Defence: Continuous At-sea Deterrence

Lord Bates Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

The noble Baroness raises an important point. Most of us in this Chamber can recall the conviction of President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev that a nuclear war cannot be won and can recall the contribution that statement made to stability at that time. The avoidance of war between nuclear weapons states and the reduction of nuclear risk is one of our foremost responsibilities. We welcome the US and Russia’s joint statement on 16 June and their commitment to a bilateral strategic stability dialogue. We regard this as a serious signal of intent to reduce the risk of nuclear conflict and enhance mutual trust and security by the two countries, which hold almost 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons.

[Lord Bates (Con)]

My Lords, given that a single nuclear submarine could deliver nuclear weapons with more than 100 times the destructive yield of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which incinerated over 200,000 people, mostly civilians, does my noble friend agree that while the possession of such weapons of mass destruction may be justified as a necessary evil at present, it remains the firm policy of Her Majesty’s Government to work towards the complete elimination of nuclear weapons? If so, how do they intend to advance that agenda?

Queen’s Speech

Lord Bates Excerpts

Wednesday 19th May 2021 Lords Chamber

Moved on Tuesday 11 May by

[Lord Bates]

That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty as follows:

“Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank Your Majesty for the most gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament”.

Nuclear Weapons

Lord Bates Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates (Con)]

On 24 January 2021, it will be 75 years since the General Assembly of the United Nations first pledged to rid the world of nuclear weapons, while meeting at Central Hall, Westminster. Is my noble friend aware that many of us who have argued vigorously against unilateral nuclear disarmament feel passionately about the need for greater progress in multilateral disarmament? I welcome the UK’s leadership in reducing our nuclear stockpile. Will the Government use the upcoming 75th anniversary to urge other nuclear states to follow suit?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

As always, my noble friend makes an interesting and informed contribution. He underlines my earlier point about why we have the deterrent and what the test of a successful deterrent is. I assure him that the United Kingdom Government support multilateral nuclear disarmament, but we believe that the non-proliferation treaty is the most effective means of progressing that objective.

Armed Forces

Lord Bates Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow my noble friend Lord Bridgeman. While he was talking, I recalled my visit to some of the cemeteries and memorials when, last year and in the early part of this year, I undertook a most moving walk across Europe to promote the Olympic truce. In January, we arrived at the island of Ireland Peace Park, which is now a memorial on the western front which commemorates the fallen on both sides who came together there. It is now a centre for peace and it will be a focal point for centenary celebrations and commemorations of the First World War. It is a fitting tribute.

I am also privileged to take part in this debate in which immense expertise has been brought to bear. I thank my noble friend Lord Astor for introducing the debate and I welcome my noble friend Lady Garden of Frognal to her role. After the moving speech of my noble friend Lady Wilcox, I wonder whether it is traditional to welcome someone back to the Back Benches but, even if it is not in order, I do so because I thought hers was a particularly moving speech and one that I welcomed.

For me, this debate has hinged on two contributions, one from my noble friend Lord King of Bridgwater, and the other from the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen. Their contributions have been very significant, particularly the point about the reception that our Armed Forces receive when they return to the United Kingdom. I have had a couple of encounters recently. I was devastated to hear about how people are treated, when in uniform, on their return, having sacrificed so much and given such incredible service. There are two points to this. One is that we need to make a case for the mission, but more fundamentally we need to bear in mind that no member of the Armed Forces has ever gone to war of their own volition. They go to war and engage in conflict because Parliament and Her Majesty’s Government dispatch them to do so. They serve the Executive and they serve the legislature. That point needs to be made. They do not question it; they go out and serve.

