Armed Forces

My Lords, I echo the thanks to the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, for obtaining this important debate at this appropriate time. I also echo the pleasure that has been expressed at seeing the noble Baroness, Lady Park, in her place. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord King, should have talked about the contribution made by the Armed Forces to the defence of the United Kingdom and peacekeeping. I want to focus on the ability of the Armed Forces to make that contribution in the future. There is always a danger in looking back but my plea, which I shall end with, is based on three experiences on which I shall draw. I remind the House that we are debating this matter in a week in which we have had two important Statements, one on the reserves and one on Afghanistan and Pakistan. My first experience may well be remembered by the noble Lord, Lord King. When the aircraft crashed at Lockerbie, the first people on the scene were the crew of a Territorial Army field ambulance. They were sent away by the police because no one knew what to do with them. One of my concerns about the reserves, which I hope will be put right as a result of the review, is that at last people will think through what the reserves represent in terms of skill and application, not just in the defence of the United Kingdom and in Iraq and Iran but also in the whole spectrum of peacekeeping, to which I want to move on. My second experience was just before leaving the Army when I was sent out to look at the United Kingdom contingent with the peacekeeping operation in Cambodia. I was disturbed to find that the commander of that contingent had been issued with a Barclaycard and told to buy what the contingent needed in the markets of Phnom Penh. That seemed to me to demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of what peacekeeping operations mean, particularly in a multinational organisation such as the United Nations. On complaining, I got my comeuppance, as the Secretary of State asked me to write a paper on the management of the United Kingdom contribution to UN operations, which led to my being asked to join a group under the command of the director-general of peacekeeping in the United Nations to consider the same in the whole context. It was quite clear that the word "peacekeeping" covered a spectrum of activities, including conflict prevention, peacekeeping under Chapter 6 of the charter, peacemaking or peace enforcement under Chapter 7 and post-conflict reconstruction. All four matters were interlinked. What was peacekeeping in one place could actually be conflict prevention in another, as could post-conflict reconstruction. If all those were to be exercised, it was essential that there should be shown to be no disconnect, to use the word used by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, between the activities of the great offices of state in this country in deciding what the national contribution should be. That means the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Office and what was then the ODA and is now DfID. Therefore, I was extremely concerned when I went to Afghanistan last year to find that there was a disconnect. The Foreign Office in Afghanistan appeared to have no link to the department run by DfID, which was sitting in a completely different building from the brigade commander. When I looked into the money available, I found that each American company commander sent to Afghanistan had not just $200,000 to spend on post-conflict reconstruction but the backing of the American Corps of Engineers. An Italian major had $2 million plus the help of the Italian Government and our brigade commander had $200,000 for the whole of Helmand, all controlled by DfID. I do not think that satisfactory peacekeeping is made unless there is a connect. The third experience was a conversation that I had with the divisional commander who commanded the troops going into Iraq in 2003. I asked him after the event, "What was your battle-winning factor as far as equipment was concerned?". He replied, "The American Marine Aircraft Wing, which was put under my command, because it had absolutely everything we needed for operations of this kind, virtually none of which was available from the Royal Air Force or the Army Air Corps". That is a telling comment and it deserves deep examination. I entirely concur with the words of my noble and gallant friend Lord Bramall questioning the cost in the current defence budget of Trident, aircraft carriers, Astute submarines and eventually the Eurofighter, all of which are hideously expensive; they have a read-back to the Cold War and distort a budget based on operations that we are required to do today and tomorrow. In this context and based on reflections on those three experiences, I echo the calls in this House today and previously for a serious defence review to examine the capability of our Armed Forces to contribute to not just the defence of the United Kingdom but also peacekeeping. The noble Lord, Lord King, quoted the late Prime Minister, saying that we must ask "What do we want to do?" and then fund it. The question "What do we want to do today and tomorrow?" has not been properly examined and the funding will be irrelevant unless it is based on an answer to that question. Finally, because this is a debate about the Armed Forces’ contribution, as so many noble Lords have said, we must not forget that what is included in that funding is the all-important care and aftercare of all those young men and women whom we ask to carry out these operations on behalf of our great nation.