Falkland Islands Defence Review

Lord King of Bridgwater Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the Statement that the Minister has made, and I endorse the comments about his conduct and attention to the House in his time as Defence Minister, which have been admirable. If there is any relevance in the story that appears today, I hope that the Government are making the strongest representations to the Argentinian Government about the unwisdom of becoming involved with Russia at present and what that might mean for the continent of America. The United States of America has previously taken a slightly detached view about the relationships and has viewed the Falklands as a matter between the United Kingdom and Argentina. Were there to be Russian involvement in some way, it would be of keen Interest to the United States.

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his very kind words. As regards Russia, the Ministry of Defence undertakes regular assessments of potential military threats to the Falkland Islands to ensure that we retain an appropriate level of defensive capability to address any such threats. We remain vigilant and are committed to the protection of the Falkland Islanders.

Defence Budget

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Wednesday 4th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I assume that someone is working on those figures. The Government do not gamble with Britain’s national security. The primary responsibility of Government is the defence of the UK and its citizens. We cannot rule out a future nuclear threat to the UK, and therefore need a credible nuclear capability. Maintaining continuous at-sea deterrence is the best way to deter the most extreme threat to the UK. To clarify my answer to the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, the 1% is not on the defence budget—it is on the equipment spend within the defence budget.

[Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)]

Undoubtedly we face a dangerous and uncertain world. I welcome the Minister’s statement. I have more confidence in supporting a Government who have shown the ability to manage the economy and have the best chance of maintaining our level of defence expenditure than I would have if we again found ourselves unable to afford to do it.

[Lord Astor of Hever]

I agree entirely with my noble friend. We need a strong economy to have strong Armed Forces.

Gurkhas

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Tuesday 24th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, of course we are very keen on a proper role for the Gurkhas, and we feel that they have a proper role at the moment.

[Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)]

Is my noble friend aware that when we were conducting the Options for Change exercise and there was great competition among infantry regiments as to which should continue and which should disband, there was a suggestion that the Gurkhas should be stood down? Does my noble friend agree that one of the best decisions we took was not to listen to that advice and to ensure that the Gurkhas continued their service? Is not all the evidence that has emerged since from Afghanistan, Iraq and the various fields of activity in which the Gurkhas have been involved further tribute to the wonderful way in which they have served this nation over so many years?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend. I think it was Prince Harry, who served alongside the Gurkhas in Afghanistan, who put it very well. He said that there was no safer place than by the side of a Gurkha.

UK Armed Forces in Iraq

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Monday 15th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, we are confident that it is working. We have a very active training programme, which I can tell the noble Lord about. We are carrying out training on heavy machine-guns and combat infantry training. We feel that any training of this sort will help the Iraqi security forces to train up to combat ISIL.

[Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)]

Is my noble friend aware that the House will be grateful that he clarified the point that there is no intention to put in combat troops, because clearly misunderstandings arose over that? It is helpful to have that cleared up. In respect of the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Jay, what sort of numbers are going through this training programme, and what sort of length is it? Obviously, in some respects, getting greater expertise and skill within the Iraqi armed forces at this time is a matter of some urgency.

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My noble friend makes a very good point. These training courses are very important. Following on from the noble Lord’s earlier question, we feel that it is very important that we build them up. We are still scoping these training courses. As I said, we have just completed several courses in the Erbil area in heavy machine-guns. We are currently doing combat infantry training and sharpshooter training with the Danes in the Sulaymaniyah area. Two more courses are being carried out.

Our soldiers have helped commercial contractors to train the Iraqis in counter-IED. As I said earlier, this is something in which we have a real niche speciality. I can assure my noble friend that the “advise and assist” recce team returned to this country on 7 December, and options are being considered to set up a logistics headquarters and a ninth armoured mechanical division. PJHQ is developing a business case for counter-IED training at two build-partner capacity sites.

Armed Forces

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Monday 7th April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)]

My Lords, the House is grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, for providing this opportunity, albeit a truncated one, to raise this important subject. I echo his last comment and hope that it will be possible early in the next Session to hold a much more substantial debate on these important issues, not least given the troubled times in which we now may be finding ourselves. His Question asks the Government for,

“their assessment of whether they have sufficient manpower and the right balance of regular and reserve forces…to meet the United Kingdom’s current national and international responsibilities and requirements”.

As he rightly says, current responsibilities may look different from those of a few months ago.

