Armed Forces Bill

Viscount Slim Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Slim]

My Lords, it is always convenient to be tail-end Charlie because everything I want to say has been said so much better by other noble Lords. However, there are one or two matters I wish to raise.

From where I sit, I do not like to get too muddled in inter-party rivalry, but one or two speeches on this side of the House were a little tougher on the military covenant than on the other side. I am quite clear—I said this in the Chamber at the time—that the military covenant was bust, broken and not adhered to under the previous Administration. The noble Baroness—I do not see her in her place—quite rightly stood up and contradicted me but I was quite certain of my ground.

On the Bill, enough evidence has been given and enough worry expressed that in the new reformed mode to which we are moving—and which, I hope, as the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, said, we will debate one day pretty soon—the annual report is still not right. The Secretary of State for Defence has to stand up and not only quote the reports but represent the Ministers and Secretaries of State of all the other departments. We need to consider this issue in our future debates in order to help him; it is not a question of going against him but of assisting and helping him.

In this debate we have talked about soldiers, sailors, airmen, veterans, reservists and so on, but we have not talked about the politicians who are the key to this. In choosing their Secretary of State for Defence, future Prime Ministers will have to be very careful because the new reform states that they have got to be longer in the job; that they have got to give five-years’ worth; that they have got to do this or do that. We must have a Secretary of State for Defence who is going to be there. The job is much more like that of the executive chairman of a major corporation, where you go there every day and you are in amongst it; where you get down to detail. It is a slightly new role for a Secretary of State.

We cannot have the Secretary of State changing every so often. With great respect to the previous Administration, there seemed to be a great number of Secretaries of State—they kept coming and going—and that is not on. The military, the soldiers on the ground—the Tommies we have heard about—are not stupid. They say, “They are changing jobs; they are promoting each other; they are being sacked or whatever. They obviously do not think much of the Ministry of Defence; they do not think much of me—a soldier, sailor, airman, veteran, whatever I am”. We have to be careful. In the future the Prime Minister of the day will have to choose even more carefully his Secretary of State for Defence and his other Ministers; they are in for a longer haul.

I wish to raise a point with the Minister about which I have belaboured him enough in the past. However, I first wish to thank him. The previous Administration was good—I had meetings with the noble Lord, Lord Bach, with one or two others and with the noble Baroness, and it was wonderful—but the noble Lord, Lord Astor, has been exceptionally good; he has come out into the open, briefed us and argued with us. However, he has failed completely on one matter. I come back to what the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, mentioned, and that is the question of the chief coroner. I repeat what I have said before in your Lordships’ House: it is farcical and cruel that it takes one year, two years, three years to officially pronounce a serviceman dead. These are men and women who have fought and been killed in action for king or queen and country, and the fact that the Government will not produce a chief coroner—which the previous Administration said they would—is mean, short-sighted and rather stupid.

I have a suggestion to make to the Minister. There is a lot of pruning going on in this reform, this new organisation, among a lot of the top brass and civil servants. Mind you, I have not yet met anyone with the guts really to bring the Civil Service down to size, but there you are. Why does the MoD not recommend to the Ministry of Justice a retired general, air marshal, brigadier, admiral, or whatever rank, to be the chief coroner? As we have said in previous debates, he does not have to be a lawyer. It would actually be rather refreshing to have someone in the Ministry of Justice who is not a lawyer. What we are looking for is a leader and an administrator; there are plenty of them about in the Ministry of Defence, and you are going to chuck some of them on the heap. I believe that what coroners need is support. They need modern ways of working. They need better administration. They need a quicker process—all these sorts of things that the right man from the Ministry of Defence can do. There has been a strange silence, and no support given publicly by the Ministry of Defence or the Secretary of State for doing something about sharpening up the coroner system. That is just an idea, and I hope something happens.

I so liked what the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, said, if I may be so bold as to say so. It is of course quite right that no one should go into battle before he is 18 or over. I have to admit that I saw my first dead enemy when I was 17 and, funnily enough, it did not do me any harm. It did not make me odd, or at least no more odd than I might already have been. So it is right that we look after them.

If you go to the Army Foundation College in Harrogate, or to any of the services’ apprentices schools, you will find that they are the best schools in Britain. The education and the citizenship training there is better than the average comprehensive school, and they are better fed, too. They also get a bit of pocket money. It is from these places, and the cadet forces—which the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, knows about and has such experience of—that all our future regimental sergeant majors come. That is where the chief petty officers in the Navy come from. Some of them become officers. Do not be too worried about them coming from care homes; they come to a new home. If you talk to them, you will find that they are very happy in their new home. They are not going to go to war, but they must be supported. They will be reported on, I am quite certain, somewhere in the system, but you are quite right: maybe somewhere in the audit—if it is 30 per cent, as you were saying—it ought to come up, too.

I am all for this Armed Forces Bill, but it needs fine-tuning. We need to discuss it and we need to make it a bit better in a number of places. There is a lot of experience around the House and many noble and gallant Lords. I hope the Minister and the Government will listen, and please do something about the coroner, because I really think it is pathetic that they do not.