Armed Forces Bill

Lord Selsdon Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, I too greatly welcome this Bill. As has already been pointed out several times by my noble friends Lady Crawley and Lady Taylor, and indeed by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, there is a very large element of continuity between this Bill and the Command Paper introduced by the previous Government in 2008, when I had the honour to be serving in the Ministry of Defence, though I had nothing directly to do with that particular Command Paper except as one of the ministerial team. That continuity is very desirable, and it is moving in the right direction. I do not think that we have necessarily got to the end of the road.

The two points where there may well need to be some strengthening or further progress are again ones that have already been mentioned. First, the provision that the Secretary of State can use his own discretion to report on anything other than the three very important items of housing, education and health, is slightly loose. A number of very important issues have been raised in the debate this afternoon, notably military inquests and pensions; they are not included in that list. There may be scope for increasing the number and the range of items which the Secretary of State has to report on, because with the best will in the world, it is all too easy, if one is a Minister, to avoid making any statement on something that is not politically convenient, or perhaps not politically convenient for colleagues to comment on, if one is not absolutely obliged to do so.

My second concern was elegantly set out by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup. It is very important to make sure that there is some progress, that results actually ensue, and that this is monitored. If we do not succeed with this Bill, particularly in the important areas of housing, health and education, the next stage would be to place statutory obligations on local authorities for housing lists, local education authorities for education, and the NHS for dentistry and waiting lists, to ensure that military personnel do not suffer in any of these respects from the need sometimes to relocate at very little notice as part of their military obligations.

As this is a Bill which gives the statutory power to the Executive branch to have Armed Services at all, it is a good moment to review the Government’s stewardship of our Armed Forces and the Government’s use of our Armed Forces. I will touch very briefly on these two vast subjects.

The Government’s stewardship of the Armed Forces over the past 14 months since the election has been lamentable—absolutely appalling and really scandalous. The Armed Forces remain pretty stretched, they have been stretched even more by the Libya campaign, and yet we are about to make redundant several thousand experienced military personnel. The degradation of the equipment programme is an even more serious long-term matter. The House will be familiar with a lot of it—it is extraordinary; we have abandoned all long-range maritime surveillance capability. We abandoned those Nimrods, which were going to deliver that, after every penny of their capital cost had already been incurred. Nothing but the operating costs remained. The Government have not come forward with any proposals on how to replace that enormous capability gap. We have abandoned—at least for 10 years, we are told—our carrier strike capability, which is an extremely serious matter.

Another matter came up in this afternoon’s statement on Afghanistan—Chinooks. I was able—at great effort, I must say—to make tremendous and very radical changes in our whole medium helicopter strategy, which enabled me to put together a pot of money with the intention of spending it on Chinooks. As a result we were able to order 22 Chinooks, bringing the total prospective number up to 70, and the Government, I am told, want to cancel 10 of them. This is the same Government, by the way, who, when they were in opposition, had the nerve to tell us that we did not have enough helicopters in Afghanistan. I am afraid to say that the Government are condemned by their own words, but I do not mean to say any more on that particular subject.

It gets worse. In addition to these cancellations of capability which we had acquired, were acquiring, or were planning to acquire, the Government have had a complete hiatus in their procurement programme over the past 14 months.

[Lord Selsdon]

Will the noble Lord give way?

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

Of course, but I am conscious of time and I will take maybe another minute or two of the House’s time if I have to give way.

[Lord Selsdon]

I was only going to say that I think we are debating the Armed Forces Bill.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I am very well aware of that. The Armed Forces Bill is designed to give the Executive branch the right to have our Armed Forces. We therefore need, before we give them that right, to discuss how they are treating our Armed Forces at the present time, and what they propose to do with them in the future. It is absolutely elemental. I cannot imagine why there should be a constitutional requirement for Parliament to give this power to the Executive branch unless we discuss those two very important matters, so I do not in any way regard myself as being offside in the matters that I have decided to raise in this debate. I can well understand the Conservative Party feeling embarrassed by some of the things that I am saying. That is not my fault; that is the fault of the Government that they support.

As I said, the situation is worse because of the hiatus in procurement at the present time. All of us who have been defence procurement Ministers—there are several in this House, and at least one who I can see in the Chamber, the noble Lord, Lord Lee—have always taken great pride in delivering what is required today for our Armed Forces. However, we know that during our time in office we will be procuring some long-term things, and that although we will not be around in the MoD when they are required, they are vital for the nation’s future. None of these decisions has been taken at all over the past 14 months. I cannot remember how many major projects I was responsible for—I suppose I could if I thought about it—but my successor has not had any at all. It is not his fault. Indeed, I can all too well understand the frustration and pain he must feel about the situation. This means that we are simply not providing for the future in this way. The Prime Minister has recognised that in order to deliver the capability that the strategic defence and security review promises in 2020—even the limited capability, greatly reduced from our own White Paper of 1998—it will be necessary to increase defence expenditure in real terms from 2015. But the Treasury has not been told that is the case and is not allowing the MoD to make any of the long-term procurements which would be necessary to achieve that capability goal and would assume an increase in availability of resources from 2015. The Government have to make up their mind; the Prime Minister has to play straight. Are we going to have more for resources after 2015 and are we going to take seriously the capability projected in the defence and security White Paper, or are we not? Let us be honest. At the moment, the Government are not being entirely straight with the public about this very important matter.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Selsdon]

My Lords, I have thoroughly enjoyed this debate—it was the spirit of it—although I did nip out for a glass of water and bit of chocolate. To be honest, I wanted to join the Navy but it changed the date of entry at Dartmouth so I could not go. However, I managed to get in by the skin of my teeth because of Suez, so before I knew it I was in the Mediterranean on patrol boats taking a star sight on a sea-gull at the top of a pole on HMS “Raleigh”. I loved that. I found the excitement great. My generation, such as the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, and others, went off to serve. One won an MC in Aden; many did national service in Libya—it is forgotten that we were in Libya for 30 years; many of the Chiefs of Staff did service there. We have forgotten that we had a worldwide role. We also have a responsibility. The Armed Forces are an asset not a liability, but someone is trying to turn it around a bit and say that they are a liability. They are a responsibility not a liability: a responsibility that everyone willingly wishes to look after.

I have found in your Lordships’ House over the 48 years I have been here that we are the greatest repository of defence knowledge that the world has ever seen. Currently, 176 people have been Ministers or served in the Armed Forces and only 15 of them cannot remember their service numbers. One of my favourites, who is very good at this, is former Leading Aircraftwoman Sharples, who occasionally uses her initiative from her Armed Forces days—she can remember her service number—to knock someone off a bicycle with her handbag.

My family, by accident, spent their lives in the Navy and things of that sort, and I had a nephew who became a SEAL team leader and then worked with the British. He said, “Good God, we thought we were trained in the Pacific to lock our arms together for 24 hours, but we are not as tough as the British and we do not seem to have the same initiative to get round the rules and regulations”.

My noble friends Lord Astor and Lord Sheikh have given us remarkable amounts of briefing. I have learnt more and more and there are little things that come to light. As I think Kipling said:

“we have got the Gatling gun, but they have not”.

The other day, the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, the secretary of what we call the warlords, chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, introduced a general who I had never heard of, who turned up to make a slide presentation in one of the committee rooms. He could not quite get it to work at first, but when he did, he produced a quite mind-blowing presentation of the way the military in Afghanistan has got into the hearts and minds of the people there. I dug out a copy of that, and, being on the Information Committee, I had the right to have a trial iPad, so I now have this wonderful presentation on Afghanistan, captured by an Army man who I thought would be sticking only to the Army. I never realised how the training of our troops now leads them to get under the skin of the people there and to become ambassadors, in a strange way, and respected.

I will say something perhaps a bit unkind about the political sector. Those in government have failed to take the advice of those who know. For example, 50 ambassadors and high commissioners wrote an open letter to the Government saying the Government did not know what they were doing in the Middle East. I did not know either, but I did have 12 years working on the Committee for Middle East Trade, six as chairman, and I would go to these places and get under the skin. A phrase I liked was one they would use when asked what was wrong with the Arab world. They would say, “Hashish, Baksheesh and British—and the worst is British because they invented the other two, but, my goodness, we cannot do without them”.

We ran the Middle East from India. When the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, who was at the same prep school as me, became a major and was assistant to the Chief of Staff at Suez—my noble friend Lord Lyell will correct me if I am wrong—he was instructed by his boss, “Bramall, I want you tell us why we have come here; what we are doing here; and what the hell we are going to do next”. At that time we were going to withdraw from east of Suez and have no worldwide role. We have to have a worldwide role because we have no inherent economy; we are dependent upon international trade and investment. It is not only the defence of that trade that is important but the ability to get under the skin and help other people.

On the training front—and here will be my challenge to your Lordships—I went to recent meetings in the MoD. I find the MoD very difficult and bureaucratic. I was in the Midland Bank for many years and so I know what bureaucrats are like. It was the same size as the Navy, in effect: about 33,000 people or more. At one of the meetings we discussed the young and the future. We must accept that a 14 year-old today will be voting at the next election; we must accept, too, that at the moment the role for our Armed Forces is not as great as it would need to be because we have no equipment and no kit and we have not yet determined where or when we should intervene and how.

As a member of the Information Committee I set down the challenge because we now have open debates in this Chamber and last year we had a debate with the young on the future of the House of Lords. They all said we were very wise, which surprised many of us. The debate this year is on the Commonwealth and the Commonwealth conference. I laid down the challenge and asked whether we could get approval—which we have got in principle—to debate next year the defence of the realm with 14 to 16 or 17 year-olds. I suggested that the Chiefs of Staff should themselves brief these young people directly, and I ask your Lordships whether you would be willing to be present as guests at that time. It would be good if we could attract the young, with their amazing enthusiasm for dangerous sports. We have to think of the future; we have to think of the young. I hope your Lordships will support this initiative next year.