In looking at this, many noble Lords will have had the advantage of reading the Defence Select Committee report, Future Army 2020. My first point is that the Secretary of State, in his answers to that Select Committee about the matters in the report, makes no bones about a determination to find a particular financial package into which defence requirements and defence equipment and resources have to fit. That is not a pleasant position to be in, but his approach is certainly much more sensible than to embark on more ambitious proposals for which funds are inadequate. Our Armed Forces are entitled to expect some measure of certainty that what we are embarking on can be properly funded and is therefore likely to be properly implemented. In that sense, recognising the need for austerity, I support him.

However, I share the noble Lord’s concern about the recruitment of reserves. I look with particular interest to what small firms are saying about making employees available for service in the reserves. Although they recognise the benefits of it to the individuals concerned, two-fifths of the companies that are open to providing reserves had reservations about their ability to help under the new structure. That is a serious matter. I therefore welcome the undertaking by the Secretary of State that he will keep this matter under close review.

I was interested in the exchange between Colonel Bob Stewart, the Secretary of State and the Chief of the General Staff when Bob Stewart asked for a short answer to the question: what was the strength and what was the weakness of Future Army 2020? General Wall said that its strength was the capability that we are getting for the resources allocated. That was a pretty guarded statement. Its weakness was that some areas would have less resilience than we would need, which obviously is a matter of concern.

The other element that I noticed coming through very strongly is that we are just talking about regulars and reserves here. However, noble Lords will have noticed the emphasis that is also given to contractors. There is undoubtedly a determination to make maximum use of contractors and contracted manpower to help fill perhaps some of the gaps in that respect. I welcome that because I have certainly found in the past that it can be very effective and very efficient—particularly, for example, bringing in contractors from the actual manufacturers to maintain and service important equipment.

I will not talk in detail about this, but the other concern I have is about rebasing from Germany, where quality of accommodation will be a major challenge for the Ministry of Defence. I hope that our returning forces will have the quality of accommodation to which they are entitled as they come out of some very good facilities in Germany.

The general view in the Select Committee report seemed to be that the question of further intervention was not one of if but of when and where. I was not in favour of intervention in Syria but I recognise that there will almost certainly be other cases. We are already involved in Somalia and Mali, and are helping with training in Libya. This activity of conflict prevention and capability building by training and helping countries to help themselves will continue to be a very important role for our Armed Forces. I welcome it from their point of view because, with the end of activities in Afghanistan, there will now be a period of what may appear to be rather dull service activity, and it is important that the Armed Forces have real and worthwhile activities.

As the noble Lord said, we are in a potentially dangerous time. We cannot be sure where the latest news coming out of Ukraine might lead. We hope that good sense will prevail, but at the same time we need to keep a very close eye on our resources while also keeping the new changes under close review. I welcome this opportunity which the noble Lord has given us to raise this point and to urge the Government to be ready to have a further, rather longer and proper discussion of these matters in the new Session of Parliament.

Defence Reform Bill

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Wednesday 26th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)]

I have some sympathy with the amendment moved by the noble Lord. I think it is very important indeed. We know that the recruitment of reservists did not get off to a magnificent start and we hope that further steps are going to be more effective. We have to watch it extremely carefully. I noticed that one proposal is to encourage those leaving the Armed Forces—the regulars—to become reservists in this case. There are some difficulties for regular serving people moving into civilian street and trying to get jobs if they say, “I am liable to go away for six months at any time”. It is not the best way to encourage a prospective new employer to offer you an opportunity. The Government have in a sense created their own problem. If the economy is improving, as we hope it is, and if employment opportunities are improving, as we hope they are, that might not make it easier to attract more reservists or to recruit people for the Armed Forces on a regular basis. Therefore, whatever one may have thought about this, recent developments in eastern Europe do not encourage one to think that this is the time to slim down on defences any further than we have done. I support the idea that we should keep a close eye on the matter and I think that the points made by the noble Lord were fair. We should pay attention to what may have been a valedictory dispatch from James Arbuthnot as chairman of the Defence Committee. I may be wrong, but I think he is proposing to stand down from that position. He has done excellent work and this may be his last report.

