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Defence in the United Kingdom

I have known General Mike Jackson for a long time. He and I have had our disagreements, as the House knows, about the disbandment of regiments this time last year, when the announcement was made in the House and I responded to it. But he is a man for whom I have the utmost respect, and I am sure that after he has retired we will be seeing even more of each other. What action, I asked, are the Government taking to address the issues of recruitment, retention and training? None. This in the end is all about cuts. All this talk of making savings comes oddly from a Government who have wasted so much on a mismanaged procurement programme. Despite the launch of the smart procurement initiative in July 1998—six and a half years ago—under the mantra, ““faster, cheaper, better””, there has been little evidence of success. The National Audit Office major project report of 2004 showed little evidence of project performance improving, finding that the MOD’s 20 largest projects were 144 months behind schedule and more than 6 per cent. over budget. That is hardly faster, cheaper and better. I fear that the soon-to-be-published major project report for 2005 will make equally disappointing reading. Defence procurement policy remains in a chaotic state, with most of the vital new programmes still awaiting production contract signature. The aircraft carrier project, which we talked about on Monday, is a good example of this Government’s incompetence. The Minister of State accused me on Monday of having attacked MOD officials because of the chaos in the programme. I did not; I talked about ministerial incompetence. Procurement decisions are taken by Ministers and they have to accept responsibility. In that project there is still total uncertainty as to when the carriers will enter service, whether they can be provided within budget and what involvement the French might have in the project. This is a shameful reflection of the mess into which the Government have got themselves on defence expenditure. The greatest threat to our armed forces posed by this Government is what they are allowing to happen, or in some cases are actually doing, to morale. We all understand that morale is crucial to the health of our armed forces. Of course, Ministers and generals claim that morale is high—they always have and they always will. But that is not what I am hearing on the ground. The effects of overstretch and the equipment shortfall are part of the problem, but there is something more insidious, and I make no excuse for returning to the matter."““There is considerable disquiet among some members of the forces and concern that, even when doing their perceived duty in an operational situation, they may become vulnerable to prosecution and will not always be backed up higher up the chain of command, where it may be claimed that the matter has been taken out of their hands.””" Those are not my words but those of Field Marshall Lord Bramall in the House of Lords on 14 July."““The Armed Forces are under legal siege and are being pushed in a direction that will see such an order being deemed as improper or legally unsound. They are being pushed by people schooled not in operations but only in political correctness. They are being pushed to a time when they will fail in an operation because the commanding officer’s authority and his command chain has been compromised with tortuous rules not relevant to fighting and where his instinct to be daring and innovative is being buried under the threat of liabilities and hounded out by those who have no concept of what is required to fight and win.””—[Official Report, House of Lords, 14 July 2005; Vol. 673, c. 1226–36.]" Again, those are not my words but those of Lord Boyce, the former Chief of the Defence Staff, in the debate in the House of Lords on 14 July. The Government cannot pretend that those views do not matter. There is a consistency in the views of former Chiefs of the Defence Staff to which the Government must pay attention. I am not suggesting that criminal misdemeanours should not be prosecuted—of course, they should. However, if we send troops to fight on our behalf they must know that we recognise that a battlefield is not a court of law and that their ability to fight and win—and, indeed, in some cases to survive—must not be compromised. Today more than ever they need that support from us.