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Armed Forces: Future Defence Policy

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for introducing the debate. I declare an interest as I am a serving TA officer, although nowadays I am not training very much. Nevertheless, the recent cuts have cost me half a day’s training. All noble Lords must have been disappointed when the Prime Minister was careless enough to lose the services of the noble Lord, Lord Drayson, to motor racing. He was the first Defence Minister that I detected industry taking the slightest notice of; it would say, "What Lord Drayson wants to do is—". That says volumes about the Minister and the country is lucky to have him in post. In previous debates I urged withdrawal from Iraq in order to concentrate on Afghanistan; I am pleased that this has happened. However, the MoD is resourced for one enduring medium-scale operation and one small-scale operation. Medium scale is a brigade of 3,000 to 5,000 men and women. However, we have deployed just over 9,000 personnel, so they are operating at 100 per cent overstretch. The good news is that the requirement for headquarters and associated staff is reduced. As a result, there is less opportunity for TA officers to deploy, but that is a positive indicator. The situation in defence is dire. In the MoD the overriding priority is Afghanistan with the possible exception of the deterrent; everything else is being taken as a risk. In his excellent opening speech, the Minister touched upon some of the potential threats that we face. A real threat could arise from a scrabble for natural resources—the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Boyce, has covered this far better than I can—but, in theory, we cannot undertake a large-scale deliberate intervention, an LSDI, for at least a decade, maybe 15 years. We are degrading the physical and conceptual components of fighting power necessary for LSDI. Training is at particular risk, especially with officers, at all levels. Fighting a counterinsurgency campaign from fixed operating bases is different from manoeuvring an armoured brigade around an area of operations. Both are very difficult, of course. The Government are taking the high risk of cutting the capability of manoeuvre forces for high-intensity warfare. Heavy armoured units are being given low priority for training resources. In addition, the lead airborne taskforce was disbanded in late 2007; a battalion-size para drop has not been conducted since 2007; the lead amphibious battle group has been stood down due to the heavy commitments of 3 Commando Brigade; and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Boyce, touched on the need for naval power. He is absolutely right. The Minister reminded us that we have not conducted a medium-scale exercise since Exercise Saif Sareea in 2001. Our ability now to deploy overseas at more than battle group level in a benign environment is extremely limited; if we tried to do it, we would probably become unstuck. There is a great deal of evidence of a lack of determination on the part of the Government. For instance, for many years the RAF has been required to operate the flying scrapheaps known as Tristar and VC-10 aircraft for strategic air trooping, for getting our troops to and from the United Kingdom to theatre. Surely the Nimrod disaster demonstrates the difficulties and danger of using obsolete aircraft that our technical people do not fully understand. Can the Minister, or any other noble Lord, name any airline in the northern hemisphere which is still operating Tristar or VC10 aircraft for moving passengers? I hope that the Minister will not use the red herring of the defensive aid suite as it would only take six months to fit it at Marshall Aerospace. FSTA will not come into operation for several years. Can the Minister say when the initial operating capability and full operating capability of FSTA will be in place for these aircraft, and can he remind us how long the procurement process took? Replacing these obsolete aircraft with modern, reliable ones would confer several advantages: first, the morale of troops would be improved because they would feel that the Government cared; secondly, operational efficiency would be improved; and, thirdly, it would demonstrate that the Government were serious about Afghanistan. The Minister must surely have asked for a cost-benefit analysis of using, say, A330s temporarily. Perhaps he could put a copy of that in the Library. Many noble Lords have referred to the cuts in TA training and few did a better job in that regard than my noble friend Lord De Mauley. Many noble Lords, including the Minister, consider that the TA support to current operations has not been, and will not be, adversely affected, but what about the insurance against unexpected operations? We must not stop paying our insurance premiums. The TA soldiers who were mobilised for operations in Iraq in 2003 received minimal pre-deployment training. The reason for that was very good; there was simply not the time. But a big job is always a come-as-you-are party; there is no time for significant amounts of training. The recent cuts were very unwise but also symptomatic of the fact that the MoD has been bled dry. My noble friend Lord Astor of Hever posed a very telling supplementary question this week when he asked: "Crucially, what message does this send to the Taliban?" No doubt the Minister will remind your Lordships that previous Conservative Governments reduced the size of the TA. I think that the TA had a strength of about 85,000 in 1984. However, immediately after the end of the Cold War, I do not recall the Labour Party strongly opposing these reductions. Even more telling is the fact that it made further reductions itself. For instance, under the SDR, the numbers were reduced but also the capability in that TA battalions were no longer designed to be deployable; they were purely training organisations. The cuts to the TA were made necessary because there was a £176 million hole in the Land Command top-level budget. This was not necessarily Land’s fault as there were exchange rate variations for costs in Germany; rising fuel costs and an unexpected increase in manning. I also understand that the cuts to the ACF and the CCF are still in place. That point was made by my noble friend Lady Seccombe. Am I correct? But in any case, in times of social stress, should we not increase expenditure on the ACF as it is a brilliant youth service?