Armed Forces Bill

The noble Lord will know, I am sure, that defence procurement requires spending money now for capability that will come forward in 10, 15 or 20 years’ time. If you do not spend money now, you do not get that capability coming forward. We spent a lot of money exactly on that basis, as the noble Lord should know, in a naval building programme, in projects for which I was responsible—the A400M and the Typhoon tranche 3, and so forth. That continuum has now stopped. It is exactly like a business that needs to invest every year, which suddenly stops investing. It will pay the price for that five, 10 or 15 years down the road. Finally, I want to say a word or two about operations and about the use by the Government of the Armed Forces that Parliament allows them to have. I am not going to say anything about Afghanistan, as we have had a Statement on that very important subject this afternoon and I have expressed myself on one aspect of that. But I shall say a couple of words about Libya. First, it appears that the cost of keeping our Tornados in the south of Italy some hour or two away from their targets, with a requirement to provide in-flight refuelling is at least as great or maybe greater—perhaps the Minister will answer the question and tell us which it is—than the cost of continuing with the Harriers and ““Ark Royal””. We all knew that the decision would be disastrous over the long term, but it looks as if it may not have been a very clever decision in the short term. The French are using the Charles de Gaulle air carrier and they are only half an hour away from their targets. As a result, they do not need any in-flight refuelling capability. The Harriers did incredibly well, as the Minister knows—he knows a lot about these things—in Afghanistan, in ground support and ground attack roles, and could have done extremely well in Libya. That is my first point; I would be grateful if the Minister could respond to it. Secondly, I am very much afraid that in Libya our Armed Forces are being asked to undertake an operation in which they are being denied all the traditional military means for success. They are operating under two resolutions, 1970 and 1973, which we of course promoted and which mean that we cannot provide arms to the rebels or opposition—our side, apparently the good guys, whom we are trying to support. They cannot put troops on the ground and they cannot provide any support to the operations of the rebels or the opposition—fire support of anything of that kind. It is a strange and worrying situation when we find ourselves asking our military to perform operations in difficult circumstances, although circumstances are almost always difficult when Armed Forces are deployed, but when the obvious military means are not available to them. I simply point that out. I am a great believer that once our forces are engaged, we should support them, and I am not querying this operation. But I would like the Government to think very carefully about undertaking operations under the aegis of resolutions from the Security Council of this kind, which so inhibit our own flexibility and our ability to deliver the desired result.