Armed Forces Act (Continuation) Order 2017

Lord Judd Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord was absolutely right to draw attention to the non-accountability of the Russians for their actions. I was for some years rapporteur to the Council of Europe on the conflict in Chechnya. One thing that drove me to despair was not only their brutal behaviour but the way in which they were recruiting for extremists. People were driven into the arms of the extremists by their behaviour.

It has been a very interesting debate, due in large part to the thoughtful and wise speech by the noble Earl and the firm and trenchant speech by my noble friend Lord Touhig. We should in debates of this kind always take some time to pay the warmest, unlimited tribute to the men and women of our armed services, the security services and the police, who carry so much responsibility in such demanding and exacting circumstances on our behalf.

I should perhaps declare an interest. I had a short service ground commission in the RAF during the Cold War. I was subsequently Minister for Defence responsible for the Navy, when we still had Service Ministers. Despite the awful circumstances, I found that a very fulfilling and enjoyable role.

Surely the first thing we should do in debating defence is to examine and define the threat. We should not start by talking about percentages of expenditure. We should ask: what is the real threat that faces us? What should we be doing to respond to that threat? What does that demand of us? How much is it responsibly essential to pay to respond to that? We sometimes forgo that debate, which leads to a great deal of misunderstanding. What is the threat?

For most ordinary people, one of the biggest threats in their lives is terrorism and extremism. What does that demand of us? It demands extremely good, highly qualified security services—we are deeply grateful for all they do on our behalf. It also requires a great deal of support from the police. However, we have to ask what leads people into extremist positions. We have always to remember that we are in a battle for hearts and minds. This can at times be extremely exacting, but it demands the highest conduct in the values that we proclaim because, if we slip from them, we play into the hands of the recruiters for the extremists.

I get very worried by some of Trump’s language. When Trump starts advocating waterboarding again and talks loosely on Twitter about the acceptability of torture, I get extremely worried. How many new recruits for extremism has he made by those few ill-judged, remarks? We therefore have a great responsibility as a long-standing ally of the United States to stand firm in our position and not yield an inch. I know from my long-standing involvement with people in the United States that many will rejoice if we do that.

The Minister is absolutely right to emphasise the unpredictability, instability and complexity of the situation. It is unnecessary to mention all the places in the world which have been listed several times in this debate, but I am glad that we have also talked about migration—refugees and displaced people—and climate change. Those two factors taken together might make anything we face at the moment seem like child’s play by comparison. We have also touched on the issue of world trade—of moving from an ordered approach to a phase of possibly aggressive free markets, without that moderating influence. That in itself becomes threatening.

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Empey, on raising another point. We must ask ourselves whether the carriers as we now have them and Polaris as it now stands are not distorting the expenditure of the overall defence budget compared to the real needs and threats that we will face and the action we may need to be able to take to contain those threats. I am not and never have been a unilateralist. I have always been a multilateralist on disarmament, but we have to ask that question, because it would be unfortunate if we end up muscle-bound because we are unable to respond to the real situation and the demands made of us.

The Minister emphasised working with others. That will be desperately important. I can think of few situations in which we can even contemplate acting alone. All of them, including terrorism of course, demand international collaboration. Therefore, working out new ways of collaborating with the European Union, continuing our close collaboration with France and others and playing our role within NATO is crucial.

Before I conclude, I mention one other point of which I am convinced. If we are to talk about effective defence policy, we have to see the relationship between arms control and regulation of the arms trade as central. In the situation in which we are operating, with extremism and terrorism as a factor, we cannot afford any danger of lethal weapons ending up in the wrong hands or weapons being used in a way that recruits extremists. We have to be certain of the end use of arms that are exported; we need to be certain of accountability. That is not an alternative. It is central to the defence programme. How are we recognising the danger and significance of armaments and ensuring that we are not inadvertently playing into the hands of people who will exacerbate the terrifying issues with which we are confronted?