Falkland Islands Defence Review
Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his very kind, totally undeserved, words. The Falklands Islands patrol vessel capability will be retained when HMS “Clyde” leaves service in 2017. I assure my noble friend that we always have either a Type 45 destroyer or a Type 23 frigate available to reinforce the Falklands Islands.
Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
I have no idea whether this is the last appearance of the noble Lord at the Dispatch Box—of course, on this side we all hope that the Government are defeated in the forthcoming election—but if it is his last performance in this role, I shall say how much our side have appreciated the courtesy and conscientiousness which he has always shown in fulfilling his roles in this House. The depth of his genuine commitment to our military and to the defence of the nation has never been doubted by anybody.
As the noble Lord knows from many discussions and debates, I have always believed that capability and threat are not independent variables. It is not an accident that since NATO started cutting its defence expenditure Mr Putin has become ever more bold and ever more aggressive. At present, Cristina Fernández is in a very difficult situation and is facing a major scandal and the collapse of the Argentinian economy. She could well be tempted to have a go at some adventure if there was a quick trick to be taken. A strong signal needed to be sent and the Government appear to have done that—that is how I interpret the Statement today. All of us on this side of the House will endorse my noble friend in giving the Government support on that.
There is one question I want to ask. Everybody who knows the Falklands knows that we cannot go on much longer there unless an effort is made to refurbish and rebuild the barracks which were constructed after 1982 and at that time were due to last for 20 years. They are already in a state of embarrassing disrepair. Are there any plans to replace them or to refurbish them?
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his very kind words. I understand that the barracks are going to be refurbished. I can write to the noble Lord with specific details on the plans.
Ukraine
Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)
My Lords, time is up.
Defence Budget
Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Astute-class Submarines
Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, women officers and ratings will be able to serve on Astute-class submarines from about next year, but this will not be the first class to do so. Seven women officers have completed the submarine officer training course and are now serving in the submarine service on board the Vanguard-class submarines, and in headquarters appointments. Women ratings will commence training this year.
Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
My noble friend and the Minister have already referred to the positive experience effects that one always gets in building any class of vessel, or in any engineering project, but does he recall that in addition to those effects that one can expect, there was a particular problem at the beginning of the Astute-class programme because of the break in continuity and expertise from the previous submarine-building programmes of the Trafalgar class? Does he therefore accept that it is vital that we do not run into those problems again, and those excess costs and wastes of money, and that this time there is absolutely no gap between the end of the building of the Astute programme and the beginning of the successor class programme?
Defence: Type 26 Frigates
Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, the Type 26 will be built by BAE Systems on the Clyde. Complex UK warships are built only in UK shipyards and we have no plans to change this. Although the contract has not been awarded, we have been clear that from 2015 the Clyde will be the UK’s only shipyard that builds complex warships.
Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
Will the noble Lord tell the House what the incremental cost is of maintaining and refitting the Type 23s, which would not have been necessary had the Type 26 programme come forward on time? If the reason for the delay in the programme is lack of money, as I suspect, why on earth have the Government underspent in their defence budget in this Parliament—against a much reduced, severely reduced, some of us think irresponsibly reduced defence budget? The Government have underspent by nearly £400 million; the exact figures were given to me in a Written Answer the other day. Is that not a dereliction of duty, both to the country and to members of the Armed Forces themselves?
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, I cannot give the noble Lord the figures that he requires, but I can assure him that we want to get the Type 26s and the capability that the Royal Navy needs, to get value for money for the taxpayer, and to have a very strong British shipbuilding industry.
Defence Reform Bill
Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I very much echo the sentiments of my noble friend Lord King. I think there is a general feeling that in the latest cutbacks in the forces the Army seems to have taken a rather greater cut than the other two services. Considering that the Army has been deployed almost continuously since the Troubles began in Northern Ireland in 1969, one has slightly to question the wisdom of the Army seemingly taking rather more punishment than the other two services.
However, I do think that the Opposition have a bit of nerve in tabling this amendment, which somewhat echoes the amendment withdrawn by the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, because, at the end of the day, we are paying now for the legacy that this Government inherited when they took power at the beginning of this Parliament. If you have £40 billion of procurement that has not been funded, you obviously at that stage have a serious problem. Something went badly wrong. When the aircraft carriers were ordered by the previous Government the roof had fallen in on the economy and there was clearly no money to pay for them. It does not matter whether they were a good idea, the money was not there and the Defence Council went ahead and ordered them. For some extraordinary reason, there was no ministerial override from the Permanent Secretary saying that the money was not there. That strikes me as a very serious shortcoming in the way in which our affairs are being run. Let us face it, there is always a temptation for politicians to order things that they cannot afford. On the other hand, we look to our civil servants to preserve the integrity of the finances of the department, and that did not seem to happen. I consider that the Army is suffering from some very bad decisions that were taken in the previous Parliament and the legacy of an overhang of unfunded procurement. Savings had to be found somewhere; and it is the Army. It is extremely regrettable that the Army has to take the punishment in this way.
Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
My Lords, I was not intending to intervene in this debate but feel that I must, in order to correct some of the myths—which is a polite way of putting it—just purveyed by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton. I was of course the Minister responsible for defence reform in the last three years of the last Government and, indeed, possibly the Minister to whom the noble Lord was referring when he talked about ministerial responsibility. I must tell him that during that time we always stayed within our annual cash limits. So far as the longer-term financing programme was concerned, we were fully and adequately funded on the basis of a 1.5% real terms increase in the defence budget, which was our policy at the time. It was a correct policy and I wish that it had been continued. It was very regrettable that this Government came in and made excessive cuts in public spending, which drove the economy down. The economy was reviving before we left office. The House will recall that in the first half of 2010 the economy grew, at first, by 0.3% and then by 0.7%. When this Government came in with their excessive spending cuts, the growth fell away again. The economy has been in the doldrums, more or less, ever since. That was a mistake made entirely by this Government.
