Ukraine

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

The noble Baroness’s colleague posed the same question to me on Monday evening. I was able to pledge that I would take that matter back and have done so. I have referred it to officials; it will essentially be an FCDO responsibility. We have been very clear as a Government that we want to co-operate with all those who are sympathetic to supporting Ukraine.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, given the state of the ground conflict in Ukraine, I will ask a domestic question on reserves. In doing so, I declare an interest as the president of the Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations. It is quite clear from the ground situation that both Russian and Ukrainian ground forces are sustained as combat effective only through the massive mobilisation of reserve forces. Compare that with our domestic situation, where the current policy, confirmed by a Minister in the other place earlier this year, is that the Army Reserve will be reduced over the next 10 years by 10%. Can the Minister confirm that this is still the policy and that there will be some urgent revisitation of it?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I cannot perhaps give the noble and gallant Lord the specific reassurance he seeks, but he will understand that, with a new Government and the constant presence of threats confronting us, we constantly review what we think our need will be and what we think will be our required capability. He will be aware that there is an exciting programme for the reservists to be much more of a united force with our regular service personnel. He raises an important point; I cannot answer him specifically but it is an area of opportunity.

Ukraine: Weapons

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I partially covered my noble friend’s question in my earlier response, because it is these multiple launch rocket systems that we have committed to provide. The training has already begun for these. The objective is that, along with the contribution of the United States and Germany, we will deploy these systems urgently and without delay.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

Can I press the Minister on the original Question? It is not a matter of what allies have, or what our stockpiles are and the degree to which they have been run down. What the House needs to be reassured of is whether the MoD is conducting a review of the contractual linkages between the MoD and the defence supply base to ensure that we have the agility to sustain our war-fighting resilience—because it is our war-fighting resilience that has historically been most run down and is potentially the most vulnerable part of our overall national military capability.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I say to the noble and gallant Lord that, as previously indicated, the department is fully engaged with industry, because we want to ensure that all equipment granted in kind to the Ukrainian armed forces is replaced as expeditiously as possible, but also that, by continually managing and reviewing our own UK stock of weapons and munitions, we ensure that while we meet that commitment to Ukraine, our UK Armed Forces’ stocks are sufficiently maintained.

Ukraine: UK Military Support

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

We routinely engage with Turkey on regional matters, at all levels. Recent engagements have included the Montreux convention and vessel movements through the Bosphorus strait during the Ukraine-Russia crisis.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

Given the risks of escalation in the military elements of the conflict in Ukraine, it is quite clear that any further military aid will have to be less than decisive. In policy terms, therefore, is a prolonged and mutually self-hurting stalemate between Ukraine and Russia probably the best that can be achieved in the current circumstances?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My honourable friend in the other place used the adjective “attritional” to describe the conflict. That is probably pretty accurate. We are very clear about the magnitude of what the Ukrainian armed forces are contending with. Our role, along with that of other NATO partners and other global allies such as the United States and the EU, is to support the Ukrainian armed forces in their endeavour. I am afraid this will not be resolved in the near future. It is important that, as a country, we do everything with our allies to support what is right and to ensure that Ukraine is assisted in seeing off what is wrong.

Ukraine: Lethal Weapons

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Tuesday 5th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

Again, the noble Lord speaks for us all in the Chamber. This illegal war, with all its hideous and barbaric consequences, must fail. Certainly, we in the United Kingdom, with our allies and partners, are doing everything we can to ensure that Ukraine is robustly supported in its attempt to see off this evil.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, the question illuminates a difficult choice for the Government. The war in Ukraine, by military definition, remains limited. It is limited in strategic aim, in geography and means employed. Injecting greater lethal aid into that war is unlikely to be decisive. Indeed, far from it, it runs two very severe risks. One is the risk of prolongation and the other is the risk of escalation. The way to eliminate those risks can only be through dialogue. Can the Minister please update the House on what she believes to be the progress of that dialogue?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I think my noble friend Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon answered a Question recently on this very issue. He was quite clear that, although normalisation of relations with Russia is not possible at the moment, robust diplomatic engagement is necessary. This is very much an FCDO responsibility. I can reassure the noble and gallant Lord that the MoD is regularly in dialogue, not just with our defence allies and partners—whether within NATO or outwith—but also, of course, with the armed forces of Ukraine.

