Armed Force: Constitution Committee Report

Lord King of Bridgwater Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to intervene briefly. First, I congratulate the noble Baroness and her committee on what I think is an absolutely excellent report and on the way in which she introduced this debate. The report is certainly extremely timely, coming so soon after the recent debates on Syria that exercised us all.

I do not know why the Defence Council ever got involved in this. I never thought that it had any relevance to this problem, and I am not surprised that it was quickly dismissed. I certainly agree with the Cabinet role. I served in a war Cabinet, which then had to report to the formal Cabinet. I recall that at the time of the Falklands War, Mrs Thatcher went round every single member of the Cabinet to ask for their support for the action she proposed to take.

The role of Parliament and the support of Parliament, as the noble and gallant Lord said, are absolutely crucial. When I was involved in the first Gulf War, I used to go out to talk to the troops in the Gulf. It was hugely important for me to be able to say to our forces, “Not only is there support for you from the Government and the Prime Minister”—and I had a change of Prime Minister halfway through—“but there is enormous support from the people in the form of their representatives in the House of Commons”. That was extraordinarily important.

I think that the convention is a stronger element than some might give it credit for, although I will be interested to see whether the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, who gave a most interesting speech, can find a resolution that can be drafted.

I have been thinking about the things that have happened since I had any responsibility in this area. We never had drones or conducted anti-piracy operations. We did not have counterterrorism. We had not had 9/11 by then, so there was not the need for the speedy reaction that the noble and gallant Lord referred to. We had not had cyberattacks. We had not had sanctions supported by military force or the threat of military force. Certainly, I never declared war, even though we were involved in an exercise in which we sent 45,000 troops fully armed and equipped to evict Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.

I do not know under what authority we set up something called Operation Provide Comfort. We had a United Nations resolution to evict Saddam Hussein from Kuwait—a country that he should not have been in—but at the end of that conflict, as some may recall, we found that he was attacking the Kurds in northern Iraq. We sent into Iraq a Marine commando unit and Tornados, based, I think, on a Turkish air base at Incirlik, and we conducted air patrols over northern Iraq. I am not sure under what authority we did that, but it illustrates exactly the point made by the noble and gallant Lord: things develop and you get mission creep, although mainly very desirable mission creep, and that has to be covered.

Against that background, I entirely understand why the Minister, in giving his evidence to the parliamentary committee and discussing Mr William Hague’s assertion that the necessity to consult Parliament would be enshrined in legislation, said that we had found that things were a bit more complicated—“a bit more complex” was, I think, the phrase that he used—than we had previously imagined. I agree with that very much. There are complexities and difficulties, and when our forces are put into “harm’s way”—an awful phrase—it is very important to ensure that their position is protected.

Noble Lords may be aware that I serve on the Select Committee that is looking at the operation of the Inquiries Act 2005. Yesterday we took evidence from a senior official at the Ministry of Defence whose job never existed in my time. He is head of claims, judicial reviews and public inquiries. This covers a whole range of activities in which we see the problems of our forces being faced with the threat of legal actions of one sort or another. In the brief and necessarily quick remarks that I will make, I will say that the noble Baroness’s committee came to the right answer.

I will make one further point. As was rightly said, this is a decision for the House of Commons; the House of Lords can only advise. Looking back to those debates on Syria, would it not have been a good thing if the House of Lords debate had been the day before, when the considerable experience of this House and the advice brought to the subject would have been available to the House of Commons? By accident, fortunately, the House of Commons prevented us going to war. I was highly relieved about that, as I made clear in my speech. That is one element that might be added to convention. Otherwise, the Government’s response is that they are now considering which way to proceed. I do not think that they need to proceed very far. We have the right basis on which to operate.