In my view, the decisions of the previous Government on defence procurement were thoroughly responsible. It was very necessary to provide for two carriers; it is an essential arm in our ability to intervene around the world, irrespective of whether we have friendly powers that are willing to provide us with airfields a suitably close distance to where our troops might be deployed or where we need to bring influence or physical power—kinetic power, if necessary—to bear. That was a right decision.
It was a crazy decision to cancel those aircraft carriers—or, at least, to cancel the carrier strike capability of the nation for 10 years. Of course we need two aircraft carriers, because otherwise we cannot be absolutely certain that when we need an aircraft carrier it will be available and will not be in refit. The decisions of the last Government on defence procurement were thoroughly responsible. They were certainly funded. I am sorry to see that, after all the denials that have been made over the last few years by everybody who actually knows the facts, the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, should still be purveying a completely untrue account of events.
Lord Stirrup (CB)
My Lords, let me add very briefly my weight to the comments of my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham and my noble and gallant friend Lord Craig, with whom I agree. It may be worth the House reflecting, first, on the fact that the current Chief of the Defence Staff has given his view that his top concern in terms of personnel pressures actually lies with the Navy. Secondly, a few moments ago we were debating the consequences of Russia’s action in Ukraine and the importance of NATO preparedness in the face of that. NATO’s greatest weakness—and, indeed, our own—and Russia’s most likely avenue of attack, should anything go awry, is likely to be in cyberspace. Noble Lords might like to reflect on whether this country is investing enough in that area.
It is clear that this country was previously not investing enough in the defence of the realm and that, in the light of the current situation, it is not investing enough now. As my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham has said, if the Government—whoever forms the Government in 2015 and beyond—do not live up to the requirement to increase defence expenditure in real terms in that year and in each year beyond, our situation will only get worse.
Defence: Nuclear Submarines
Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, it will take place at Devonport in Plymouth, yes. There is no risk, I can assure the noble Lord, to the workers or the local community up at Dounreay. The naval reactor test establishment remains a very safe and low-risk site. Workers remain safe and the local community and environment is not at risk. There has been a very small increase in the radioactivity of the coolant in the sealed reactor circuit. This has not gone outside the sealed unit and it has certainly not gone into the atmosphere. This refuelling is a prudent, pre-emptive and purely precautionary measure and it has been carried out to manage risk to the operational submarine programme and not to mitigate any safety issue.
As far as any risk to the submarine crews is concerned, the safety of our nuclear submarines is not in doubt and we have not identified any issues with our operational submarines. The refuelling of HMS “Vanguard” will begin in late 2015 as a precautionary measure during her scheduled deep maintenance period. If a leak occurred on a submarine, it would be detected immediately.
Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
My Lords, I endorse the words of my noble friend Lord West about the importance of having four SSBMs rather than three, which has been brought out by this incident. Had we only three boats, as people more out of ignorance of the situation than anything else have sometimes urged upon Governments of both parties, and were we then faced—which we have not been on this occasion, mercifully although we might have been—with a need for an emergency refuelling, continuous at-sea deterrent would almost certainly have been threatened.
I would have had the ministerial responsibility for this matter had it arisen in my time in office and, on the basis of the facts set out in the Statement this afternoon—the House will be grateful for the fullness of the explanations given by the noble Lord—I think that the Government have done absolutely the right thing. However, I am mystified by why the decision has been taken now rather than two years ago. Surely, once it was clear that the prototype had this important fault, it should have been clear at that point that when the first opportunity arose to do a deep refit of the oldest submarine HMS “Vanguard” it would have been sensible to have taken the opportunity to refuel. That has been done now. But surely that could have been seen to be the right solution two years ago, or 18 months ago when matters had been thoroughly worked through in terms of the conclusions from the leak that has been established in the prototype. Why the delay? That is the one thing that mystifies me about this whole incident.
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, taking the first part of the noble Lord’s question, nuclear deterrent remains the ultimate guarantor of our nation’s security. The Government’s policy is clear: we will maintain a continuous at-sea deterrent and proceed with plans to build a new fleet of submarines. Final decisions on successive submarines and the numbers, which the noble Lord mentioned, will be taken in 2016.
The noble Lord asked why there was a delay. I set out an answer in some detail to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser.
Defence Reform Bill
Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts(12 years ago)
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Lord Robertson of Port Ellen
I would like to say a few words in relation to some of the more general issues concerned here. I return to the question I asked about SDSR 2015 because it concerns me that we might be going through exactly the same kind of exercise as we did for the SDSR that was done previously in six months. I do not want to draw any comparisons with the one that I supervised in 1998; it lasted a lot longer than it should have. It still managed to do so but it was affected by the circumstances which came after it, as the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, said. However, it did not become outdated as quickly as the SDSR that the new Government brought in, which quickly came face to face with the reality of Libya after it was put in place. It focused on 2020 but was then faced with the situation in Libya as well.
Importantly, the defence review that we did in 1998 established a consensus. Perhaps for the first time in military history, the review was accepted by all the defence chiefs both in public, as one might have expected, and in private because it represented a view that was consensual. After the new Government came into place, we embarked upon a consultation exercise that made sure that all the stakeholders had an opportunity to express a view. The Ministers, Robin Cook and myself, and the Permanent Secretaries in the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development did a roadshow that went round the country, and which also embraced pretty much every stakeholder in the business. When it came out, it was therefore a genuine security and defence review.
The failure of the last SDSR was, essentially, that it was a Treasury-led exercise, done far too quickly and involving far too few elements. I fear that that is precisely what is happening at this stage. I have consulted the Opposition to see whether anybody has bothered to ask them about the initial preparation or any of the discussions taking place at present, and the shadow Defence Secretary assures me that no such approaches have been made. We look as though we are again getting ourselves into the trap of something being prepared at or around the next election campaign, which will essentially be based on a Treasury view about what the country can afford and how the rest of it fits into that.
Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
My noble friend is saying some important things but does he agree that if the Government are serious about producing or drafting an SDSR, they ought at an early stage to be consulting not merely with the list of people who he quite rightly set out—the academics, think tanks and other stakeholders in this country—but with our allies, particularly the United States and our EU allies? If they do not consult them, the review that comes out may be inconsistent with the strategic intentions and plans of our key allies. Opportunities for fruitful collaboration or for the division of labour will be lost and it may well be that unfortunate misunderstandings will be sown.
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen
Indeed, my noble friend makes an extremely good point. In many ways, it goes without saying. It may well be that there are some discussions going on with our allies and inside NATO about it. I would hope so, although I am a bit pessimistic about most of these things since it becomes opaque. Part of the dispiriting nature of the way in which the British political system works is that you go from everything to zero quickly, as my noble friend will know only too well from being in government. In government, you know everything and then when you are in opposition you are allowed access to pretty much nothing at all. Therefore, having been Secretary-General of NATO and knowing everything that was going on inside that organisation, it was a grim experience to then dredge the newspapers and the occasional website to try to find out what was actually going on. The point that is being made is that the widest possible consultation is required, so that, at the end of the day, the review is fixed, has traction and makes sense in the light of the international circumstances as well as of domestic public opinion. Without that, it will fall apart, and fall apart quite quickly.
Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister made a full and comprehensive speech under Amendment 18. It was a very good speech and set off a kind of Second Reading debate, which was quite interesting. I broadly agree with him. As he knows, I utterly deprecate the reduction in our Regular Forces and our equipment capability, which this Government have brought in, but it is even more vital in that light that we make a success of our campaign to recruit more reservists and to train and equip them properly. Nobody on this side of the House in any way disagrees with the Government in that respect or does not want to do everything possible to make sure that that effort is a success.
However, I want to make one comment. There is a lack of clarity and frankness still about how we are planning to deploy our reserves under the new system. I am very glad that the Minister did not say, although I have heard it—and, evidently, from his speech the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, has also heard—from government Ministers in the past few years that, “We’re reducing the regulars but we’re compensating by increasing the reserves”. That would be utterly irresponsible. There is no doubt at all that in certain areas such as those the Minister mentioned, including medics and signals experts, reservists may well play the majority part in future combat operations. But when it comes to the infantry it is extremely difficult—with the best will in the world and with motivation and discipline and morale being entirely equivalent, which is the most that one can hope for—to train up reservists to exactly the same level of confidence and alertness that the regulars have. It is therefore very difficult to avoid feeling that, if you deploy large numbers of reservists on combat operations, you will not have a higher casualty rate, which would be very irresponsible.
We have successfully deployed on an embedded basis individuals who have been chosen for that in Iraq and Iran, with front-line troops going on patrol and so forth and fighting intensive warfare. The Government need to be clear about this because reservists need to know whether under the new regime they still have a chance of that kind of experience. As I have said to the Minister privately, if they do not you may not succeed in attracting the same calibre of people into the reserves. On the other hand, with the numbers going in both directions—the decline in the regulars and increase in the reserves—it is not going to be possible to deploy large numbers of reservists, because the success of employing them on an embedded basis depends on selecting individuals and making sure that the number of reservists is relatively small in relation to the regulars, who are committed to a particular intensive operation.
I want the Government to be absolutely clear about this. There should be no beating about the bush at all. It is perfectly respectable to say that those with medical and signal skills will not be needed the whole time on a contingency basis in the regular forces but we will need to draw on them—and, in any case, we need those people to be able to exercise their own professional activities and gain skills in the civilian sector when they are not being deployed on operations, so they will be deployed on the front line, as they have been up to now. We have to be absolutely clear about our intentions for reservists, and it is really that they should not be deployed in high-intensity warfare. When the Minister said—slightly vaguely, I thought, avoiding this issue—that they would be in supporting roles, which essentially means that they would be behind the wire rather than outside it. We should be clear about that, but it is probably the right solution in all the circumstances. We need clarity, and we have not had it on that point.
Apart from that, I agreed very much with the Minister’s speech, which I thought was good. This Bill is rightly generous—I do not complain about that—to employers and reservists in the financial incentives and protections that it sets out. However, my reason for speaking on this clause is that I am slightly worried. This is not a vastly or historically momentous point—far from it—and it is not one on which I have put an amendment down, although I suppose I could table one at Report, if needed.
A potential loophole is provided by Clause 47—almost a manhole in our path that some people might fall down. Therefore, I want to raise this whole matter, and I hope that I get some reassurance. The object of Clause 47 is to provide protection for reservists who have been less than two years in employment and who then face the sack wholly or partially because of their membership of the reserve. Beyond two years, they have the protections that everyone has under the Employment Rights Act and a section—I cannot remember the number—of the Reserve Forces Act that makes it clear that people cannot be sacked when they are deployed, at risk of being deployed or about to be deployed.
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord for the length of my speech on the last clause. It contains important issues and I wanted to cover them in some detail.
Lord Davies of Stamford
My Lords, I must have given the wrong impression. In no sense was I complaining about the length of the Minister’s speech. I thought I had congratulated him on a comprehensive speech, which had started an interesting debate.
Lord Astor of Hever
I apologise. Perhaps I misunderstood when the noble Lord referred to Second Reading speeches. Anyway, I hope that I answered all the important points.
The noble Lord referred to the lack of clarity in deploying the reserves, especially the infantry. The pairing of regulars and reserves on high-intensity combat will include individuals and up to sub-unit level. We are changing the mobilisation limits to 12 months to enable greater pre-deployment training. I mentioned earlier—I am sure the noble Lord will welcome this—that we must get more of the niche skills in the cyber field and in the medics, who we do not need the whole time.
