(3 years ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, I always listen with care to the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, who has immense experience in this area. I assure him that under current plans the Army will be balanced to deliver right across the defence spectrum, to protect the homeland, engage with allies and partners overseas, constrain the aggressive activities of our adversaries and—if necessary—to fight wars. It is an Army that has been designed to fight but also organised to operate more productively and effectively.
My Lords, from these Benches, I reiterate the concerns expressed by the noble Lords, Lord Coaker and Lord Dannatt, about the size of the Army. In his first Answer, the noble Earl referred to the integrated review and the increased defence expenditure. The latter was welcome but what assessment have the Government made of the current exchange rate against the dollar and inflation? It is all very well to bandy headline figures around, but what will that mean in terms of capabilities? Should we not be concerned about not only the size of the Army, which is too small, but defence expenditure more widely?
The noble Baroness will remember that, as part of the spending review of 2020, MoD secured a generous £24 billon uplift to its budget. This will enable the Armed Forces generally to invest in things that they would not otherwise have been able to, including spending £6.6 billion on R&D, establishing a new space command, developing the next generation of naval vessels, developing a new combat air system for the RAF and enhancing our cyber capabilities. So a multitude of work is going on to improve the capability and capacity of all of our Armed Forces.
(3 years, 2 months ago)
Lords ChamberSamantha Jones, the permanent secretary and chief operating officer, will be in charge of civil servants in No. 10. As the noble Lord will know, the Ministerial Code states:
“The responsibility for the management and conduct of special advisers, including discipline, rests with the Minister who made the appointment.”
There is experience within No. 10 to draw on. There is specialist HR experience from the Cabinet Office’s spad HR team to support that role. I believe the chief of staff and the deputy chief of staff will also play a role in that regard.
My Lords, almost six months to the day before the Russians invaded Ukraine, the United States—and, by extension, its NATO allies—left Afghanistan. We have talked a lot already about the Ukrainian refugee scheme. In the other place, John Baron MP, chair of the APPG for the British Council, raised the issue of British Council staff who were told that they would have the opportunity to come to the United Kingdom. They are still stuck in Afghanistan. What are Her Majesty’s Government doing to ensure that the commitments they made in August are met, that the ACRS is fit for purpose and that people who have worked for the British Council actually know when they can begin to apply? Looking at Ukraine and seeing what offers the UK has made to Ukrainians, they feel that they are being ignored.
They are certainly not being ignored. My understanding is that they can access the schemes, but I will have to write to the noble Baroness because this has been largely focused on Ukraine. I think an answer was given, but I do not have the words to hand and do not want to mislead her. However, I am very happy to put on record what was said in response to that in the Commons.
(3 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, ordinarily I would not support a novel procedure which overrode the precedence of the ways in which we normally do business and in which the Government expect to direct how business is taken in both Houses of Parliament. But I have been increasingly concerned that the Private Member’s Bill processes, both here and in the other place, simply do not work. They do not work for controversial Bills. It is simple to thwart the progress of a controversial Bill both here and in another place—but particularly so in this House through the mechanisms which we have seen used.
This issue is so important: it is clear that there is strong body of opinion within the British public wanting to see this issue addressed in some way. We must find parliamentary time to make a proper decision on it. I accept what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, says about the unusual nature of a Minister having to lay a draft Bill which is not government business. But sometimes things are so important that we must find practical ways through them. I believe that my noble friend’s amendment is a practical way through a very difficult problem, and I urge all noble Lords on my Benches to ignore the Whip.
My Lords, in Committee, I asked whether the Minister—I think the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, was responding on that occasion—had thought about giving parliamentary time to the Private Member’s Bill. The proponents of the current amendment are suggesting that this is not about the Government bringing forward a piece of legislation, even though—as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, pointed out—that is exactly what the amendment says. If the intention of the amendment is to request parliamentary time—and we really are looking only at proposed new subsection (2)(b)—could the Minister, in replying, consider whether parliamentary time could be given to the issue without damaging neutrality in any way? The amendment, as drafted, would require the Government to bring forward legislation in favour of assisted dying. An amendment which gives parliamentary time to the issue would be very different.
