Defence: Strategic Defence and Security Review

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Touhig

Monday 2nd March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the House of Commons Defence Committee raised that question in its report last year. The Government’s response said that,

“we have already had preliminary discussions in particular with the US and France following our engagement in the French Livre Blanc and US Quadrennial Defense Review processes”.

This question is out there, but to be decided by whichever Government emerges after the next election.

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, each night some 500 veterans sleep on the streets of London and towns and cities across Britain. I mean in no way to diminish the importance of the strategic defence review, but can the Minister indicate when the Government will honour the spirit of the Armed Forces covenant and face up to this crisis? Our defence depends on the commitment of the men and women of our Armed Forces and we owe them a duty of care when they have left the services.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I of course acknowledge the importance of the noble Lord’s point, but I merely stress that I am answering for the Cabinet Office and the Government as a whole. We are talking about a security and defence review that involves the majority of departments in Whitehall feeding into an overall view of threats to our domestic and international security.

Parliamentary Constituency Boundaries: Review

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Touhig

Tuesday 9th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how much it has cost to conduct the review of parliamentary constituency boundaries in the United Kingdom.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the four Boundary Commissions spent about £5.8 million up to the end of August 2012 on the boundary review. They expect to spend about £3.8 million from September 2012 to the end of the review.

[Lord Touhig]

I am sure that I am not alone in believing that that money would be better spent keeping disabled people, like the Remploy workers, in a job, but we are where we are. We remember that the Conservative and Lib Dem Peers were united in their enthusiasm to pass the Bill to reduce the number of parliamentary constituencies. Does the Minister expect both coalition parties to be equally united and enthusiastic to vote for the final report of the Boundary Commissions when it comes here next year? Furthermore, will the Minister be voting for it?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are a coalition. We have our open disagreements. I recall well the official who said to me last year that it was really rather easier working with this coalition than with the Blair/Brown coalition because we have our disagreements in the open whereas they plotted against each other. When it comes to the vote next year, we will consider our views.

Armed Forces: Housing

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Touhig

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I understand that there will be another 500 to 800 houses to be upgraded next year. I add that not all service families are living in service family accommodation; part of the intention of the new employment model currently under negotiation is that fewer service families will have to move as regularly as before. More will therefore be able to invest in their own homes. I was, indeed, asking some of the doorkeepers about their service accommodation and service life, and I was interested to hear how many of them had loans through the services to buy their own houses.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, no sensible person would move into a house that they had not first looked at, yet for many service families the first time they see the accommodation that they have been allocated is the day they move in. Does the Minister agree that this is not the right way in which to treat our servicemen and their families? If he does, what are the Government doing about it?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, as the noble Lord will know, part of the problem has been the sheer number of moves that service families have been making, particularly in the Army. With the return of our forces from Germany and the changes in the forces structures that we are implementing, we hope that there will be less frequent and fewer rapid moves, which would enable service families to be consulted a good deal more widely.

Universal Credit

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Touhig

Thursday 20th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the proposed universal credit is included in the Treasury’s risk register of projects that are at risk of overspending, delay or failure.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, there is no specific Treasury risk register, although I know that the phrase has been used in a number of newspaper articles. The Treasury works closely with colleagues in the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority to monitor the progress of major projects. The universal credit programme is on the Government’s major projects portfolio, which is a compilation of the Government’s high-risk and high-value projects. It covers approximately 200 major projects with a total value in excess of £300 billion. The Major Projects Authority has been engaged with the universal credit programme since 2010. As well as providing challenge through regular assurance reviews, it is involved at various levels of monitoring progress. The Major Projects Review Group, a body established by the previous Government in 2007, recently also considered progress with the universal credit programme.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer but I am a little surprised by it. To make universal credit work, the Government say that 80 per cent of all claims will need to be made online. At the moment, 31 per cent of the poorest families in this country have never used a computer and only 17 per cent of benefit claims are made online. On top of that, to make the IT system for the new universal credit work it will require every single employer in the United Kingdom to tell the Inland Revenue every single month how much every single employee earns in salary and pays in tax. As most government IT projects in recent times have failed, why does the Minister think that this one will succeed?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

There were several questions underneath what the noble Lord has just said. Twenty per cent of those who will come under the universal credit system are currently estimated to have access to computers. It is planned that 50 per cent should have access by 2013 and 80 per cent by 2017. I myself queried those figures when I was being briefed but I am told that of those currently claiming unemployment benefit, some 80 per cent have access to online facilities and of those claiming jobseeker’s allowance, some 60 per cent have access. I did not ask what the gender breakdown was; I suspect the answer is that more men than women have it but I remind everyone that the Government’s current digital champion, Martha Lane Fox, is working on this.

Armed Forces: Accommodation

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Touhig

Thursday 15th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, the defence estate represents 1 per cent of the land mass of Britain and is worth over £15 billion. Have the Government looked at disposing of some defence estate assets, a policy that I pursued when I was a Defence Minister? There is a lot of money there that could be used to improve the quality of accommodation for our service men and women.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I assure the noble Lord that the Government have looked at that, although I suspect that we will not follow the example of the Icelandic Government in considering selling large chunks of the defence estate to Chinese investors.