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We had a good report from the Comptroller and Auditor-General in July last year, and another published on 8 March from the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, chaired by my honourable friend Edward Leigh, entitled Ministry of Defence: Delivering digital tactical communications through the Bowman CIP programme. I refer to it now because the Government have understandably not yet replied to it. The Minister is, frankly, much more qualified in his job than most Ministers in most departments, and has the skills and abilities that should make him independent of the civil servants. He is the sort of Minister who should not have to do what he is told, but be telling people what to do. That may be an optimistic statement, but it is a desirable objective. I hope that, when the Government reply to this PAC report, the Minister will personally draft that reply, calling on all the assistance he needs.

The main Bowman contract now is with General Dynamics UK Limited, which is chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Levine, who has a particular interest in all of this; he was the Chief of Defence Procurement from 1985 to 1991 and adviser to the Prime Minister on efficiency and effectiveness from 1992 to 1997. The PAC did not actually question him, because it normally calls in the departmental accounting officer, which is what it did. I dare say the Minister already has dealings with the noble Lord, Lord Levine. I do not myself know the noble Lord at all, but I assume he has great abilities in these matters or he would not have got the chairmanship of General Dynamics. He certainly has great experience of Whitehall and defence procurement. I hope that the Minister will call him in and discuss the exact nature of the reply that ought to be given to the PAC’s report, since the noble Lord has been on both sides of the Bowman operation.

It is a damning report. Due to time, I shall read only the chapter headings:

“1 Programme governance arrangements were not fit for purpose ...

2 Initial decisions were not well informed to reduce later risk ...3 Through life costs were not rigorously assessed 4 Operational benefits are limited by reductions in the programme”.

One of the failures in this operation has been referred to by my noble friend Lord James: the weight of the actual kit. The piece of kit produced was too heavy for soldiers to carry at the infantry level. The right honourable Member for Swansea West, Mr Alan Williams, the Father of the House of Commons, who proved a determined terrier in questioning the failures of the Bowman system, said:

“Directors of Infantry have stated since the late 1990s that increased weight and size are unacceptable”.

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The Permanent Secretary of Defence, Mr Jeffrey, replied:

“We ended up with a radio which, for specific purposes for dismounted troops, is heavier than the Army required”.

Mr Williams said that Bowman was:

“beyond ergonomic practicality for a foot soldier to cope with”.

If that is not a definition of disastrous failure, I do not know what is. When Mr Williams then referred to the huge extra costs, an extra £121 million, that are having to be paid out to try to correct this—and this was not the only fault with the Bowman—he said to the Permanent Secretary:

“Is that not an appalling waste of taxpayers’ money?”,

and the Permanent Secretary’s answer was:

“It is a regrettable additional expenditure”.

That has echoes to me of Sir Humphrey but it also has echoes of the Home Office. I wondered who the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence was, so I looked him up because I had not heard of him before. I found that he knows all about the Home Office because he came from the Home Office. In fact, he has done 25 years in the Home Office and was, during the crucial years from 2002 to 2005, in charge of the Immigration and Nationality Department of the Home Office, which I seem to remember the then Home Secretary referring to as “not fit for purpose”. I wonder what made the committee head one of its chapters in this report with “not fit for purpose”. I have said enough about Bowman but I hope the Minister will take it very seriously. It is a crucial piece of equipment. It has not been well handled and there must be real lessons to learn. It is not just regrettable, it is deplorable.

I have one further point to make. I believe we must in future share more equally the financial burdens of military operations in which we engage on behalf of the wider international community. I am thinking particularly of Afghanistan where we are spending, as was said in a Statement to this House recently, considerably more than our share in financial terms. We are, after the United States, the largest military presence there. And some of the few other countries which are making military contributions are putting severe restrictions on their forces. I believe there should be a central fund which is paid for by all members of NATO in proportion to their GDP. That would include countries that make military force contributions to the operations, but those countries would then be reimbursed 100 per cent from that fund. Even if we are going to produce disproportionately large forces to fight the NATO campaigns—and I think it is excellent that we should because we have the finest military forces in the world—at least let us be repaid rather than have other richer countries which make little contribution riding on our backs financially as well as militarily.

3.26 pm

Lord Lyell: My Lords, last evening, about 12 hours ago, I was dining downstairs with my noble friend Lord King, to whom I am very grateful for giving us the chance to speak on defence today. While we were having dinner, the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay of

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Cartvale, took ill. She normally might well be on the Benches opposite and I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, will be able to convey our best wishes. I hope that she will be well again very soon and able to return perhaps to correct some of the things I want to say briefly today.

