National Security Situation

Lord Stirrup Excerpts

Thursday 19th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, this debate could hardly be more timely, coming as it does just a month after the publication of the Government’s national security capability review and following hard on the heels of the employment of chemical agents in Syria and the UK. I am pleased that, among all of our national convulsions over Brexit, we are, for a brief time at least, able to discuss the perilous global situation in which we find ourselves and the responses with which we might best counter the challenges we face.

Let me start with the security capability review itself. It makes a number of obvious points with which it is hard to argue. It is somewhat less convincing, however, when it comes to the “so what?” questions that flow from its analysis. I will touch on just a few of these. The first relates to the “fusion doctrine”, which I assume is what used to be known as the “comprehensive approach” in a new guise. The proposition that the UK should react to security challenges with a coherent, cross-disciplinary response that utilises all elements of power, soft and hard, in an appropriate mix is, of course, indisputable. The problem, though, is that Whitehall is not really very good at this. During the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, it took a lot of time and effort to get the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development working together effectively. The ad-hoc processes and individual relationships that went into making the endeavour successful did not, by and large, endure beyond those campaigns.

If the new doctrine is to be successful, and not just the whim of the year, it will require a fundamental shift in culture, as the security capability review itself acknowledges. However, a change of culture is one of the most difficult things to achieve: it takes sustained effort over many years and a system of rewards and sanctions that drive behaviour. A senior responsible official, while helpful, will not achieve this fundamental shift. Can the Minister tell the House how such a change in culture is to be driven and, most importantly, assessed across Whitehall over the long term?

Turning now to external issues, I sense a degree of schizophrenia in the capability review when it comes to China. Much is made of our commitment to a rules-based international system. China seems to acquiesce in such a system only if it gets to make up the rules itself. It has engaged in the theft of intellectual property on a massive scale, and it uses its increasing economic and industrial strength to leverage its own interests—not unreasonably—from a Chinese perspective. However, the capability review merely notes:

“Competition between states … including in the South China Sea, brings risks of miscalculation and conflict”.


It goes on to note, somewhat laconically:

“We have established a global comprehensive strategic partnership with China”.


What exactly is this strategic partnership? How are we balancing our engagement with China and our need for its investment with the protection of our national infrastructure and the wider observance of international rules and norms? There are clearly tensions here that it seems to me give rise to fundamental questions that the security capability review has ducked. I should be grateful if the Minister provided some enlightenment on this crucial matter.

There is, though, one strand running through the review that is both clear and compelling, although it raises more questions than it answers. In chapter after chapter, the review emphasises the importance of finding ways to partner effectively with the EU once we leave. I could not agree more. As I have said on previous occasions, our security in these islands has always been inextricably linked with the security of the rest of Europe, and no referendum can change that. We need urgently to agree with the EU a method of consulting and co-operating on a wide range of security and defence issues, and that means a method of consulting and co-operating on foreign policy matters more widely. This needs to be an ongoing and enduring process. Coming together just at times of crisis will not enable us to respond effectively to, let alone pre-empt, the common challenges we will face. The national security capability review sets out the requirement in stark terms but offers no solutions. Will the Minister tell the House what work is under way to provide the mechanisms and processes that are urgently needed to underpin our security in this regard?

I turn now to the burning issue of state-based threats within Europe, from Russia in particular. The capability review rightly highlights the considerable and increasing risks of conflict, but it is less clear on the strategy for dealing with this. There has been much talk of a new Cold War, but this is a misreading of the situation. We in the West do not face an ideological foe bent on global revolution, as was the case with the Soviet Union. We face a gangster regime that has plundered its own country for individual gain and seeks to increase its international stature and power by equally unsavoury means. How do we respond to such a challenge? First, it seems to me that we need to take a long view here. Our ultimate strategic objective should be a Russia that lives comfortably with its neighbours, adheres to accepted international norms and is a responsible member of the wider international community. It is therefore important that we continue to engage with Russia as and when we can and maintain channels of communication, even in times of great stress.

