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Iran: HMS ““Cornwall””

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. I also thank him for organising, with the assistance of the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, an extensive briefing by General Fulton, with the CDS and the Permanent Secretary in attendance, for a small group from the House of Lords Defence Group. We were impressed by the thoroughness of the general’s inquiry and the robust and encouraging way that the CDS handled our questions. There is no doubt that lessons have been learnt. Will the Minister confirm that the recommendations of the Fulton report will be implemented and properly funded? How will he keep the House informed of the progress of the implementation and the funding of the recommendations? We should not lose sight of the fact that 14 young men and one woman were put in a perilous situation. Their capture was hugely embarrassing for the Royal Navy, the Government and the whole country, and could have become a fatal and complex hostage situation. Unfortunately, the Government made a bad situation much worse by granting permission for service personnel to sell their stories to the tabloids. That reduced the Royal Navy to a laughing stock; and the subsequent rescinding of that decision made the Navy look even more ridiculous. We must not allow the Royal Navy to take all the blame for the two issues under consideration in the Statement. We should not forget the excellence of the Royal Navy. As the Statement makes clear, its training is world-class. Many young women and men come from overseas to benefit from that training. I have some questions, because we must ensure that such an incident can never happen again. I fully understand that operational security must be of prime concern in the way that the issue is handled. HMS ““Cornwall”” was part of the Op TELIC command chain reporting to PJHQ, not to C in C Fleet. This was not just a naval issue. Should that arrangement now be changed, given that Op TELIC is more land-focused than concerned with maritime matters? The Royal Navy operates within a multinational context in the Gulf; our coalition partners will be essential to the successful implementation of the report’s recommendations. Can the Minister confirm what steps within the coalition the Ministry of Defence will take to address the report? Is the Iraqi Navy now carrying out its own board and search operations in its waters? We have been training it for several years. Why did HMS ““Cornwall”” not have the second Lynx for which it was set up? Was this the result of too few helicopters chasing too many commitments? Helicopters on ships are used for a whole series of different tasks. The priority must always be for operational tasks. Is there some merit in the MoD considering a second helicopter just for administration tasks? The Hall report makes clear that the media fiasco should never have occurred in the first place—not least because the MoD received a warning of a possible media circus from the Press Complaints Commission and an offer of assistance from that body. Poor media handling of any crisis must not be allowed to happen ever again. What on earth could the Secretary of State have been thinking when he approved the sale of those stories? What effect could he have expected it to have on the parents of service men and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan? What effect could he have expected it to have on service personnel recovering from serious injuries in hospital? The Statement recommends strengthening the relatively small press office. Will the Government consider reinstating the single-service press officers? If a uniformed press officer had been in place, this sorry saga might have been prevented. Finally, under normal circumstances, the noble Lord, Lord Garden, would be in his place to respond to the Statement. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, to pass on our best wishes to the noble Lord, Lord Garden, and hope that we will see him back in his place very soon.