Defence: Type 45 Destroyers

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I say to the noble Baroness that the programme is under way; it is scheduled, and the other Type 45s will be going in subject to their operational obligations and their availability for the refit. I think the noble Baroness should understand that the conversion is a complex engineering project. The noble Lord, Lord West, and I may disagree on many things, but I think we are both agreed on the technical complexity of this and it is being delivered against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic. There has been a significant challenge that has tested industry and it has impacted the schedule, but we continue to monitor and review the programme.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, as we have seen in Ukraine, the most important vector of attack in conflict below the threshold of formalised warfare is a form of politicised war based on an effective narrative. I am sure the problem of the Type 45’s power plant will be expensively resolved, but what steps are we taking to improve our speed and effectiveness in translating military activity into an effective political narrative?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I am almost tempted to answer the question the other way around and say that, with the integrated review, the defence Command Paper and the allocation of budget to defence over the duration of this Parliament and exactly what that means for both equipment and shipbuilding, we have seen that there is a very manifest political resolve to support defence and ensure our capability is as good as it can be. As to the more strategic questions of how you relate what you are doing at the MoD end with what is required out on the front, as the noble and gallant Lord will understand, we are constantly assessing, identifying and recognising threat and addressing that with the multifaceted character of the capability we have.

Exchange of Naval Nuclear Propulsion Information Agreement

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Monday 17th January 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for the opportunity for this short debate. I reassure her that, although I am a landlubber, the importance of the nuclear enterprise transcends single service interests. Indeed, in common with most former defence chiefs, I maintain a close interest in the nation’s nuclear enterprise. This is not always easy since many of the Government’s formal publications and announcements on nuclear issues, such as last October’s annual update to Parliament, are, perhaps by design, somewhat opaque.

A consistent set of features of the nuclear enterprise is, however, clearly discernible. The enterprise is vital, expensive, fragile and, wholly understandably, beset with various risks. One area of that risk is the future propulsion system of our nuclear submarines, and one category of that fragility is the quality and future availability of suitably qualified nuclear personnel. The fragility is fully recognised, though it is, to be honest, far less obvious that it is being successfully ameliorated.

The recently announced AUKUS agreement is in many respects hugely welcome, as we have heard. It aligns the interests of three like-minded Governments in an increasingly important part of the world and against a commonly agreed threat. The genesis of agreement, however, is less obvious. It appears, anecdotally, to have been the opportunistic exploitation of a military-to-military inquiry about the challenges of adopting nuclear propulsion in a submarine enterprise. It certainly does not seem to be an initiative that spent years of cautious marinading in policy consideration. Rather, it was an opportunity to give substance to rhetoric. There may well be nothing wrong in that at all, but my concern is that a major foreign policy initiative that necessitates any dilution of the UK national effort, any diversion of our nuclear expertise or anything that has the potential to add fragility or risk to our own nuclear enterprise must be contemplated and embarked upon with extreme caution. I would welcome the Minister’s assurance that this risk is fully recognised and will be properly ameliorated.

Army Restructuring: Future Soldier

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I thank the noble and right reverend Lord very much indeed. He raises two important points. On recruitment, he is correct that challenges with recruitment were identified, and the approach to recruitment changed—and, actually, the position has turned around and is very encouraging. Part of what we are doing is to try to ensure that the Army represents an attractive career with an attractive future. Therefore, we are optimistic that recruitment will not be an issue and there will continue to be a good rate of applications to join the Army. We have no reason to think that that will not materialise.

On reservists and skills, one consequence of this reconfiguration, as I said earlier to the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, is to make this a much more attractive prospect for reservists, for two reasons. It gives them a sense that they are valued, acknowledged and regarded as part of the scene, as it were; whereas I think before that they may have felt that they were on the periphery, additional when needed but not at the centre of activity. This turns that around and makes sure that they are part of a whole-force approach.

The other interesting thing is, with the changes that have been introduced and some of the innovations that have been implemented in very recent times, we are now offering greater flexibility to reservists so they can choose, along with their employers, what is a suitable period of commitment for them. It used to be much more rigid: it was a short period away and then back to the full-time job. We are trying to make sure that that is much more flexible. We think that that will also appeal to a lot of people, depending on where they are in their career in the outside world, and that should facilitate heightened interest in the reserves, and, I hope, encourage more people to sign up to be reservists, in the knowledge that we are tailoring a system that is designed to suit them and their employers, as well as benefiting our whole-force approach.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

There is much to be excited about in this announcement—there is quite a lot of novelty—and, if I turned the clock back, I think it is an Army that I would want to join. I congratulate the architects. My worry is that, despite some presentational sleight of hand, it is an Army that will be some 9,000 fewer—and with that smaller Army the delivery will depend on a number of challenging things. Regardless of what the Minister has just said, it needs a perfect recruiting system. In respect of the reserves, it needs the willingness of employers to release reserves not as a last resort but as an integral part of what the Army needs to function on a daily basis. It also demands the adoption of some robotic and autonomous systems, which currently do not even have a legal framework within which to operate.

