Al-Sweady Inquiry Report

Tony Baldry Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

I understand the significance of this issue in Northern Ireland. It is not, of course, the subject of this report, but I know it is part of the discussions into the past that are now being conducted. I hope that will soon be resolved, but the hon. Lady is, quite reasonably, tempting me into areas outside my particular field.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend suggest to the Lord Chancellor that, when the SRA concludes its investigation, the Lord Chancellor comes to the House to make a statement, so that the SRA knows that the eyes of Parliament are going to be on its conduct of this investigation, and not least the question of how the firms of solicitors got their clients? There are suggestions that they were paying agents to go around Iraq to drum up business, often not knowing who their clients were. This seems to me to be yet another issue that needs to be properly investigated by the SRA.

[Michael Fallon]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend raising that, and I hope it will be.

UK Armed Forces (Iraq)

Tony Baldry Excerpts

Monday 15th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

I think that everyone in the House is awaiting the well overdue publication of the Chilcot inquiry, and anything that can be done to accelerate that would be welcomed on both sides of the House. Helmand is a better place than it was when our troops went in, however, and we should pay tribute to the work done there and the sacrifices made.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

We are all proud of the work done by the combined school for explosives and bomb disposal now based at Bicester. Do I understand it from my right hon. Friend’s statement that either Royal Engineer and/or Royal Logistics corps limited bomb disposal capacity will be deployed to help train Iraqi service personnel in dealing with bomb disposal and improvised explosive devices?

Oral Answers to Questions

Tony Baldry Excerpts

Monday 17th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

No. The contract notices for the procurement of the managed service providers will be published shortly. We are finalising the terms of the memorandum of understanding between the Treasury and the MOD, but the broad parameters have been agreed. The freedoms will be very broad, but there will be some constraints, as I hope the hon. Lady would expect. There will be an overall envelope of resources for operating costs, which will be subject to a downward trajectory over time, representing efficiency. Within that envelope, there will be very broad freedom to tailor pay and conditions to the requirements of the marketplace.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Did the shadow Secretary of State for Defence not say in December of last year that we all wanted to see the best of the public sector alongside the best of the private sector? If everyone is in agreement on this—from the shadow Secretary of State for Defence to Lord Levene—it must be a good idea. Presumably, the only really important thing here is ensuring value for money for taxpayers.

[Mr Hammond]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right: it is about ensuring that the armed forces get the kit they need and have been promised when they need it, and that the taxpayer gets a fair deal. By creating DE&S as a trading entity with freedoms and flexibilities to enter the marketplace and hire the people it needs to do the job properly and effectively, we will ensure that outcome.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tony Baldry Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

In terms of official party policy the hon. Gentleman is of course right and I do not know why he is trying to make a spat out of this: we agree on this issue. He knows very well, however, who within his party is seeking to reopen this issue. He knows what is going on behind the scenes and I absolutely support his determination to hold the line in the Labour party. I wish him every success in doing so.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

T2. I understand that there will be an exchange of contracts between the Ministry of Defence and Cherwell district council for the sale of MOD surplus land at Craven Hill early in March. That is good news because this is the largest Government surplus brownfield site—it is a one-off and in due course will enable the building of up to 1,900 homes. May I invite my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to come to Bicester later in the year, once completion of the contracts has happened, to turn the first sod on this important construction site?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Andrew Murrison)]

We do expect exchange of contracts between the MOD and Cherwell district council in the time scale my right hon. Friend outlines, but there are a number of outstanding issues that will need to be resolved first, including identification of alternative access into the St David barracks area, and we encourage Cherwell district council to be forward-leaning on finalising this point. May I also say to my right hon. Friend that invitations to turn sods are always welcome?

Armed Forces Restructuring

Tony Baldry Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I do not think the hon. Gentleman is doing a great service to the families and memories of our brave servicemen and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the two campaigns that he refers to. I do not think that many hon. Members or, indeed, many of the British public think that it is either right or in our interests to turn our backs on the world. We are an open nation and a trading nation that depends on the maintenance of the rules-based system of international law and trade. We should remain fully engaged in the future, and our armed forces are but one—a very important one—of the many levers that we have available to maintain our influence in the world.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

The armed forces recognise, as does everyone else, what had to be done to clear up the mess that the last Labour Government left the country in, but they want, as we all do, some stability and certainty in their lives, so will my right hon. Friend reiterate and make it clear to the House that, once this last tranche of redundancies has been completed, that is it—this is the final tranche—so that everyone in the armed forces knows that they have some stability and certainty?

[Mr Hammond]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, and that is exactly what I want to convey today. This has been a difficult time: a period of uncertainty and change, and no one likes uncertainty or change. The armed forces will now be able to concentrate on the future and on building the skills and capabilities that we have set out for Future Force 2020, knowing that we have completed the draw-down in size and the major restructuring that we have undertaken. That provides a very robust base to build for the future, with armed forces that will remain one of the most experienced combat-hardened and capable armed forces in the world.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tony Baldry Excerpts

Monday 16th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry]

Absolutely. As all my predecessors have said, if any hon. Member has any difficulty at all, they should write to me and we will make sure that we speed up the process. If hon. Members have any difficulty they should contact the Minister—at the moment, it happens to be me—and we will do everything we can to speed that up, because that is very important.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

In respect of the defence estate, we are very keen to get on with building new housing on the surplus Ministry of Defence land at Craven Hill in Bicester, but there appears to be some confusion about where the new housing will go and where tank transporters will be stored. Will my right hon. Friend please intervene to make sure that that is sorted out as soon as possible? We want to ensure that he gets a financial receipt for his Department.

[Mr Philip Hammond]

I have, indeed, already done so. I think that there has been a miscommunication and a misunderstanding by Cherwell district council. We are clear that our proposals for the possible continued use of part of the land for military purposes will not have any negative impact on the wider proposed housing development. We hope to be able to proceed with the sale imminently.

First World War Commemoration

Tony Baldry Excerpts

Thursday 7th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

The great war resulted in death and carnage on a previously unknown and unimagined scale. Not surprisingly, there was an enormous and justified outpouring of public grief that resulted in a major public arts programme in Britain to design and erect memorials to those who had died, and the Imperial—now Commonwealth—War Graves Commission was founded in 1917. We are fortunate to have two commissioners among our Members—my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson) and the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones).

There are now roughly 36,000 memorials to the dead of the great war in Britain which reflect that unprecedented expression of public grief. What they almost all have in common are the inscriptions of the names of those who died. Those names are essential to the act of remembrance—

“Their name liveth for ever more”.

War memorials are everywhere urging remembrance. Not surprisingly many of the war memorials are in churches or within the curtilage of church buildings.

The centenary years of the great war will hopefully stimulate considerable interest in war memorials and monuments and the histories of the names of those inscribed on those monuments. Clive Aslet, the former editor of Country Life, recently wrote a book called, “War Memorial - the story of one village’s sacrifice from 1914-2003”. It took a typical village—Lydford in Devon—and traced the individual history behind all the names on its war memorial. Clive Aslet has commented:

“What I would really like to do for the Centenary of the First World War in 2014 is to set up a project for each village to find out about its own dead. There is so much you could do and it would be a fantastic national and local resource. This book threw up such a richness of material and it really got me up every morning because I became so utterly absorbed by the story of these people’s lives.”

Other communities are already taking up the challenge. Michael Allbrook and Robert Forsyth have written a history of “A Parish at War”—a military record of three villages in my constituency, Deddington, Clifton and Hempton. They say in the preface to their book:

“When the ‘Deddington’ War Memorial was erected in 1922, it was sufficient for the inscription to be simply a name and an initial. Everybody knew them. Now more information is necessary to tell us about these men of Deddington. You will see that the names include men who had emigrated to Australia Canada and New Zealand and still they volunteered to support the land of their birth.”

As my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland has said, it was Government policy that all those who died overseas would be buried where they died, irrespective of their rank. The graves were located overseas, and back home there was a memorial bearing the names of those who had died. It is difficult now to imagine what it must have been like and the enormous grief when, some few years after the great war, memorials were unveiled with the names of those engraved, the memories of whom were still clear and sharp.

Of course, every community had to design, commission and erect its own war memorial. As early as 1915, a newly formed civic arts association was distributing advice about appropriate ways to remember the dead. In 1919, the Victoria and Albert museum put on a war memorials exhibition organised by the Royal Academy of Arts with the intention of directing groups, communities and committees in the right artistic and architectural direction. As early as 1916, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission made the important decision that no distinction was to be made in the formal nature of the memorials between officers and men lying in the same cemeteries. All were equal in death.

Most of us have heard of Mick Jagger, of Rolling Stones fame, but not so many will have heard of his uncle, Charles Sargeant Jagger, who designed both the Royal Artillery memorial in London’s Hyde park corner and the first world war memorial in Paddington station. Driving around Hyde park, one finds it all too easy to take the Royal Artillery memorial for granted—something that one sees all the time but does not always notice. I hope that during the next four years, we will notice all our war memorials and ensure that by 2018 we learn as much as we can about the lives of the men whose names are inscribed upon them, and that every war memorial is restored and remains kempt—memorials to those who died in the great war protecting and guaranteeing our freedoms.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tony Baldry Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Sir Tony Baldry.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

19. My hon. Friend the Minister has ably answered the question I was going to ask, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

That is a remarkable self-denying ordinance. If the Minister wants to say something, we must not deny her the opportunity in her maiden performance in this portfolio.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tony Baldry Excerpts

Monday 2nd September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Ministers will have to make a decision about whether to consolidate DE&S at Donnington or at Bicester. Unless and until they make that decision, it will not be easy to persuade the private sector to invest in much-needed new logistics equipment and 21st-century warehousing at either location.

