bren gun of the guardsman who had been firing and it was clear. I walked forward. He put the magazine back on to the gun and pulled the trigger. Those who know about Bren guns will know that that means that the thing goes off. The butt of the gun was on the ground and the bullet went straight over my head.

Are we saying that, if I had been killed in either of those circumstances, it would have been right for my family to have sued the Army because of something it had done wrong? Come on, let us live in the serious world. My noble friend Lord Faulks compared training in the Army to the Factories Acts and so on, but I do not believe that life is like that. You have to train in reasonably extreme circumstances in the military, and you run risks when you do that. Regrettably, people die quite regularly when training with the British military. If they all sue because someone did something wrong and someone died, where on earth will we end up? It strikes me that we are moving into very difficult territory if we do that.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, referred to Snatch Land Rovers. We deployed Snatch Land Rovers not because we had much more sophisticated vehicles that we could have used instead, but because we had nothing else at the time. The military has a great habit of being equipped to fight the previous war, never the current one. Eventually Snatch Land Rovers were replaced, but the fact is that we did not have the option to use anything better. This is another thing that is almost inevitably going to happen with the military. On day one of any conflict, it is never going to have the right equipment to fight that particular war.

We have to be very careful that we do not go down the same road as the National Health Service, where everyone now sues if something goes wrong with the result that it costs the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds a year. It would be regrettable if the military suffered the same fate.

Defence: Better Defence Acquisition

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I encourage noble Lords to keep their questions brief. We have only 20 minutes and quite a few people want to speak.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I very much welcome my noble friend’s Statement. GOCO will certainly introduce commercial disciplines and the incentives that can be provided by the private sector.

I have two questions for him. How long does he think these contracts will run for? How many years are we talking about? Will a GOCO address the question of the affordability of major projects? As we know, in the past we have seen enormous amounts of equipment ordered, particularly by the previous Government, although clearly there was not any money to pay for it. Will this introduction of a GOCO improve that situation in the future?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, the answer to my noble friend’s first question is nine years. The answer to his second question is yes. We are determined. We feel that the discipline that will be brought in by a GOCO will make everything much more affordable and we will not have the kind of fantasy world that defence procurement has had in the past.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, on the last point, I arranged a briefing—I am not sure whether the noble Baroness was there—at which the Minister for Defence Equipment, Support and Technology briefed noble Lords. He was hugely impressed by the depth of experience on all sides. He came to see me afterwards and asked if it would be possible to brief either individually or as a group. He is very keen to hear any suggestions and observations, and is aware that I am looking at noble Lords who have had huge responsibilities on this very subject in the past and know a great deal about it—a great deal more than I do. We are in the assessment phase. We are listening and learning and want to hear any suggestions. No decision will be made until next summer, so there is still plenty of time to hear what any noble Lord tells us.

Picking up on what the noble Baroness said, we obviously want to keep skills as far as possible and we feel that the GOCO would do that. We feel that of all the disciplines that it would bring to this, it would help to cut down the time taken for procurement. Taking the carriers as an example, with all the disciplines that it could bring, and being able to employ higher-paid people, it may be able to do things quicker. I do not want to take anything away from what DE&S has done—the noble Lord mentioned that—and I pay tribute to all the very hard-working civil servants and members of the Armed Forces who have worked there. However, they are constrained by Civil Service restrictions and we need to get more discipline and more incentive to get equipment for the Armed Forces quicker and more efficiently.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

Following what the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, said, we are proposing a GOCO that may or may not turn out to be a monopoly. If it did turn out to be a monopoly, does my noble friend not agree that you are better off with a private sector monopoly than with a Civil Service one? Also, the prospect of competition being introduced after nine years will always be there, whatever happens to that GOCO.

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, we are talking about two things. We are talking about the GOCO but also a single-source regulation situation. We feel that the disciplines that we would place on the GOCO would ensure that there is not a monopoly.

