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House of Lords
Wednesday, 7 February 2007.
The House met at three o’clock (Prayers having been read earlier at the Judicial Sitting by the Lord Bishop of London): the LORD SPEAKER on the Woolsack.
Armed Forces: Accommodation
Lord Bramall asked Her Majesty’s Government:
What assessment they have made of the quality of British Armed Forces accommodation; and whether any further action is necessary.
Baroness Crawley: My Lords, I am sure that the whole House will wish to join me in offering our sincere condolences to the family and friends of Second Lieutenant Bracho-Cooke, who was killed in Iraq on Monday.
In each of the past two financial years, around £500 million has been spent on the maintenance and improvement of service accommodation. In the next decade, we plan to spend a total of more than £5 billion on the defence estate. Even so, we recognise that much still needs to be done to meet the needs of our service men and women and their families.
Lord Bramall: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that helpful and fairly positive reply, albeit invoking some concern over what has happened hitherto. Does she agree that the root of the problem lay 10 years ago when the Ministry of Defence, under excessive Treasury pressure, forced through a daft plan to sell off and lease back a large part of the defence estate and hand over its upkeep to an impersonal and progressively underfunded agency, which, as a result, manifestly performed less effectively than the chain of command used to do? As this has not been corrected, can the Minister assure the House that when sufficient funds are produced to carry out the improvements and modernisations, which she has more or less promised as necessary, these will be ring-fenced? Otherwise, they will be vulnerable to the inevitable cash squeezes that invariably hit first the administrative tail, and the present lamentable and totally unacceptable state of affairs will merely linger on.
Baroness Crawley: My Lords, I say to the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, that we are concerned. We ask a great deal of our service men and women. It is right that they should expect the very highest standard of accommodation when they come back from various theatres and, of course, while their families remain in that accommodation. We have spent and are spending more than £1.3 billion on modern, en-suite, single-bed spaces for our service personnel, which is just part of the £5 billion that we plan to spend on service accommodation in the next decade. The noble and gallant Lord talked about the sale to Annington Homes 10 years ago. He is right that that was, in effect, a privatisation measure. It meant that we were tied into a contract that perhaps if
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Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, from these Benches we, too, send our condolences to the family of the young officer who was killed. To avoid messages to call centres disappearing into a void, would it be possible for service families to have more direct access to the contractors responsible for correcting problems with their accommodation?
Baroness Crawley: My Lords, I understand the point that the noble Lord is making. When the housing prime contract, to which I am sure he is referring, was set up last year, it had a very inauspicious start. I think that the helpdesk expected something in the order of 800 to 1,000 calls a day, but it got more than 2,500 and did not cope well, to put it mildly. However, firm action has been taken to improve the quality of the service and there is now considerable improvement in the present system. More than 9,000 calls are made to the helpdesk each week, of which 92 per cent are now answered within 30 seconds and 98 per cent are answered within two minutes.
Lord Garden: My Lords, Members on these Benches join others in offering our condolences to the family of the second lieutenant so tragically killed on Monday.
The Minister has spoken of £5 billion to be spent over the next decade. That sounds like a lot of money, but many of our soldiers, sailors and airmen will have long since left the services in 10 years’ time. How is this work to be accelerated in the light of the assurances given by the Prime Minister in his speech at Plymouth? Lastly, what proportion of substandard accommodation will be upgraded by that £5 billion?
Baroness Crawley: My Lords, on 11 January the Prime Minister spoke about introducing the second phase of the modernisation of accommodation for single service men and women. As I explained earlier, we have spent around £1.5 billion during the first phase on modern, en-suite, single-bed accommodation. As we know, people’s expectations increase all the time. Whereas sharing a room with four or eight people was considered acceptable 10 or 20 years ago, today young service people want their own rooms and en-suite facilities. The Prime Minister has already indicated that there will be a substantial second phase for that.
Lord Inge: My Lords, after the injection of cash over the two years that the Minister has talked about, what percentage of married quarters and the barrack estate of the three services will still be substandard?
Baroness Crawley: My Lords, at present 59 per cent of married quarters meet the highest of the four rates, which as the noble and gallant Lord knows represents a very exacting standard. We hope that the figure will go up to 64 per cent over the next three years, rising into the future.
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Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, when did the MoD last make an inspection of this accommodation? Was there a report, what did it say, and was it implemented? If so, when?
Baroness Crawley: My Lords, new build and upgrades of the order of 12,000 for service families and 20,000 for single living accommodation spaces are continually monitored. However, I will get the details for the noble Lord and let him know.