That leads to another point, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord King, which is how the military service is doing all that it can and so it behoves us in Parliament to do all that we can to communicate that message and to scrutinise it. I would like to flag up one point before going back to the First World War reminiscences and some comments on the work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. I do not wish to get into a debate about the rights and wrongs of conflict but I would like to make a more general point about the role of Parliament in making the decision to go to war. That point has been widely debated and there have been significant reports on it by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee in 2004; by a House of Lords committee which produced a report in 2006 called Waging War: Parliament’s Role and Responsibility; and most recently by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee of the House of Commons in its eighth report of Session 2010-12. They were all saying that there needed to be a systematic and constitutional way in which Parliament is consulted before forces in this country are deployed. That relates to the prerogative powers and it is a very good thing to do. When that report came out, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, when leader of the Opposition in 2006, said that he felt that in order for there to be trust in MPs, MPs must be consulted before, not after, military forces are deployed overseas. That is a very important principle. I noticed that when the report from the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee was published, there was a debate and the Foreign Secretary said in the House of Commons on 21 March 2011:

“We will also enshrine in law for the future the necessity of consulting Parliament on military action”.—[Official Report, Commons, 21/3/11; col. 799.]

That was a strong, clear undertaking and it would be good to get an update from my noble friend on the Front Bench on how that discussion is progressing. Of course, we all appreciate that situations are fast moving and that these are immense issues with which Prime Ministers, Secretaries of State for Defence and Ministers of Defence have to wrestle. I do not envy them for a second but this place should put wisdom, expertise and learning at the disposal of people who make decisions on grave matters as to when to deploy our courageous forces overseas.

I return to the work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which is my principle theme. This Sunday, I shall return to the Menin Gate, Ypres, where I shall take part in an act of remembrance. I am reminded of the work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission which, I have to confess, I knew little about until the early part of this year. As I walked from Paris to Arras and on towards Ypres in Belgium, along the western front, and Passchendaele, I saw by the roadside meticulously kept cemeteries, with striking white Portland headstones, commemorating the fallen in the First World War. When I arrived in Ypres on foot in January, there was a very cold snap in continental Europe—it was about minus six and the wind was blowing madly. I met with Ian Hussein, who runs the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in northern France and Flanders. He looks after about 980 war cemeteries across France and Belgium. I also met John Sutherland from the British Legion and Benoit Mottrie, who is the chairman of the Last Post Association, who organised this remarkable event.

Every night, at 8 o’clock local time in Ypres, the Last Post is sounded under the Menin Gate. I was invited to go along and I wanted to go. I was slightly puzzled because it was blowing a gale and absolutely freezing, but none the less I showed support because they were delighted that a parliamentarian happened to be passing through town and could attend. I expected to see a few hardy souls but I saw a few hundred hardy souls. They have turned up every night from 11 November 1929 to sound the Last Post at the Menin Gate memorial in all weathers. The only exception was during the four years of the occupation of Ypres from 20 May 1940 to 6 September 1944, when the daily ceremony was continued in England at the Brookwood Military Cemetery in Surrey. I went to see that daily act of remembrance, and found it incredibly moving. Perhaps in her closing remarks the Minister might send a message to the citizens and organisers of the Last Post Association, the British Legion and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, who undertake to ensure that the sacrifice of 54,000 men around the Menin Gate is remembered.

The day after visiting the Menin Gate, Ian Hussein took me to visit some of the cemeteries, including Tyne Cot. It is one of the largest, where 11,894 soldiers are buried, most in unknown graves because people were trampled into the mud and drowned, such was the hell of the 1917 battle of Passchendaele at Ypres. I struggled to think of the right emotion when faced with this vast sacrifice. Should I feel immense national pride for the service and sacrifice of our courageous Armed Forces, including my great-grandfather and his two brothers? Was that the right emotion? Was it regret at the sacrifice? As I looked around, I came across a plaque recording the words of King George V when he opened the cemetery in 1922. He captured the correct emotions, and I will close my remarks with his words. The King said:

“We can truly say that the whole circuit of the Earth is girdled with the graves of our dead. In the course of my pilgrimage, I have many times asked myself whether there can be more potent advocates of peace upon Earth through the years to come, than the massed multitudes of silent witnesses to the desolation of war”.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Lord Bates Excerpts