Armed Forces: Army Basing Plan

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I agree with everything that my noble friend says about the Royal Marines. The Secretary of State was telling me last night how impressed he was when he visited them on winter training in Norway earlier this week. I agree with my noble friend that remaining in Arbroath will be good for the Royal Marines and for their families. As I said earlier, 45 Commando Royal Marines will remain in Arbroath for the foreseeable future. We investigated the feasibility of the move to the south-west but that option did not, at this stage, represent value for money and Arbroath is not needed for Army basing in Scotland. It is my understanding, as my noble friend said, that 45 Commando is very happy with this decision.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I noticed that the Statement includes a proposal to sell off Hyde Park barracks, presumably because it is so incredibly valuable. Does my noble friend have any idea where the Household Cavalry would go if that was done?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, that is a difficult question for me to answer. Of course, if the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment was ordered to leave, it would have to go. However, as the Statement made clear, a lot of research needs to be done before it can move out. Suitable barracks would need to be found within the centre of London for it to move to, with all the costing worked out. It would be very complicated, but we would be irresponsible not to look into it.

Armed Forces

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I should start by saying that I work for an American defence company called Curtis Wright. The Wright in Curtis Wright was the Wright brothers. Curtis Wright supplied many fighter aircraft to the US Air Force during the last war. After the war somebody came along and said, “We think you should look very closely at the whole idea of jet propulsion for fighter aircraft”. Curtis Wright looked at it very carefully and said, “No, this is not the answer”. Your Lordships will not be surprised to know that Curtis Wright are not in the production of fighter aircraft any more, but they are involved in a number of other technical areas in defence supply. It is always a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, because—let us face it—he does not lack chutzpah when it comes to defending the actions of the previous Government.

I will deal, firstly, with the question of defence specialisation. This has a certain allure to it because what it means is that different countries in Europe would take over the sole supply of the capability of certain bits of defence. The very obvious answer to that would be that armour should be in the hands of the Germans. If the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, talks to his honourable friend in the other place, Gisela Stuart, who is German, she will tell him that the Germans have become completely pacifist. If we had this arrangement, and we decided we wanted to fight an armoured conflict somewhere, we could not do it because the Germans would not fight. There seem to be enormous problems. The noble Lord says that when this great unification of European forces was put together, they would have to sign up to looking after our colonies. The Spanish are extremely hostile to the idea of us defending the Falklands at all, and I am not sure that they are going to sign up to that in any way. There are enormous shortcomings.

I will move on to the great debate, which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, about the size of the deficit inherited by this Government. Was it £37 billion or £38 billion of unfunded procurement over 10 years? Or was it a smaller figure? It must have been a pretty massive figure because otherwise we would not have had the devastating review of our whole procurement programme, cutting out ranges of procurement. The Harriers had to go, as did the maritime patrol aircraft and so forth. That would not have happened if there had not been a very serious problem which this Government had to address. I do not expect the Minister to answer this when she sums up, but perhaps she could write to me about it. Last Tuesday, my noble friend Lord Trefgarne gave lunch to Sir Clive Whitmore, who used to be the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Defence when I was there and in the time of my noble friend Lord King. Clive Whitmore, who understood politicians very clearly, was famous for saying all the time, “I have to remind you, Ministers, that I am the chief accounting officer of the Ministry of Defence, and if you want to spend money you have not got, I want a ministerial override”. As your Lordships know, a ministerial override is something that comes from the Permanent Secretary and has to be signed by a Minister. It basically says that “I, as a Permanent Secretary, advise against this particular procurement because the funds are not available and they have to be signed off by a Minister”.