On talking to the reserves—I am sure the noble Lord has also done so—I found that a number of them want to deploy. When the noble Lord was a Defence Minister, I went to Afghanistan on a couple of occasions and I met a number of reserves, who were very well trained. All the regulars to whom I spoke were very impressed by the reserves and how well they trained and fitted into the Regular Army. I do not think that there is any pressure on them being embedded with the regulars, and it is our plan that they train together and use the same equipment. I should like to organise for noble and gallant Lords a visit to a reserve unit paired with a regular unit to talk to the soldiers.
Lord Davies of Stamford
I thank the noble Lord and totally agree about this. The reserves have done a wonderful job. I pay tribute to them. We have all paid tribute to them. I used to go to Afghanistan and Iraq every six months when I was in the MoD, and I saw them on the front line in exactly the way the Minister describes. As he knows, reservists take it as a matter of enormous professional pride—it is a thing they really want—when their regular colleagues forget that they are reservists. That does happen. You hear that from both sides. That is a tremendously high standard to achieve. People go into the Reserve Forces because they are prepared to put themselves through the hell of training up to that level and to risk their lives when they are deployed. That is the military experience they want. If they are going to have that on offer in future, they must be honestly told that. If they are just going to be deployed behind the wire or on UN peace-keeping operations, they need to be told that too.
Lord Astor of Hever
The noble Lord makes a very good point. I will take away the points he made earlier about Clause 47 and write to him on them. The noble Lord, Lord Robertson, mentioned the Ashcroft report. If there is an appetite for it, I am very happy to organise a Peers’ brief on it. Perhaps noble Lords will get back to me on that.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, I have considerable sympathy for the spirit of the amendments spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser. There was a deal of concern expressed at Second Reading over the impact on civilian employment of the additional levels of readiness and the additional time involved in the new recruit programme. Trying to safeguard both sides was discussed then.
I picked up a leaflet at the MoD a few days ago which under “The Employer Proposition” states:
“We will develop an open and predictable relationship by: ensuring that reservists notify employers of their reserve status”,
with a rider that it is “subject to security considerations”. That part of the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, is already being dealt with. Another paragraph of the leaflet states:
“We will introduce a new National Relationship Management scheme to establish strategic personnel relationships with major employer organisations, relevant trade bodies and the largest employers”.
It is essential for the success of this scheme that the Government have an ongoing dialogue with employers to make quite sure that their concerns are met, as well as making sure that the rights of reservists in connection with their employment are met. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us that the concerns which the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, has raised are already being dealt with and considered, and that safeguards have been put in place by the Government.
Lord Davies of Stamford
My noble friend’s amendment is testimony to what I spoke about earlier—the complete commitment on this side of the Committee to try to ensure that we successfully recruit and train the projected number of reservists. It would be intolerable if people who had signed up to fight for their country were subject in some way to discrimination in the employment and labour markets. Discrimination because of their sex, colour and so on is now regarded as utterly intolerable. My noble friend’s amendment is therefore absolutely appropriate.
I should make one final point. I think that I am right—the Minister will know the details—in saying that similar protections are available to members of the National Guard in the United States. We all know that the National Guard is extremely successful at recruiting and that it has enormous public support, including among employers, so I do not see any difficulty of the kind suggested by the noble Baroness whereby employers might reasonably resent such a provision. We all know that the National Guard in the United States plays a key role in the defence capability of that nation and is regularly deployed on operations. We should be encouraged by the experience of the United States to pursue the line adopted in my noble friend’s amendment.
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, we recognise and value the contribution of reservists and need to be sure that their interests are properly protected. Part of this is making sure that their reserve service does not negatively affect their employment prospects. That is why Clause 47 amends the Employment Rights Act 1996 to remove the current two-year qualifying period for claims of unfair dismissal where the reason for dismissal is, or is primarily because, the individual is a reservist.
I should emphasise that protection is already in place to ensure that reservists are not dismissed as a result of any duties or liabilities that they have to undertake, for example as a result of being mobilised. This protection is provided by the Reserve Forces (Safeguard of Employment) Act 1985, Section 1 of which gives a reservist who is called out for reserve service the right to apply to his or her former employer to be reinstated after they return from mobilised service. In addition, Section 17 of the 1985 Act makes it a criminal offence for an employer to dismiss an employee solely or mainly by reason of any duties or liabilities that may arise as a result of being called out.
One key strand of the White Paper was to foster an open and honest relationship with employers. Employers of reservists make a greater contribution to national security than others. We understand and value the commitment that employers make. We have seen from some of the evidence submitted—I am thinking particularly of that from the Confederation of British Industry—that employers are wary of the introduction of discrimination-type legislation, and that such an approach would run counter to the partnership approach that is needed between employers and defence. CBI members were particularly concerned that such an approach could strain working relationships between employers and reservists.
As part of this partnership approach we will: provide employers with greater awareness and predictability of training and mobilisation commitments; streamline the administrative arrangements to receive financial assistance when a reservist is mobilised; introduce additional financial incentive payments to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises; and provide appropriate recognition of the contribution that these employers make by enhancing our existing recognition schemes.
Subsection (1) of the proposed new clause in Amendment 18B would mean that Section 39(4) of the Equality Act 2010 would apply “as if membership” of the Reserve Forces “were a protected characteristic”. Surely, membership either is or is not a protected characteristic. The advice from the Government Equalities Office is that being a reservist would not count as a protected characteristic as defined in the 2010 Act—in other words, age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, and sex or sexual orientation.
There have been occasional calls for various characteristics to be given protected status, particularly during the preparations for the Equality Act. These were mostly in relation to some form of physical appearance, ranging from extremes in individuals’ height and weight to the way in which people may choose to dress. However, after full consideration, the list of protected characteristics was set as already outlined. Including reserves as a protected characteristic in the Equality Act would be a disproportionate tool to tackle the problem and could give rise to the same argument being deployed successfully in relation to a number of the physical characteristics that I mentioned. This could have the result of doubling the number of characteristics, which would have an increased on-cost to businesses, public authorities and the courts.
