Viscount Slim
Main Page: Viscount Slim (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)Department Debates - View all Viscount Slim's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(13 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, with the greatest respect, this was one very unfortunate error by one individual in the Army—the noble Lord mentioned the e-mail today. In the Ministry of Defence, we go to enormous lengths to make sure that redundancies are carried out correctly, and this happens in almost every case.
Viscount Slim
My Lords, if one goes a little deeper, the noble Lord will recall that when he was in opposition, during the time of the previous Administration, the position of a commanding officer was gone into in considerable detail in your Lordships’ House and in Committee. The purpose was that most of us were very put out by the fact that the authority of a commanding officer was being denuded. The noble Lord might agree that this incident, as I understand it, of bypassing a commanding officer and directly talking to a warrant officer will have a very adverse effect on commanding officers in battle on operations. In the examination that the noble Lord has said is going on, I hope that the position of the commanding officer of a unit—the key man in any operation—is not being denuded or his authority removed in any way whatever.