Monetary Policy Committee
3.07 pm
Lord Barnett asked Her Majesty’s Government:
Whether they have any plans to revise their instructions to the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England on the issue of inflation.
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, the Chancellor will send his updated remits to the Governor of the Bank of England in March, as he does every year. Since the Bank of England was made independent in 1997, the United Kingdom has enjoyed unprecedented macroeconomic stability and a period of unbroken growth unparalleled by any other G7 economy.
Lord Barnett: My Lords, my noble friend is right to congratulate, as do we all, the Monetary Policy Committee on having maintained a low rate of inflation as per the targets for the past 10 years. However, I am sure that he is aware that, in addition to inflation, the committee is also required under the Bank of England Act 1998 to consider and support the Government’s economic objectives of high and stable levels of growth and employment. A former member of the Monetary Policy Committee recently told me that neither the Governor nor the MPC has ever considered the second requirement. So will my noble friend ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, before he moves on, to consider sending at least a reminder to the Governor and the MPC that they should take proper account of the Government’s other requirement?
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I am somewhat surprised by my noble friend’s source on this. The minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee clearly indicate that the MPC attaches great importance to the growth of the gross domestic product and to labour market conditions. The Chancellor, in his letter, makes that clear to the committee, and the record stands by itself.
Lord Howarth of Newport: My Lords, is not the lesson of 2006 that the MPC should keep its concentration fixed on its anti-inflationary remit rather than letting itself be distracted too much by other concerns about the state of the economy or economic management? Is it not the case that as long as the MPC maintains its predictability and its credibility on inflation, we are thereby likely to have lower interest rates and faster domestic economic growth?
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Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I am grateful to my second noble friend for producing the justified balance that we always expect from the government Back Benches on this issue. On growth and employment, I want to emphasise and reinforce what he has just said: the issue is the inflation target. The Bank is all too well aware of the sanctions under the Bank of England Act 1998 if it fails to hit the inflation target. If inflation goes over the target by more than 1 per cent, the Bank will have to explain itself. That will be the main driver of its business.
Baroness Noakes: My Lords, at the end of 2003 the Chancellor decided to change the measure from RPIX to CPI. Since then, the CPI measure has doubled and is now 1 per cent above its target. Do the Government believe that that was a wise decision? Do they believe that it has had any impact at all on wage settlements?
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, we think that it was a wise decision for the obvious reason that it clearly enables us to directly use international comparators, which is of great importance. Even with the limited rise in United Kingdom interest rates in recent months, we are still well below the international average. The vast majority of central banks have been obliged in recent months to increase interest rates as a result of the obvious factor of high oil, gas and food prices. We use the index as a credible indicator for our major macroeconomic decisions, and wage bargainers of course have recourse to it.
Lord Anderson of Swansea: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that there is a direct correlation between credibility, both at home and abroad, and government interference, and that the decision that the Government made immediately on coming to office in 1997 has been the foundation of much of the clear economic success?
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I am glad to agree with my noble friend.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: My Lords—
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Rooker): My Lords, it is time to hear from the Lib Dems.
Lord Newby: My Lords, I suspect that even the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, will have doubts whether the Monetary Policy Committee will change its procedures given that the current remit has operated for nearly 10 years. However, the MPC’s procedures are deficient in the method of appointment provided for. Will the Minister recommend to his colleague the Chancellor that future appointments to the MPC should be made openly and transparently, rather than in a late-night telephone call from the Chancellor asking some poor, unsuspecting economist to make up his mind by the following morning?
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Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I have met few poor economists, and very few unsuspecting ones, but I have not seen any of them turn the offer down.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: My Lords, I am somewhat confused. What do the Government think the Monetary Policy Committee is doing? Is it concentrating solely on inflation and the inflation target, as the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, suggested, or is it doing what the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, has suggested it should be doing and looking at more than one area? I think that the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, is right. What do the Government think is going on?
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, the answer to that question is straightforward. The major obligation on the Monetary Policy Committee is clearly detailed in the Bank of England Act, and the Chancellor’s remit stays scrupulously close to that. The committee has a major objective on inflation. That does not alter the fact that it is all too well aware that its deliberations and decisions have an impact on the wider macro-economy. The Chancellor and others point out to it the necessity of taking the issue in the round—and that is broadly what my noble friends succeeded in doing with their two contrasting but exceedingly helpful questions.
