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Debate on the Address

My Lords, it is a particular pleasure to address the Queen’s Speech in the presence of one of my most distinguished predecessors, the noble Lord, Lord Healey, who has just entered the Chamber. I hope that I may take him with me in some of my remarks, which although critical of certain aspects of the Government are motivated by what I hope is a bipartisan approach to the importance of defence for our country at this time. My noble friend Lord Howell said that the Commonwealth got only one mention in the Queen’s Speech. As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, said, defence and the Armed Forces got none. As the earlier speeches made clear, this is against the background of the very dangerous situation that we are in. There is no question about that. In his eighth response to a Queen’s Speech, my noble friend Lord Strathclyde said last year that the world was a more dangerous place. I do not think that anybody would challenge the fact that, whatever it was like last year, it is certainly no safer now, and in many ways it is much more dangerous. The recent events in Pakistan and the appalling bomb outrage in Baghlan province yesterday, which killed five Afghan MPs in a province which was previously thought to be safe, indicate the seriousness of the challenge that we face there. I have sought to address the Queen’s Speech against the background that this is the new Prime Minister’s message to the country and to Parliament, and to examine how his approach to defence is being carried through in the actions that he has taken so far. Comments have been made—I do not endorse them; I have merely heard them—that our new Prime Minister is not interested in defence. I judge as I find. I have to say that some of the initial actions that he has taken cause the greatest concern. At a time when the pressures on the Secretary of State for Defence are as great as I remember them being in recent years, the idea that he should be double hatted as Secretary of State for Scotland at the same time is quite incredible and a serious mistake. I understood that the Government were going to reconsider that particularly misguided decision. We were promised a response on that but we have not yet had it. Mr Adam Ingram attracted considerable support and respect for the way in which he sought to address his duties as Minister for the Armed Forces. A slightly less noticed change is that he has gone and at this critical moment for our Armed Forces, deployed as they are in these theatres of extreme danger and hazard, Mr Bob Ainsworth, who was the Labour Deputy Chief Whip, has now taken over as a completely new Minister with, I believe, no previous experience in the defence field. I endorse everything that the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, said about the noble Lord, Lord Drayson. I found him admirable in the sense that he was the only Minister on either side of the House that I ever remember saying to me, ““You were one of my predecessors in defence. Any advice you can give me I would be very willing to receive””. New Ministers are not noted for acting in that way, and I admired him for it. Given the responsibilities that he carried and the abilities that he brought to the task, his absence is a great loss to the Government. He had experience on the commercial side. I do not know the noble Baroness’s commercial background but she is taking on a challenging undertaking, given the scale of the contracts for which she is now responsible as the Minister for Defence Procurement and the difficulties that the Ministry of Defence has in organising its procurement in an efficient and reliable way. But it is worse than that. Another of the noble Lord’s responsibilities was for the Defence Export Services Organisation. The decision to close DESO down in the Ministry of Defence—it has been widely welcomed by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, and is trumpeted on its website at the moment; I have no doubt that it will trumpet the departure of the noble Lord, Lord Drayson, as well—is a major blow to the defence industries of this country. I can see the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, who was active as a Minister in helping to promote a lot of companies in the defence field. I am not talking about the arms trade and undercover arms sales, but a lot of good British companies that bring a lot of income and jobs to this country, are much respected and relied on DESO as their agent and assistant in dealing with Governments across the world. I do not want to suggest anything about the loyalty and decency of the noble Lord, Lord Drayson, which allowed that press release to go out about him taking up Le Mans 24-hour driving. However, what happens if you close down part of a Minister’s responsibility without consulting him—if he is actually doing rather a good job at that—and without any idea what you will put in its place, and then try to find an alternative arrangement in what I think is now called DBERR, which was the DTI? Incidentally, we were told that the noble Lord would also be a Minister in that department—he had a double hat—and I am not sure whether the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, will be as well. My simple point is that if you treat Ministers of ability and competence like that, you need not be surprised if some of them decide that they will go off and do 24-hour Le Mans driving instead. I am concerned, because there is a crisis in morale in our forces. They are entitled to feel the support of the leadership of the country—the Government and Ministers in the Ministry of Defence—because of the challenge. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, and I faced that challenge in the first Gulf War. When our forces are in the front line, facing the dangers that they do, the challenge for Ministers is to ensure that the country is behind them—that the country understands why they are there, that it supports the mission that they are undertaking, and that the casualties that they take are fully understood. They must be respected by the country as a whole. There has been a serious problem of credibility of government ever since Iraq and the dodgy dossier. There is a lack of proper reporting back. Also, many people in the country lack belief in what seem overoptimistic reports of what is going on, and there seems an unwillingness sometimes to reveal the full extent of the casualties that we are taking. I was not aware of the scale. I looked at a report about 3 Para coming back from six months with the 16 Air Assault Brigade in Helmand. It earned a Victoria Cross and a George Cross, and lost 14 dead with 46 more wounded. That is one parachute regiment in the front line in Helmand. In the first Gulf War, we faced no casualties of anything like that proportion. As was said by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, we know now that we may be there for a long time with challenges to face, so it is the responsibility of Ministers to ensure that the resources are there, and that the country—by Ministers’ own efforts, communication and persuasion—understands why the forces are there and that they have public support for what they undertake. Against that background, I challenge something that the noble Baroness said during her appallingly daunting task of having to stand up at five minutes’ notice and make the opening speech. We know it is not true that the burden in Afghanistan is equitably shared between the NATO allies. We know that there is great difficulty in getting any of the NATO allies to continue or in any way increase their commitment. They certainly do not wish to do so in the more hazardous areas of Afghanistan. We face a challenging time. I apologise to the House for overrunning. My simple message is that what the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, called ““the covenant””—the duty of a nation to see that, if our forces are in harm’s way and on the orders of the Government are serving our country in the way that they are, they are entitled to the fullest possible support in every respect, whether on the front line, with equipment, in housing, in medical treatment, in the question of compensation for injury. There is a whole range of things. At the moment, the Government are failing in that respect and I hope that the message they take out of this debate from me and from others is that action is needed this day.