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Armed Forces

My Lords, I began my career in defence in this House when I tried in vain to delay a Treasury decision to sell the married quarters estate for a paltry sum, so I am well aware that this is not a party matter and we are all culpable. We all read the Sunday papers and the disgraceful story they told. Although I was relieved to hear from my noble and learned friend Lord Mayhew that part of it was not just, there was, nevertheless, enough truth in it. However, for years now, serious professional bodies such as the Armed Forces Pay Review Body, the Defence Committee in the Commons and this House have been predicting serious trouble. Not three months ago, the National Audit Commission gave bleak and dire warnings of a shortfall of 68 to 70 per cent in the provision of accident and emergency and intensive therapy nurses and of 17 per cent in GPs. Without the Reserve Forces, there would have been, and may still be, a disaster, and the recurring theme is lack of care for the needs of soldiers and their families. The closing of service hospitals not only created the so-called dedicated wards which, because the National Health Service has priority, have proved largely to be for our geriatrics—although I am glad to hear that that is not true in Selly Oak—but also brought to an end all secondary health care. Families have to turn to an NHS that was never geared for the postings which keep service families perpetually on the move. Incidentally, calling unfortunate service families and the new crop of traumatised soldiers—who are experiencing the same difficulty in securing treatment and credibility in the civilian world as the Gulf War veterans did—““stakeholders”” and ““customers”” in the new jargon of the Government does nothing to enhance their access to decent housing or to secure their timely secondary care in civilian hospitals. We all know all this only too well. We have been saying it to a long succession of Ministers who would undoubtedly prefer to report some action. Why can they not do so? They cannot because there is no money and no sufficient will to care. The Army puts up with things. Ministers, who could do something, seem quite unmoved by widespread evidence of turbulence, routine breaking of harmony guidelines on separated service and dangerous reliance on the Reserve Forces. "““Many of the medical staff in Iraq are on their second or even  third operational tour in 12 months. Territorials make up 50 per cent of the 400-strong UK medical force in Operation TELIC 4A””.—[Official Report, 17/1/05; cols. 568-69.]" The Government take us into adventures that they should not. The Chancellor has suddenly become interested in veterans, but he still grudges every penny spent on defence. If we are set to stay for 10 or even20 years in Afghanistan, to say nothing of the other wars into which this Government may precipitate us because of the new military doctrine of intervention—the child of the UN—there will be serious and perhaps irreversible trouble. What is the point of glossy reports defining how many wars—two minor or one major—we are prepared to be engaged in if we do not have the men and they no longer believe they are valued except to enable politicians to make gestures? The National Audit Office conducted a poll in which 64 per cent of the service men and women polled gave as their reason for contemplating leaving the service—this relates to the important issue of retention—their perception that the British people no longer value them. Nearly the same number was motivated by the failure to provide even the basic equipment they need not just to fight a war, but to stay alive. Like the Armed Forces Pay Review Body, the NAO finds this a matter of great concern. Ithas identified a number of operational pinch-points, that is, indispensable skilled jobs that are not being filled. They include recovery mechanics, information systems engineers, the warfare branch in the Royal Navy and nuclear watch-keepers. Ships are being deployed with a number of gapped posts. Harmony guidelines are regularly broken. Instructors have to go on operations, and many of those vital technicians are now also committed to anti-terrorism work in the UK. This is many-hatting with a vengeance, and it is happening to armed services that are seriously over-stretched and under-valued. All we hear is the Treasury termites being allowed, by the very political leaders who should ensure that the forces have what they need, to require the money needed to look after the families and the wounded to be found somewhere when all the other, usually operational, demands have been met from within the MoD’s budget. What can be done to ensure that defence decisions are made on the grounds of defence and not merely those of cost? There is a faint hope that Mr Brown, once he is wearing the Prime Minister’s hat, may at last perceive that the continuing success and, indeed, survival of our Armed Forces is and will be a critical factor when he comes to deal not only with the US but also with NATO, the EU and, not least, Russia, which, in the words of the IRA, has not gone away. The armed services are suffering not only from the unchecked depredations of the termites but also from the whole new doctrine of this Government. Mark Leonard, who founded the new Foreign Policy Centre, was shocked to find that our foreign policy was founded on the national interest. He thought that he would consult not diplomats or the Ministers of a country, but opinion polls, field workers and the internet. His other new doctrine, expressed more recently in a BBC discussion of arms sales is very remarkable. It is that we do not need arms or defence because our influence comes from people respecting us. Any number of glossy reports are being written—the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit produced one92 pages long—mostly by people who have never been near a war. I wonder what became of JIC assessments and regular reporting from missions abroad, which once contained people from DfID, commercial and defence attachés and, above all, political staff who spoke the language, made friends, travelled the country and knew the danger points. Today, separate DfID missions, many of them long on goodwill but woefully short of knowledge of the country, are far larger and better funded. There are probably no defence or commercial attachés any more and they were the people who used to help British business land million-pound contracts. There is a tiny cadre of political staff whose job is to know the country, the people, the customs and the ethnic problems but also, vitally, to represent what we think and hold dear. That is all going. I perceive three major strands of policy throughout government: the first is to subordinate our defence and our foreign policy to the perceived interests of DfID, which has too much money to spend; the second is to reduce a once highly valued FCO to a department for global warming; and the third is to commit our Armed Forces without regard to what they need to operate. Too much money and power is being wasted on such things as major subventions—not accounted for because that would be colonialist—to African leaders such as the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, who last year shot down some of his own people. All this adversely affects the standing of diplomatic missions vis-à-vis the Governments to whom they are reporting. They are the people who should be telling us when there are danger points. In turn, that severely reduces good on-the-spot briefing when military action is contemplated. We often expect the forces to operate in a dire political vacuum. We have a Government in which the worthyMr Brown and the winsome Mr Blair visit our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan respectively and utterly ignore the increasingly desperate need for more money even for the equipment to stay alive let alone to fight a war—many noble Lords have given examples of what I am talking about. When Mr Brown went to Iraq this year, he was photographed with the troops, and he made an announcement about money. Was that money for defence? No. It was money for the Iraqis. He should not be surprised if increasing numbers of service men and women opt for resignation from the forces, which are at the disposal of a Government who treat them so monstrously. That goes for the Gulf veterans, the young wounded returning here to geriatric wards in some cases and to families who feel abandoned. No amount of smart procurement, global strategy and defence planning assumptions which seem made to be ignored will change the drift out of the services. Something has to be done to convince them that they are valued and will be supported in just the way that the noble Viscount, Lord Slim—the great Lord Slim—said. The Government know from countless reports that too many deployments, too little care to provide the necessary equipment, the disgraceful lack of secondary medical care for families of men discharged and the continuing neglect of service housing all lead inexorably to major failures—the failure to provide the nation’s defence, the failure to provide the duty of care for the armed services. I should dearly like to see Mr Brown and Mr Blair in an old Land Rover in Afghanistan without flak jackets, and without helicopter support because of the lack of money to train the pilots.