Strategic Defence and Security Review

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot), the Chairman of the Defence Committee, on which I sit. His leadership is outstanding. I want to talk about what might be the most important thing: morale. As we all know, Napoleon called morale the sacred flame—the thing that matters more than anything else. He said that morale is to the physical as three is to one. When I was a captain, I used to teach leadership at Sandhurst and I could not quite understand what he meant. Ten years later, when I was a British military commander in Bosnia, people would ask me—Serbs, Croats or Muslims—how many men I had under my command. I would reply, ““Lots. How many do you think?”” They said, ““Between 3,000 and 4,000.”” I had 800. Morale made the difference. High morale is definitely a force multiplier. It is not quantifiable statistically, but we can feel it. My experience is clear. When we go into a unit, we can feel what morale is like from the way people talk, stand and behave. Let us be clear: the British armed forces have the highest morale in the world on operations. Anyone who has visited our troops in Afghanistan can see that. Wherever British soldiers go in the world, their morale is high on operations. I am worried about what happens when they are not on operations. In all the years I have been involved with the Army, and it goes back a long time—1967—I have never seen such low morale among personnel when they are not on operations. There is a difference. On operations they come up to the plate; they are fantastic. They are everything one would always expect. It is the British way of doing it. But off operations—boom! Down they go. Obviously, the SDSR has an impact, because there is massive uncertainty on job security and life for the future. There is a pay freeze, and rising inflation has made life very difficult for the junior ranks. Some service personnel are involved in change programmes. They see an increase in work load and fewer resources being given to them. Obviously, barracks and the accommodation are not great. The Welsh Guards in Cavalry barracks are looking forward to having a hot shower when they go to Afghanistan—and they are in west London. I hope last night's Evening Standard is wrong that anyone above the rank of sergeant is going to lose his or her London weighting, because if that is the case a sergeant will get a 4.5% pay cut in London, when he or she has no choice over where they are deployed. Do we take a pay cut? Do we lose our London weighting? Do civil servants lose their London weighting? It is not fair. Many people, of course, serve away from home for a long time, and the tour interval for some people is now down to about a year. Families do not like it, clearly, and they put pressure on soldiers. The biggest contributory factor to low morale is the fact that our armed forces are taking such a cut in personnel. Leadership is essential. Leadership in the Ministry of Defence is about heart as much as statistics. Soldiers need to know they matter and are cared for by the people who look after them. Military commanders should look downwards first before they look upwards. I am slightly worried because I seem to think—I hope I am wrong, but perhaps I am not—that too many generals are trying to be political or be civil servants rather than looking down at their soldiers. I will end, because I know we are short of time, by concluding on morale. If we want to be the best—to use the Army's phrase, ““Be the best””—we must get morale right. It is not right at the moment, particularly when our soldiers, sailors and airmen are not serving in the field. Addressing morale is the top priority of everyone in the Ministry of Defence, from the Secretary of State downwards. It is very important that everyone in a position of power and influence puts their heart and soul into getting that vital aspect as good as it can be. Thank you for calling me, Mr Deputy Speaker.