---

Armed Forces

My Lords, I am glad that I was here for the very powerful opening speech by my noble and gallant friend Lord Inge, whom I congratulate on obtaining this important debate. I am sorry that having to attend the inquiry into the Zahid Mubarek murder meant that I have had to miss a large number of other statements, which I would dearly have liked to have heard. As my noble and gallant friend mentioned, I would like to include two other subjects in this debate by expanding in some detail on why we get so concerned, rather than merely passing comments, on the tour interval and the need for service directors of public relations. Just before the last Gulf War, a number of us, including the noble Lord, Lord Garden, got together to write a paper to send to the Prime Minister outlining some of our concerns about what such a campaign might involve, and in particular the overstretch of already overstretched Armed Forces that might result. Nothing happened for five weeks, so I sent a letter about when we had been told that letters would arrive back from the Prime Minister. Almost by return of motorbike, I got a letter from the Minister at the Foreign Office, Mr O’Brien, who at the end of five closely typed pages included a pat on the head, saying, ““You don’t need to worry because the gap between tours is 23 months””. What worried me about that statement was not only that it was wholly incorrect—we would not have written saying that we were worried unless we had had full briefing from the Ministry of Defence, which we had had, and in my case personal knowledge from friends and people who were in the Army who explained about the short tours. I was worried, too, because the fact that the Minister could write that made me think that he believed it—and if he believed that that was the case, it suggested that the flaws were in the planning process, which might result in even further overstretch. Why are we concerned about this? There is always a danger when old soldiers stand up to speak that you cast your mind back to what used to happen. I am not going to worry about doing that on this occasion. There used to be something called the annual training cycle, because everyone recognised that in all three services you had to train individuals first, and having got their individual skills honed you then put them into teams or sub-units or whatever and worked down to a conclusion in the year with a major exercise, when you put together as large a formation as possible. At that time it was reckoned that to recover from an operational tour and go through a proper cycle of regeneration to enable the full training of individuals in their skills, to move people on to other skills and retrain them and, most particularly, to identify and train your future non-commissioned officers—the middle management—and officers, two years was about right. The first year was left to the unit to do what it had to do and the second year it went through a full process, with the result that at the end of two years you could say, ““I have a fully trained and refreshed unit which is fully ready for operations””. An example of the excellence of that cycle was very well borne out to me by the case of the 2nd Scots Guards, who were under my command in Belfast in 1980; they returned to London in 1981 and went on public duties and then went to the Falklands, where they fought some extremely fierce battles, particularly on Tumbledown. They had done nothing like that since the war. When I questioned the commanding officer about how it was possible to go from the streets of Belfast through public duties and out to the Falklands and to perform excellently in all three, he said that it was the quality of the training that they had been able to do on all ranks. Unless you have experienced that, you do not realise why people get so concerned about what is being missed if tour intervals are down to as short a time as 10 months, as they are now, and regiments are going back to Iraq within a year of leaving it. When I commanded my regiment in Belfast in 1974-75, I became extremely concerned about the quality of our non-commissioned officers—not in the tactical side on the streets, but in all the other things that they needed to do to look after their riflemen, develop them and see that they themselves were identified for future careers. I came to the conclusion that although we were operating at very high activity rates in four-man groups all over the streets of Belfast, the individual middle manager had no responsibility for his soldiers. He led them, came back, somebody else debriefed them, fed them, paid them, sent them on leave and then briefed them again. They were more like bomber crews in the air force than soldiers living a 365-day regimental year. Fortunately, we were sent to Gibraltar and were able to have three-month non-commissioned officer courses to try to put that right, because I reckoned that without a period to do that sort of thing the regiment would have exhausted the talent that it had and would have been left with undertrained people for the future. I mention that because what worries me about having tour lengths down to as low as they are now is that the regiments and units in the Army are not being allowed to regenerate themselves and, most particularly, to develop the future leadership and skills. It is always the case that the services, with their admirable attitude of ““Wilco-ness wins””, will go off and do anything that they are asked to the best of their ability. The single servicemen love being on operations and love being away, but the strain is felt by the people who have been there for longer, particularly those who are married. I worry about the figures that suggest that the people at about the 10-year point are haemorrhaging, because they are the people whose experience is absolutely critical for the future. The seeds of this problem were sown way back in an exercise called Options for Change, which was introduced by the Conservative Government in 1991. What worried my noble and gallant friend Lord Inge and I, because we were both on the Army board that considered the matter, was the sudden reduction in the numbers of the Army from 156,000 to 104,000, a cut of one-third. We argued very strongly that the assessment had not included what was likely to follow the end of the Cold War and all that might be required. We argued—this is not an attempt to score a cheap inter-service point against my noble and gallant friend Lord Craig or the noble Lord, Lord Garden—that the RAF at that time had a strength of 85,000. We felt that there was an imbalance and we argued long and strong for the Army to be up to 125,000, which would have enabled it to cope with its problems. We lost. The figure is still down and is still too low. I cannot see how with the current commitment rate we can get it up to what it ought to be, to be able to have the regeneration process that there ought to be. That is why we feel so strongly about these rates. Noble Lords will forgive me for repeating anything that the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Boyce, has said on the business of the director of public relations. What happened was that in 1997 the then director of Army public relations was responsible for a BBC film of a riot control exercise at Sandhurst in which the rioters were depicted as trade unionists. The Prime Minister, Mr Wilson, rang up the Ministry of Defence very angrily and said, ““If that’s what they think is good public relations, never again must a serviceman be director of public relations for the whole Ministry of Defence. We will have a civilian in charge—they can have people in each of the services but they will not have one at the top””. The next time that the public relations came under pressure was in the Falklands War, when a civilian was in charge. Noble Lords will remember Mr Ian McDonald, with his remarkable speaking voice, who was known familiarly by the press as the warm-up man for the ““Lutine”” bell. The problem was that, quite rightly as a civil servant, he saw his first duty as to Ministers, so the job of that part of the public relations staff was purely to serve Ministers and their policy. They used to say that they would have a line to take followed by a Q&A brief, and that that would answer anything. The trouble was that when we came to the Falklands War the press did not believe the policy line; they did not ask the ““Q””s, nor listen to the ““A””s. The public relations staff were floundering. Eventually he had to be rescued by bringing military men in to be the spokesmen and give explanations. That happened after the first battle of Goose Green, and then right on to the end. That is a lesson that should have been learnt. Immediately after the war, however, there was an inquiry into the handling of the media during it by the Defence Committee in the other place, which recommended a reduction in the number of service directors of public relations. That reduction has gone on until, recently, the previous Secretary of State abolished them altogether. That is a very retrograde step, particularly because the role of those people is not the protection of Ministers but the protection and projection of the image of the Armed Forces. When I see inaccurate depictions of operations, what worries me is that they are giving a false impression to the public that can lead to wrong ideas. When I see inept handling of issues such as casualty reporting, and when I see media people floundering because they do not understand what they are looking at as they are not defence correspondents but journalists, I realise what a gaping hole there is. Particularly at this time, with all the strains so admirably described by my noble and gallant friend Lord Inge, this is a cry to re-examine that unfortunate decision and give the services back the person who can best help explain what they are all about to the public whom they serve.