Defence Reform Bill

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Tuesday 10th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)]

My Lords, I am particularly pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Levene, in this debate. I think your Lordships will recognise that nobody in the country can speak with more authority on the subjects that are part of the Bill than the noble Lord. He has had quite exceptional experience in this field, having headed up the procurement executive and having been recalled by successive Secretaries of State to overhaul and review the programme of reform for the Ministry of Defence. I particularly echo one point that he made very forcibly. It has been a feature of opening speeches from the Front Benches to pay tribute to our Armed Forces. I readily endorse that of course but also pay tribute to the civilian members in the MoD who back them up. I exempt the current Secretary of State and Defence Ministers from this, but there is a tendency in other parts of the Government to decry civil servants and say that all their present problems are problems with the civil servants rather than necessarily with policies or things they have inherited. The Minister ended on a cheerful note, saying that he looked forward to this debate. I am not sure it is the easiest debate he will ever have to reply to in his career and I admire his optimism.

The Bill has three main parts. I have no comment on Part 2, about which other noble Lords have spoken, but will say a word about Part 3. I have considerable concern whether it will be possible to reach the numbers planned for the new reserve. I am an old TA officer used to serving my time with drill nights, a few training weekends and a few fortnight camps but am all too conscious of the different demands that are now made of people serving in the reserves. I used to spend a lot of my time as Secretary of State going round an organisation called TAVRA—the Territorial, Auxiliary and Volunteer Reserve Association—and persuading employers to encourage their employees to serve in the TA.

However, of course I was trying to sell an entirely different sort of menu from what is now required. The challenges for companies and for employees are now very much greater. I was struck by the comments made by Tobias Ellwood in a debate in another place. He is a Member of Parliament who is a former soldier and a former PPS, I think, to the Secretary of State and who continues to be a member of the Reserve Forces. His last exercise was in Laikipia in Kenya:

“Halfway through the two-and-a-half week exercise, we came together to discuss the future of the TA and its impact on each of us. Round the table, we had to say what would happen if we were required to break away from our jobs for nine months. Not one person in my group was able to put up their hand and say that their employer would be able to grant them permission to be away from work for that period”.—[Official Report, Commons, 16/7/13; col. 1009.]

That very much sums up my concern about this proposal. The amendment that the Secretary of State has announced in another place, which will come forward on Report, is extremely welcome. It will be necessary to watch this very carefully as it is in nobody’s interest to find, at the end of this period, that we have a substantial shortfall.

I note the criticisms that were made about Regular Army recruiting, which suggested that part of the problem was that it was not very good at recruiting people for the TA. That may be a little unkind and is simply a measure of the difficulty that it would have doing so. It clearly has to be recognised that, by contrast to what used to be the position in the TA, it will be extremely difficult for small employers to agree to their employees going off and run the risk that they may disappear for six or nine months.

Turning to Part 1, I have reservations about the proposed GOCO but I was very interested to see what the outcome of the competition would be. As the various candidates fell by the wayside, finally leaving just one competitor, I entirely understand why the Secretary of State has decided, and announced today, that he will not proceed with the proposal. It is fair to say that there are rather better omens than there might be for making a success of DE&S-plus.

I do not want to embarrass the noble Lord, Lord Levene. He quoted a report from 1991. I rather enjoyed that because I was Secretary of State at that time and he was in charge of procurement, and he showed what a much better performance was being achieved then than sadly has been the case more recently.

Only last Thursday my noble friend published in this House a Written Statement by the Secretary of State in connection with the second annual review by the noble Lord, Lord Levene, which recognised that there had been substantial progress. The Secretary of State said that there was,

“clear evidence that the Ministry of Defence has become more businesslike”.—[Official Report, 5/12/13; col. WS 37.]

which was, “very encouraging”.

There are real difficulties about a GOCO taking over the DE&S function. Certainly, as the noble Lord, Lord Levene, has said, I have no objection to GOCOs, because we did them. We did them in Devonport and Portsmouth and they were a great success. They had limited, targeted objectives—putting a company in charge of something with its commercial expertise and defined objectives—and nobody would criticise them now.

However, if you take the wider considerations for total procurement in excess of £10 billion a year, the implications are not simply about what is the best commercial deal; there are economic implications for every part of our country. There may be regional aspects to that; the future of an industry may be at stake; international collaborative ventures may have to be taken into account. What could well become a real headache for a future Secretary of State are possible conflicts of interest and allegations of failure and lack of impartiality in the treatment of contracts. There are also the security implications of foreign companies that are applying to become the GOCO operator working for other Governments as well. There is a range of issues that goes much further.