More widely, however, I want to turn to MACA—military aid to the civil authorities—which involves such things as assistance with foot and mouth, floods, Nightingale hospitals, post-Brexit supply chains and Covid vaccinations; all those things. Historically, those come out of what is called the Armed Forces’ irreducible capacity, but where within this structure is the irreducible spare capacity to meet the exponential rise in the tasks that relate to the resilience of the nation and which featured in the integrated review as among the principal future threats to the country? You cannot have reserves released by their employers to do MACA tasks in the UK when they form an essential part of making the regular force resilient. I think this House should be worried, despite many of the attractive novelties contained in this announcement.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

First, I thank the noble and gallant Lord very much indeed for his initial reaction and for his very helpful observation that this is an Army that he would like to join, as I understood him to say. I think that says a lot.

The noble and gallant Lord raises important issues. He first of all mentioned the reduction in the number of personnel. I think he will be aware of this, but in the past we tended to have numbers in boxes and on pieces of paper, which was very comforting, but actually they did not reflect the number of people whom we could call on if the chips were down. For various reasons, the numbers were perhaps inaccurate, or people were unavailable, and they were not a regular or reliable indicator of who we had to hand. The intention behind all this is that, when we talk about these figures, they represent men and women who are on hand, ready to serve and can be called upon.

The noble and gallant Lord mentioned recruitment. I repeat what I said to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, that recruitment has had fairly positive progress in the past two or three years, and we hope that can continue. On the reservists, again, as I indicated, we have always had an interest in the reserve side of our Armed Forces. There is nothing to suggest that that is diminishing. The whole point about the new structures and flexibilities is that that will be increasingly attractive to them. He made the important point that that is only as good as the willingness of the reservists to be more involved and the willingness of their employers to release them. Attempts have been made to ensure that that is a more flexible territory, whereby reservists benefit from getting long periods off. On the whole, employers have a very positive attitude to reservists, so we hope that that attitude of co-operation will continue.

On AI, the noble and gallant Lord is quite right: it continues, as we discussed during the passage of the Armed Forces Bill, to be an intricate, complex and challenging environment. He is aware that, as far as the MoD is concerned, there is a defence strategy coming out fairly imminently, so I cannot say any more about that, other than to reiterate what I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, that we are very clear that we must recruit to the Army people with skills that we need—and we will need the skills of people conversant with those areas of activity. The noble and gallant Lord makes an important point that we want to be sure that we have personnel who are of a calibre to cope with that new environment.

In relation to overall resilience and the Army’s ability to respond to the MACA requests, we have seen that very vividly and impressively articulated in the response to Covid—it is an important point. Bringing in recognition of the reserves and the appointment of the new company in York acknowledges that we need a way of steadily addressing that resilience issue so that we have a core of people poised to respond to these situations. We do not then necessarily take other forces away from what may be important deployed activity. I wish to reassure the noble Lord that implicit in the new structure is this essential component of flexibility and fluidity, so that there is much more movement and much more of a focus on having people available—maybe in smaller units; I accept that—to go to the job when the job needs to be done, wherever that job arises.

Armed Forces Bill

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 23rd November 2021 Lords Chamber

I sometimes get the feeling that the Minister believes that, if only we read our briefs from the MoD diligently enough and listened hard enough, we would accept what she is telling us about the Government’s position on lethal autonomous weapons. But there are fundamental questions at stake here which remain as yet unanswered. A review of the kind suggested in this amendment would be instrumental in answering them.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, I support this amendment. I am sorry that my name has not found its way on to the Order Paper; I had Covid last week and I failed the IT test of getting it properly registered.

I come at this from perhaps a different angle. I have spent perhaps rather too much of my latter career in the Ministry of Defence and understand the way it functions. It spends the vast majority of its time—and I think this is understandable—managing the crisis of the moment. It spends very little time, in truth, on strategic foresight, and therefore it spends quite a bit of the other part of its time on making good that lack of strategic foresight—and much of what this whole Armed Forces Bill is about is making good that lack of foresight. The thing that I support so much about this amendment is that it is an attempt to get ahead of the game.