On the other hand, we need to be clear that certain behaviours simply cannot be allowed to pass unchallenged. We need to be absolutely clear about our responses if we are to lower the risk of miscalculation. The bottom line in this regard must be our commitment to NATO and our undiminished support for Article 5. NATO must demonstrate its capability and resolve when it comes to the territorial defence of its members, and the UK should lead the way in this. Russia must be left in no doubt of the utmost seriousness with which we view the matter. Meanwhile, we must strengthen our capabilities to deal with asymmetric threats, particularly in cyberspace and in the various social strata of our nations. The UK has made a good start in this but still has a lot of catching up to do. More shadowy Russian actions outside these spheres will require more nuanced responses. These will not necessarily be effective in changing Russian behaviour in the short term, but the mere fact of a response is nevertheless important. Of crucial importance is the need to maintain a high degree of international unity in the face of Russian challenges, which only serves to underline the importance of the co-ordination and co-operation mechanisms within Europe to which I referred earlier.

One very difficult and pertinent matter which requires urgent thought is how the international community should approach the use of chemical weapons. We need to decide if the nature of these weapons and the requirement to sustain the Chemical Weapons Convention justify a coercive or retributive response to their use. If they do, that should be as part of a wider strategic programme of action to minimise the risk of chemical attacks and to punish them more comprehensively when they occur. One-off military responses may send a signal about our opposition to such weapons, but are unlikely by themselves to deter their use. This is an issue on which the security capability review is unhelpfully silent.

Finally, I remind the House of some of the words and phrases used by the Prime Minister in her introduction to the review, where she sets out what has changed since 2015:

“threats have continued to intensify and evolve and we face a range of complex challenges … the resurgence of state-based threats … the undermining of the international rules based order; the rise in cyber-attacks … the increase in threat posed by terrorism, extremism and instability”.

Well, quite. That is an accurate and very worrying picture of what is happening in our world. One must ask, though: how has all this affected our investment priorities in the UK? The answer seems to be not at all. The defence budget has been shown to be inadequate to meet the aims of the 2015 review, let alone to cope with the increased threats and challenges set out so clearly by the Prime Minister.

A strategy is truly a strategy only if it matches objectives with resources. It is simply no good parroting old tropes, as the national security capability review does, about a minimum of 2% of GDP being committed to defence, and about a 0.5% real-terms annual increase in spending. It should hardly be a source of great national pride that we have just avoided breaching NATO’s absolute minimum spending requirement, and a 0.5% annual increment is clearly not enough; nor is comparing our position to the delinquents in the alliance a strategic response to the challenges of the world.

We are in danger from a range of complex and growing threats; on that, I entirely agree with the Prime Minister. What is required now is not mere reorganisation and rebranding, but a programme of investment commensurate with those threats. Only then will we have a national security strategy worth the name.

Defence Review

Lord Stirrup Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Grand Committee

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, the Treasury-mandated starting point for the 2010 defence review was a reduction in the MoD’s budget of between 10% and 20% to be achieved over the first three years. The measures necessary to achieve such savings so quickly proved unpalatable, even to a Government focused wholly on the elimination of the deficit over the span of one Parliament. But even the savings that were eventually made, of some 7.5%, inevitably left a strategically incoherent defence programme. The best that could be done was to reach a position in 2015 from which coherence could be rebuilt, provided that substantial real-terms increases were made in the defence budget in each of the succeeding years.

In the 2015 review, the MoD produced a plan to restore coherence, although more slowly than envisaged in 2010, but the plan was inadequately funded. It relied on wholly unrealistic assumptions about the savings that could be made through efficiency. When, unsurprisingly, these failed to materialise, the plan was in trouble, and the subsequent fall in the exchange rate only exacerbated the problem.

The Government now face a choice: they can provide more money and fund the plan properly or they must come up with a new plan. I, of course, urge them to adopt the former course, not least because this is the minimum action that is required. Let it be remembered that the 2015 plan was about achieving coherence, not about restoring our defence capabilities to where they should be in this challenging and dangerous world. That would require an annual expenditure of more like 3% of GDP. Alas, I do not expect the Government to go so far. However, I trust that the Minister will, in due course, be able to confirm that they will at least do this bare minimum. I, like many other Members of your Lordships’ House, would view anything less with the gravest concern.

Armed Forces: Morale

Lord Stirrup Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, Britain has a competitive advantage in defence, and that advantage is based on the commitment, professionalism and skills of our people. We place heavy demands on them all, including those in the Armed Forces whom we ask to risk their lives on operations. Therefore, we place a very high premium on recruiting, retaining and developing the right people. As set out in the 2015 SDSR, we have identified a number of long-term plans to ensure that the service offer to which I referred better reflects the aspirations and expectations of our personnel and new recruits.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, our future military capability depends on retaining sufficient talented and experienced personnel. That retention in turn depends on offering those personnel sufficiently challenging, rewarding and exciting training. Can the Minister reassure the House that, in its search for savings, the Ministry of Defence will not be looking to cut back in this area, which would be the falsest of all false economies?