My Lords, I will make a brief intervention. First, I rise to challenge the view that all bishops and religious leaders are against assisted dying. I changed my mind some seven years ago.
Secondly, we are discussing the Health and Care Bill. It so happened that this week I received a letter from two doctors—husband and wife—from Colchester. I will read a part of it because they asked me to intervene on their behalf. Their experience comes from within the National Health Service; they worked in the NHS all their careers. One of them says:
“I visited P a little more than two weeks before he died. Alone with me, he explained that he was beyond misery, from the pain of his condition and from the effects that drugs were having. The time had come, the patient asked, to request something that would allow him to slip away. The look of disbelief and horror as I explained that I could not do this haunts me still.”
The doctor goes on to say:
“The Health Service which has done everything it could to involve the patient in their care and comply with the patient's wishes waits until they are at their most vulnerable and incapacitated, to impose a course diametrically opposed to the wishes of the patient.”
(3 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberI thank the right reverend Prelate. We are certainly working on his first point about air routes. We have been working particularly with, for instance, the Qataris and the US to think about ways we might facilitate that. I can certainly reassure him that we are talking to our international partners about that and, on borders, with Pakistan, Uzbekistan and others to try to see what we can do to create the safe passage we all want. As I have also said, the dialogues going on with the various organisations with the Taliban are reinforcing time and again that this is, first and foremost, something the international community wants to see.
On housing, I mentioned that we are already working with more than 100 councils to meet demand for housing and more than 2,000 places have already been confirmed. We have also made available £5 million of support to local councils to provide housing and are having further discussions.
On, I suppose, not lower-level but other engagement, on 27 August we launched a portal to allow members of the public to submit offers of support for people arriving from Afghanistan. Offers of housing support can currently be submitted through that and work is ongoing to expand it to offers such as job opportunities, professional skills, training and donations of specific items. We are working with our local authority partners and friends, but also with the great generosity of the British public, which we are all aware of. We are providing ways in which they can offer help and support as well, which I know will be extremely welcome.
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Browne, talked about open-source material looking at the situation in Afghanistan in the first half of this year. Closer to home, your Lordships’ International Relations and Defence Committee produced a report in January on the UK and Afghanistan in which we outlined considerable concerns. We impressed on the Government the need to talk to the incoming Biden Administration. What effort did the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office put into talking to the American Administration behind the scenes? The fact that the Government were preparing for Operation Pitting from January does not really send the right signals. Surely, we should have been trying to create a situation where we did not need an emergency evacuation. We should have left in a way that left stability, not chaos.
As I said, intelligence and information were obviously being assessed by the FCDO and the MoD throughout this and plans were being taken. It is a fact that the speed at which the Taliban moved took people by surprise; people, including the Taliban, have admitted that. We did this evacuation thanks to the bravery of our forces. We managed to evacuate more Afghans than any other country, apart from the US. Lessons will of course be learned and we will look at those, but we must also recognise that our forces and diplomats did a fantastic job in extremely difficult circumstances. We must be grateful to them.
(3 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, I do not think that today is the day for recriminations. The time for reckoning, as the noble Lord, Lord Hain, has talked about, should come later, at a time when, I trust, there will be a full inquiry into British activity with our NATO partners in Afghanistan. Today is the time to think about urgent action.
In the last few days, the situation in Afghanistan has seen the clocks go back 20 years or, for women, several centuries. Women and girls are now in a profoundly vulnerable situation—not just the judges, about whom we heard so movingly and effectively from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, but the wives and daughters of those who have worked with NATO forces or with NGOs. It is absolutely vital that we urgently find a way of getting out as many people as possible.