I hope that the proposal in the Secretary of State’s Statement, DE&S-plus, can be made to work and that we can build on existing capabilities. Many will have noticed the key paragraph in the Statement, that,

“we will permit the new organisation significant freedoms and flexibilities, agreed with the Treasury and Cabinet Office, around how it recruits, rewards, retains and manages staff along more commercial lines”.

That is a crucial decision, which seems to meet the challenge. There are many very experienced and talented people in the procurement field within the Ministry of Defence, but some of them lack wider senior commercial experience. If we can reinforce that, I have every hope that that could work.

It is against that background that I hope that we will also tackle one of the besetting sins of the Ministry of Defence over the years, and get greater continuity. People continually changing jobs is a problem in many government departments. We must build up that field of expertise with maximum continuity of employment.

The more difficult issue that I have to raise is that, if this is the Secretary of State’s announced decision today—and it has been referred to already—there is the question of whether we are really going forward with Part 1. I am in favour of giving every possible encouragement to the Government’s now announced decision for DE&S-plus. I hope that he can recruit the very best people to work in that, to reinforce it and to make it an effective body. It does not seem the ideal start for them if you say, “By the way, we may chuck it all in a couple of years’ time and, by the way, we don’t actually have to go back to Parliament because we already have an Act of Parliament in place that enables us to do it”. There is a difficult constitutional point as to whether this should be proceeded with at this stage. I am talking of course only about Part 1.

This has all happened in a great rush. We have had the Secretary of State’s announcement only this afternoon and not had a chance to discuss it. Your Lordships’ House does not vote against Second Readings so the Bill will proceed, but, between now and Committee, we have seriously to consider what really should happen to Part 1. I hope that we will give our fullest backing to DE&S-plus and make that work, and really see the improvement in the performance in MoD procurement to which I know the Secretary of State and all the Ministers in the department attach such enormous importance.

Defence: Procurement

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Thursday 21st November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I cannot comment on the Ministry of Defence’s accounting procedures, but I have full confidence in them.

[Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend the Minister said that the status quo is not an option, and certainly there needs to be a massive improvement in the procurement capabilities and efficiency of the Ministry of Defence; it is a long-standing problem. However, when my noble friend Lord Lee says that you cannot have a competition with only one entrant, is it not true that the competition now is between an outside contractor—Bechtel and its consortium—and an in-house resolution? If we do that, will he ensure, because it is essential, that there is more continuity and expertise, as has been referred to, in the procurement section of the MoD?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I can give my noble friend that assurance. Two processes are happening—one as a result of the single GOCO bidder and, as yesterday’s Written Ministerial Statement made clear, that requires a further review across government of the validity of the competition. Secondly, the MoD will be assessing the bid that we have on the table for a GOCO, along with a DE&S-plus proposal, when we have it, to see which will provide the best solution.

Armed Forces: Redundancies

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Tuesday 22nd January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, as I said earlier, the National Security Council is meeting at this moment. It will obviously be considering world events as they evolve. We are confident that we have the members of Armed Forces to deal with any situation. As the noble Lord knows, we are reducing the numbers next year, coming back from Afghanistan. We have plenty of members of the Armed Forces to deal with these eventualities.

[Lord King of Bridgwater]

My Lords—

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, the Government’s record in this area is not a good one. Within a few months of getting rid of our carrier strike capability, we found ourselves regretting the absence of a carrier in the Libyan operation and were forced to spend even more money hiring an Italian naval base and providing in-flight refuelling which we would not otherwise have needed. In the present state of affairs, is there not all too great a chance that we might soon regret this hasty decision to reduce our Army, which was taken in rather different circumstances a couple of years ago?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I am sorry to hear that from the noble Lord. These redundancies are not new, and were part of the difficult decisions that had to be made to tackle the multi-million pound defence deficit which we inherited from the previous Government.

[Lord King of Bridgwater]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the challenge faced by the Ministry of Defence and the Army now is whether they can produce the number of reservists who are to take the place of those made redundant from the regular Army? That will need to be kept under review.

Is not the lesson of current events—not least in Mali and perhaps leaking over into Algeria—and of events in Afghanistan that there is definitely a time limit for the use of foreign troops in other people’s countries? The real challenge here is to make sure that we can train local military competence, whether in west Africa or elsewhere. Increasingly, they are the people who want a more ordered and stable world. The local people will increasingly have to be responsible for their own defence.

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, on the first part of my noble friend’s question about reservists, we are confident that we can get up to the number of 30,000, which is our ambition. When my noble friend was Secretary of State, the numbers were about 72,000, of which 30,000 is less than half.