Friday 12th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

I welcome the review and congratulate my noble friend the Minister on the persuasive way in which he made the case for it in his opening speech. Some have questioned the five-month period given for the review and have said that it was too short. They are perhaps forgetting that the coalition Government are quick about making decisions and show decisive leadership. They managed to come up with a five-year programme for government in five days, so five months for a strategic defence review may be seen as rather generous in that setting. After all, it is not that people have not known what needed to be done; they have just lacked the courage and decisiveness to do it. We now have that leadership, the strategy is very clear and I welcome it.

Much has been made of where cost savings will be required; little has been made of where investment is being made. The noble Lord, Lord Boateng, referred to the area of conflict prevention and I shall focus my remarks on that. The SDSR set out that the direct funding of conflict prevention through the conflict pool will rise from £229 million to £300 million and that the overseas aid budget, which is critical to our defence and security, will rise by £3.1 billion by 2014. This is not only honouring our commitment to the poorest on the planet and the victims of wars and disease but is a crucial way of protecting our security. As the saying goes, if you do not visit your problem neighbourhoods then your problem neighbourhoods have a habit of visiting you.

Currently, approximately £1.9 billion of the official overseas aid budget supports fragile and conflict-affected states. The strategic defence review, at page 46, envisages that this may double by 2014-15. The investment will make us safer at home and abroad. This point was made by right honourable friend the Prime Minister, who said in another place that,

“we must get better at treating the causes of instability, not just dealing with the consequences. When we fail to prevent conflict and have to resort to military intervention, the costs are always far higher”.—[Official Report, Commons, 19/10/10; col. 798.]

He goes on to give the example of the awkward framework agreement in the conflict between the Albanian National Liberation Army and the Macedonian security forces under the previous Government, when NATO deployed a short 30-day mission to help embed the peace by monitoring the disarmament of the ANLA and destroying its weapons. It has been estimated that the international community’s early intervention cost £3,000 million but that it would have saved a potential £15 billion had the conflict escalated.

Of course, the savings of good conflict prevention work are even more significant when one considers the human consequences. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham, in his excellent maiden speech, referred to the work of Selly Oak Hospital and Headley Court in the rehabilitation of members of our Armed Forces who have been injured and wounded in action. This reminds us that in the Afghanistan campaign alone there have been 341 deaths, but for every one death five are wounded in action, sometimes horrifically. These courageous men and women deserve to be cared for. They are receiving that care at those institutions and we should recognise that.

On 14 June, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister said in relation to Afghanistan that insurgencies usually end with political settlements, not military victories: that we need a political process to bring the insurgency to an end. I cannot understand how efforts at peacemaking and conflict resolution are sometimes dismissed as the preserve of woolly-minded idealists. More often than not, it requires more courage, and is more odious, to make peace than to make war. We know that from the situation in Northern Ireland. I am delighted that this Government have rejected that outdated thinking and are reorientating our thinking on strategic defence towards conflict resolution.

When Sir Winston Churchill, as Prime Minister, said that jaw-jaw is better than war-war, it was significant because it was in the context of a revered wartime leader making those comments in 1954 at the age of 80. He was commenting on the Cold War and reflecting on the chaos and carnage that had already cost 100 million lives so far that century.

As I walked in this morning to take part in this debate, I walked through line upon line of poppies and small wooden crosses in Westminster Abbey Gardens, each with the names of brave men and women who gave the ultimate sacrifice in the service of their country. War is a scourge on all sides. There are no victors and no vanquished; we all lose because each life lost diminishes us as a human civilisation and poses a threat to our survival. We should remember, though, that when the guns start, it is because the politicians have failed. Our Armed Forces serve a political leadership. We are responsible for them, and it behoves us to do everything in our power to minimise the risks of their sacrifice being required of them in future.