Lord Davies of Stamford
Would the noble Lord be kind enough to address my point about the National Guard in relation to Amendment 18B? We should bear in mind that any employers’ organisation—like any other trade association or representative body—is always likely, when a new idea is put to it, to adopt a defensive, cautious position and focus on the difficulties. Good government surely does not consist of abandoning a good idea at the first hurdle. Has the MoD explored the experience of the National Guard in this context in the United States and, if so, could the Minister let us know the conclusions of that study?
Lord Astor of Hever
The noble Lord makes a very good point about the National Guard, and I apologise if I did not refer to it in my response. This is quite a detailed subject. I will write to the noble Lord and copy my letter to the other noble Lords who have taken part in this debate.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill
My Lords, I hope that the Minister will include in his reply what instances there have been of confusion about what a “service person” should be. I would have thought that under existing legislation “service person” would include all the things that are included in proposed new subsection (7) in the amendment. Has there been any experience that “service person” has not been taken to include the people mentioned here? It seems a rather worthy thing to protect people even more and make sure that they are included in the criminal justice legislation, but I wonder whether there is reason to believe that any of this has been necessary in the past.
Lord Davies of Stamford
My Lords, when in 2007 I chaired the national inquiry into the national recognition of the Armed Forces, this was one of the recommendations that we made. We made 40 recommendations, 38 of which, including Armed Forces Day, automatic parades for units returning from combat missions and so forth, were accepted. Two were not, and this was one of them. The other one was having an officer of the Armed Forces permanently available in the House of Commons, probably in the Library, to inform people about any military matters that they might have questions about. In that report, to which I refer the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, we cited a number of cases of grievous assaults perpetrated on members of the Armed Forces, and I am afraid that the problem has not gone away. Over the past six years or so, there have been other incidents which the Committee will know about. I retain my support for this amendment.
It has one curious feature but I think I know the explanation. It is that the protection seems to be designed merely for members of the Reserve Forces but does not currently exist for members of the Regular Forces. I imagine that it is because including all members of the Armed Forces could have been outside the scope of the Bill. I therefore imagine that my noble friend, with whom I have not discussed this matter, had this in mind as a probing amendment to try to push the way forward to achieve what we really need, which is the kind of legal protection for all members of the Armed Forces—all those who wear the Queen’s uniform—who are prepared to lay down their lives for the rest of us. The least we can do is to make sure that they do not suffer discrimination or, in this case, violence, potentially, when they are in their home country.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill
My Lords, perhaps I may ask for some elucidation. I accept all the points that the noble Lord has made about his time in the MoD and his knowledge of this subject. Obviously these incidents have happened, but do we need legislation such as this to identify it or were the perpetrators of these actions against the service people he mentioned dealt with by the law at the time?
Lord Davies of Stamford
My Lords, I do not know that I should get into the habit of answering questions across the Floor. I would love to be a Minister again but that has not happened to me so far. I shall have to wait a bit longer. However, I shall of course respond to the noble Lord. There are the normal legal protections against assault from which he and I and every other citizen benefit. Clearly, it is a criminal offence. However, the purpose of this amendment, as I understand my noble friend, is to make it an exacerbating factor if the reason for the assault is that the victim is a member of the Armed Forces. That provides a special protection for those who might otherwise be especially vulnerable to this kind of attack. It is similar to the exacerbating factor that we already have of the motive, or part of the motive, for an assault being racial. We introduced that for a section of the community whose members might be innocent victims of gratuitous attacks which otherwise would not occur. Therefore, there is a complete analogy there and I think it was the analogy which, rightly, inspired my noble friend—if I may be so bold as to presume to answer for him—to conceive this amendment.
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, I am sure that I speak for all of us in saying that we hold the same view about discrimination against members of the Armed Forces. It is a completely unacceptable form of behaviour towards the men and women who have committed themselves to defending this country, its people and its way of life, and to making sacrifices that others perhaps sometimes take for granted. Those who discriminate against service personnel, or against the wider Armed Forces community, succeed only in diminishing themselves.
Discrimination can take many forms. Some of it is thoughtless or uninformed—for example, when public services fail to take account of the special circumstances in which Armed Forces personnel find themselves. Some of it is based on myth and prejudice—a view that soldiers create trouble or are unreliable customers is a misperception that we must challenge. However, some discrimination or abuse stems from genuine hostility to members of the Armed Forces, motivated by politics or perhaps by some unfortunate personal experience. It is on that narrow part of the spectrum that this amendment focuses.
The amendment would have the effect of amending Section 146 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which lays down circumstances in which the seriousness of a criminal offence, and thus the severity of the resulting sentence, is increased. It provides for increased sentences where an offender demonstrated hostility based on the victim’s sexual orientation, disability or transgender status, or where the offence was motivated by hostility towards persons of a particular sexual orientation, persons who have a disability or persons who are transgender. Section 145 of that Act makes similar provision in respect of “racially or religiously aggravated” offences.
The amendment would provide for increased sentences where an offender demonstrated hostility based on the victim being a,
“member of the reserve forces”,
or indeed,
“any relative of a member of the reserve forces”.
It would also provide for increased sentences where an offence was motivated by hostility towards members of the Reserve Forces.
It is important that we are clear about what the amendment would not do. It would not cover situations such as a refusal to admit members of the Armed Forces to a hotel or bar. Such situations have led to widespread public indignation but they generally do not involve a criminal offence.
The Government’s view is that there is no need for a change in the law on these lines. The courts already have a wide power in sentencing to take into account factors that make conduct more serious. Criminal acts based on irrational hostility to a person because he or she is in the Reserve Forces may lead to a higher sentence in any event. I am not aware of any evidence of courts finding that they have insufficient powers to give an appropriate sentence to an offender in such circumstances, or that we have received representations from the courts asking us to amend the law in this way.
