Armed Forces Act (Continuation) Order 2017

Lord Walker of Aldringham Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Walker of Aldringham (CB)]

My Lords, as we have heard from many noble Lords who have spoken, we are living in a very troubled and insecure world— militarily, politically, economically and socially. Everything seems to be in turmoil. It does not matter where you look, the landscape is littered with issues that Governments and international institutions are finding it increasingly difficult to handle. In this Chamber, we pray daily for peace and tranquillity in the realm. But we are clearly not doing enough.

So what does all this mean for our military in the second decade of the 21st century? The most pressing item on people’s agenda is Brexit. At first sight it seems to us that Brexit itself is unlikely to have a vast impact on our Armed Forces—certainly on their roles and tasks. We are firmly attached to NATO and expect to be able to continue to co-operate with our European allies. More indirectly, there are big unknowns. What will happen within and to our defence industries? How will a change in the value and exchange rates of the pound affect our ability to fund the ever-increasing costs of procurement of military equipment and manpower?

Added to that is the spectre of the Scottish independence referendum. Should it become a reality, there will presumably be a requirement to give Scotland her share of the combat units and vehicles, aircraft squadrons, warships, intelligence, logistics and maintenance assets, and of course to sort out our nuclear base at Faslane. That will all take some doing. I wonder whether the Minister will be able to give us a view as to the Government’s thinking, should that happen.

The central lesson of our experience of the last 60 years is that forces equipped and capable of prosecuting warfare at the highest-intensity level are absolutely capable of less demanding operations. But the reverse is not true. That is why our national engine is and must remain warfighting. Indeed, the Minister referred to it as full-spectrum capability, so that we can change down through the gears when demands require it. This equation is as much about organisational attitudes and methods as about the physical fabric of our capability, although the former is nothing without the latter. To use an Army analogy, the sort of mentality that can position an armoured division tactically in an area equivalent to that inside the M25, supply it with 70 tonnes of food and 1,600 tonnes of ammunition on a daily basis and then use some 30,000 to 40,000 men and more than 10,000 vehicles to destroy or defend against an enemy at night, should be able to burn a few sheep when everyone else is panicking.

However, you cannot hope to keep the peace if those who threaten doubt your will or your ability to wage war. They will laugh in your face. Contingencies in which the enemy is an abstract noun, such as famine, terror, poverty and disaster, may be more likely at present, but we must never forget that we still have potential enemies whose senses are stimulated only by the weight of conventional force brought to bear on them—and there are more than 120,000 main battle tanks out there. High-intensity warfare is, thankfully, relatively low on likelihood, but we should not forget that we used a version of this capability as recently as the Gulf War in 1991 and again in Iraq in 2003—although thankfully both times against a very weak enemy. But the risk level has gone up a notch or two, as we have heard, particularly in the last couple of years. We have seen the sabre rattling of Russia with its latest modern battle tank and enhanced capabilities across the board—and only the other day Iran announced the development of its own version of the Russian tank.

We currently claim to have a set of forces structured to be capable of high-intensity warfighting as part of an alliance. In this type of warfare, operations are conducted in five dimensions: in and from the air; in and with the electromagnetic spectrum; on the land; and, if sea is involved, with both surface and subsurface operations. Our contribution would in effect be a one-shot weapon which would consume most of our available resources.

In a recently leaked memo, the last commander of our Joint Forces Command cast grave doubts on the efficacy of this capability. Even if only part of what he claims about the shortcomings in our strategic thinking, cybercapability and fragile naval, air and land capabilities is true, our ability to fight a conventional war must be in doubt. At the same time, there is much uncertainty about all our allies in NATO increasing their defence spending, as we have heard from so many noble Lords, and the impact that it might have on our US ally’s intentions. Were we to engage in an endeavour requiring us to deploy this capability and fail, we would be faced with one of two very unpalatable options: either accept defeat or resort to our nuclear capability.

A capability for high-intensity warfare is high on cost—and getting higher by the day. Once that capability is lost, it takes a long time, a lot of money and a lot of training to reconstitute it. Moreover, if Scotland votes for independence, the repair bill will be large and could come sooner than expected. Everybody agrees that the defence of our nation is the first duty of our Government. I believe that that duty to maintain such a capability should be followed, whatever the future costs may be.

I will talk briefly about one other aspect because it has been touched on by a number of noble Lords. It is about our people. Being a service man or woman is not better or cleverer, or necessarily braver, than being in another occupation—but it is different. That is because we require our youngsters to be sent off at a moment’s notice to a place they may have difficulty finding on a map, where they are required to risk life and limb alongside an ally whose language they may not be able to understand and in defence of an issue that they may not even have begun to grasp. In this distinctive chemistry of the military world, men and women, as we have already heard, wish to be valued. They wish to be valuable as well. They are paid folk and they have a contract that takes them to the door of death.

Nothing about the future suggests that tomorrow’s service men or women will have to be any less brave, less physically and mentally tough or less resilient than their predecessors. There will continue to be a premium on the men and women who are prepared to put up with the dreadfulness of an environment that is at best exceptionally unpleasant. There will be an equal premium on those leaders capable of persuading others to accept that dreadfulness.

These folk have hardly been highly rewarded by the nations they have defended. The New Model Army of the 1640s—the most reliable force to emerge from the English Civil War—was eventually driven to oppose the Parliament for which it had fought so well by the fact that its pay was in arrears. Time and again, servicefolk, who have been perfectly prepared to face physical risks, have sulked, grumbled or even mutinied over pay and conditions. The feeling that their country is not honouring its part of the contract or the fear that the well-being of dependants is threatened, strikes at the very basis of their loyalty. It is indeed ironic that our country has oft been best defended by those who owe it the least.

In 1957, when conscription ended, the Regular Armed Forces were some 700,000 strong; the defence budget was some 7% of GDP; and the average per capita cost of a service man or woman was some £41,000. By 2011, we had shrunk to186,000; the defence budget was just over 2% of GDP; but the average per capita cost was some £220,000. The full-time trained strength as of December last year had dropped to just over 139,000—some 4% below establishment. The jury is out on whether full manning can be achieved.

Today, after the last SDSR, one of the main areas in which savings are being sought is in personnel. Military pay will increase by only 1% over the next four years—well below projected levels in the private sector. For a private soldier this is 1% on £18,000—some £7,000 below the national average. Service allowances are being targeted for savings, and the 30% savings in numbers of MoD civilians could well require backfilling with military personnel. There are, too, concerns about the legal pursuit of 60 year-olds in Northern Ireland, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Astor, the damage done by the IHAT allegations, and concerns about service accommodation and work/life balance. I believe that we need to do better for our people, for it seems that our country still seeks to be best defended by those who owe it the least.