The noble Baroness and the Minister will be delighted that most of my speech has been made for me, because exactly a fortnight ago today I accompanied the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew, who has spoken eloquently on the military section of the hospital at Selly Oak. I have some experience as I spent two years as a national serviceman, like my noble friend Lord Marlesford and one or two others. My career finished on 20 January 1959 with a triple fracture of the leg. All in all, I spent 32 weeks in and out of hospital over the next two years. That hospital was also visited by my noble friend Lord Astor and my noble friend Lord King spent time there as well thanks to injuries, though not quite that long. It taught me and, I suspect, my noble friends a great deal about illness, sickness and accidents. The first thing one requires is rest; the second thing is care and rehabilitation. Everything I saw at Selly Oak on a fairly brief visit went to prove that the team there under Air Commodore Batchelor, the commandant, are certainly the number one team in their discipline and I hope the Minister will be able to pass on our impression and enormous gratitude to the team and everyone connected with it who we met and saw there.

My noble friend Lord Burnett referred particularly to dedicated military areas. I think he was absolutely right. I hope the Minister will be able to confirm that that is going to be improved as far as is possible within the priorities he has in his briefings for Selly Oak. I hope that he can manage that as far as possible.

We received all sorts of details in a marvellous briefing from the commandant, but time is short and I shall not encourage the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, to practise the Mexican wave by leaping up and sitting down, because I shall take only two or three more minutes. Will the Minister confirm that there is a dedicated mess area for the military nurses and medical services at Selly Oak? If there is not, could he please see that it is very high up the list of priorities? It is absolutely necessary. I saw two separate facilities at Selly Oak, to which I think my noble and learned friend Lord Mayhew referred, as did others. One was for young soldiers and the walking wounded under diagnosis. While the exact nature of their illness or casualty was being diagnosed, they were reasonably mobile. It was certainly an admirable facility. In the other facility, we found a warrant officer in the Territorial Army—my noble friend Lord Glenarthur will be very pleased about that—and two teams of four. There were also facilities for families to use while visiting their relatives who may be injured or recuperating. That very valuable arm may be called welfare, but I regard it very much as part of the Selly Oak procedure.

Time is short, and my noble friend Lord Arran is about to speak. I pay tribute to the medics in the wonderful medical team at Selly Oak. I also pay

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tribute to 45 Commando, who were referred to earlier and who are my local Royal Marines in the county of Angus, which alas has proved to be rather too far away for a visit by the House of Lords defence group. It is near enough to my noble friend Lord Glenarthur, so perhaps we might make a combined strike at some stage. They continually serve in Afghanistan, and many of us in Angus and the north-east of Scotland will want to welcome them back safe and sound, because they have taken casualties. We pay our tribute to them, but above all, today of all days, we pay tribute to each and every serviceman around the world who is subject to what the Minister has been encouraging us to speak about today. My noble friend Lord King has been so good as to give us the chance to say, “Thank you and well done”, to each and every one of them.

3.32 pm

The Earl of Arran: My Lords, as I am short of voice, my points will be brief. In 1989, I had the privilege to be given my first job in government. I was sent to the Ministry of Defence, where my boss at that time is now my noble friend Lord King of Bridgwater, whom I warmly congratulate on bringing forward the debate. My colleagues were my noble friend Lord Hamilton of Epsom, the late Alan Clark and one other Minister.

Out of the five Ministers at that time, four of us had done national service. Some of us had fought in campaigns such as in Cyprus, where Grivas was the terrorist of the day. It was not uncommon to be greeted by hails of bullets in an ambush at the age of 18. Thus, when as Ministers we arrived at the Ministry of Defence, we knew how the different services operated. We understood the different chains of command and we had a reasonable knowledge of the weaponry of that era. This was very helpful not only to us when dealing with civil servants, but more particularly to those who were serving in the Armed Forces. We had a good knowledge of what it was all about, as at one time we had each been one of them.

Time has moved on since then, and more than 60 years of global peace have passed since the last world war. Although I have not checked this, I am fairly certain that not one member of the present Government and only a handful of civil servants have had similar experiences, although some, of course, have served in the TA. This can make it very hard for the Armed Forces to get their message across. At times, exactly what their anxieties and requirements are and why can be a very complex message. Naturally, I am in no way advocating the return of national service, as admirable and as necessary as it was then, given that global peace was only 20 years old. Yet it is increasingly difficult for those in government to understand the genuine needs of the finest Armed Forces in the world—or is it obstinacy? It is tempting for people in government, and particularly for young people in the Treasury, to think that they can lower their guard and relax into the perception of certainty that global conflict can never happen again. Therein lies an error of enormous magnitude.