My noble friend makes a good point on training. Much more of the emphasis of our Armed Forces in future will be on training and mentoring our allies throughout the world.

Afghanistan

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Wednesday 19th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I reconfirm to my noble friend Lord Lee of Trafford that more and more members of our Armed Forces will take on a training and mentoring role. As the Statement said, 80% of operations are now led by the Afghan national security forces. I have been out there and seen for myself the mentoring and how successful our Armed Forces and our allies are in training up the Afghans.

I will write to my noble friend but, in answer to his questions, so far as I am aware the US forces’ reduction discussions are still taking place. I understand that the Prime Minister spoke to President Obama yesterday, but I will write to my noble friend on this as I am not aware of the exact figures.

Equipment withdrawal is an issue that has come up a lot in the House. We are making quite good progress on the different routes through which equipment would be withdrawn; it will not just be through Pakistan or the northern routes. Obviously some would come back directly by air, while some would go directly by air to countries in the Middle East. A lot of work is going on regarding this issue. Decisions about gifting and what to do with equipment will be made on a case-by-case basis, using the principle of operational priority and value for money to the UK taxpayer. We are reviewing our policies of gifting to ensure that any gifted equipment is appropriate and follows parliamentary, Treasury and National Audit Office rules, but obviously a number of bits of kit will be gifted. Work on managing the recovery of UK equipment is under way. Redeployment began in earnest, and as planned, on 1 October.

My noble friend asked me about efforts to stimulate the economy post-2014. I know that the international community, as the Statement said, has donated a great deal of money to the Afghan Government for that very end, and DfID has a number of different initiatives in Afghanistan.

With regard to the attitude towards interpreters, I have the line on that somewhere, but I assure my noble friend that we stick by our interpreters and will do everything to safeguard their security.

[Lord King of Bridgwater]

Does the Minister recognise that there will be general agreement in this House, and widely in the country, that 11 years at this level of military commitment in Afghanistan is quite long enough? I welcome the announcement of this withdrawal since the real threat to our national security, which was Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, has long since ended. We should pay tribute to all those who have lost their lives and the enormous number who have suffered life-changing injuries in this very long campaign.

Is the most important part of this Statement not the recognition that it will not be by military means but through political discussions that a better future for Afghanistan will be achieved? I welcome the content of the Statement regarding the efforts that will be made in this respect. That will be very important, if the political discussions move well, as we move towards the extremely difficult exercise of withdrawal of men and materiel from that area. The noble Lord leading for the Opposition referred to the fact that we have been there before and our withdrawals have often been the most difficult part of the exercise. I hope that that will not be repeated in this situation.

We are now committing ourselves to considerable financial support. The Prime Minister said that we are in for the long term, but nothing could be more damaging to that than if there are continuing allegations of corruption. We are aware that certain UK funds ended up in real estate development in Dubai in the hands of certain private individuals, and any suggestion of continuing corruption would be enormously damaging to the national will to continue to support the Afghan people and to carry on the work that has been carried forward so far with the courage, resilience and good spirit of our Armed Forces.

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend that it is now time that our Armed Forces started to come back. We have done a very good job in building up the capability of the Afghan national security forces. As my noble friend did, I pay tribute to those members of our Armed Forces who have lost their lives and to the large numbers of members of our Armed Forces, as we heard in a Question earlier, who have had life-changing injuries and wounds. As my noble friend said, it is not just by military means that Afghanistan will end up in a better place. I know that those in the Foreign Office and our ISAF allies are in deep discussions with the Afghan Government and Pakistan. As my noble friend said, we are certainly in this for the long term, and we must do everything possible to try to get on top of the corruption.

With the leave of the House, I will answer the question asked by my noble friend Lord Lee about the interpreters. People who put their life on the line for the United Kingdom will not be abandoned. Locally engaged Afghan staff working for our Armed Forces and civilian missions in Afghanistan make an invaluable contribution to the UK’s efforts to help to support the spread of security, stability and development in their country. We take our responsibility for all members of staff very seriously and have put in place measures to reduce the risks that they face. Precautions are taken during recruitment, and staff are fully briefed before taking up employment about any risks involving their work. We regularly encourage staff to report any security concerns immediately. We follow an agreed cross-government policy in considering cases of intimidation or injury on a case-by-case basis. This policy ensures that we take into account the individual circumstances of each case and allows us to decide a proportionate response.