The MoD properly stops and looks to the future in the times of its periodic reviews, and there was much to commend the last integrated review. There are two things I would pluck from it that are relevant to this amendment. First, the review was littered with the idea that the country was making a strategic bet on the future by way of investment in technology: technology would be the source of our new prosperity; it would be the source of our technological edge; we would become a superpower; it was the reason that we could reduce the size of our Armed Forces; it was through the exploitation of novel technology that we could hold our heads up high and not fear for our safety.

At the same time, elsewhere in the review—this is my formulation, not the review’s—two forms of warfare were identified. There is the one we do not want to fight—the reversion to formalised war at a scale above the threshold of kinetic conflict—and then there is this grey area of hybrid war; the war that we are currently engaged in, where our malevolent and malicious enemies seek to exploit every trick in the book and the rules of warfare in order to exploit new vectors of attack to effectively defeat us during peacetime in mendacious ways.

You can read as much as you want into the second thing, but this idea of a permanent competition for relative survival and advantage is undoubtedly a feature of the current global security situation. Therefore, in those moments of strategic foresight in the integrated review, we have in some ways identified the fact that the advantage given by novel technologies will be decisive and that we have enemies who will be mendacious in ways that we cannot quite comprehend.

I worry that, in the months to come, this Chamber might revert to its defence arguments being about counting the number of ships, air squadrons or tanks. The amendment will hold the Ministry of Defence and its generals to account by parliamentarians for the ways in which these weapons evolve—they will evolve at pace—and the rules that are to be employed by not just us but our adversaries and what is and is not their proper exploitation.

Having paused in that integrated review and discerned the future, however darkly, it would be gross negligence if we did not wish upon ourselves an instrument by which the evolution of these weapons and the rules involved in their employment were not the closest interest of parliamentarians and this House. The Ministry of Defence should be held to account over the coming months and years to see how it all plays out. This amendment would do so, and it has my unreserved support.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I apologise again for not speaking in Committee due to being at COP. I offer support and regret that I did not attach my name to this amendment. What the noble Lord, Lord Browne, said about public consultation in this process is really important, as is what the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton, said about parliamentary scrutiny. Those two things very much fit together.

I am very aware that the Minister started this day, many hours ago now, promising to read a book, so I will refer to a book but not ask her to read it. It is entitled Exponential: How Accelerating Technology is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It, and it is by Azeem Azhar. The thesis is that there is an exponential gap: technologies are taking off at an exponential rate, but society is only evolving incrementally. In terms of society, we can of course look at institutions like politics and the military.

Another book is very interesting in this area. Its co-author, Kai-Fu Lee, has described it as a scientific fiction book, and it posits the possibility of, within the next couple of decades, large quantities of drones learning to form swarms, with teamwork and redundancy. A swarm of 10,000 drones could wipe out half a city and theoretically cost as little as $10 million.

It is worth quoting the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, who said:

“The prospect of machines with the discretion and power to take human life is morally repugnant.”


That relates to some of the words in the podcast that the noble Lord, Lord Browne, referred to; I have not listened to it, but I will.

Fittingly, given what the Secretary-General said, the United Nations Association of the UK has very much been working on this issue, and communicating with the Government on it. In February, the Government told it that UK weapons systems

“will always be under human control”.

What we have heard from other noble Lords in this debate about how that language seems to have gone backwards is very concerning.

This is very pressing because the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons will hold an expert meeting on 2 December, I believe, which will look at controls on lethal autonomous weapons systems—LAWS, as they are known. It would be very encouraging to hear from the Minister, now or at some future point, what the Government plan to do if there are no positive outcomes from that—or, indeed, whatever the outcomes are. While the Government have ruled out an independent process, both the mine ban convention and the Convention on Cluster Munitions were ultimately negotiated outside the CCW.

Finally and very briefly, I will address proposed new subsection (2)(d) and how individual members of the Armed Forces might be held responsible. There is an interesting parallel here with the question on deploying autonomous vehicles—the issue of insurance and who will be held responsible if something goes wrong. Of course, the same issues of personal responsibility and how it is laid will face military personnel. This may sound like a distant thing, talking about decades, but I note that a report from Drone Wars UK notes that Protector, the new weaponised drone, is “autonomy enabled”. I think Drone Wars UK says it has been unable to establish what that means and what the Government intend to do with that autonomy-enabled capability, but the first of an initial batch of 16 Protectors is scheduled to arrive between 2021 and 2024, and the Protector is scheduled to enter service with the RAF in mid-2024.

So I think this is an urgent amendment, and I commend the noble Lord, Lord Browne, and the others on this, and I would hope to continue to work with them on the issue.