In contrast, converting the flexibility that the courts currently have into a mandatory requirement, as the amendment proposes, may present practical difficulties. For example, demonstrating to a court that the aggravating factor was present and should be taken into consideration could be relatively straightforward in some cases, such as where a victim was in uniform, but far from straightforward in other cases, such as those in which the victim was a relative of a member of the Reserve Forces. How are the courts to deal with a situation where an offence is motivated by excessive rivalry between different sections of the Armed Forces or, perhaps, a domestic dispute? A mandatory requirement for a higher sentence reduces the court’s ability to take a sensible, common-sense approach to what is really going on in the circumstances it is examining.
There is a fundamental difference between offences provoked by hostility to the work of the victim and offences motivated by prejudice against inherent characteristics, such as homophobic crime. Section 146 of the 2003 Act is designed to help to change deep-rooted prejudices. It would be quite wrong to suggest that such provisions were necessary in relation to the Armed Forces. However, the most telling argument against this amendment is the views of the intended beneficiaries. I am not aware of any general desire in the Armed Forces community for legislation of this type. The service men and women who wear their uniforms with pride want to be respected in and considered part of their communities, and rightly so. We should not put them in a position where they are forced to explain why they require protection in law in a way not enjoyed by, for example, firemen or ambulance staff. Indeed, the amendment deals only with members of the Reserve Forces, as the noble Lord pointed out. It would not extend to members of the Regular Forces, meaning that rather than helping create the whole force which we seek the amendment would separate out members of the Reserve Forces for different treatment in law. I am not sure whether they would wish to see that in this context.
None of this means that the Government are complacent about discrimination against service personnel: quite the opposite. The Armed Forces covenant has a high profile across the whole of Whitehall and beyond. The first principle, that members of the Armed Forces community should not suffer disadvantage as a result of that membership, has given rise to many initiatives which are making a real, practical difference. In the first statutory annual report on the Armed Forces covenant, published in December 2012, we described what we were doing to make these principles a reality. We are working to remove the disadvantage that the children of service personnel can face in the schools system as a result of their mobility through the admissions code and the service pupil premium. We are ensuring that service personnel and leavers encounter a level playing field in access to social housing or Government-funded home ownership schemes.
At the same time, we are working to build the links between the Armed Forces community and the wider community to improve the knowledge and understanding that must be at the centre of that relationship. From knowledge flows the esteem for our service men and women that is ultimately the most powerful way to counter discrimination. The community covenant has now been signed in nearly 400 local authority areas, from Cornwall to the north of Scotland, and around 60 companies have signed up to the new corporate covenant, signifying a real determination to strengthen ties with the Armed Forces. I am confident that it will continue to gain further support. The grant scheme linked to the community covenant has allowed us to back a range of schemes that will help to put these declarations into practice. To that, we can now add the £35 million fund created as a result of the LIBOR fines, which will support charities with projects to help the Armed Forces and their families.
This is not an entirely new proposal. Thomas Docherty MP previously raised this issue in a Private Member’s Bill and has another for consideration this year, with its Second Reading having been scheduled for 24 January. The debate was adjourned and is expected to resume on 28 February. The previous Government, in response to a similar recommendation in the 2008 report from the then Member for Grantham and Stamford, now the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, said,
“we do not think that a change in the law is necessary or appropriate.”
As a result of the Armed Forces Act 2011, we have a new vehicle at our disposal in the form of an annual report to Parliament—effectively a report on the state of the Armed Forces covenant. In February of last year, my right honourable friend, the member for Rayleigh and Wickford, the Minister of State for the Armed Forces, indicated that the question of discrimination would be a legitimate issue for the next report at the end of 2013. The report, published on 16 December 2013, said:
“Our view is that, in the last year or so, the extent of public knowledge and sympathy for the Armed Forces has continued to grow—aided by the Community Covenant and the new Corporate Covenant. We therefore continue to believe that education, rather than legislation, is the key to eradicating the kind of behaviour that we all abhor”.
In answer to the question from my noble friend Lord Palmer about what instances there have been of service personnel not taken to include those in the amendment, we recognise a service person as a regular or reserve member of the Armed Forces. Proposed subsection (7) in the amendment seems to be drafted to enable debate in this Committee otherwise it would be out of scope, as it was judged to be in the House of Commons. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, asked about legal protection. Legal protection for all Armed Forces personnel would be out of scope of this Bill.
I hope that I have answered all the noble Lord’s concerns and I urge him to withdraw his amendment.
Defence Reform Bill
Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts(12 years ago)
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Lord Craig of Radley (CB)
My Lords, I shall speak briefly to the amendments. I look at the matter from the point of view of the user, the Armed Forces, and what is in it for them.
Nowadays, the Armed Forces will have much more say over the amount of money that may be spent on their equipment, and therefore they may take more of an interest in the detail of the procurement side than was true in my day. Nevertheless, it is important that they have confidence that whatever system is going to procure their equipment has general support throughout the country and throughout government. At the moment we have two propositions, neither of which seems to be making good headway. The GOCO has certainly made no headway and it remains to be seen how well the DE&S+ will go—I even have doubts about that—but, of the two, I prefer it the GOCO.
However, dealing with the amendments, I find a good deal of attraction in Amendment 25. It brings the super-affirmative approach to the issue and is the one that I would favour.
Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
My Lords, I was the last defence procurement Minister in the previous Government. It is too early to make definitive judgments about how well-based were the projects for which I was responsible because some of them were quite long term. As far as I know, most of them are doing well and are on track and on time. They include the A400M, the Typhoon Tranche 3, the Chinook contract—where the Government, sadly, cut the numbers from 22 to 12 —the Puma upgrade, the Scout vehicle and so on.