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Nothing matters in any country other than the defence and protection of its own shores. This is any Government’s first and foremost responsibility. The defence of the realm is supreme above all else. This must never be forgotten. Whither the great offices of state—the Foreign Office and the Home Office—and whither health and education if we were no longer in control of our own destiny but in the hands of a foreign power? Hence, and underlining so strongly, the need for Trident.

Many noble Lords have this afternoon severely criticised the Government for lack of action and non-understanding of the needs of our Armed Forces, wherever they may be serving. This is not playing politics; these are not light-hearted jabs at the Minister. Your Lordships are profoundly and deeply worried—this verges on outright anger—at the continual reports in the media and from first-hand knowledge of talking to members of the Armed Forces. Add to that the relentless, overt and outright criticism from senior members of the Armed Forces, brave and courageous men whose loyalty has now been stretched too far—this criticism is unprecedented in modern times—and you have a very serious problem. They no longer feel that they can keep silent, for they are responsible for all the strands of the men and women under their command who are sent to fight in foreign arenas, whether on peace-keeping missions or combating forces of evil.

The most important aspect of all must be to ensure that those who are deployed on such missions are equipped with the most modern and sophisticated equipment available, at whatever cost. You do not play around with the lives of brave men and women. If you are going to send such men and women possibly to die for their country, it is imperative to be absolutely certain that they have all the resources that they need to secure their own safety, to perform the tasks that they are asked to, and to return to their families safe and sound. Not to do so is not only callous and disgraceful, but nearly an act of criminal negligence.

3.38 pm

Lord Garden: My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, for making this debate possible. I remember with pleasure serving in the Ministry of Defence during his time as the Defence Secretary. In preparing for this debate I looked at the foreword to his 1991 White Paper, in which he said,

“Our determination is to produce forces which, while smaller, are well-equipped, properly trained and housed, and well motivated”.

This is something which his successors have also aimed to do. Yet, as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Boyce, described to us, things have not gone that way.

Today, after 15 years of salami-slicing and occasional, more major reviews, we are spending just under half the proportion of GDP that we tended to spend during the Cold War, and the three armed services together have a trained strength of below 180,000—about the same size as the United States Marine Corps. Yet the operational tasks are now, as we have heard from so many noble Lords, much heavier than they ever were during the Cold War days.

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Ministry of Defence planners, of which I was one, have to make assumptions about the steady state and the peak tasking in order to justify the numbers of people, the structure and also the equipment programme. These assumptions drive the calculations for equipment life and logistical support needs. Assumptions are inevitably proved wrong by events, for all the reasons that the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Guthrie, told us in his speech. Any organisation would expect to have to modify its planning assumptions regularly in the light of experience. What is so extraordinary—and it is the real criticism that underlies all the problems that have been catalogued today—is that the Ministry of Defence does not seem to have adjusted its defence planning assumptions to match the world that it is experiencing. That has been the case for the past eight years, since the intervention in Kosovo in 1999, and is why I disagree with the analysis by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, of the approach that has been taken since that time.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew, raised the question of definitions of overstretch. When we question each statement about a change of force levels—1,400 up in Afghanistan, 1,600 down in Iraq, 800 out of Bosnia—we deal with a snapshot of tasking. The real problem is the long-term effect of continuous operations at or above the defence programme’s planned level, as the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, said. Remedies are short term, and the damage they do affects the long term more and more. The ways that one addresses short-term operational needs and the long-term structure of the forces are different; we need to keep that in mind. In this debate, there has been a lot of wishful thinking about the effect that great slugs of money could have. In the short term, there is not much that we can do quickly to rectify the situation with money. We cannot get recruits in quickly. We cannot train them up quickly. NCOs take years to grow. If we bring in more people, we need to take experienced people out of the frontline to do the training task. Deepcut showed us what happens if we cut supervisory levels too far. As the noble Baroness, Lady Park, said, specialists are an even greater problem area. I have spoken before about the black hole in naval nuclear watchkeeper manning, which dates from the 1990s. It takes many years to replace or increase the numbers of a range of essential specialists.

