Armed Forces Bill

My Lords, I have thoroughly enjoyed this debate—it was the spirit of it—although I did nip out for a glass of water and bit of chocolate. To be honest, I wanted to join the Navy but it changed the date of entry at Dartmouth so I could not go. However, I managed to get in by the skin of my teeth because of Suez, so before I knew it I was in the Mediterranean on patrol boats taking a star sight on a sea-gull at the top of a pole on HMS ““Raleigh””. I loved that. I found the excitement great. My generation, such as the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, and others, went off to serve. One won an MC in Aden; many did national service in Libya—it is forgotten that we were in Libya for 30 years; many of the Chiefs of Staff did service there. We have forgotten that we had a worldwide role. We also have a responsibility. The Armed Forces are an asset not a liability, but someone is trying to turn it around a bit and say that they are a liability. They are a responsibility not a liability: a responsibility that everyone willingly wishes to look after. I have found in your Lordships’ House over the 48 years I have been here that we are the greatest repository of defence knowledge that the world has ever seen. Currently, 176 people have been Ministers or served in the Armed Forces and only 15 of them cannot remember their service numbers. One of my favourites, who is very good at this, is former Leading Aircraftwoman Sharples, who occasionally uses her initiative from her Armed Forces days—she can remember her service number—to knock someone off a bicycle with her handbag. My family, by accident, spent their lives in the Navy and things of that sort, and I had a nephew who became a SEAL team leader and then worked with the British. He said, ““Good God, we thought we were trained in the Pacific to lock our arms together for 24 hours, but we are not as tough as the British and we do not seem to have the same initiative to get round the rules and regulations””. My noble friends Lord Astor and Lord Sheikh have given us remarkable amounts of briefing. I have learnt more and more and there are little things that come to light. As I think Kipling said: "““we have got the Gatling gun, but they have not””." The other day, the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, the secretary of what we call the warlords, chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, introduced a general who I had never heard of, who turned up to make a slide presentation in one of the committee rooms. He could not quite get it to work at first, but when he did, he produced a quite mind-blowing presentation of the way the military in Afghanistan has got into the hearts and minds of the people there. I dug out a copy of that, and being on the Information Committee I had the right to have a trial iPad, so I now have this wonderful presentation on Afghanistan, captured by an Army man who I thought would be sticking only to the Army. I never realised how the training of our troops now leads them to get under the skin of the people there and to become ambassadors, in a strange way, and respected. I will say something perhaps a bit unkind about the political sector. Those in government have failed to take the advice of those who know. For example, 50 ambassadors and high commissioners wrote an open letter to the Government saying the Government did not know what they were doing in the Middle East. I did not know either, but I did have 12 years working on the Committee for Middle East Trade, six as chairman, and I would go to these places and get under the skin. A phrase I liked was that when asked what is wrong with the Arab world, they would say, ““Hashish, Baksheesh and British””—and the worst is British because they invented the other two, but, my goodness, we cannot do without them. We ran the Middle East from India. When the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, who was at the same prep school as me, became a major and was assistant to the Chief of Staff at Suez—my noble friend Lord Lyell will correct me if I am wrong—he was asked by his boss, ““Bramall, I want you tell us why we have come here; what we are doing here; and what the hell we are going to do next””. At that time we were going to withdraw from east of Suez and have no worldwide role. We have to have a worldwide role because we have no inherent economy; we are dependent upon international trade and investment. It is not only the defence of that trade that is important but the ability to get under the skin and help other people. On the training front—and here will be my challenge to your Lordships—I went to recent meetings in the MoD. I find the MoD very difficult and bureaucratic. I was in the Midland Bank for many years and so I know what bureaucrats are like. It was the same size as the Navy, in effect: about 33,000 people or more. At one of the meetings we discussed the young and the future. We must accept that a 14 year-old today will be voting at the next election; we must accept, too, that at the moment the role for our Armed Forces is not as great as it would need to be because we have no equipment and no kit and we have not yet determined where or when we should intervene and how. As a member of the Information Committee I set down the challenge because we now have open debates in this Chamber and last year we had a debate with the young on the future of the House of Lords. They all said we were very wise, which surprised many of us. The debate this year is on the Commonwealth and the Commonwealth conference. I laid down the challenge and asked whether we could get approval—which we have got in principle—to debate next year the defence of the realm with 14 to 16 or 17 year-olds. I suggested that the Chiefs of Staff should themselves brief these young people directly, and I ask your Lordships whether you would be willing to be present as guests at that time. It would be good if we could attract the young, with their amazing enthusiasm for dangerous sports. We have to think of the future; we have to think of the young. I hope your Lordships will support this initiative next year.