[Earl Howe]

The challenge, when looking for efficiencies rather than straightforward savings, is to achieve the same or a better level of outputs with the money available. I can tell the noble and gallant Lord that, while training is of course under the spotlight, what we do not want to do is to dilute or degrade the quality of that training for those whose standards we set great store by.

Armed Forces (Flexible Working) Bill [HL]

Lord Stirrup Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 12th September 2017 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jolly (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 14 in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Smith of Newnham, who, because of the Statement immediately after Questions, has got herself in the wrong place at the wrong time and has had to go into the Chamber. It is a very straightforward amendment. It asks for information to be provided by the Defence Council at least a year in advance to all members of the Armed Forces, giving them information about the scheme, how it will operate, how to apply and what alternative forms of flexible working are available.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, when I spoke at Second Reading I indicated that I was supportive of the principle that the Bill seeks to enshrine. After all, who could argue against increased flexibility? But I did have a number of caveats and cautions. It seems crucial that whatever we do does not undermine the ethos that is essential to a successful fighting force. I raised a number of issues, not all of which have been dealt with to my satisfaction, but I set those to one side for the moment to focus in particular on Amendment 1.

At Second Reading, the noble Earl took me to task for using the term “flexible employment”. He pointed out to me that service personnel are not employees as such. He is of course quite right, although the waters are somewhat muddied when the MoD itself uses terms such as “new employment model”. Service men and women have always understood and accepted that they are liable to be called to duty at any time— 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year. The Bill seeks to change that. In doing so, though, it introduces the term “part-time” and part-time is a concept which in the military has never been recognised for regular service. It implies something that is completely removed from the ethos that is essential to a fighting service.

We all know what the Bill is talking about. We all know that it does not intend to undermine that ethos. But we also know that Bills which become Acts can have unintended consequences, and this Bill has to be treated with a great degree of caution, in my view, because of the fundamental nature of the changes that it introduces. As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, has already pointed out, the use of such terms as part-time is anathema to the military. Why use such a term when much more appropriate terms are there, ready to be employed? I therefore support very strongly Amendment 1.

Armed Forces (Flexible Working) Bill [HL]

Lord Stirrup Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 11th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, I too welcome the intention behind this Bill. As the Minister has explained, the Armed Forces are currently losing talented and experienced personnel who might be retained if they were able to secure some temporary flexibility in their conditions of employment. This is perhaps particularly, although not exclusively, true for female personnel. Although such flexibility might not by itself lead to a dramatic growth in the overall numbers of women in the military, it might allow the services to retain more of those who are highly capable, who could then go on to increase the percentage of females in the most senior ranks. This would be very welcome.

However, while supporting the Bill in principle, like other noble Lords and noble and gallant Lords, I am concerned that the proposed changes should not detract from the UK’s overall military capability and effectiveness. We must remember the purpose of employing people within the military: it is not to produce goods or services for consumers on an everyday basis, but to deliver targeted military effect when and where the Government require it. The day-to-day outputs of military formations are very often in preparation for their real purpose, not an end in themselves.

I also wonder about the title of the Bill. In response to one of the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, do we not already have a degree of flexible working in the military—people producing a full output but with varying start and finish times, and even through working from home? Is this Bill not rather about flexible terms of employment? That would certainly make the variations in rates of pay and so on more easily understood by a wider audience.

However, although I have stressed the crucial need to maintain military capability and military effectiveness, this does not in my view mean that the nature of military life and its processes should not change. The Armed Forces that I left some six or seven years past looked and felt in many ways very different from the organisation that I joined half a century ago. Yet I defy anyone to say that its 21st century personnel, in Iraq and Afghanistan for example, have not displayed at least the same level of professionalism, commitment and courage as their distinguished predecessors.

Accepted norms change over time, and no military can allow itself to become too far removed from the society that it serves and from which it springs. Yet militaries are, and have to be, different. These two axioms lead to the requirement for a difficult balancing act, setting individual needs and aspirations on the one hand against operational demands and duties on the other. The question we must address in considering the Bill is whether that balance has been appropriately struck—and the answer is that we do not know.

