Armed Forces Bill

Lord Walker of Aldringham Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Walker of Aldringham]

My Lords, in the Sunday Telegraph was an inspiring article about four young soldiers who intend to row across the Atlantic. You might say that there is nothing remarkable about that, but these are four young soldiers who have been badly injured, maimed by bombs in Afghanistan, and between the four of them they can muster only three complete legs. Their plan is to enter the Woodvale Atlantic rowing race, which begins in December, and none of them has any experience of the sea. They hope to raise £1 million to share between Help for Heroes, ABF The Soldiers’ Charity and SSAFA. Their endeavour is both inspirational and highly laudable and I am sure that all of us in your Lordships’ House wish them every success.

However, their endeavour brings into focus the whole question of the funding of the covenant that is addressed in this latest Bill. The Armed Forces have a long and strong tradition of raising money for charities. In the last century the vast majority of such fundraising activity was targeted on charities that were not linked directly to the armed services—they tended to focus on cancer, children and raising money for those charities which were local to units’ bases or linked to their specialist trades.

The service-orientated charities do a remarkable job but in essence they are there to attend to the needs of veterans and their families who have fallen on hard times. However, those who have been killed, maimed and wounded by being sent to war by our country can hardly be portrayed as “falling” on hard times. I believe most passionately that if the covenant is to mean anything at all, when a service man or woman is damaged in any way whatever during their military service, then a clear duty lies with the Government for a lifetime of support.

As the doctrine states, this is about service men and women doing their duty, putting the needs of the nation before their own, forgoing some of the rights enjoyed by those outside the Armed Forces and accepting the grave responsibility and legal right to fight and kill according to their orders and their unlimited liability to give their lives for others. The unique nature of military service means that the Armed Forces differ from all other institutions, as many noble Lords have said.

We should not forget—sometimes I think we do—that during the lifetimes of most of us in this House British service men and women have lost their lives and been maimed and wounded in Palestine, China, Korea, Malaya, Egypt, Kenya, the Suez, Cyprus, Borneo, Aden and Dhofar. More recently, they have died and been wounded as they fought across the Falkland Islands; as they steadfastly, and without favour, absorbed the venom of Northern Ireland; as they have twice driven massed armour into the Middle Eastern deserts. They have snatched hostages from the swamps of Sierra Leone and the embassies of Kensington. They have hunted terrorists in the mountains of Afghanistan and the Pacific Islands; they have fed refugees, delivered humanitarian aid, slaughtered sheep, put out fires, guarded prisons, cleared domestic rubbish and fought floods. That is a pretty impressive CV by any standards, and there can no doubt in your Lordships’ minds about the debt that we owe these people and what we ought to do about it. Even as we debate, our service men and women are at full stretch on operations helping to manage the consequences of, or prevent the intensification of, conflict in various parts of the world.

The covenant that must exist between the Government and the Armed Forces is in my view a simple moral contract which means that, in return for the sacrifices made by those in the forces, the Government will ensure they are treated fairly and they should be confident, as many of the speakers today have said, that the nation will look after them and their families.

Of course, the covenant is wider than just the response to those who are injured. This notion of fairness is, I believe, central to any covenant and must be demonstrated both strategically and tactically. The recent strategic defence and security review committed the Government to being more selective in their use of the Armed Forces,

“deploying them only where key UK national interests are at stake; where there is a clear strategic aim; where the likely political, economic and human costs are in proportion to the likely benefits; where there is a viable exit strategy”.

Just try measuring our latest military adventure in Libya against “key national interests”, “clear strategic aim” and “viable exit strategy”. How fair does that seem, as a use of our military forces, when we are heavily engaged elsewhere and at the same time key elements of our forces are being dismantled? At the other end of the scale, service men and women who have recently served in Afghanistan are being made compulsorily redundant, which is morally indefensible. In this context, one has to ask: what price a commitment to the covenant? My heart sinks at the thought of the recent defence reform proposals which see a defence board, with only a single military member among seven to 10, giving any airtime to developing a covenant which really means anything.

As many noble Lords have already observed, the Bill introduces the requirement for the Secretary of State to lay an annual report before Parliament about the effects of membership or former membership of the armed services on servicepeople. I am not certain that a covenant lends itself in any way to legislation—of course the covenant is not going into legislation, merely the requirement for the Secretary of State to report—but I am certain that the time for reports, of which there has been a plethora in the past five years, is over. The requirement is absolutely clear, as so many have said. What is needed now is action: action to implement the covenant across all government departments and from top to bottom. It cannot be achieved without the necessary funding.

I return to our four brave young men rowing the Atlantic. We should be enormously uplifted by what they are doing and why they are doing it. However, there are too many examples of the third sector being exploited to fill the void of support that in my view is legitimately and morally the Government’s responsibility, and we should be deeply ashamed that the money they raise is going into that void.