| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
5.6 pm
Mr. Michael Colvin (Romsey): The hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) is right to draw attention to the problems of compensation. I join him in congratulating the Minister for the Armed Forces on his announcement that the Ministry of Defence and the Department of Social Security will be jointly reviewing arrangements for compensating members of the armed forces who suffer illness, injury or death as a result of their work.
No doubt the consultation paper will appear before the House rises for the summer recess. That will bring the number of consultation papers issued by the Government to almost 200. It is all very well to go through the process of consultation, but it tends to delay action. Consult by all means, but if a way could be found of speeding up the process, that would be much appreciated. Following the consultation, it will be the armed forces Bill of 2001 that will introduce a new scheme of compensation. That means that the scheme will not be effective until 2003. That is too long to wait for a change in the existing regime.
The hon. Member for Selby referred also to the importance of women in the defence of the realm, in whatever role. I much endorse what he had to say about that. In Select Committee terms, the last bastion or the last male preserve has been breached with the arrival in the Defence Committee of the hon. Members for Crawley (Laura Moffatt) and for Stockton, South (Ms Taylor). I warmly congratulate them on climbing the learning curve with enormous speed.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Crawley on her contribution to the debate. I was with her on the visits to our forces in Macedonia, the Adriatic and Italy. She will recall that our very first meeting was at Vicenza, which was the headquarters for all the air operations which were being undertaken. She will remember what the United States air force general had to say about the air operation. I will not use the typically lurid American terms which he used to describe it, but he certainly indicated to us--my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces was present--that we should have bombed Belgrade far harder and earlier on instead of having targets all around Serbia. He said that really hard strikes on Belgrade on day one would have had a profound effect on Mr. Milosevic and on the Serb people. I think that he was absolutely right. The general also deplored the fact that it took 72 hours to get approval for individual air strikes. That was too long. Many of the hold-ups were apparently in the White House.
Now that the operation is virtually concluded, although it has already been accepted by the House generally that the job of peacekeeping will run for years to come, it is important that there is a full and independent inquiry into the conduct of the war and the diplomatic action that led
up to it. We had that after the Falklands war and the Gulf war. I think that such a inquiry should now take place after the war in the Balkans.
I know that the Foreign Affairs Select Committee will be undertaking its own inquiry. The Defence Committee has said that it will undertake one. It may be that the two Select Committees will join forces to take evidence in some instances. An independent inquiry into the conduct of the diplomatic representations and activities, and then the war, is also extremely important. That will run on to the peacekeeping operation as well.
In her excellent speech, the hon. Member for Crawley referred to the difficulty of changing our laws to permit homosexuals to serve in the armed forces. She made the valid point that that will vary from one force to another, and possibly even from one unit to another.
We saw evidence of a similar situation with regard to women when we visited the Royal Navy in the Adriatic sea. On HMS Invincible, with a crew of 1,200, there were many women serving--about 10 per cent. of the crew, I think--with no difficulty at all. It worked superbly. However, on the Newcastle, with a crew of about 200, there were no women on board at all, simply because such a ship does not have the facilities to keep the sexes apart, and all sorts of difficulties could arise. The example of HMS Invincible proves that the rules can be adjusted to take account of the units involved.
I am very sorry, as are other hon. Members, about the poor attendance at this debate. When I entered the House, a debate on any defence matter was a big occasion and the House was always full. That may reflect the composition of the House. In those days, as an ex-soldier, I would never dare to take part in a defence debate, because the House was stuffed full of retired soldiers, sailors and airmen, all covered in medals, and it would be more than I dared do to venture into what I saw as their preserve.
These days, it is important for us to try to preserve a military connection in the House. I hope that selection committees in constituencies, choosing parliamentary candidates from all parties, bear that in mind. We are losing a great deal of expertise, and with the departure of the hereditary peers, we shall lose a wealth of military experience in the other place. That is greatly to be regretted. None the less, I welcome the arrival on our Front Bench of two who should be described as honourable and gallant Gentlemen--a new shadow Secretary of State with experience as an officer in the Scots Guards and an ex-sailor who opened today's debate.
We have heard much praise today for our armed forces. Even as an ex-Grenadier Guardsman, I would pick up the motto of my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan), who was in the Coldstream Guards. Their motto is "Second to None", and it could well be applied to the British armed forces. They have certainly been put to the test recently in Kosovo and in Bosnia, and they have come through with flying colours. It is all very well to praise them, but we now want action to ensure that they are able to continue their work.
The mission of our armed forces was well set out in the strategic defence review. It was made clear by the Government that the United Kingdom is to be
We have enormous worldwide interests--for our size, probably more than any other country. Trade is a higher percentage of our gross domestic product than any other country that I know of. We have enormous investment worldwide--more in the United States than has even Japan or Germany. We still have immense influence around the world. We are a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and we belong to all the best clubs--the G8, the Commonwealth and many others.
We still have a number of overseas territories that must be looked after. We have 1,000 service men and women in the Falklands, 3,000 in the sovereign bases in Cyprus and many others deployed elsewhere. There are 33 locations around the world where British service men and women are stationed, some on active service, some not.
If we are to become a world policeman, there is the problem of getting our troops to where they have to perform. The SDR proposed joint rapid reaction forces, which are to be in operation by October 2001. I should like the Minister to tell us whether that date will be met and, if so, what progress the Government have made on delivering the ro-ro ferries and the aircraft support that will be required.