Things are little better when we look at short-term problems with equipment. I have no doubt about the Minister’s repeated assurances that he is giving the greatest priority to procuring all the essential needs, including the helicopter lift. Yet we do not seem to be any closer to closing the gap between what we need and what we scratch together from an assortment of tired airframes. I hope the Minister will lay out his plans today and will give firmer dates than he has been able to give so far for giving us a robust support helicopter support capability, including the plan to get the eight HC3 Chinooks flying again. The noble Viscount, Lord Slim, raised the problems of air lift, both strategic and tactical. It is another problem that the Minister regularly acknowledges, yet we still await the FSTA programme, which could provide some relief in the area of strategic lift. However, it will take time. I

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would also be interested to know what effect the Airbus troubles will have on the plans for A400M. The noble Lord, Lord King, raised the question of the inerting system for C130 fuel tanks. I shall not spend much time on it, but there is a difficult operational decision to be made about the number of troops put at risk by a reduction in the C130 fleet for unscheduled servicing against the risk of a slower fitment programme. That illustrates the knock-on effect of having too small a force for the tasks we are taking on. It does not matter whether it is aircraft, ships, vehicles or military personnel; we need to have some extra capability for things that turn up unexpectedly.

All this means that there is only one short-term remedy now open to the Government, given the concerns we have heard. It is no longer a matter of choice: if we wish to recover the Armed Forces, we must reduce their commitments to below the planning assumptions and we must hold that lower level of operational tasking for at least two years—my erstwhile colleague, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Boyce, says more than two years. The noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, asked what we should give up, and my answer is that, despite the Government’s indication of a prospective reduction in Iraq, the commitment remains significant and continues to require all the force-enabling capabilities. Yet the UK contribution is under 5 per cent of the total multinational forces. An article in the Los Angeles Times on 28 February explained the Government’s—Tony Blair’s, as it put it—plight to its readership:

“The tragedy is that he had to rob Peter to pay Paul because Britain can't maintain 7,000 troops in Iraq and 7,000 in Afghanistan. Those are hardly huge numbers for a country of 60 million with the fifth-largest national economy in the world. Yet even as Britain has continued to play a leading role in world affairs, it has allowed its defenses to molder”.

It is right—we cannot do both. We may regret it, but that is the situation. We need to complete the withdrawal from Iraq and do it quickly, handing over to the US forces so that we can concentrate on Afghanistan. I support the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, in what he said on that.

In Afghanistan, I share the concerns of many noble Lords, including the noble and gallant Lords, Lord Bramall and Lord Inge, about the confusion of strategy between allies and the prospects of success. If we are not clear on the priorities for action the tactics will also be confused. The funding suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, that all should contribute to NATO operations is absolutely right; however, the Government do not accept that—I have raised it before. Nevertheless, we support the UK contribution, we believe it must become the focus for our main military and reconstruction effort.

I turn now to the second, longer term problem where money can make a difference. But do we really expect to get a large amount of money? I am a member of a panel organised by the Royal United Services Institute Acquisition Focus. We have just published a report, The Underfunded Equipment Programme: Where Now? The group assess the shortfall of necessary funding on the equipment programme over the next 10 years as being of the order of 20 per cent. I am told by some of my erstwhile colleagues

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that that may be quite an underestimate. Here, extra money from the defence budget could help. But we are talking about a sum of around £15 billion. Failing that, the UK will need to focus much more narrowly on essential capabilities for national security. The report identifies what those in the group saw as essential capabilities: strategic intelligence, the deterrent, a sustainable expeditionary force and its enablers, a maritime security force, defence of UK airspace, and the necessary network-enabled capability to tie all those together. The consequences for the Defence Industrial Strategy would be profound. Some of the effects could be mitigated by a more serious attempt to operate true European defence capabilities at the high end but I think it is unlikely to happen. In sum the future is bleak—in the long term as well as the short—and the problem is exacerbated further by the increasing number of private finance arrangements the Ministry of Defence takes on, thus reducing flexibility in the longer term.

I conclude by adding my tribute to the extraordinary men and women we have in our Armed Forces and our reserves. I was grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Freeman and Lord Glenarthur, for raising those—we must not forget the reserves who suffer in some way even more acutely from some of the problems we have talked about. As many noble Lords said, there are still questions about the duty of care, whether we are talking about those who are injured or—another area that was not raised today but in which I take a particular interest—those who are made homeless on leaving the service, where we need to do more. I also welcomed the contribution made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes; SSAFA Forces Help does good work in this area.

I trust that the Minister will tell us what the Government are doing in the two areas in terms of duty of care. I, too, was delighted by the Armed Forces’ Pay Review Body report and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Young, for his contribution as a member of it. It recognises that the Armed Forces merited the larger reward, particularly for those at the more junior levels, and that the Government are to be congratulated on deciding to implement the award immediately. That increase costs £275 million. It is a 3.9 per cent average increase across the piece. Could the Minister say where the money is to come from in the longer term because as always, the higher rate of inflation on defence personnel costs has a knock-on effect for all the problems we have talked about.

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