Armed Forces Bill

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 8th November 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches did not add our names to these two amendments, both of which seem to be small but important. In particular, as the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, said, Amendment 56 essentially asks the Government to go back to a prior commitment. Can the Minister commit to 100 champions in jobcentres? As the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, pointed out, the Minister’s noble friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, could not answer all the questions the other day in the Chamber. If it were possible for either DWP or the MoD to come forward with some statistics, that would be helpful. Normally, asking for annual reports on this, that and the other can be a little time-consuming and bureaucratic but, on this occasion, if the information is not available it is time to suggest that we ask the Government to make sure that it is available. Unless the Government can make a commitment, the amendment seems wholly appropriate.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

This amendment, which I do not particularly support or otherwise, would be an awful lot better placed if better evidence were available. There does not appear to be the relevant data. Personally, I am convinced that if that data were made available, it would re-establish in people’s minds and in society at large that the Armed Forces are one of the nation’s most successful organisations for social improvement among the people who join.

I fear that amendments such as this convey the impression that people enter the Armed Forces and then leave, at some later stage, damaged by the experience. That is far from the reality of the situation. Yes, some unfortunate people will struggle to find employment—some people struggle with second careers—but, by and large, people leave the Armed Forces both socially and professionally improved and go on to have highly successful second careers. So the publication of the evidence base would be hugely helpful in determining whether this sort of amendment was, in truth, required.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, this may have been a short debate, but it was interesting. Once again, I have no doubt about the commitment of the noble Lords, Lord Coaker and Lord Tunnicliffe, in taking an interest in these matters. Amendments 52 and 56 engage with the subject of, first, the number of veterans claiming universal credit, and secondly, Armed Forces champions.

I will deal with Amendment 52 first. The Government are delighted that the universal credit system has now been enhanced to allow the Department for Work and Pensions to collect information on how many universal credit claimants are veterans. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton, put his finger on the point: the all-important issue here is the data, which is not yet complete. It is still early days. The DWP is still building up its data base and working out what the data is telling them and how to make best use of it, including producing reports and making information public. This may well include making information available through the covenant annual report, as well as more routine data releases.

I understand that, as soon as decisions have been made, the DWP will write to the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, setting out its plans. I expect it to be able to do this early in the new year. Further, the MoD will keep a close eye on this area as well. We are also interested in the data being collected, so I, too, look forward to the DWP’s response on this matter. With that assurance, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

I will now address Amendment 56, again in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, which seeks to put into the Bill a specific number of Armed Forces champions who would be in place at all times. The number of Armed Forces champions, their specific roles and how and where they are deployed are detailed day-to-day operational matters for the DWP.

The DWP’s long-standing, undoubted and profound commitment to and support for the Armed Forces covenant is clear. Like the rest of this Government, my colleagues there do everything that they can to provide members of the Armed Forces community with the help and support that they deserve. I thought that the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton, made an important point about the impressions that we wish to create and what the perceptions might be. Armed Forces champions are key in supporting and enabling the DWP to provide that help and support, but setting out a specific number in the Bill will limit the DWP’s flexibility to adjust the support to meet levels of need and will do nothing to enhance the current support provided by the DWP to veterans and others.

The DWP works very closely with the MoD and the Office for Veterans’ Affairs to help ensure that those using its services get the help and support that they need. Earlier this year it introduced a new model. Once again, it is important to put all this into shape so that there is context. It introduced the new model to transform the support that the DWP provides to members of the Armed Forces. This change of approach by the DWP was not subjective; it reflected feedback that the department had received, including from formal research and from those representing members of the Armed Forces community.

The new model was designed to ensure that veterans and others are served in a more intelligent and effective way. It enables the department to better match available resources with the demand for its services. The new model has built on the successful network of Armed Forces champions, which had been in place within the DWP for a number of years.

As part of the new model, the department has introduced for the first time a dedicated Armed Forces role at middle management level. These roles have responsibility for building capability and sharing best practice on Armed Forces issues across the DWP network, as well as building networks with the tri-services. It is important to understand the relevance and significance of that conjunction of activity.

There is a lead role in each of the 11 Jobcentre Plus groups and, as part of its work, it oversees 50 Armed Forces champions stationed across the Jobcentre Plus network. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, was critical of that level of champions, but the work of the champions cannot be viewed in isolation, for the reasons that I have just described.