However, I inherited a number of contracts which were the subject of substantial cost and time overruns. They were originally signed in the late 1990s. I will not make party-political points by saying exactly when they were signed now because otherwise you will think that I am making a party-political speech, which I certainly do not intend to do. Those errors were based on a fundamental mistake, which is to think that there is one simple formula for defence procurement. There have been arguments for many years, for generations, about whether you should have cost plus, competition or fixed-price contracts. The answer is that all these formulas are appropriate in certain circumstances. However, the great mistakes were made on projects such as Astute and Nimrod, which involved new technology and new developments—a new generation of reconnaissance aircraft in one case and hunter-killer submarines in the other.
It was a fundamental mistake to think that those procurements could be conducted on a fixed price because, when you are at the frontiers of technology—I said this on Second Reading—by definition you do not know what problems you are going to encounter and how much time and money will be needed to resolve them. If you ask a contractor to come up with a fixed price it will either be crazily high to cover all possible risks to himself or, more likely, if he thinks that being a national provider he is going to get the contract anyway, he will come up with an unrealistically low price, knowing that he can renegotiate more favourable terms once the Government and the MOD are committed to that contract because ultimately the Government have to have that capability delivered.
That is the phenomenon we suffered from with those two disastrously-conceived projects, although the capability was absolutely necessary. It was a great mistake for the Government to get rid of the MRA4 when they came into power. The Astute programme has continued and is delivering results, and I am very glad about that. The MRA4, however, was a great error. If you have a first of class of a major aircraft or naval vessel—a major platform—an absolute rule is that that is inevitably going to be a prototype. You cannot actually call it a prototype because you cannot build a combat aircraft for £100 million, or a Type 45 destroyer for £1 billion, or an Astute class submarine for £1.2 billion or £1.5 billion and then throw it away. So it is not going to be a prototype.
You are going to make some mistakes in building it the first time round. You will need to make amendments and changes which you had not originally foreseen and these will all add to costs and time. The only solution is to have a version of cost plus during that period for the first of class. Subsequently, when you have an idea of the technical issues and have resolved them, you can refine the thing down and ask for a fixed price. It must be a sophisticated version of cost plus and the formula that I found most useful—we have got it now for the Astute programme—is a target price with an incentive for coming in under the target price; a share of the over-run if it is above the target price; and a completely open book policy so that there is a genuine sense of teamwork between customer and supplier. Those formulas can work. One has to be quite flexible about this and not believe that there is some perfect, platonic solution to defence procurement.
Defence Reform Bill
Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
My Lords, I do not want to take up too much time, so will address only Part 1 and reserve my comments on Parts 2 and 3 for later stages in the Bill’s progress.
If anything can be said about the Government and defence—quite modestly and unexceptionably, because the points are so blatantly obvious—it is that this Government do not care much about defence and that their judgment in defence matters is pretty poor. In the course of three and a half years, they are well on their way to running the Army down from 100,000 to 82,000, they have abolished our carrier strike capability, they have abolished entirely our long-range maritime surveillance capability and they have reduced our capability in helicopters, in naval escorts— I think we are now down to 13 naval escorts from 22 when the previous Government left office—and in many other areas.
We are told all the time that that is due to a shortage of funds, but in fact the Government had a surplus in 2011-12, which was then entirely lost to the Treasury. There was then an extraordinary surplus of £2 billion, more or less, in the last financial year, ending in April 2013, some of which has been lost to the Treasury. The Government complacently say that a lot of it has been rolled over, but even this Government must realise that if you do that, at the very best you are delivering equipment a year later than it should have been delivered, and because of the time value of money, your money does not buy as much as it otherwise would do. That has been a disaster for defence—a completely self-made disaster.
On top of all that, we have had this extraordinary, monumental shambles today—something that in future years we will look back on as a memorable shambles—in which the Government, on the very day that they are introducing an important Bill at Second Reading, make a Statement a couple of hours beforehand saying that the first part of the Bill is inoperable and that they do not intend to take it forward in the foreseeable future. The Government have ended up with the worst of all possible worlds. That is the absolute obverse of good leadership and good management.
The Government are keeping both their feet on both sides of the fence. They are not taking a clear decision. Of course that will be damaging to the morale and momentum of DE&S-plus and of course it will be damaging to recruitment, particularly at higher levels. People going in at the higher level are precisely the sort of people who will be displaced in the event that, a few years down the line, the Government switch to the GOCO course and Bechtel or Boeing or Serco or someone comes in and puts its own staff in these senior decision-making posts. It is utterly naive not to suppose that there will be real damage from this continued indecision by the Government. We have had too much indecision already; we might at least have expected and been entitled to a clear decision at this stage.
The decision should be quite clear: we should junk the idea of the GOCO altogether. I totally agree with the points that have been made about GOCO by a lot of people whom I know well and who know an awful lot about defence: the noble Lord, Lord Levene, and the noble and gallant Lords, Lord Stirrup and Lord Craig, and others who have spoken in this debate.
Of course, the Government have run into a lot of problems with industry over the GOCO proposal, mostly about conflicts of interest and treatment of intellectual property. However, there are two much more fundamental reasons why the whole idea was completely misconceived from the beginning. The first is that defence procurement is and ought to be and ought always to be core business for the Ministry of Defence. It is exactly like recruitment or training; what we are talking about is producing the essential inputs into defence capability. The MoD must be in charge of that and must understand that.
What is more, if the Government give up that capability and that knowledge, they will not get it back. There are all sorts of people now in the MoD and DE&S—I know them well—who can negotiate a contract with a GOCO partner if you want one. But if you actually sign that contract and give up your role running defence procurement to some private sector partner, in five years’ time or whenever you renew the contract, you will be at a very considerable disadvantage, and in 10 years’ time you will not be able at all to have an intelligent or effective negotiation or to monitor intelligently what is going on. It is very important that this should remain a core function and a core expertise of any Ministry of Defence worthy of the name. That is true in this country and elsewhere; it always has been and I believe it always should be.
