Armed Forces: Capability

Lord Hutton of Furness Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hutton of Furness (Lab)]

My Lords, I draw the attention of your Lordships’ House to the interests I have declared in the register. I act as an adviser and consultant to Lockheed Martin here in the United Kingdom. I start by associating myself with the words of my noble friends Lord Robertson, Lord West and Lord Reid, and those of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, all of whom I agree very strongly with.

I believe that the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review is a more coherent and impressive strategy and framework than the 2010 document, which, as we all know, was largely designed to make painful and difficult cuts in the capability, capacity and strength of the UK Armed Forces. The most important element in the 2015 strategy is the Government’s very welcome and positive commitment to ensuring that the United Kingdom and our Armed Forces are able to contribute large-scale expeditionary and amphibious war-fighting capabilities against a technologically equivalent power. That is a very important commitment and aspiration. But, as we all know, herein lies the rub: even though that capacity and capability are vital for Britain’s long-term strategic goals, after several years of cuts to our defence forces we are trying to deploy and maintain that capability with pitifully few platforms and too few trained and deployable personnel.

If one looks at the strategy that the Government have set out—consciously and deliberately limiting salary increases to our Armed Forces—at a stroke, it made the work of the pay review body superfluous. They are restricting the important elements that will attract and recruit the people we want at a time when wage growth is significant and employment is high, so there is a very serious problem here. We have too few platforms and too few people who are readily deployable and trained.

In the time I have, I will make two or three points. Some have been made by noble Lords but it is worth dwelling on them. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, was the first to mention the importance of attrition. As far as I can see, no allowance at all is made in the strategy for any attrition of our key weapons and platforms. In times of peace that may be fantastic, but at times of war it is not such a clever strategy—particularly if, heaven forbid, we found ourselves pitted against a technologically equivalent power; that is not an impossibility.

Of the three armed services, my real concern today is the Royal Navy. The Royal Navy is under the greatest pressure of all the three services and has been cut disastrously to below a sustainable level, both in platforms and in people. I do not dispute for a second that the Type 45 destroyers and the Type 26 frigates will be much more capable platforms, delivering much more kinetic power. But there is one problem: they can only be in one place at a time, and we simply do not have enough platforms, particularly if we have to prepare for the possibility of the carrier battle groups. The Queen Elizabeth class ships would have to be defended entirely by Royal Navy assets. I think we are going to struggle to do that, and it is critical that the Government address that point.

The RAF is already operating flat out on its existing missions. The air police work in the Baltics, in Syria and in Iraq, and provide quick-reaction aircraft in the Falklands. Those are all fairly modest operations, and I do not see any spare capacity there at all. Although I strongly welcome General Carter’s new focus on deploying the Army at divisional strength with new strike brigades, no provision at all seems to be made in SDSR 2015 regarding where the air defence role is going to come from. Our Rapier forces are fully committed to defending the Falklands. Pulling them out of there would send a very unfortunate signal.

There is more work to be done. I do not think the strategy is complete. Of course, Ministers will have to make a very difficult set of decisions about resources. But the bottom line is simply this: these are the most dangerous times since the end of the Cold War. We are taking more risks with the defence of the United Kingdom than we reasonably ought to be taking.