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Armed Forces

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord King, on securing this debate and on the way in which he introduced it. I congratulate other noble Lords also on the quality of their contributions. After yesterday’s voting on the future of this House, listening to a debate such as that which we have had this afternoon provides no better example of this House’s value. As the noble Lord, Lord Astor, said, the broad sweep of the debate was on two levels. The first was strategic, relating, as the noble Lord, Lord Garden, said, to the challenges of balancing the short-term pressures with longer-needs needs. On a second level were a number of individual points. I shall endeavour to answer as many of them as I can; on those that I cannot answer, I shall write to noble Lords. To some issues, I cannot respond in public, but I am happy to organise a briefing for noble Lords, especially on force protection, as soon as possible if they would find that helpful. I welcome this opportunity to debate the state of our Armed Forces. I was in Iraq last week and had the opportunity to conduct my own mini-audit of how things are going in that theatre. Nowhere are the challenges facing our Armed Forces brought into greater clarity than in Basra. Given that our Armed Forces risk their lives on our behalf, they deserve Ministers who speak plainly and face up to the issues, so I shall endeavour to do so today. There are some problems and I shall touch on them, but I do not believe that our Armed Forces are somehow in crisis. We need to strengthen the covenant between our Armed Forces and the people. There are significant issues, some of which are longstanding and go back across many Governments and some relatively recent, reflecting the challenges in a rapidly developing world. I join many noble Lords who today paid tribute to all our men and women in uniform. As I saw for myself last week, their morale is high and their professionalism is second to none. They really are excellent. My thoughts, like those of the noble Lord, Lord King, go to those who wounded in action and the friends and families of those who have lost their lives. I agree with the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, other ex-chiefs and many others in this House who said that we need to invest more in defence. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Garden, emphasised and as I believe is the view across parties in this House, we must match that investment with reform. The world is uncertain and changing fast. It is important that we match those challenges with Armed Forces that are fit. That involves making sure that investment and reform go hand in hand. This Government have that policy; we have invested a great deal in defence and made significant progress in that reform, but we need to do more on both fronts. We recognise that operational success depends on the quality of our people. We acknowledge our responsibility to ensure that they and their families are properly looked after. That is why we agreed the new tax-free operational allowance and pushed hard to produce evidence for an above-inflation pay rise. My noble friend Lord Young, who is in his place, described his own experience as a member of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body and in Basra. I am absolutely delighted, as are the Armed Forces, that the pay review approved earlier this month will give an above-inflation increase for all service personnel, with over 9 per cent for the most junior ranks. That is the biggest military pay rise in four years and the biggest in the public sector. It is well deserved, and I mention it today because it is a clear signal of the value that the Government and this country place on our Armed Forces. I think that the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Inge, said that we need to do more to educate the nation about the importance of our Armed Forces. He is right; we need to do more to ensure that they are better understood by the public. From meeting our Armed Forces, I know that they like to be busy; but I regret that some are busier than they and we would wish. The noble Baroness, Lady Park, highlighted her concerns about certain pinch-point trades as highlighted in the NAO report. We share those concerns and are taking action to address them. The noble Lord, Lord King, asked about recruitment. We are operating in a competitive recruiting environment, because of the success and growth of our economy. We need approximately 20,000 new recruits a year across all three services. I am pleased that young people today have more opportunities than ever before; however, despite that challenge we have so far recruited 96 per cent of our requirement for this financial year. While recruitment levels are generally up since last year, the situation is still not as robust as we would like, particularly for the Army. We have introduced incentives in shortage areas such as the Infantry and Royal Artillery. We see some positive progress, with a 30 per cent increase in potential recruits to the Infantry and a 44 per cent increase for the Royal Artillery, but we will have to continue to put significant effort into that. Even more important than recruiting is retaining enough of the skilled people we already have. Some turnover is inevitable, but we need to keep a close eye on retention. There are particular areas in which we are seeing retention issues and where we need to do further work as exit rates are too high: the Infantry, the Royal Marines and air crew. I noted the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, about a fourth commando unit. In Afghanistan, I have seen for myself the absolute excellence of the Royal Marines, but we need to look at the reasons for their exit rates and at how to improve them. There are targeted financial incentives to address this partially; we are spending an extra £17 million per year and taking other steps. As highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, important in all this, and as part of our ““One Army”” approach, is the vital role of reservists. The noble Lord’s idea of a special appeal to employer organisations is excellent; I will speak to him about what we can do to be more effective. Importantly, we should also recognise some of the restrictions that we face in communication. My noble friend Lady Dean and the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, related their concerns about war widows and making contact with them. I will happily meet both noble Baronesses to discuss what we can do further there.