Mobile Networks: Resilience

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Tuesday 11th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I am not able to give that assurance as I do not know what bases the emergency services use. If, for example, they were entirely dependent on O2 they would not have back-up. I am not aware whether that is the case but I will certainly write to the noble Baroness on that subject.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, the Civil Contingencies Secretariat used to produce a pamphlet which covered all the resilience issues, including communications, power and pandemics. Now that is included as part of the national risk register, so that when you look it up on the web you can draw down things. Is there any plan to produce that very useful booklet again, which went to every single household and gave advice on how to confront these various resilience issues?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I am not sure of the answer to that. Critical national infrastructure is the responsibility of the Cabinet Office and I will certainly ask those there and write to the noble Lord.

Pornographic Websites: Age Verification

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

One of the reasons this has taken so long is that it is complicated. We in the DCMS, and many others, not least in this House, have spent a long time discussing the best way of achieving this. I am not immediately familiar with exactly what section 6 says, but when the statutory instrument comes before this House—it is an affirmative one to be discussed—I will have the answer ready for the noble Earl.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister not agree that the possession of a biometric card by the population would make the implementation of things such as this very much easier?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

In some ways it would, but there are problems with people who either do not want to or cannot have biometric cards.

Artificial Intelligence

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Thursday 26th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

One example that I think I have already mentioned is data trusts. The review made the point that big companies have not a monopoly, but the advantage of having so much data. SMEs and small companies need access to that data in order to grow. That is the whole point of AI. If we can get a mechanism that allows big and small companies to work together on datasets to retain the value and to get some use of it, it would be a great advantage. We are committed to having pilots on data trusts in place by the end of this year.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise for not having been here at the beginning of the Statement. My question relates to a narrow field: the issue of fully autonomous weapons systems which are using AI and learn as they go on. What is the Government’s position on the development of fully autonomous weapons systems, bearing in mind that we know that at least two countries are working on what I think is an extremely dangerous thing?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

The development of weapons generally is a very dangerous thing. We consider that the existing provisions of international humanitarian law are sufficient to regulate the use of weapons systems which might be developed in the future as they have been flexible enough in the past to cope with the invention of new means of warfare such as submarines and aeroplanes, but we are obliged to determine whether new weapons or means comply with international law. We will continue to engage with the UN on this point. We bear it in mind; we understand the implications of it, and we will remain within international law as it stands.

Undersea Cables

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

That is a good point. It is not just transatlantic cables that are important here; the Policy Exchange report gives examples of other areas in the world where cables have broken. I am not going to say exactly what the mitigation measures are but that is what the national risk assessment is for, and the National Security Council looks at that.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that we first became very concerned about our cables in the 1970s; indeed, we built HMS “Challenger” at great cost to work on these cables and look at where there had been attacks and what had been done. We got rid of her when the Cold War stopped. The Russians have now started investing very heavily in nuclear submarines that can go deep and carry out attacks on these cables. At the end of the Cold War we had probably the best antisubmarine warfare and undersea warfare capability in the world, but that has slowly been eroded. What are we planning to do to look at the cables that are in deep water? The Type 26 programme is late and slow, with only a small number of ships coming, while the MPAs are still not with us. What are we doing to have ships and platforms that will enable us to go and check these lines, repair them and do the necessary work?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

As far as repairing them is concerned, the individual companies are responsible for that. The noble Lord asked roughly the same question in December last year, and my noble friend said that, although he could not go into details about the UK’s antisubmarine capability, any threat to the UK infrastructure is taken extremely seriously. Nowadays it is not just submarines, of course; any so-called civilian vessel that can have drones on board can do the same. The main defence is resilience and lots of different cables, because there are just over half a million miles of cable to monitor in the world.

Battle of Passchendaele

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Thursday 19th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to speak in this debate commemorating the fearsome Battle of Passchendaele. As the noble Lord, Lord Black, mentioned in his very powerful opening speech, it epitomized the horror of trench warfare and combat on the Western Front during the First World War, but of course there was more to it than that. The fortitude and bravery of our men who were involved in the battle is very humbling but in hindsight, one has to wonder about how the battle was allowed to continue for over three months when it became clear in the first few weeks that there was limited strategic advantage to be won.

