Strategic Defence and Security Review

Lord Walker of Aldringham Excerpts

Friday 12th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Walker of Aldringham]

My Lords, I very much welcome the profile that the current security and defence debate has given to the whole business of defence over recent months. The national security strategy is a very commendable attempt to look into the future and isolate the threats and risks that we face so that we are in the best place to deal with them. However, like many other noble Lords and noble and gallant Lords, I am quite clear that it is always the unexpected that happens, and it will be the unexpected that happens next time.

The national security strategy states in its introduction that:

“The security of our Nation is the first duty of Government”,

and goes on to say:

“The Coalition Government has given national security the highest priority”.

Set against being a wealthy nation and an SDSR stating:

“The Armed Forces are at the core of our nation's security”,

it seems, sadly, that these notions are patently not carried through, and I cannot help but reflect that as a country we seem to be rather bad at defence reviews. We either get them wrong because we do not resource them properly when we have come up with a good answer, or we do not think about them thoroughly enough in the first place. I fear that this defence review suffers from both those defects, and the distraction of a special alliance with France is no substitute for ensuring that our own military house is in good order.

At first reading, it seems that all three services have lost a similar number of personnel and each has lost a bit of its equipment. In terms of our envisaged deployments, the largest now is a third smaller than it has been until this moment, the brigade-sized force for deployment is equally a third smaller and we have a few less tanks, guns, ships and aircraft. An outsider looking in might well be forgiven for judging that the review is merely a salami-slicing exercise with equal pain for everybody and that same outsider might see it as a touch incoherent. If as a student at staff college I had suggested to my instructor that we would have an aircraft carrier but no aircraft to fly off it, or that we should spend £1 billion or more on a new aircraft carrier only for it to be put immediately into mothballs, or that a minuscule garrison, such as that on the Falklands, would be sufficient to stave off a surprise attack from a determined enemy, I would certainly not be standing before noble Lords now.

However, they are the easy targets. What I would like to do is focus on something that is much less visible to the readers of the SDSR but is more insidious in the longer term. It is about our men and women, who have already been mentioned by one or two noble Lords. I will have to use the Army as the example or it will get too complicated, but please read across for the other two services. The physical effect that an army can have, even when it is constrained by resources, can be multiplied by the reputation that that army has in the minds of its enemies and allies alike. The reputation of the British Army comes from the soldiers who man it, and they exhibit a very particular cocktail of characteristics. The British soldier has always been somebody seeking a bit of roving and adventure, even with the off-chance that he might have to lay down his life for his country. In the past decade alone, we have seen him in Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Sierra Leone, East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan. It is not surprising therefore that this busy little Army is well recruited. But the soldier now reads that,

“we will be more selective in our use of the Armed Forces, deploying them decisively at the right time but only where key UK national interests are at stake; where we have a clear strategic aim; where the likely political, economic and human costs are in proportion to the likely benefits and”—

wonderful—

“where we have a viable exit strategy”.

Oh, that we should be able to achieve all of that when we do everything. But “more selective” than what? We may be more selective than we were about Iraq, but are we going to stop being good members of NATO or deny our friends in need a bit of help? Indeed, we have just made a new French friend. You cannot shape the battlefield from Whitehall and exit strategies will always be contingent upon events in theatre. What is more, idle hands will make Tommy a very dull boy.

The British soldier's sense of professionalism is of central importance to him. Question it, or undermine it, and you upset him greatly. His equipment too is of great consequence to him and adds to his sense of self-worth. The notion of extended readiness, for those noble Lords who read into the review, is not one that brings comfort to him. It smacks of a first and a second XI, and every time there is pressure on the budget the readiness gets extended even further, training opportunities reduce and equipment is in even shorter supply, and the second XI drops even further behind. The British soldier is the first to know that a gas rattle is no substitute for a rifle and live ammunition. He will be the first to seek employment elsewhere if he sees the Army to which he belongs becoming hollow and he seems to be losing the skills and self-esteem.

Financial reward has never been, and today still is not, his mainspring, but he expects to be treated fairly, and he wants and needs to be valued by the nation that he serves. But he now has uncertainties about his terms and conditions of service as he sees the continuity of education allowance, public service pensions, housing and post-service medical care all under pressure. As we have heard already, and as we shall see shortly, Professor Hew Strachan's report will make clear that there is a long way to go before we can be satisfied that the so-called military covenant is properly in place.

Even within the initial reduction of 7,000 in the Army, we will see people returning from operational duty to find that they are being made redundant. Many noble Lords will have seen that unedifying interview on the television of the Harrier pilot at Joint Headquarters who expressed, with suppressed anger and frustration, that he was being done out of a job. What price a fair deal?

On the wider front, the Army is coming home. But we have no real idea of how much leaving Germany will cost us. We will need to leave everything in the exact order and acceptable condition that the Germans want, and we have no real idea of the costs of rebarracking and providing training facilities for 20,000 troops and rehousing their families here. Those costs will lie where they fall, to the detriment of all of us—something that is very apparent to our commanders. We should not underestimate how damaging the cumulative effect of all of this can be on both recruiting and retention, but equally on the quality of those who seek to join the services. It may not be noticeable for several years, but it will become apparent, not least among our special forces.

Like many noble Lords, I too fear that this defence review has failed us again. It has not been sufficiently strategic; it has been done at such a speed that it has not been thorough enough; its outcome is not resourced; and, while I accept that there are some industrial and procurement handcuffs that have had to be considered, it has been driven, rather than constrained by, resources. Only time will tell, but this defence review could well be the catalyst for an irreversible outflow of quality and we may have embarked on a course in which the consequence, unintended or not, will be a steady dilution of the excellence of our Armed Forces.