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Armed Forces

No, my Lords, I do not believe that that corresponds to a large level of incompetence. The noble Lord, Lord Garden, asked about the effect of the withdrawal of certain coalition partners’ forces, including the Italians and the Japanese. We are confident that the process of handover by states within the regions for which we are acting will not have a negative impact on our troops. We are going through a transition process. We have seen recent progress in al-Muthanna province, and that is what we need to build on through this year. Noble Lords have highlighted issues relating to the balance between the resources provided to our Armed Forces and the commitments that they are asked to undertake. We continually review the commitments that our forces undertake, both at home and abroad, to ensure that they are appropriate to the task. The British Armed Forces are exceptionally good at what they do. That means that they are significantly in demand by coalition partners, and I am sure that our friends and allies recognise that a British presence in any coalition operation is greatly valued. As a result, the operational tempo is high and our people are heavily committed. This is a challenge which we accept. This is a challenge on which we as a Government are actively working. But I stress that, as the noble and gallant Lords will know, as ex-chiefs of staff, the decisions relating to deployment levels are judgments made by the chiefs of staff. Their judgment today is that these deployment levels are manageable. We recognise that we are operating beyond the planning assumptions. Therefore, we are carrying out the necessary changes and reforms to manage that, with a focus on the way in which we go about defence equipment procurement and on the structure of the Armed Forces. Making the Armed Forces appropriately equipped and structured to meet that challenge is a reform which, as a number of noble Lords have said, has been needed for some considerable time. Many of the issues relating to equipment and the structure of our forces go back decades, but this Government are tackling them and we can see that significant progress has been made in a number of areas. The effect of all that on recruitment and retention means that we require some 18,000 new recruits each year. This is an environment where the economy is strong and therefore the competition is in itself strong, but our recruitment is good and the retention levels are satisfactory. During the past financial year, we recruited 96 per cent of our requirement—the same as in the previous year. There is no manning crisis. Last year, the Armed Forces were 98.2 per cent manned. However, a number of noble and gallant Lords mentioned the pinch points relating to medical personnel and some logistics personnel, and we recognise those. They require us to respond to those areas and to make progress, and, on another occasion or in writing, I should be happy to provide noble Lords with updated details. When I took on the role of Minister for defence procurement, I was struck that a comparison of the level of funding for defence is made on the basis of the proportion of GDP spend, but I do not think that that is the right test to apply. We should be looking at the absolute level of investment within our defence resources but not as a proportion of the country’s GDP. We have seen an acceleration of GDP growth over recent years. The absolute level of investment that this Government have made has been the longest consistent increase in investment in the Armed Forces. The record of the previous Government shows that there was a decrease in the level of investment in the Armed Forces. Under this Government, starting from 1997, we have consistently spent more on our Armed Forces, and we have maintained that level of spending. Of course, that needs to be balanced with an emphasis on driving efficiencies to ensure that the Armed Forces are provided with the funding, and that they use that funding, in the most efficient way. We have been able to identify £2.8 billion-worth of efficiency savings within the Armed Forces, and that money is being reinvested in defence. I was asked about rumours of £1 billion-worth of cuts. I can tell the House that there is no truth in those rumours. When we talk about the level of commitments and the significant operations in which our forces are engaged, it is important to recognise that the Treasury funds specific additional costs arising from operations on top of the defence budget. That amounted to an extra £1.25 billion in the last financial year.