The Bill is simply enabling legislation. It sets out the desired ends, but says virtually nothing about the ways and means. These will be the subject of secondary legislation and military regulations, but it is they that will enable us to reach an informed judgment about the balance to which I have referred. Without knowledge of the detail, the Bill falls into the, “Trust me, I’m a doctor” category. Let me give some examples of the issues that need to be addressed.

What percentage of people will be allowed to move on to flexible terms of employment? In the very helpful briefing arranged by the Minister, we were told that the services expect the take-up to be small—perhaps 0.5% to 1% of the force—based upon experience elsewhere. But no other military has operated such a system fully, and certainly not long enough to judge how take-up might change as people become accustomed to the idea. The figure of 1% seems small given the very large proportion of people who cite the strict current conditions of service as the principal reason for their leaving the military.

It is true that a reduction in salary is likely to act as a deterrent to many, but that still leaves us uncertain of the final take-up. It is therefore important that the Armed Forces conduct an analysis to determine what part of their establishment—how many and where—could be subject to flexible terms without undermining operational capability. This would at least establish a clear limit beyond which we should not go. Can the Minister tell the House whether such work has been undertaken, and if so what are the results?

We also need to consider the broad conditions that should govern the application for a move to flexible terms of employment. I understand that the current intention is not to require people to specify the reasons behind any application, since it might involve personal issues that they would rather remain private—I understand that.

On the other hand, if the availability of such opportunities is limited—owing to operational pressures, for example—how are the services to judge between competing demands? How are those involved in the appeal process to judge the merits of a case if they do not know all the relevant details? Ought we not at least to be specifying the reasons that would be considered a valid basis for applying for a period of flexibility, or perhaps setting out the motivations that would not form such a basis?

Flexibility is very much to be welcomed, but it often leads to increased complexity. If a particular job is currently being done for five, or perhaps more, days a week, what happens if the incumbent is suddenly working for only three days out of every seven? I assume that there will still be work that needs doing, else one must conclude that the organisation was overmanned in the first place. How is this burden to be met? Perhaps in some cases it can be addressed through the increased use of reservists, but probably not in all. What other measures will be required to deal with the challenge?

Whatever mechanisms and procedures are put in place, they will surely lead to increased pressures on the personnel management staffs. A great number of posts within the military simply could not be occupied on a part-time basis: crews of Royal Navy warships, the personnel of combat units in the Army and the members of front-line squadrons in the Royal Air Force, to name just three instances. That means that, in many cases, someone moving to flexible terms of employment will need to be posted elsewhere—perhaps to a job with a current incumbent who has been in post for only a short time and who will have to be moved on. All this will require careful handling.

I understand that the services are currently examining the implications for their personnel management processes and organisations, but as yet have reached no definite conclusions. I should be grateful if the Minister could keep the House informed once they do. There may be consequences for staff numbers and there will undoubtedly be issues for the joint personnel administration system.

In passing, I question one of the assertions that has been made regarding the financial consequences of the proposed arrangements. It has been said that any savings resulting from the reduced pay bill when personnel move to part-time arrangements would accrue to the budget of the appropriate service, which could then use it to pay for backfilling arrangements or on some other expenditure of its choice. This seems to me to be wishful thinking. The more likely outcome, particularly given the pressures on the defence budget, is that the central staffs will reduce the service’s overall budget allocation by a commensurate amount. It is true that if they did not act in such a fashion, an opportunity cost would fall somewhere—the central staffs, after all, do not get to keep any of the money. But I would discourage the idea that the Bill will somehow automatically lead to increased financial flexibility for the individual services.

Other noble and noble and gallant Lords have raised further important issues, and I could add to them. I will not at this point, but instead reiterate what is perhaps the central theme in this debate. For us to judge the appropriateness of the Bill’s proposals, we need to know much more than we do presently. The devil is in the detail, and in this case the Prince of Hades is hiding in undecided, and certainly unseen, secondary legislation and regulation. We therefore need to see and discuss this detail before reaching a firm conclusion on the Bill. I accept that a list of detailed technical amendments to existing regulations will not serve this purpose, but some explanation of and debate about how the new system would work in practice is in my view necessary before the Bill should be allowed to pass on from your Lordships’ House.

I have asked many questions and sounded several notes of caution. I have done so not because I resist the legislation but because I want us all to be able to give it our enthusiastic backing. As I said, I support the Bill in principle. I hope that the Minister will be able to come back with proposals for further consultation that will allow me to do so in practice.