We have heard today the suggestion of 20,000 refugees. That is great, but only 5,000 this year is woefully inadequate. We have, apparently, already brought in 3,000 interpreters and their families. What can the Government tell us about all the other people who need to get out of Afghanistan and brought over as a matter of urgency? This is not just interpreters but the cleaners, catering staff and others who worked for the Army and in the embassy—locally engaged staff who were sometimes employed directly by the embassy, sometimes not. The provisions in place are for those who were employed but, occasionally, people lost their jobs perhaps because they had smoked cannabis. Government Ministers do not necessarily lose their jobs when they admit to having taken drugs; surely these people should be given every opportunity to leave Afghanistan.
Can the Minister tell us, in responding, what contact the FCDO has had with interpreters who are still in Afghanistan and what offers have been given in recent days to people who maybe do not have passports? Surely there is a need for the Government and Home Office to understand that some of the people we need to bring out of Afghanistan will need to come without the normal paperwork. Our ambassador is doing a fantastic job, as I understand it, in making sure that paperwork is expedited, but we need to ensure that people are not being kept back because of issues to do with petty bureaucracy.
Does the FCDO have any idea of the number of people who are vulnerable because they have worked for the UK and our allies? Is it working on a figure of far more than 5,000 people? The numbers are not sufficient. The RAF is doing a fantastic job at the moment, but can we assume that those numbers of maybe 1,000 people a day can go on at least until the end of August and that we will deal with the debt that we owe to people who have serviced our service men and women? In concluding, I of course pay tribute to our service men and women for everything that they have done. It was not in vain because, for 20 years, we gave the people of Afghanistan hope.
(4 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, earlier in the debate it was suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, that we are all on a spectrum of some sort. Nobody has quite said that we should go back overnight to exactly the way Parliament was before March 2020, although the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, came close to it. Nobody has entirely said that we should be wholly hybrid and, as far as possible, not be present in person in your Lordships’ House. I fall quite a long way along the spectrum towards the speech and Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. In an ideal world, we should all be back in person on 21 June, without social distancing and without hybridity; this is my personal view. It is noticeable that the Whips on the Liberal Democrat side decided to put me in a graveyard slot this afternoon. Presumably, they thought that I would say something dangerous and controversial.
However much I should like to say that we must get back to being here in person, it is also important to bear in mind that some Members are not able to do so at present, as my noble friend Lady Brinton pointed out. This does not mean that they are not working, nor that they have no value. It does not mean that they should take leave of absence. We need to find a mechanism that allows those Members who physically cannot be here at present to participate, but this must be the exception. Those of us for whom it is simply more comfortable and convenient to stay at, and work from, home need to stop and think again about the purpose of this Chamber.
The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, pointed out that form followed function in the hybrid proceedings. That was all very well but, at various times, it has felt as if the broadcasters have been in control. We have been told that things cannot happen because it does not suit or is not possible for the broadcasters. We should not make rules that are for the convenience of us as Members. We should make rules that are for the good governance of this country, to enable Parliament to do its duty and for us all to hold the Government to account and scrutinise.
Like many noble Lords, I do not feel that this Chamber has been able to do its job adequately during the last year. The staff and Members have all done a great job, as have the Zoom people who emailed to remind me what a great job they have been doing. That flexibility has been important but to hold Ministers to account, we need to be able to see and make eye contact with them across the Chamber. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, has just looked up at me; had I been speaking remotely, I would have had no idea if he had looked up or not.
To do our jobs, it is crucial that we are able to interact and we cannot do this effectively via a Zoom screen. We should move back to in-person meetings of the Chamber as soon as possible, with the caveat that those who are unable to attend will have some sort of mechanism to enable them to participate, but this should be the exception. The noble Lords, Lord Kakkar and Lord Hannan, pointed out that the Writ of Summons requires us to be here. It was noticeable that Her Majesty the Queen was herself here present last week. If she, at 95, can be here, so can we—and we should be.
My call would be that this House needs to take back control. We should not let the Procedure Committee decide on interventions. We should be able to decide when we intervene on Ministers or in debate. We need to return to ensuring that we are scrutinising and doing our duty. In doing so, I hope we can ensure that the Government do their job effectively as well.
The noble Lord, Lord Curry of Kirkharle, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe.
