Armed Forces

My Lords, events in life can give rise to great emotions, and this is one of those days. As I stood with my wife this morning watching the services in Basra I felt that welling-up of sadness that almost leads to a tear in the eye. That, like the "Last Post", is a sad moment. Then there is another welling-up, which is when the pride takes over. As I look around at this country I see that there is a reason for great pride in our Armed Forces. They are probably the most respected institution that we have in the world at this moment—they are respected worldwide. It is sad that the Bank of England has gone downhill and that Parliament and the Government are no longer respected. But pound for pound, dollar for dollar, euro for euro, those men and women and what they represent are worth more than any others in the world. What they do today is often a result of history. What they have done has sometimes been due to the mistakes of others but very seldom has it been due to their own mistakes. One has to think now about the future. Over the past few weeks I have been writing a Green Paper. I like those sorts of things; you take useless information, put it all together and draw conclusions that you know no one else would ever accept. So I began with Her Majesty the Queen and her Crown dependencies, overseas territories and realms—three countries, 12 countries, 15 countries. Then I took the Commonwealth, 65 countries that are British-related and, to some extent, interrelated. You might say, "Well, what about these countries?". But you do not look at their population; you look at their coastlines, 44,000 kilometres of them—our territories. That is a little more, by a few hundred kilometres, than the territory of the Soviet Union, and twice that of the United States. You then say, "Let’s look at the oceans of the world and these coastlines and what they represent". The coastline around the Pacific measures 136,000 kilometres; around the Indian Ocean, 111,000 kilometres; around the Mediterranean, 87,000 kilometres. You say, "What does that all mean?". You go back into your history and say, "Why on earth did we go out into the world?". We have never been an exporting nation; we have always been an importing nation. The role of the Navy has been to protect our lives by protecting our imports. Thus, the future of our island, which was once known by the ancients as "Windmill Hill" because we worshipped the wind, is to go out and invest, develop and bring back some of the benefits from around the world. Looking at the food crisis and at the dependent territories and others, you realise that almost all those who are in trouble had investment in development that took place because of what they had to offer and the added value that could be created. So I thought that we must look not only at the added value on the land but at the added value in the sea and what lies under it. I thought that for these territories the Government should immediately declare 500-mile limits over the oceans, or at least a limit of half the distance between the island and the next mainland, that we should then protect. The problem for the world and the defence of world peace does not necessarily lie inland; it depends upon access by sea. Inevitably, having served in the Royal Navy, I would expect this to be the Navy’s prime role. Can we defend the sea routes? Can we, effectively, have access? Access for defence or peacekeeping purposes is difficult on lands that are not linked to the coast. Of course we need the new carriers. We need other resources too, but some of them are relatively simple. Having had to serve in patrols in Cyprus where you were in inshore or coastal minesweepers that made you sick, you suddenly realise that for patrol boats in some of these territories you do not need anything much bigger than a large motor gunboat with a 40-millimetre Bofors and what they now call a chain gun. I was thinking of how we could defend these territories. Your Lordships will remember that there are now 45 claims to the Antarctic, because of the natural resources that are underneath it. When the Russians go and stick a flag somewhere, that is them laying a claim. We should give consideration to the resources of the sea. If I were like the noble Lord, Lord Sterling, with his ships and his lateral-thinking mind, I would say, "Maybe, if we take these territorial rights, we can sell certain oil rights and other rights, which could raise significant funds that could finance further developments". These are just slightly lateral thoughts, but if we are to have a future as a nation, it will be trade-related. We have an enormous manufacturing balance-of-payments deficit, but we have a great opportunity at the moment. The biggest single growth area of GDP, surprisingly enough, is the health service. The public sector is what it is all about today, and that is wrong. If unemployment is rising and we need to stimulate demand, let us not give people £2,000 to scrap an old car; let us spend a bit more of the reserves on creating forces. Let us not just train university students in boats on the Thames; let us put them together and send them out in gunboats. After all, I went to sea as an officer in the Navy after only 90 days’ basic training, which I think was due to a technological error. I have great respect for many people who have taken part in this stimulating debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Park, who is sitting there as the leading member of the household cavalry in your Lordships’ House at the moment, creates emotions in me: sadness because she was not here for a while, but great pride that she is here now. There is much that we can learn from history. I have already been forced to learn it. When you are in trade, you sit below the salt; you go to the more difficult countries and deal with the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean—all parts of the world that no one wants to go to because they are hot and dusty. Then, suddenly, you find that that is where the conflict is. The conflict is not in the Channel or in the western approaches; there are both conflicts and opportunities throughout the world, and we, the United Kingdom, have the greatest opportunity that we have had in my lifetime.