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Iran: HMS ““Cornwall””

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords opposite for their comments on the briefing that we gave yesterday. As noble Lords have said, this set a precedent for this House, which reflects the deep expertise in defence in this House, which the Ministry of Defence completely recognises. I join noble Lords in sending the noble Lord, Lord Garden, my best wishes for a speedy recovery. I very much look forward to seeing him back in this House. Noble Lords will recognise that what I can say about the operational aspects is limited to what was said in the Statement on the Fulton report, but I will endeavour to go as far as I can. As I have said, we take parliamentary scrutiny extremely seriously, and we intend to learn all the lessons that we can from this incident. The noble Lord, Lord Astor, asked about the funding for what the recommendations propose and how we will keep the House informed. We will ensure that what the recommendations propose is fully funded. Last night, we discussed the possibility of the House of Lords Defence Group, which has met to review this, to meet again to review at some appropriate point towards the end of the year the progress that has been made towards implementing the recommendations. We in the Ministry of Defence welcome such scrutiny. On the steps that we are taking with our coalition partners, one of the key points made by the Fulton report is the need to improve the way in which we learn from the experiences of other coalition partners in a complex and rapidly changing operational and tactical environment. We will share the Fulton report with our coalition partners, and we are working to improve the processes by which we ensure that such lessons are shared more effectively among coalition partners when operating in these circumstances. The noble Lord asked me what exactly the Iraqis are doing in relation to security in the Gulf area. The Iraqi marines, who operate as part of the Iraqi Navy, already carry out some vessel boardings under training and mentoring from the Royal Navy, and carry out security checks. Alongside our overall strategy in Iraq, we anticipate developing the Iraqi security forces, in time, to hand over responsibility as their capability improves both in terms of equipment and know-how. Fulton makes absolutely clear that issues of equipment were not material to this incident, whether related to the ship or the helicopters. In terms of why not two helicopters, it is correct that HMS ““Cornwall”” has the capacity to take on board two helicopters. However, the operating procedures for these boarding operations did not require a helicopter to be on guard throughout. The noble Lord made a point about the availability of a helicopter specifically tasked to do administration roles as the commanding officer was embedded on HMS ““Cornwall””. We will look at that. As Fulton has shown, we do not believe that helicopter assets were material to this incident. On the reinstatement of a single-service press officer, a key recommendation from the Hall review is the need for us to strengthen and to develop the Ministry of Defence press office. We accept that recommendation and we will do that. It is important to recognise that approximately half the personnel in the Director General and Media Communications are military personnel. We do not believe that reinstating the single-service press officers in the way in which they operated in the past is the answer. We believe that improving access to military expertise is key, but Hall makes a clear point that this needs to be done not as part of the frontline command but as part of the central MoD, which is how we will implement this. The noble Lord asked whether we are aware of the evidence relating to smuggling. The coalition forces are operating under a United Nations Security Council resolution specifically addressing smuggling and links to organised crime in the northern Gulf. This is part of the context in which our forces are operating. So, yes, we are aware. As Fulton has said, we need to look at how we manage communications in response to a dynamically changing environment. As we have said, our clear policy now is that it is not acceptable for serving personnel to receive payments. The noble Lord makes a good point on the complexity of this issue relating to family members of serving personnel. There are also complexities relating to, for example, serving personnel writing memoirs. These are complex areas, which is why we are now implementing a process of setting out regulations to cover all the complicated aspects raised by this policy. It stems from a central policy decision that serving personnel may not receive payments for selling stories. As regards the training review and contacts with the media, for many years we have had media embedded with our personnel operations and our personnel do receive, and have received, training on how to interact with embedded media. However, there is a need to review our training overall for personnel, and media training is one aspect of that. We are undertaking an overall review of operationally specific training for personnel. Our policy for the demands on personnel was to make up boarding parties from personnel from the ship’s company and not to have specialist boarding personnel. We now are changing that policy and will have specialist boarding teams. We do not think that there will be a problem in terms of personnel to do that. We believe that we can manage it in the way in which we train our personnel. We will do that and therefore will plan for it.