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Armed Forces

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord King, for creating the opportunity for this debate. I should also like to congratulate the Minister on his promotion. I declare an interest as a member of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body, which has been referred to already in this debate. I am pleased to participate in the debate because those who take part do so because they either know something about the issue or, even more importantly, care about it. I am sure that we share a common objective; that is, to ensure, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said, that we keep the covenant between the nation and the Armed Forces, ensuring that those people who are prepared either to lay down their lives or risk their lives are suitably equipped and rewarded. Historically, complaints about funding of the Armed Forces go back a long way. Wellington argued with the Government; Kipling immortalised it in verse; and Churchill, if my memory serves me right, argued about the number of ships that were thought to be appropriate. That is not to make light of the matter; these are key issues. I confess to being one of those who probably knew very little about the Armed Forces before joining the Armed Forces Pay Review Body. That is not to say that I was uninterested, but that I was lacking in practical knowledge. I was born a year too late to undertake national service. However, I had the benefit last year of a visit to Iraq. I owe the Armed Forces Pay Review Body a debt of gratitude for educating me about what our forces undergo in an operational theatre. Until I went there I would not have thought of the fact that they operate in a temperature of 50 degrees for most of the time while wearing equipment that weighs roughly 75 pounds. If one realises that they sit in a Warrior armoured vehicle for up to eight hours, perhaps even longer, where the temperatures can reach anywhere between 60 and70 degrees, it certainly makes one think about the contribution that they make day in and day out, by and large in an uncomplaining way and with high morale. I commend to noble Lords the latest report of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body. If noble Lords have not had a look at it, it is worth going through. We sat in on around 320 formal and informal discussion groups, enabling us to hear first hand the views of around 4,000 service personnel and spouses. We also looked at the range of accommodation and conditions. As we went around Basra and the surrounding areas, we were briefed by the commanding officer at Abu Naji in the Maysan province. He said matter of factly, ““It is pretty tough out here. We are being shelled three or four times a week. Last week, we had continuous shelling for something like 11 minutes. It was so bad that I felt impelled to go and talk to my goat afterwards””. I thought that that was some kind of Army slang, until he introduced me to his pet goat afterwards—I still treasure the photograph of me, the goat and the commanding officer. One just could not appreciate the quality of his leadership unless one met him. The same went for some of the troops, including a young woman officer who, while they were being shelled, had rescued some of her comrades and taken them into more sheltered accommodation. There has been a huge amount of debate about whether the forces are stretched or overstretched. They clearly are stretched: I do not think that anybody would deny that. They maintain their morale in spite of it. The noble Viscount, Lord Slim, spoke of a trade-off between troops and false teeth. I share his view that we certainly should not underpay them or undervalue their contribution. This year, the Government have responded to a view which I heard from members of the Armed Forces whom we met; that is, that they did not feel that their contribution was being sufficiently valued. They complained that other forces received operational tax-free pay. It is not a simple analogy, because one has to look at pay in the round. However, the Government have made a considerable contribution this year. There has been the tax-free operational pay allowance. The Armed Forces Pay Review Body has made a significant award this year, which I gather from recent feedback has been well received. It has been especially significant for junior ranks, where pay has gone up by 9.2 per cent. We cannot therefore accuse the Government of being insensitive to the situation. That is not to say that everything is perfect. There has been a lot of talk about manning, recruitment and retention. I agree that is worthwhile looking at the National Audit Office report. However, we should recognise the circumstances in which the Armed Forces have to recruit these days. They have a diminished recruitment pool. When employment is at record levels, it is difficult to recruit. That has to be taken into account. Indeed, the National Audit Office did take it into account. Some progress has been made on retention, but the job is far from done, which is why we have had to resort to significant use of financial retention incentives, of which the National Audit Office in the short term approves. Our report recognises that accommodation impacts on retention in a number of ways—not just its quality, though that is important and more needs to be done. My noble friend Lord Tomlinson reminded us that there has been significant investment, which needs to continue. There can be no complacency in that area. However, one of the problems that we encountered last year was the new maintenance contract, MODern Housing Solutions. That was not working very well at its inception; it caused a lot of complaints. Nowadays, contact between the members of Armed Forces and their homes is a lot more regular than it used to be. Mobile phones and the internet mean that problems that families of members of the Armed Forces face at home impact immediately on them. We should not underestimate the impact that that has on their decisions. There has been some improvement, but not before time. I was puzzled when the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said that we had to be modest in what we do. No, we cannot do everything, but the global threat has increased. Are we really saying that we should not have gone into Bosnia or Sierra Leone, or that we should pull out of Afghanistan? I have deliberately not focused on Iraq, because that is perhaps a separate issue. It is not so easy just to say that we should be more modest. I was grateful for the report of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew, on medical accommodation, because it was a balanced assessment. There have been problems, and it would be wrong to deny them. The mixed wards, where military personnel were mixed with civilians, caused tension—we need not go into that, but they really did. Bringing troops together improves morale and avoids some of these awkward situations. Ensuring adequate accommodation for visiting families is important because they come from all over the country. I turn to operational welfare. We provide some time for free phone calls and internet access. Sometimes, the access is limited. If we could do more in that area, then it would impact on morale. Contact with home is really important: they do not want an area where they must wait ages for the phone. We ought to take away many of those limitations—and some imaginative commanding officers have managed to achieve that, but I had better not say how in these circumstances. I am conscious of the time, so I will end on Trident and the whole host of financial commitments that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, graphically illustrated. My concern here is that finding the funds for Trident might somehow impact on what else we can provide for the Armed Forces. If we could find no way of ensuring that was not to be the case, it would be a really unfortunate message to go around. I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement, but there are still concerns about that significant financial commitment and the impact that it might well have on Armed Forces expenditure.