By that time of the war the British Army had begun to understand modern industrial-scale war, and the limited assault on the Messines ridge on 7 June 1917, using huge mines tunnelled under German positions and tanks, was a major tactical success. We were getting better at fighting tactically but fighting in a quagmire, created by nature and man, where tanks could not be used and men were bogged down—constrained by barbed wire and enemy blockhouses—was never going to achieve a strategic success. However, it did attrit and demoralise the German forces, far more than I think was realised at the time.

As has been said, one key reason for the battle was a desire to reach the Channel coast and stop German U-boats operating from ports there. Why was that considered so important? The Battle of Jutland, fought in the North Sea in mid-1916, had effectively decided the outcome of the war. The Germans knew their key adversary, which they had made clear was Britain, could be conquered only if they could defeat the Royal Navy. The Battle of Jutland, though not the crushing victory of annihilation that Britain expected, left the Navy pre-eminent and the Germans realized this.

On 22 December 1916, Admiral von Holtzendorff composed a memorandum which became the pivotal document for Germany’s resumption of unrestricted U-boat warfare in 1917. He proposed defeating Britain by sinking 600,000 tonnes of shipping per month, based on a study done in 1916 by Dr Richard Fuss, who had shown that if merchant shipping was sunk at such a rate, Britain would run out of ships and be forced to sue for peace within six months, well before the Americans—who were likely to enter the conflict because of the unrestricted U-boat campaign—could act. As an aside, is it not amazing that we had a shipbuilding industry that could build up to 600,000 tonnes of shipping each month? I leave your Lordships to reflect on where our shipbuilding industry is now.

On 9 January 1917, the Kaiser met with Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg and the military leaders to discuss measures to resolve Germany’s increasingly grim war situation. The German navy was bottled up in Kiel and the British blockade had caused food scarcity, which I am afraid in turn caused death by malnutrition in Germany. It is horrifying to think that by 1918, 900,000 German civilians had died of malnutrition as a result of the British blockade. There was a shortage of machine tools, copper and other essentials, which led to revolution and collapse within Germany. The German military staff urged the Kaiser to unleash the submarine fleet and on 31 January 1917, he duly signed the order for unrestricted submarine warfare, which started on 1 February. Germany had 105 submarines ready for action, of which 23 were based in Flanders. Its initial campaign was hugely successful: 500,000 tonnes of shipping was sunk in both February and March, and 860,000 tonnes in April, when Britain’s supplies of wheat went down below six weeks-worth. In May, the losses exceeded 600,000 tonnes and in June, 700,000 tonnes. Again, it is worth thinking that we still rely on ships for everything that comes into this country, 95% of which by volume comes by sea. We forget that at our peril.

By June 1917, there was a real possibility that Britain would be starved into surrender in a matter of weeks, and although the USA joined the allies in April as a result of the German campaign and the Zimmermann telegram, it was months before they could bring any military power to bear. At first, the British Admiralty failed to respond to the German offensive, refusing to consider widespread convoying. That changed on 27 April. In May and June a regular convoy system was established and after July, the monthly losses never exceeded 500,000 tonnes, although they remained above 300,000 tonnes.

With hindsight, we can see that the risk of Britain’s defeat by U-boats had been overcome by July, at the end of which the Battle of Passchendaele started. But when the battle was being planned there was a very real possibility of British defeat, and any action at all that could have some impact on the U-boats was worth considering, even a major battle such as Passchendaele, because if we did not stop the U-boat threat, Britain was going to be defeated.

When the Battle of Passchendaele juddered to a halt on 6 November, our gallant troops were no nearer to the key ports on the north Belgian coast, and for the loss of some 300,000 men or slightly more—the figure is disputed—the Ypres salient had been slightly expanded, by about five miles. However, many lessons had been learned and reinforced, and there were no more huge, meaningless, old-style offensive battles by the British in World War I.

By 1918, the British Empire Army was the best Army in the world. Having stopped the German spring offensive, it drove the German army back across the Siegfried line, defeating it daily, month on month, until the Armistice on 11 November. So perhaps Passchendaele had not been completely in vain, but it is completely appropriate that we should remember the gallant sacrifice of so many brave men during that battle.

Gaming Machines

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I had not considered that issue, I must admit, but I do not think it is for me to comment.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, talking of gaming machines and games of chance, Lady Emma Hamilton enjoyed games of chance and 224 years ago yesterday she met Nelson—an affair of the heart. On Nelson’s heart was engraved “lack of frigates”. He had some 284 of them. Today, the Government are committed to maintaining only 19 escorts. Does the Minister think we should have a somewhat better aspiration, or it may be engraved on all our hearts?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I am afraid I had not thought about that.