(4 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberAs I said, we remain fully compliant with the non-proliferation treaty and deeply committed to our collective goal of a world without nuclear weapons. But we also remain committed to maintaining the minimum destructive power needed to guarantee that the UK’s nuclear deterrent remains credible and effective against the full range of state nuclear threats from any direction.
My Lords, when the defence expenditure increase was announced, I welcomed it from these Benches. It never occurred to me that the increase in defence expenditure was in order to have more nuclear warheads. The noble Lord, Lord West, has already pointed out that this is problematic. Can the noble Baroness explain to the House how it would be in line with Article VI of the non-proliferation treaty? Surely by increasing our nuclear holdings we are not doing anything to help nuclear disarmament.
As I said, the review details our intent to increase the limit of our overall nuclear weapons stockpile. It is a ceiling, not a target. As I have also said, we remain fully compliant with the non-proliferation treaty.
(4 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, I suspect that the Prime Minister’s Statement divides Peers, MPs and everybody else, to an extent, into those of us who speak on defence issues and those concerned about wider issues. Therefore, while I obviously welcome what the Statement said on defence expenditure, like other Peers, I ask the Minister what has happened to the 0.7% legal commitment to development aid. In the defence sphere, the Prime Minister talked about a
“once-in-a-generation modernisation”
programme and how we are going to get away from the “vicious circle” of
“squandering billions along the way.”—[Official Report, Commons, 19/11/20; col. 488.]
Given that the cart has come before the horse—the expenditure has been flagged up before the integrated review is complete—could the Minister explain to us how the Government intend to avoid “squandering billions” and how they will improve defence procurement?
As the noble Baroness says, we believe that this settlement gives a chance to break free from the vicious circle whereby we ordered ever decreasing numbers of ever more expensive items of military hardware. We have set out a number of projects that we will move forward across the Navy in particular but also with the RAF and others. We have also set out a very ambitious plan focused on using new technologies, AI, our new National Cyber Force and space. This is a broad package that we believe will truly help our Armed Forces modernise and be able to tackle the emerging and very different global threats that they are currently facing.
(5 years ago)
Lords ChamberI hoped that I had set out some of that detail in my answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith. Each local area will have a local action committee to manage its outbreaks, and discussions at a local level will be supported by the joint work of the joint biosecurity centre, Public Health England and NHS Test and Trace. We have already seen a successful lockdown in Weston-super-Mare, so we are starting to see these situations being taken under control and dealt with at a very local level.
My Lords, the Leader referred to guidance for theatres and orchestras pending a move back to live theatre. What practical assistance are the Government able to give to the performing arts pending reopening to ensure that the sector remains vibrant post lockdown?
Ministers in the department recently met leaders in this sector to discuss the impact and how guidance could be developed to ensure that the sector can reopen. It will be consulted on guidelines. There is another round table with the sector next week to discuss that. Obviously, this is an incredibly important sector and we are looking to continue support, but the sector has benefited from the job retention scheme and the self-employment support scheme, as well as from the £160 million Arts Council England emergency funding. We are in ongoing discussions. Of course, we want this sector to open up as quickly as possible, but in a way that ensures that audiences and performers are safe in the environment.
(5 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberIt is very easy in a situation such as this for us to resort to colourful words to describe it. I personally regret the degree of emotion that has entered this debate. It is perhaps not surprising, but feelings run high—my noble friend is entirely right. I do not wish to add any animus to that situation.
My Lords, it has been suggested that it would be unfortunate to try to push legislation through Parliament inappropriately quickly, but if the Prime Minister is looking for a deal which would not come until on or after 17 October, would we not need to amend the 2018 withdrawal Act? Is there time for that? Does the Minister envisage an opportunity for Parliament to amend that legislation appropriately?
The technical position would be that, if a deal is reached, a withdrawal agreement Bill would be introduced, hopefully for approval by Parliament. We are absolutely clear that there is time to do that. There may be a need to obtain the consent of Parliament to sit at rather unusual hours to do that, but we are clear that it can be done.