The SDR limited our involvement in overseas military operations to two brigade-sized operations, as we originally had in Bosnia and Kosovo, or one divisional-sized operation, such as the Gulf war. However, our current deployment is about double that because we have 4,000 men in Bosnia and 13,000 in Kosovo. We are already way over that limit, which raises the question of how long those operations will last. When the Defence Committee put that question to the Chief of the Defence Staff, he said that he did not think we could maintain those operations in the Balkans for more than six months. We all know jolly well that they will be much longer term than that.
To meet those commitments, new establishment levels have been set by the Government which are planned to be achieved by 2004, but what are we to do in the meantime? We have heard many contributions on the increasing pressures on our service men and women and their families. What has been said about the problems of unaccompanied tours rings a bell with most of us in respect of our talks with service men, women and families in our constituencies. The number of operational tours has doubled, which should be of real concern to the Government.
On overstretch, I was struck when an hon. Member quoted General de la Billiere as saying that our Army is 20,000 men short. That is a sobering figure. The SDR plans for 3,300 more soldiers, many of whom will be specialists, but we are 6,000 soldiers--mainly infantry men--short. I congratulate the Government on what they have said about teaching infantry men skills. Fewer men join the infantry because they will not learn a skill that they can use when they leave the Army. Giving infantry men a skill will attract more recruits.
We are aware that 36 per cent. of Army personnel are committed to operations and a further 22.5 per cent. have been warned that they could be deployed on operations at any time. That shows the degree of overstretch in clear terms. The Minister for the Armed Forces was asked about the Government's target for tour intervals. The previous Government's target, which they had difficulty
meeting, was one six-month operational tour every two years. That left plenty of time for retraining and all the other things that had to be done between tours. The figures for current tour intervals are worrying and the Defence Committee will be studying them carefully when it undertakes its inquiry into the Kosovo operation. There is no doubt that there is far less time for retraining. That lowers morale and has an impact on recruitment and retention.
In Kosovo, the hon. Member for Crawley and I were lobbied by a number of forces personnel about pay. It was drawn to our attention that, whereas the pay of an unmarried Army captain who was sent to Kosovo would fall by nearly £5 a day, the Germans were receiving £40 a day extra. Members of the American forces do not pay tax on their pay. Many of the future operations in which British troops take part will be multinational so it is important that the Armed Forces Pay Review Body takes into account the difficulty of soldiers serving alongside soldiers from other nations who are on completely different pay scales for doing the same job. The so-called "X" factor must be revisited and the longer separation service allowance must also be looked at urgently. Will the Minister say something about that when he responds to the debate?
I was horrified to find, when I visited the Irish Guards in Macedonia, that in one platoon there were not one or two but four different cap badges. The Irish Guards were so under strength that their numbers were made up by the Green Howards, the Royal Artillery and the Royal Engineers. I believe that when the 1st Battalion the Parachute Regiment was deployed it was 120 men short and the numbers had to be made up from 3 Para. That is not good enough.
When I visited Haslar hospital the other day, I was reminded of the seriousness of the situation within the defence medical services. I discovered from a recent parliamentary answer on this matter that the figures for medical posts with consultant status compared with those deployable within the defence medical services were staggering. The number of posts for anaesthetists should be 130, but the number deployable is 31; the number of posts for orthopaedic surgeons should be 29, but the number deployable is 13; the number of posts for accident and emergency consultants should be 23, but the number deployable is three; and the number of posts for burns and plastics, which one would think was important in the Army, should be 10, but the number deployable is two.
Although the Government believe that those numbers should be made up from the reservists, the national health service is incapable of doing that; and as the Government have reduced the numbers in the Territorial Army overall by 18,800, it is hardly surprising that it is proving difficult to find reservists to fill any gaps. I accept what the Minister said in his opening remarks about the improvement in recruitment, but although there may be more recruits coming into the armed forces, more are leaving. Since 1997, 12,000 more people have left the armed forces than have joined them. That is extremely serious.
The Army is the most obvious victim of overstretch, but in two years 12,000 people left the Royal Navy and only 8,500 joined. A similar problem exists in the RAF. When civil aviation emerges from its current business
trough and there is a greater demand for civil airline pilots, many RAF pilots will push off for higher-paid jobs. That problem will have to be faced.
A big debate is going on about the restructuring of our armed forces in Europe. It started before the NATO summit in Washington and has certainly continued apace since. It concerns the whole question of the development of the common foreign and security policy, the relationship between NATO and Europe, perhaps via the Western European Union, and whether the European security and defence identity should be within or outside NATO. Which is it to be? The Prime Minister at St. Malo seemed to say that it should be both inside and outside, which gives all the wrong signals. Moreover, what he said is different from what the Secretary of State has said, which adds to the confusion.
It is not just me who is confused; our friends in the WEU, with whom I debate these matters in the WEU Assembly, are also confused about the mixed signals being given by the Government. The more cynical among us feel that what the Prime Minister said at St. Malo was meant to act as a smokescreen for the Government's backing down on the single currency and the whole question of economic and monetary union.
It is crazy to start worrying about and debating defence and security institutions in Europe when we should be debating our capability of meeting the commitments that we are making, not only as a single nation but with our allies. America spends $270 billion a year on defence. The Western European Union countries combined--the European members of NATO--spend only $170 billion. When we discuss these matters with our American allies, it is hardly surprising that they complain to us about Europe's failure to meet its proper burden of international security. That has a big knock-on effect on the way in which we perform collectively.
We must seriously consider the shortfalls, and not just in the budget--we have seen with the SDR how the defence budget is planned. There is this ominous £250 million to come in the last year, which we suspect is from the sale of the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency. As a hard-nosed privatiser, I strongly support what the Chairman of the Defence Committee said about resisting the privatisation of DERA either in part or in whole.
"a force for good in the world".
On several occasions the Prime Minister has spoken of the UK's global commitment to security.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |