Armed Forces: Capability

Viscount Younger of Leckie Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Robertson of Port Ellen (Lab)]

My Lords, let me start by paying just a moment of tribute to Lord Lyell, who died yesterday. He was the secretary of the All-Party Defence Group and a formidable and energetic supporter of Britain’s Armed Forces. He will be greatly missed by the House and by many of those whom he met.

This is a very timely debate—never more so to those of us who watched yesterday’s press conference in New York. On a distinguished panel last year, I was asked what I believed was the greatest threat to the safety and security of our country. I considered some of the immediate and looming challenges and threats, some of which are pretty formidable: the migration flows that have suddenly ended up on our shores; the spread of religious experience extremism and jihadi violence plumbing new depths of savagery; a restive and resurgent Russia; a rising China; and the disruption by North Korea. Add to that fragile and failed states spreading mayhem across borders, international conflicts, climate change, cyber warfare and the global proliferation of lethal technology and weapons. On top of all that, there is the rise and dominance of organised crime, population growth, pandemics and financial instability.

That is a pretty formidable cocktail of trouble for us to face. However, my answer to the question of what was the greatest threat is actually different: it is ourselves. We are our own worst enemies. We are short-sighted, penny-pinching, naively optimistic, complacent and ostrich-like to the way in which the world has become interconnected and more fragile, unpredictable and incendiary. We are grossly unprepared and underresourced to meet the challenges of the coming years. These threats are potent and deadly, and some of them are very urgent.

At the end of the Cold War, I made a speech at Chatham House in which I coined what was to be a much-quoted phrase when I said that there had been a “bonfire of the certainties”. The fall of the Berlin Wall had unleashed a flood of optimism that had made Kremlinologists redundant overnight and robbed us of the albeit dangerous manageability of the Soviet/West confrontation. Some were even rash enough to say that it was the “end of history”. All of us took a substantial peace dividend and defence budgets were cut radically over the next five years. I believe we are now seeing another bonfire, this time of the post-Cold War certainties. In doing so, we have left ourselves vulnerable and, in many ways, unready. If we look at the way in which we have responded to this new world of regional conflicts, violent civil wars and other violent manifestations of the turmoil that I have already listed, we see that it hardly measures up to the scale of what faces us.

If anyone doubts my contention that we are our own worst enemy, just let them look at the debate in both Houses of this Parliament on 29 August 2013. The President of the United States had drawn a red line on President Assad using chemical weapons on his own people in a conflict that was already tearing his country apart and spreading to every part of the Middle East and beyond. Consequently, when the sarin gas attacks on civilians were confirmed, President Obama rightly decided that a military attack should be mounted to degrade President Assad’s war machine. Our Prime Minister at the time agreed, said he wanted to join this wholly justified action and recalled Parliament in order to put it to the House of Commons. The Commons, with my own party playing an opportunistic and disgraceful part, refused to give permission for the UK to join the response to the hideous chemical attacks on civilians.

The Prime Minister, having been defeated on an issue of grave military consequence, not only did not resign, which you would have thought in all honour he should have done, but instead swiftly closed off the possibility of even reconsidering the decision. It did not need John Kerry, the outgoing US Secretary of State, to remind us of this last week and lay the blame for President Obama’s retreat from his red lines on the British House of Commons on that August day. We all already knew it and we must all share the responsibility, even those of us who supported the government position, for the carnage that followed. Tears for Aleppo will never be enough. I love my country. I care about its future and the safety of our people in a very troubled world. That is why I am ashamed that that night this Parliament, where I have served for 38 years, did what it did. As events have spiralled into horror since then, with a line coming directly from that vote, my shame turns to anger.

Now, in eight days’ time, we will have President Donald Trump as the leader of the western world—the Donald, with his Mexican wall, with new protectionism and isolationism, with his serious questioning of NATO solidarity, with a belief in torture and with Lieutenant-General Michael Flynn as his key security adviser. Perhaps we do not actually need more enemies in the world today.

We in this country have Brexit. Going against the grain of history, our country is about to embark on a tortuous journey, with no known destination, that will absorb people, time and talent and will suck the energy out of our political system just as the challenges to Europe come crashing in on us. Our influence on our European neighbours will dramatically and inevitably diminish. Although they will still need our military, as Europe finds Trump’s America turning away we will find it difficult to take the lead that we usually claim. Reports this week that Britain’s claim to the Deputy SACEUR position has been challenged by France are just the latest evidence of that slipping influence. Our Foreign Office, the soft-power arm of government, at the same time as bearing the burden of maintaining our influence in the rest of the world, will be eclipsed by the Brexit vortex as its budget, already smaller than the budget for the US Embassy in Baghdad, will come under renewed pressure.

In our crazy complacency we seem quite oblivious to the fact that the relative peacefulness of the world today, as we look over a new precipice, has been achieved by our nuclear deterrent and by our institutions and processes, which require diplomacy, intelligence, involvement and, crucially—when it is required and at the end of the line—decisive interventions. Where will the space be left for all that as we paddle through the treacle of dismantling 40 years of integration?

What confirms again that we are our own worst enemy is the attitude to spending on defence and security. Yes, I agree with and welcome the fact that we are spending the NATO target of 2%; we are right in many ways to crow that we are among the few who do. That is good so far as it goes, but we should wait for a moment. After all, have we stretched the definition of 2% to get there? Are we not confusing percentages with capabilities? Who can doubt, as well, that the Brexit devaluation of the pound will now have a serious effect on the defence budget? I hope that the noble Earl the Minister will tell us how much it is estimated that blow will cost his department.

