Strategic Defence and Security Review

Lord Soley Excerpts

Friday 12th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

It is an absolute delight and privilege to follow my noble friend Lord Hutton—my old friend—in this debate. I have known him for many years and, like the House of Commons, I have always respected his calm and rational assessment of difficult judgments that had to be made in a number of the positions that he held there. I also knew him as a constituent; he has the great advantage of being one of my constituents who did not come to see me to complain about everything, for which I am always grateful. The other thing that ought to be remembered is that he speaks with considerable experience of the military, not only from his own background but, as many noble Lords will know, from the book that he wrote on the history of the Royal Lancaster Regiment in the First World War, Kitchener’s Men, which gave a gritty account of the life of soldiers in the 1915-18 period. It indicates his knowledge and commitment to the area that he served so well and I look forward to hearing from him again. I also look forward to hearing more from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham, who also made a helpful contribution today.

I do not want to spend too much time on some of the issues that I know will be covered by people better equipped than I am to deal with them, but I want to make a couple of broad points before going on to my main point. The first point is that we are witnessing a profound shift in the balance of power in the world. My noble friend Lord Rosser is right to point out that the economic crisis was a western-world crisis. There is a shift of power from the West to emerging superpowers. We need to be aware of that. It is one reason for the agreement with France on the use of the carriers, for which I commend the Government. That treaty ought to be extended. As my noble friend Lord Robertson said, there are other countries in Europe. Contrary to the popular opinion of some Members on the Conservative Back Benches in the other place, Europe is vital to our interests and co-operation on these areas is crucial. France also recognises that it cannot continue at the same strategic level without co-operating with the United Kingdom. I think—and I speak as a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies—that this review reduces our capabilities. We cannot escape from that. The only way in which we are going to be able to build them up in future is by co-operation with our allies, particularly our allies in Europe. I hope that the Government will have the courage to make more treaties on that, whether in the context of a wider European basis—NATO, the EU or whatever—or on an individual basis. We need to recognise the shift in power.

The other thing that I want to mention, on which my noble friend Lord Hutton touched, is the industrial basis. The position of Britain for manufacturing is far better than many people give us credit for. We are still the sixth largest manufacturing country in the world. We have, in the aerospace industry, the largest manufacturing capacity in the European area. It was, the last time I checked, still the second largest and second most advanced aerospace industry in the world. I get worried that we will not retain that position unless the Government take it into account when they make decisions on both the civil aviation side and the military aviation side.

That enables me to say also that I agree with those people who are expressing deep concern about the decision on the Harriers, Tornados and Nimrod. I recognise that the Government have a difficult problem with the expenditure balance, but they need to remember that, as my noble friend Lord Rosser said, this is about the assessment of how you handle it. If we had not proceeded with the two carriers, we would have had to look at the opportunity costs and at the economic impact on certain areas and, above all, on the industries that are required to service those aircraft carriers, which are some of the most advanced technological industries in the country. To give a final plug for another local issue—not local to me, but one that I happen to know something about—Lossiemouth is very important to the economy and the morale of the people in that area. Lossiemouth is important in all this.

A positive comment that I can make about the strategic defence review is that the Government are getting it right about the threat from cyberwarfare. I know that the Minister would be the first to accept that he is building on the excellent work done by my noble friend Lord West when he was the Minister. The idea of the new operations group to deal with this problem is excellent. Someone said recently that this is a “horse and tank moment”. I do not know whether it is or not, but it is certainly true that we are moving into a situation where not just nation states but well armed, well organised groups of one type or another can do immense damage to the economy of an advanced nation without a shot being fired or a bomb being dropped. It is a particularly big and serious threat.

I shall spend my remaining minute on something that is not in the review but to which we should give more attention—the morale of the Armed Forces. Let me say clearly that I think that morale is extremely good. Whenever I have been to Afghanistan, Iraq or other areas, I have seen that morale is high and good. I am not talking just of morale as regards pay, pensions, housing and things of that type. I am also talking about the way in which we address the problem for the Armed Forces when we are dealing with these new types of conflict, whether Afghanistan or some of the terror threats around the world.

In some of the media coverage, there is an expectation that somehow or other the Armed Forces in a state of war have to be dealt with on the same legal basis as if we were dealing with a civilian operation. For example, some of the discussions in the courts when they are dealing with coroners’ reports—I can give only one example, simply through the shortage of time—concern whether it is wise to send soldiers in a soft-skinned vehicle or a heavily armoured vehicle to a village or another area where we are trying to win hearts and minds. Let us be clear: those troops might consciously be putting their lives and safety at greater risk simply because they have made an assessment of the need to use a soft-skinned vehicle rather than a heavily armoured vehicle. In many of those cases, I do not know how you can argue in a coroner’s court that conventionally this is in some way similar to the requirements of a civilian employer.

I do not want in any way to imply that the British Armed Forces should act outside the law or that we should not support, as we do, extending the rule of law—including on war crimes—as far as possible into these situations. However, we could be in danger of assuming that everything in civil law can be applied in the military sphere, when it cannot be. I have used this example before, but I make no excuse for using it again: in the 19th century, when Britain used its Armed Forces to stop the transatlantic slave trade, the captains of ships were brought to the court here in the House of Lords and fined for interfering with trade on the high seas. The discussion in the press at the time was, “We must stop what we are doing. Bring our troops home. Bring our boys home. We are making matters worse”. The arguments were very similar to those that we hear about Afghanistan now. At some stage, we need to look at the way in which we deal with this difficult area of the legal situation relating to our forces in conflict, as opposed to civil situations.