[Mr Dunne]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for pressing the case for his constituency interest in one of the most significant logistics sites the MOD operates. It is our view that it is not appropriate to prejudge the outcome of the Defence Infrastructure Organisation, the logistic commodities and services transformation exercise, the DE&S-plus exercise or the Defence Support Group exercise, all of which have an involvement in both Donnington and Bicester. Once we are clear which entity we are working with on each exercise, we will be best placed to judge where the locations should be consolidated.

Reservists

Tony Baldry Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2013 Westminster Hall

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

I am proud to be a yeoman. Throughout history, the reserves have risen to the challenges that they have been set. I appreciate the concerns of regular soldiers and regiments that the Regular Army has to contract, but the British Army has contracted and expanded over the years in accordance with perceived threats. To listen to some hon. Members, one would think that no regiment in the British Army had hitherto been disbanded. My grandfather served as a regular in the Highland Light Infantry and my great grandfather served as a regular in the Gordon Highlanders, and both regiments were disbanded many years ago. The reserves have managed to fulfil full-time regular roles with great efficiency. My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) made it clear that when he was interviewing soldiers in Iraq, he could not distinguish between full-time regular soldiers and the reservists, because the reservists demonstrated all the professional skills of a regular soldier.

My last appointment in the Territorial and Army Volunteer Reserve was as honouree colonel of what would seem to many a somewhat unglamorous unit. When they were on parade, however, they all had a chest full of medals, because they had served in pretty well every conflict since Iraq 1. We were always over-recruited. That was the laundry troops of the Royal Logistics Corps, and that demonstrates that if we give men and women a purposeful task through which they can see that they are contributing, whether that is as laundry troops, in the Army media group or as front-line combat troops, they will respond. There has been a scintilla of a suggestion from the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) and my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham that reservists do not necessarily have a high degree of competence.

[Thomas Docherty]

rose—

[Sir Tony Baldry]

The hon. Gentleman said that it was all very well for reservists to be working as medics or doing back-office jobs. During my 22 years in the TAVR, I was fortunate to serve for eight years as a staff officer to the artillery commander of the Allied Command Europe Mobile Force. If one is trusted as a command post officer to have under one’s command a multi-force battery of guns, as a TA officer, it is perfectly clear that, with training and commitment, reserve officers, men and women can do whatever task is required of them in the British Army.

We will clearly need to recruit men and women into the reserves, and as MPs, we all have a duty in that. We all have convening skills. I certainly talk to local employers in my patch to ensure that they understand what is required of them and what is involved in the reserve forces of the 21st century, and to ensure that Oxfordshire gives the armed forces—the Army and our reserves—the fullest possible support, as it always has done. I hope that Ministers will consider ensuring that those employers that step up to the plate by releasing men and women to the reserves are able to demonstrate that on their letterheads. Such a thing has been done in different ways throughout history.

My final point is totally separate from, but related to, the thrust of my comments. The reserves have a number of skills that the Regular Army either does not have, or is giving up. One of the Royal Logistic Corps units that regularly trains at Bicester, in my constituency, is a railway unit that is made up almost entirely of Network Rail employees. Its intention is to keep a railhead open from ports to theatres of war. It was used in Kosovo, and its guys are very committed. When I was recently in Kosovo, the Kosovan Government said that they would be very willing to have them go there to continue their training, if the Ministry of Defence was agreeable. I understand that the unit might be threatened with disbandment, but such areas of expertise within the reserve forces are worth keeping.

I was a founder member of the Army’s media group, which was set up by Colonel Alan Protheroe—recently deceased, I am afraid—who was a deputy director-general of the BBC, because the Regular Army realised that it did not have people who could cope with journalists and the media in times of conflict. Over the years, the group has built up considerable expertise. The reserves often can cost-effectively ensure that the Army has areas of expertise that it can call upon.

The evidence of history will show that when the yeomanry—the reserves—have been given a task and training, and have been told what is required of them, they have always stepped up to the plate. I have every confidence that if the reserves are pointed in the right direction and given the right support and training, along with the encouragement of this House and others, they will have no difficulty recruiting and retaining, and ensuring the operational efficiency required for the defence of the realm.