In 1997-98, as Secretary of State for Defence, I led the strategic defence review with, among others, my noble friend Lord Reid. It radically remodelled and modernised our post-Cold War forces. In the preface to the review, I said that post-Cold War problems,

“pose a real threat to our security, whether in the Balkans, the Middle East or in some trouble spot yet to ignite. If we are to discharge our international responsibilities in such areas, we must retain the power to act. Our Armed Forces are Britain’s insurance against a huge variety of risks”.

That is as true today as it was when I wrote it. The question is whether we in this country have properly retained that power to act. Some doubt will be cast on that by the distinguished speakers who will speak after me in this debate.

The Minister will undoubtedly tell us at the end of the debate that there is formidable hardware in the pipeline, from Trident to the carriers that were the centrepiece of my 1998 review. The question remains, though: is it enough to meet the challenges we are facing when so many of them are urgent and so potent?

My worry is that we are sleepwalking into a potential calamity. My depressing catalogue of threats, after all, does not even take account of what I said in 1998 of trouble spots yet to ignite. As I wrote those words, we could not have foreseen the conflict the very next year in Kosovo, the attacks of 9/11, the implosion of Syria, the whole of the Arab spring and, indeed, the rise of Daesh/ISIS. We have today a crisis of optimism—hoping for the best and failing to prepare for the worst.

You might legitimately ask, having heard my gloomy assessment and warning, what we should be doing. Here are just a few of my thoughts. First, we must retain and protect our own defence industrial base. That alone gives us some real control in the UK. At the same time, we must encourage and participate in joint projects with our European NATO allies. European contributions to NATO are not just limited by financial shortcomings but by wasteful duplication, and we must continue to press our NATO allies to boost spending and capabilities. If they—and we—did that, we might help expand the growth in our economies.

Secondly, we must continue to promote our values and principles on the world stage. We must defend NATO as the cornerstone of our national and collective defence and tell the people of this country, and indeed the wider world, how essential the alliance remains. Article 5, where an attack on one is an attack on all, is not a choice; it is a solemn obligation. Anybody who questions it questions the whole basis of collective security. Our communication policy on this whole issue is, frankly, pathetic.

Thirdly, we must be aware of and act on the dangers inherent in the present confrontation between Russia and the West. Without the tripwires and warning arrangements of the Cold War, we are in grave danger of making a mistake or a miscalculation with potentially catastrophic results.

Our much-reduced military is still among the very best in the world. Our diplomats have few peers internationally. Our intelligence services are relied on by most of the free world. It is now time for our Government to recognise the dangers to Britain and to live up to their high standards. Never in my lifetime was bold and courageous leadership more necessary and more urgent.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, before we hear from my noble friend Lord King, I remind the House that this is a time-limited date with Back-Bench speeches limited to four minutes. Timing is particularly tight, so I entreat Peers to wind up immediately when the clock displays four minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde (Lab)]

My Lords, I join with others in thanking my noble friend Lord Robertson for this debate today and for introducing such wide-ranging coverage of the issues that we face. I was not at all surprised that he included personnel in that. As the very new chairman of the Armed Forces’ Pay Review Body, I was called in by the first Defence Secretary of the new Labour Government to be told that the staging of the pay award by the Tory Government that had caused so much demoralisation in the Armed Forces for several years was going to stop. Whatever the review body recommended, our Armed Forces would get—and the Labour Government honoured that agreement right the way through.

On the personnel that we have and the capability of our Armed Forces, we can have the best policies in the world, get a real 2% defence budget, make the changes and invest, but unless we have the continuation of professional Armed Forces personnel, backed and supported by their families, we will not succeed. Part of the worldwide reputation our Armed Forces have for their professionalism, talent and whatever they bring wherever they go is because we have this concordat.

The Armed Forces have their covenant, which is welcome and has been improved over the past few years, and they have the Armed Forces’ Pay Review Body, which is independent. There is a report due out shortly but I looked at its report from last year and it makes worrying reading. I looked at the previous three as well and they make incrementally worrying reading.

What do Armed Forces personnel and their families see? They—and I—see a Prime Minister who has been in office for nearly a year and has not made one major speech on international security or defence. How are they supposed to feel about that when so much of our security as a nation depends on them and their ability? Many of them see the 2% as smoke and mirrors. They do not understand why pensions should be included in defence spending. An accountant may be able to argue that but you will never convince our people, or many of us in the Chamber today, that that is spending on defence equipment and personnel. They saw last year the announcement by the Government that from 2016, for four years, the maximum pay award they will get year on year will be 1%. Our Armed Forces people are not slow off the mark; they know what is going on and in evidence to the review body they asked why that should be imposed on them when the very people who are imposing it—MPs—are getting more than 1%. Yet we expect our Armed Forces to continue to give the commitment that they have given.

The review body is independent. It has been respected by Governments across the piece. Yet in 2010, and again last year, the Treasury quite arbitrarily, without reference to the review body, cut the commitment bonuses—the commitment to go and do the job. It is in the report. It makes worrying reading indeed. Just 14% of our Armed Forces think that morale is high. If that were a company, it would be looking at itself and at what it could do to improve it. Just 36% were satisfied with their lifestyle and remuneration package. Just under half of them were dissatisfied with the impact on their partner’s career. Many partners have to put their career in abeyance when their Armed Forces partner is serving.

Paragraph 2.14 of the report was one of the most worrying aspects. The review body said:

“One of the most powerful messages … was that personnel were losing trust in their employer”—

the MoD, the Government. So I ask the Minister: do the Government intend to maintain the 1% for the next four years? If they do, do they not agree that that will affect recruitment and retention? Will the impact that the drop in the value of the pound—£1.50 the night of Brexit; £1.20 last night—will have on the MoD budget have to be met out of the MoD budget?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My Lords, as I am in charge of time management, I make a further strong entreaty that remaining speeches must conclude as the clock reaches four minutes.