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Armed Forces

My Lords, it is a bit daunting to follow the noble and learned Lord, but I look upon him today as a heavily wounded cavalry officer. I do not know if you have seen him, but he can hardly walk and there is not a horse in sight. It is tricky. He has been brave to come and talk to us, and we all wish him a speedy recovery. I will, with your Lordships’ permission, come down a bit, to congratulate the Ministry of Defence on its new workings for the Brigade of Gurkhas. The new rules that have been put out for its future make a great deal of sense. This has been hard work by the Under-Secretary and those who came before him, including the noble Lord, Lord Moonie, who I do not see in his place. Due credit must be given to the Brigade of Gurkhas because, with the absolutely impossible situation within Nepal, they have somehow carried on with their recruitment and enlistment service. Noble Lords should be aware that the only two battalions up to strength on their own are the Gurkha battalions. They have been ably supported throughout these negotiations, and I hope the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, will not mind me mentioning the great support he has given over many years. One or two little problems arise from this new paper. I do not want to dwell on them because the news is so good. Yet there is going to be a bit of a pension problem. Some decisions will have to be taken in view of the arbitrary 1997 ruling—similar, the noble Lord might recall, to the 1973 ruling that he and I have had words about in the past. We have to make certain that the Gurkha pensioner, post-1997 and pre-1997, does not lose out. The Gurkha Welfare Trust will have more to do, and will need Government support and perhaps bringing into consultations. They already look after the many Gurkha soldiers throughout Nepal who left without 15 years’ service, who did not get a pension and only a fairly small hand-out. One or two things must be sorted, as well as help and advice to the Gurkha. I hope that that will be done. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, will be speaking. The Minister may not know that his late father was the most senior general of Gurkhas in the Indian army. The Gurkhas have some 50 battalions, compared to our two. His father was a great solider, and the noble Lord and I have one thing in common. Whatever way we disappeared into the mists and tangents afterwards, we were both brought up as Gurkha children. That is something rather special in a man’s life. I do not want to get involved in the blame game, and was rather hoping that we would not get into that today. I thank the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, for his speech and his interjection. The gallant defence put up by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, was good, but I have noticed that whenever a political party has some difficulty, the first thing they crashis the military so that they can maintain their constituents in false teeth, education or whatever it is that they want. I am not impressed by the blame game. I am much more concerned about what we are doing about what is happening today. I still see this cutting, cutting, cutting; diminishing and civilianising the military, and not helping its ethos. I worry that this still goes on, and lay the blame bluntly on the Cabinet, on Ministers of the day and Ministers of the past. I will not allow the previous administration not to be commented upon. Down the corridor in the other place, people do not consider the military problems, the Armed Forces, nearly enough. They get carried away with polar bears in the snow and goodness knows what. They do not give time to the military problems of today and their own Armed Forces—this covenant that noble Lords have so rightly talked about today. It is disgraceful. The shoring up process being attempted at the moment is okay, but will not actually help that much. For all the high morale in the Royal Marines that the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, talked about, they know they are at the bottom the pile. All soldiers, sailors and airman know they are at the bottom of the pile, and somebody has got to bring them up. I am able to speak a little deeper than the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, on this. I had the honour, with the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, of living with the Royal Marines in the Helmand for some days. They are magnificent. We do not have to say anything more; we expect them to be the best and they are. Soldiers are just as good, but the marines are doing the most tremendous job there. The noble Earl and I were very impressed by the leadership, at the intellectual way in which they approach problems. I thank the noble Earl because he is 30 years younger than me and twice I asked him to carry my pack because I am about to be 80. That is a small matter. He has considerable experience in various operational theatres as a fine reserve officer. I was not happy with the air support. The air support is so tiny that it can only cope with one situation at a time. When company groups set out to achieve their aims, one of them often has to stop because the other needs all the air support. That is no way to run an outfit or operations. Noble Lords should also be aware of the enemy. The Taliban are the grandsons of the people we used to recruit in the Indian army under the overall name of Pathans. They are very good if you train them properly. Ask a German at Cassino what a bunch of Punjabi Musselmans, the great Hindu martial tribes or the Pathans were like as they came at him, or ask a Jap in Burma; they knew what they were up against. The Taliban’s’ macho honour requires them to be brave and good, but they respect strength and power. I do not like hearing that we are containing them and keeping them at bay; I want to hear of them being defeated. A lot of hard work has been done in the operation there to win hearts and minds by talking to everybody, but when there is a battle, we have to win, not break off. We must beat the enemy and win. If we had the proper strength and forces, particularly air support, we could probably win in Afghanistan, even with all the problems. Careful thought should be given to how we are going to do that.