Armed Forces: Capability

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, like many other noble Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, on his admirable introduction and thank him for tabling this important debate. Inevitably with such a predictably large number of speakers and the four-minute time limit, there is little that is new or unknown that anyone can add, but I hope that the aggregation of some common concerns will have impressed itself on government.

Quite apart from being an old soldier, I must declare an interest as a member of the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, and I would like to begin my contribution from that viewpoint.

Like many other members of the Joint Committee, I had hoped that government would have learned its lesson from the disastrous 2010 SDSR, which contained so many imponderables and loopholes. Naively perhaps, we hoped that hints that the 2015 SDSR would follow and be based on a national security strategy would result in just that, because in logic other requirements, such as the comprehensive spending review, could have been based on the national security strategy as well. But no, they were published simultaneously, and I submit that 23 June 2016 rendered both out of date.

Many factors have to be taken into account when planning the defence of the United Kingdom, on which the capabilities of our Armed Forces must be based—not least partnership arrangements with neighbouring countries. Until 23 June, these were with fellow members of the European Union, but now bilateral arrangements will have to be made with each. It is true that some are members of NATO, but its continued existence, in its current US-reliant form, must be in doubt after 20 January, as the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, and others have pointed out. It is also true that all are members of the OSCE, but since the early 1990s in former Yugoslavia this has not featured on the military horizon.

In thinking about the current inadequacies in each of our Armed Forces, which other noble Lords have spelled out in some detail, I could not help casting my mind back to the options for change exercise in 1991, to which my noble and gallant friend Lord Craig referred. As Adjutant-General, I was responsible for implementing the reduction in the size of the Army by a third over three years, from 156,000 to 104,000. Our key worries about implementing the requirement can be encapsulated in two words—uncertainty and sustainability. Uncertainty coloured our thinking about force structure, in the context of the lessons of the first Gulf War, which included the inadequate size of infantry battalions, not having been assimilated, and the emerging requirement to provide contingencies to peacekeeping operations and post-conflict reconstruction.

Sustainability coloured our thinking about the ratio between cuts to teeth or tail. Noble Lords will therefore appreciate that we wondered whether we were being required to make a jump too far, in isolation of consideration of the current international situation. To jump to today, plans to cut the Army yet further, to 82,000, were made before 23 June, and I submit that that needs to be rethought in the light of the changed international situation.

Of course resources are the key, and we all know that there is unlikely to be any more money. I have mentioned before in this House that Field-Marshal Carver, whose military assistant I was once privileged to be, had two definitions of the word “affordability”—can you afford it, and can you afford to give up what you have to give up in order to afford it? One of my main reasons for calling for a review of both the national security strategy and SDSR 2015 is to enable an affordability test to be carried out on the capabilities of the United Kingdom Armed Forces planned before 23 June 2016 to determine whether they are appropriate in current and future international situations.