Armed Forces: Chain of Command

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 12:24 pm on 14 July 2005.

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Photo of Baroness Park of Monmouth Baroness Park of Monmouth Conservative 12:24, 14 July 2005

My Lords, I wish to speak in the context of the present debate on the duty of care as it affects the relationship between the Government—the MoD—and our Armed Forces. Sir Michael Rose once said:

"Soldiers are not merely civilians in uniform. They form the distinctive group within our society which is required either to kill other human beings or expressly to sacrifice themselves for the nation".

They should not suffer because of our failure to seek a derogation or even a reservation when signing the Act.

As Lord Carver said at the time,

"In practical terms it would not be possible under severe active service conditions to apply most of the provisions of the Act", and that is precisely when soldiers need and are entitled to be tried—if tried they have to be—within the service under well-tried military procedures and according to the rules of engagement.

The duty of care extends to ensuring that the forces are not put under unnecessary strain, a strain that is very likely to arise in a continuing campaign such as Iraq, where peace is not peace and war is not war and the enemy is very difficult to identify, and where it is even more vital for the morale of the troops that they know exactly what the rules are and how they are protected. In future capabilities, the committee in the other place concluded that many frontline units in the Army have for some years been experiencing an operational and training cycle whose intensity is unsustainable in the longer term and that the Strategic Defence Review had provided relatively little resilience. Good morale has therefore a practical necessity.

The committee thought that if the Army has only just enough personnel to man the proposed force structure, a lack of resilience could be expected in the future. But meanwhile the Government are taking on more and more tasks. The present emphasis on expeditionary operations may not be taking sufficient account of whether there are actually enough boots on the ground. Increasingly, the Armed Forces are being committed to EU and UN plans for battle groups, the initial operational capability, support for an AU force, including possible action in Africa, and filling the large shortfall in the European capability. Little or none of that was foreseen in the Strategic Defence Review, and neither the EU nor the UN are capable of managing all those forces.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit has produced a massive, glossy, 161-page tome, Investing in Prevention: An International Strategy to Manage Risks of Instability and Improve Crisis Response. Why that was necessary as well as the Global Conflict Prevention Pool in which the MoD, FCO and DfID work together is far from clear. The MoD's strategy Delivering Security in a Changing World already envisages that the UK will be regularly engaged in stabilisation and post-conflict efforts, with all their special problems—for the foreseeable future. The only thing for which HMG evidently has no plans is where to find the available resources.

Due care should include not only the safety and reassurance of judgments within the military system; it should consider morale in other areas. That includes the anxiety which will be suffered by families and the doubts of potential recruits.

I am baffled by the immense tome from the Strategy Unit compiled by 28 policy analysts, of whom only three were from the MoD, and a red team of five, of whom one was—surprise, surprise—a partner in McKinsey's. It is full of diagrams, tables, recommendations on everything from supporting NEPAD and the EU to an incentive to capacity matrix, figures, boxes, tables, strategies and basic instability frameworks. I should not be surprised if the cost of this tome in terms of staff and production would not go quite a long way to improving service housing.

The Government are failing in a duty of care, both in legal and in moral terms. Co-ordinating war-making and the subsequent peace-building is sensible, but not confusing and diluting the role of the Armed Forces in an attempt to treat them as if they were civilians, just like you and me. They are not, any more than DfID is composed of diplomats or soldiers.

The MoD is not there to operate, as it seems it did, on the basis of political correctness. That is the last thing that should concern it. For our part, we have a simple duty and noble and gallant Lords are certainly fulfilling that today. We must demand that the Government protect the troops as they protect us and allow those troops the safety and reassurance to which they have a right.