The final signing off of the aircraft carriers was in 2009. The roof had fallen in on the whole economy, and we had complete disaster in every direction. It was obvious to a child of five that there was going to be no more money coming into the defence budget. At the same time, two aircraft carriers were ordered at a cost of around £5 billion. That was on top of a mass of other equipment which had been ordered but for which there were no funds whatever. What happened in the Ministry of Defence? Why were there no ministerial overrides? We look to our Civil Service to guarantee the continuity and solvency of departments of state. What went wrong that that did not kick in? What provision has now been made in the Ministry of Defence to ensure that this sort of thing does not happen in the future? Perhaps that could be put in a letter. We should be seriously concerned if we reach a position where things are being ordered in this way. This is always going to happen in political life as politicians believe they can buy people’s votes by putting out enormous orders and there could be no better way of buying votes than to have two aircraft carriers being built simultaneously in every shipyard in the country so the largesse could be spread as widely as possible. Why was there not a ministerial override saying, “The funds are not available for this, I therefore do not recommend it, and I am doing it only because I am ordered to by the Minister”?

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

Perhaps I can help the noble Lord and also defend civil servants whose reputations might otherwise be tarnished by what he has just said. We had the most conscientious and able Permanent Secretary and finance director in my time. There was no ministerial override because there did not need to be one as the carrier programme, like other parts of our programme, was funded and properly provided for within our defence budget.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

That no doubt explains why the first thing this Government tried to do when they got in was to cancel the carrier programme, only to find that it could not be cancelled because BAS is very good at tying up such incredibly tight contracts that it would have cost more to cancel than to go ahead with it. I do not totally buy that: there is something seriously wrong here, and I do not think we would have the current difficulties if there had been a few more ministerial overrides in the past. Critics of my right honourable friend, Philip Hammond, the new Secretary of State, say that he is just a number cruncher who does not know anything about defence priorities. He understands very well the first defence priority, which is that you do not order kit if you do not have the money to pay for it. His second priority is balancing the budget, and he therefore takes total care that we are not going to run into any major crisis, such as the one we have experienced recently. His business experience will be valuable, and he is the ideal man to be holding the position of Secretary of State.

It is not just a shambles that we find in the administration of the Ministry of Defence. We used to be able to rely on men in uniform to do the right thing, but what have we seen? We have seen the humiliation of the retreat from Basra, which raises serious questions about the intelligence given to our military commanders before they went in. Was it a complete surprise that the Iranians decided to get involved in all the Shia militias there? The result was that we had to pull out. In terms of safe passage to get back to the airport, we had to do a deal whereby we would not go back in. The Americans were, to put it mildly, dismayed, and eventually the Iraqi Government took the view that such was the appalling shambles left behind in Basra that they had to go in with the Iraqi Army and US Marine Corps. Once they went back in, they certainly sorted out the problems there, and there has not been much of a problem there since.

Almost as a reaction to Basra, the British Army afterwards decided to deploy 3,500 men in Helmand province. What was the intelligence there? Did they not know that the Pashtuns in Helmand loathe all foreigners, and the foreigners they loathe more than any others are the British, because they still have not forgiven us for the wars we fought against them in the 19th century? The result was that we nearly lost that whole force of 3,500 men, but for the fantastic air power provided by NATO, which pulverised all the mud villages in front of it but would not have done an awful lot for hearts and minds in Afghanistan.

I am actually seriously worried about where the Ministry of Defence has gone in the past. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State has a serious problem of getting this thing back into some sort of order, both in terms of finances and, I hope, in getting involved in operational matters, because serious problems have been created for which we are paying a hefty price. I wish I could say that I looked to the future with confidence as regards the serious challenges facing my right honourable friend. He has an awful lot of work to do.

European Defence Agency

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I went up to RAF Waddington a couple of weeks ago and saw for myself what the noble Lord has talked about. I cannot answer from the Dispatch Box whether the French will be involved in that. As I have said previously from the Dispatch Box on many occasions, I welcome as much co-operation with the French as possible. We are working with them in a lot of areas. Noble Lords may have seen in the Daily Telegraph today the photograph of our Royal Marines training off Corsica with the French marines.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, would not European defence co-operation have been enhanced if the merger between BAES and EADS had gone ahead? Was it not a tragedy that this deal was bombed by Chancellor Merkel?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend that there would have been some benefits from the two companies joining up. However, having said that, I think that BAE will continue to thrive on its own. It has some wonderful products and Ministers in the Ministry of Defence do their very best to help BAE sell them.