The second fundamental reason why the GOCO proposal was misconceived and a mistake in principle from the beginning is that an essential part of defence procurement is flexibility. The enemy has a vote in this. You have to take the enemy into account. The enemy may change; the enemy may change his tactics and you have to change your procurement policy accordingly.
When I was defence procurement Minister, I held a meeting in my office every month on counter-IED policy. I had the experts there from DE&S and of course our own capability people and people from PJHQ, and the absolute experts from the various research institutes that we have at Fort Halstead and so forth. They are brilliant; I want to pay tribute to them now. I am full of admiration, and always will be for the rest of my life, for their expertise and dedication. They get no public recognition at all for their role.
We also had the Americans there. I had negotiated an open-eyes agreement with my American counterpart, Ash Carter, on counter-IED. We had an American colonel and she always contributed very usefully to our meetings. In those meetings we quite frequently decided then and there, that afternoon, to change our procurement of some particular technology or item of equipment and switch it to something else, usually in the UOR programme but it sometimes involved adjusting a core programme as well. You needed to do that because the enemy was changing and the enemy’s tactics were changing, and we wanted to save lives and win operations. Those are the fundamental obligations of any Defence Minister, which must override any other consideration.
It is quite wrong to give up that flexibility. You need flexibility for other reasons. I made it a principle—I have no idea whether the Government continue with it, but I hope that they do—that before I authorised any major programme, I always investigated whether we could do it in collaboration with an ally. If you do that, not only do you share the research and development costs and the risks but you get longer production runs, and the very considerable fixed overheads then spread over a greater production run, which is highly desirable. I had a lot of successes in that, particularly with the French, where we did a lot of things. One example was in underwater programmes. I invited them into the Mantis UAV programme. We did the new turret for the Warrior and the Scout vehicle together. These were successful examples of international collaboration requiring great flexibility.
If you had an annual, biannual or five-year contract with a GOCO to procure things on your behalf, you would have to hold up the whole process. You would have to talk to them; you would have to negotiate with them; and it would take time. What is more, it would take money. Money is what motivates the private sector—quite rightly and understandably so—and it knows perfectly well that the way in which it makes the real money out of government is when the Government change their mind, change their specification and want to do something differently. That is always the great moment, when you get penalties and you can increase your prices. That is exactly the situation which we must not find ourselves in and why we must not go down the GOCO route. I hope that we hear no more about the GOCO. However, I am extremely disappointed: it is a fundamental failure of government not to reach a clear decision and to let the country and everybody involved in defence procurement, in industry and within the MoD, know exactly where we stand, and to maintain this uncertainty which they have created, quite gratuitously, in the coming months and years.
What is the solution? I do not want ever to be accused in this House of criticising without saying what I would like to do and what I believe is the right solution. I think that we should proceed with the DE&S as it currently is and make steady, incremental improvements to it. Any human institution, of course, can be improved, and that is true of the DE&S. The DE&S contains wonderful people of enormous ability and enormous dedication, enthusiasm and commitment. When I was putting together the Scout programme, I remember there being a big time factor there. We succeeded in getting the whole process, which would normally take about two years, done in about 13 weeks. People were working through the night and through the weekends. They are superb people. Of course, they do not have quite enough of certain types of expertise—some in the financial area and some in the project engineering area—and that must be remedied, as Kevin O’Donoghue and I were trying to do. We did so often by secondments from the private sector. You cannot bring in people to deal with contracts of their own companies, of course, but you can put them in other parts of the DE&S and they will learn a lot about government procurement and you will learn a lot from their particular expertise during those secondments.
You can also do something which I did not have the occasion to do but thought of doing on several occasions. Where you have a particularly complicated and difficult project, you could perhaps bring in a private sector partner to be alongside you in the negotiations. I would have done that on the future tanker programme, which had gone on for eight or nine years when I took over. Luckily, the people concerned came to a conclusion rather rapidly after I came on board and avoided that particular fate. That is something that we should look at.
Above all, I do not believe that the DE&S needs a new corporate structure. That creates barriers, inflexibilities and some of the problems to which I have already referred. I totally agree with the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup. He was quite right in what he just said about the international position. Of course, we have had big problems with cost and time overruns—you always have those in defence procurement if you are at the cutting edge of technology. By definition, nobody can predict exactly the time and costs involved in solving technical problems at the cutting edge—at the coal face. That is absolutely inevitable. If you look at how the French and the Americans do it—those are the only comparisons really worth making because other people are not normally at the cutting edge of technology—you will see that the position is very similar there. The Americans have far worse cost overruns. Their time overruns are not quite so bad because they throw enormous amounts of money at something when they run into a problem.
However, that is not a reason for complacency. There is enormous scope for improving the DE&S, and it should be steadily improved in the way that I have described, but we should in no circumstances destroy any of its enormous qualities. We should in no circumstances throw over this particular institution lightly and set up something else which we would live to regret.
Finally, I want to ask some specific questions of the Minister. If he does not have answers for me now, I ask him to write to me and place a copy of the letter in the House. First, was it by accident or design that the approximately £2 billion surplus was accumulated in the MoD in the last financial year? Secondly, are the Government providing for or expecting to make compensation to Bechtel for withdrawing the competition in which it was engaged and on which it would have spent a lot of money? Thirdly, what is the total cost of this GOCO exercise, including any compensation to contractors if that arises? Fourthly, what is the pay or total remuneration package for Bernard Gray in his new role? Fifthly—the matter has been raised this afternoon but nobody seems to have any clue to the answer—why was it that, extraordinarily in this case, the normal processes for open, public recruitment were overridden and a special deal was done with one particular nominated individual?