Parliament: Deployment of British Forces Overseas
3.15 pm
Lord Goodlad asked Her Majesty’s Government:
Whether they will hold further discussions on the role of Parliament in the future deployment of British forces overseas.
The Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs and Lord Chancellor (Lord Falconer of Thoroton): My Lords, the Government addressed this point in the House of Commons on 8 January. The position was also made clear in the Government’s response to this House’s Constitution Committee’s report Waging War: Parliament’s Role and Responsibility. The Government continue to listen to views about prerogative powers to deploy the Armed Forces and to keep their policies under review.
Lord Goodlad: My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for that reply. As he said, the Select Committee on the Constitution, of which I have the honour to be a member, published a report last July that recommended that there should be a parliamentary convention determining Parliament’s role in making decisions to deploy force outside the United Kingdom to war. The Government, in their very brief response, said that they were not presently persuaded of the case for establishing a new convention determining the role of Parliament in the deployment of the Armed Forces but would keep the matter under review. The Leader of the Opposition, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats, the Chancellor of the Exchequer
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Lord Goodlad: My Lords, I am coming to the question. We shall shortly be debating the future composition of this House and its role. There is a strong chance that in future there will be a difference of view between the two Houses. In view of the public interest in this matter, will the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor undertake to facilitate a debate on the Select Committee’s report in this House at an early date?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: Unfortunately, my Lords, I cannot make any offers of debates on such issues. The committee’s report, to which the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, referred, was an excellent contribution to the debate. The issue is difficult. The question is: should the Executive still formally have the power to wage war? Everyone accepts that it is inconceivable in the current climate that any Government would ever go to war without first having the support of Parliament. I suspect that the issue, although defined as a matter of principle, does not have much practical impact.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart: My Lords, since there were no parliamentary Motions supporting armed intervention in Sierra Leone and Kosovo, is it not clear that the supposed constitutional convention that Parliament will be asked afterwards is a fragile protection against a Government committing British forces to armed conflict without the wholehearted support of the British people? Should the prerogative powers not be based on constitutional statute?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, it was clear that the Constitution Committee rejected the idea of any sort of statute in this area because that would be inflexible. It would have been perfectly possible at any stage for Parliament to intervene and say it did not support either of the interventions in Kosovo and Sierra Leone. It did not.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill: My Lords, I do not know whether the noble and learned Lord has had the chance to read the Private Member’s Bill that I produced on this subject, but does he agree that it would be possible to have a statute that provided that we should not wage war without parliamentary approval, but that also had flexibility built into it for cases of emergency? What is the objection in principle to placing this part of the prerogative under the control of Parliament with built-in flexibility, rather than relying upon a rubbery, elastic, probably non-existent convention?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, the committee gave two reasons. First, you could not, by a framework in a statute, build in sufficient flexibility. Secondly, and separately, there was no enforceability
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Lord Foulkes of Cumnock: My Lords, is my noble and learned friend aware that I am a little puzzled about the way this Question is going? My recollection is that, when I was a Member of the other place, I was permitted by the present Prime Minister to vote on the deployment of troops in Iraq, but I was not permitted by the previous Administration, under Mrs Thatcher’s premiership, to vote on the deployment of troops in the south Atlantic. Is that not a very important difference?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, my noble friend is right about the vote on both issues. On the deployment of troops in the south Atlantic, I anticipate that it is right to say that the then Prime Minister had the full support of the British people. There was no dispute about that so there was no need to have a formal vote on it. There was a vote on the invasion of Iraq, the outcome of which was in favour of going. It demonstrates that flexibility ensures that Parliament can express its view appropriately.
Viscount Bledisloe: My Lords, the noble and learned Lord has emphasised that the committee was not in favour of this matter being regulated by statute. Why does he ignore the fact that the committee was equally firmly of the view that we could not leave matters as they were and that it had to progress to a properly organised convention? Why is one point relied on and the other totally ignored?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: Because I was dealing with a Question on whether I support a statute, my Lords.
Lord Elton: In that case, my Lords, does the noble and learned Lord support a convention?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, as we made clear, we do not support a convention because we do not think one is needed. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, accurately said, we said that we would keep this under review.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill: My Lords, will the noble and learned Lord clarify that? He says that we do not need a convention, but is there not a convention already?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: No, there is not a convention already, my Lords. That is what we said in our evidence, and I do not think that people disputed it. It is perfectly possible—indeed, it will invariably happen—that Parliament would debate the going to war by the Executive, but there is no convention about how or when that should happen and what the circumstances would be.
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