The champions have specific responsibility for supporting claimants who are members of the Armed Forces community. Under the new model of support, the champions also have a front-line role and will personally handle some claims for the first time, supporting veterans into work and helping to resolve some of the more complex cases where necessary. I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe—I think the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, also raised this point—that there is at least one Armed Forces champion in each of the 37 Jobcentre Plus districts.

The new model has been welcomed by the department’s Armed Forces stakeholders, who have been more interested, to be honest, in the structures and quality of services than in actual numbers. The DWP has listened to what stakeholders and researchers have said. Putting in place the new lead roles will help to improve the co-ordination of support activity and facilitate the sharing of best practice between the champions, and more widely across the department. The new roles also provide the opportunity for more pro-active work with the three armed services on resettlement and recruitment. Again, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton, took an interest in this issue.

In the early stages of introducing the new model, the DWP talked to a number of stakeholders, including Armed Forces charities and other groups, about the planned structures and roles. It explained how these would work in practice for stakeholders, as well as for individual claimants and their families. Now, almost six months in, the change seems to have settled in well and continues to be well received.

The DWP’s support is not limited to those with a formal Armed Forces role. For example, the new model enables the dedicated Armed Forces roles to complement the wider investment the department had already made during the pandemic in the recruitment of an additional 13,500 work coaches, bringing the total to 27,000. The Committee may be interested to know that every work coach receives specific training to support members of the Armed Forces community, and that an important part of the work of the new champions and lead roles is to build capability on Armed Forces issues across the whole department. This is not just across the Jobcentre Plus network but more widely, for example in DWP service centres.

As your Lordships will understand, there are many DWP staff, some based in individual jobcentre offices, who will be the local expert on Armed Forces issues and will work with those in the dedicated roles also to the support the Armed Forces. Many of these staff will have experienced service life themselves, either directly or through friends and family. They will use this experience in their work.

As within other parts of its business, the DWP will monitor and evaluate the new model, and will use the information gathered from this work to shape the support provided. These new arrangements come on top of other support that is already in place. For example, veterans are given early entry to the work and health programme, and if we can use service medical board evidence, a severely disabled veteran does not have to undergo additional examinations for employment and support allowance and universal credit purposes.

If the intention of this amendment is to make sure that the DWP always provides an Armed Forces champions service, it is unnecessary. The the DWP, through its words and actions, has consistently demonstrated its commitment to support veterans and members of the Armed Forces community. I accept that this is unintentional, but the amendment would constrain what are rightly day-to-day operational decisions for DWP managers. For example, holding open a post for a short while during a recruitment exercise would become unlawful. I know that is not the noble Lord’s intention, but we should let the expert delivery managers in the DWP manage their resources as they see fit.

With that reassurance of the scale of support within the DWP for Armed Forces personnel and veterans, I hope nthe noble Lord will be prepared to withdraw his amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

In the meantime, can the Minister review everything that I have said in these debates, or ask her officials to, and answer my questions?

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak in support of this amendment. It is one of the few elements of the Bill that seeks to get ahead of the game rather than just play catch-up. My particular perspective is that there is one element of the new security challenge that I feel has escaped proper consideration, one for which there seems no comprehensive or coherent plan of action, which is the issue most commonly referred to as “lawfare”.

To my view, the law is potentially one the most powerful weapons that we have in the security context of the age. It is both a weapon of defence that we should use to protect ourselves from the malign activity of others, and a weapon of attack that we should use to liberate our own freedom of action. As had been said, a fundamental deduction from the recent integrated review was that, within what is a significantly changed strategic context, we now live in a persistent state of adversarial competition, but one in which the resort to formalised warfare at scale is, perhaps by choice, avoided. The preferred vectors of attack in this competitive world are not, therefore, active, large-scale military operations, but more subtle, more deniable and less attributable activities.

The domains of active warfare are no longer necessarily primarily land, sea and air, but space, cyber and what is called the “cognitive domain”. Whereas traditional warfare has rules and laws and accepted norms of ethics and morality, the new character of grey-zone warfare is one in which our enemies exploit, for advantage, the absence of a legal framework within which to operate. So the new vectors of attack are activities such as disinformation, multiplied by internet bots; deniable cyber offensive activity; proxy terrorism; and political assassination, potentially using international private military companies.

More specifically in relation to this amendment, technological advancement in the areas of artificial intelligence, machine learning and autonomous weapons systems also offers scope for our adversaries to deny us their potential benefit while they exploit their unattributed use simply because no accepted legal framework for their authorised use yet exists. This context means that our principal geopolitical adversaries can employ methods that are both malign and aggressive but which we find difficult to respond to because we are unclear about what is morally, ethically and legally permissible. We risk, in effect, allowing our enemies to win without fighting.

In this House, during the passage of the overseas operations Bill, I bore witness to—forgive me—some remarkably contorted debates that appeared to present the law as either something inviolate to change or else an irremovable object that needed elegant methods of circumnavigation. I fear that our enemies will exploit our legal complexities to undermine our morale and devalue our credibility as an ally, among other things.

My view is that the only practical way to respond to the situation I have described and the one described in the integrated review is to start to use the law to our advantage: to go on the legal offensive, to reimagine our use of the law not as a time-honoured constraint on activity but as a weapon to be employed to liberate and confirm the legal boundaries of our own freedom of action while bringing much-needed constraint to the malign activities of our enemies. The Government need to give serious thought as to what aspects of this legal offensive need prioritisation. This House, consisting as it does of far more legal minds the military ones, has a significant role to play, but unless global Britain can make a meaningful contribution to the re-establishment of internationally accepted norms of morality, truth and justice, some might seriously undermine the willingness of our people to fight for them.

My strong view is that this country has all the necessary skills to embark on lawfare. I hope that, within their stated intent to help shape the future international order, the Government have the political will to do so as well. I believe the amendment is a small step in the right direction and it has my unreserved support.

[Lord Craig of Radley (CB)]

My Lords, I support this amendment and agree that there is an increasing need for clarity not just today but in the immediate future about the legality of, for example, remote aerial vehicle kinetic operations that involve loss of life, whether military, paramilitary or civilian. Many recent operations have been conducted on an asymmetric footing and not all perhaps with formal, clear-cut international approval. Of course, the right to self-defence is well understood, but how confident are we that emerging technologies in defence weapons systems and their oversight will remain invariably with a human in ultimate control? How it that to be maintained in order to comply with the present laws of conflict as new weapons systems with new technologies are deployed? Are the laws of conflict being overtaken by the possibilities of new types of lethal weapons systems?

Presumably the legality of a remote aerial vehicle operation applies to long-distance control from ships as well as to that from a land base that is remote geographically from the target. Does that base have to be on national territory? What if it is not? What if the operation of the remote vehicle is shared with an ally? How has the operation been approved? What justifications are required for an armed response or for initiating one?

What if the child of a non-combatant civilian accidentally killed by a remote kinetic strike subsequently grows up and seeks to sue the individual or individuals responsible for the control or authorisation of the attack that killed their parent? Will the loss or destruction of any official records of the attack be any sort of viable defence?

As technology moves defence capabilities forward, we will soon enter the era of loyal wingman UAVs and how they interact with their human control. Swarming mini drones are also emerging. There will soon be more, as novel digital technologies are exploited; for example, in the Tempest programme, although I do not have knowledge of secret projects.

The Armed Forces personnel—and this is the key point—involved in kinetic operations exploiting these novel technologies must have absolute clarity about the legal position in which they are required to operate. It is time to know more about how the Government are examining this issue, as I am sure they must be. It is time to be kept informed about the considerations of this complex legal issue as it evolves. Reports from the Secretary of State to Parliament are a must. A review, which should be already in hand, should be reported to Parliament.

Armed Forces Bill

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Grand Committee

I hope that the Minister might be able to outline her specific objections to including rates of gambling-related harm as part of the MoD’s existing research on UK Armed Forces mental health, beyond the argument that the department does not view it as a problem. Many people who are intimately involved with this, and in particular with veterans, do believe that it is a huge problem that deserves attention equal to that given to other mental health harms.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, I am very happy to add my support to my noble friend Lord Dannatt’s Amendment 48 regarding mental health support. I came to today’s debate thinking that it struck me as a very modest but effective way of keeping the Ministry of Defence’s feet to the fire on an issue patently requiring action. However, having listened today, I begin to worry that it may not be enough.

I think it is now more generally accepted in society that in human beings mental health is every bit as prevalent as physical health. The fact that mental health can suffer as a result of traumatic experience is also widely accepted. Mental health should nowadays carry no stigma and should be proactively monitored in the same way that physical and dental health are. This is where I improvise and part company with my prepared thoughts, as I reflect on my own experience of the mismatch in the approach to mental as opposed to physical health.

In September 1973, as an 18 year-old, I attended Sandhurst. On day one, I was weighed. Sandhurst had an idea that an officer had to weigh 12 stone 8 pounds. If you weighed more than that, you were put in a queue for extra PT. If you weighed less, you were put in a queue for extra milk.

In virtually every week, if not every day, of my life in the Army in the following 43 years, something to do with my physical health was assessed or tested, with a basic fitness test every other day, a battle fitness test probably once a month, the Army physical training assessment, the Army physical fitness assessment, annual medicals, hearing tests, foot inspections and dental tests. This mismatch between checks on my physical and mental well-being is remarkable. I was never once in 43 years asked by anybody how I felt mentally. I know from my own children that sports physiotherapists are everywhere. People, including my son, think nothing of taking a couple of sessions with a therapist to make them feel a bit better—he knows he will get better, but he just feels a bit down.

If the Minister will forgive me, the appearance of the annual online platform and £2.7 million in funding does not seem a sufficient amount of effort. It smacks of tokenism to meet something that actually needs a cultural shift in the whole approach to mental health from the Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defence. Whatever happens to this amendment, which I fully support, I hope that this sense of a need for a cultural shift is taken back to the ministry and the Armed Forces.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton. His sharing of his personal experience has honestly been of great benefit to the Committee on this group of amendments, although I am not sure I can match the impact it has probably had on your Lordships’ thinking. I should begin my first contribution to the Committee by offering my apologies for my absence from the first day; family commitments required that I was in Scotland.

The proposals before the Committee in this group have the same objective: they are aimed at safeguarding and improving the mental health and welfare of service personnel. I support Amendments 48 and 66A but have added my name to Amendment 60, and I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for tabling it. I agree with the arguments that he put forward and begin my remarks in support of his amendment by referring the Committee to his Oral Question in your Lordships’ House on 13 September, on the prevalence of gambling disorder in the Armed Forces. In my supplementary question then, I drew attention to the Army Headquarters Regional Command IPPD information sheet, Gambling—A Serious Risk to Military Personnel, which he has drawn from today. If the Committee will allow me, I wish to do the same for part of my argument.

In the preamble—this is the Army talking—it is stated that

“service personnel … are potentially more vulnerable and at greater risk to the harm that can result from gambling than the general public”.

As has been pointed out, it goes on to assert specifically that:

“Military veterans are 8 times more likely to become problem gamblers than the general population”.


This is not an historic document. Examination of it reveals in its last footnote a reference to 30 April 2019, which I understand to be its publication date, so it is a relatively modern view of the Army.

The Forces in Mind Trust study on veterans’ health and gambling, published on 23 September 2021, reinforces the Army’s official conclusion that there is that prevalence among veterans. It finds that veterans who responded to its survey were 10 times more likely than non-veteran respondents to experience gambling harm, and that veterans gambling were seven times more likely to be motivated by a need to escape or avoid distress. But this research is much more valuable than that, because it reveals some other very disturbing traits among veterans. Veteran participants were found to be at much greater risk of poor mental health outcomes, including depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, and to have an alcohol and/or nicotine dependence. This research found that veterans with problem gambling had higher healthcare and benefit costs, as well as higher levels of debt than non-veterans. It is relevant to the right reverend Prelate’s amendment that the recommendations from the report include routine screening for gambling problems, including when leaving the Armed Forces.

I have to be completely honest about this: on the publication of the report, the researchers emphasised that their research must be considered with some caution, principally because

“The sample was recruited online, and veterans who have gambled may have been more likely to take part”.


I say that, however, with some further qualification because it is exactly the broader discussion about gambling and gambling harm that the Government themselves have been relying on for the oft-made assertion in your Lordships’ House that such harm is present in only a very small number of gamblers. It is all based on research and data gathered in much the same way. However, Professor Simon Dymond, the lead author of the report, said:

“Despite this, the significance of the findings is indisputable. This is the first UK study to explore the impact of gambling on UK ex-Service personnel, and our findings are consistent with the international body of work which finds that veterans are at greater risk of gambling harm.”


From my perspective, in addition to its consistency with the international body of work referred to, this research is fully consistent with the position adopted by the Army itself, which is expressed unqualified in the transition IPPD information sheet. Further, it is significant that the veterans who participated, whether self-selecting or not, were motivated to gamble by the need for an escape from, or avoidance of, distress.

However, this is perhaps the most concerning finding of the research. I quote the executive summary of the study:

“All veterans surveyed experienced some symptoms of depression, anxiety, risky alcohol use, nicotine dependence at higher levels, and increased indications of PTSD and complex PTSD … diagnoses compared to non-veterans.”


Consequently, I repeat what I said on 13 September in my supplementary question. In considering this, the “appropriate questions”, both for the Government and for us, that need to be answered are—