Lord Garden: My Lords, I, too, thank the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Inge, for arranging this important debate. We have heard common themes from noble Lords, with all their wide experience. We have heard of too many operational tasks. We have heard of deficiencies in the current equipment and in the future equipment programme. The question of insufficient resources in the defence budget has come up time and again. Most important, we have heard expressions of concern about the way in which our men and women who serve and try to make the system work in the Armed Forces are feeling bruised. We have also heard personnel worries about the future. I want to keep the personnel issues uppermost in my remarks.

I turn first to operational tasking. I was grateful for the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Owen, about the lack of a debate on Iraq and Afghanistan with a Foreign Office Minister to respond to it. Despite the assurances that I had that such a debate would happen before the Recess, it has not. I trust that it will happen soon after the Recess. For all the reasons that the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Inge, gave for the necessity to look at the grand strategic picture of these campaigns, it is important that we have this debate and that it is answered by a Foreign Office Minister.

The challenges that our troops face in these two theatres remain severe, as we have heard. In Iraq, the announcement of the forthcoming handover of one of the provinces to the Iraqi security forces is of course welcome, but it means that we will see a redistribution to the more difficult areas, such as the urban areas of Basra. What effect will the forthcoming departures by the Japanese and Italian personnel have on UK force taskings in that area?

The other major operational challenge, as we have heard, is in Afghanistan. We are in a period of transition as the south goes over to NATO control from Operation Enduring Freedom. It is a considerable test for the alliance, and clarity of purpose and command is essential. The chairman of the Defence Select Committee, James Arbuthnot, speaking in the defence debate last week in the other place, asked whether,
“the operational command and control between ISAF and Operation Enduring Freedom has been fully worked out”.—[Official Report, Commons, 22/6/06; col. 1539.]

In the same debate Sir Malcolm Rifkind—a former Defence Secretary, of course—worried that we might,
“maintain an inefficient military command structure that cannot deliver the best results”.—[Official Report, Commons, 22/6/06; col. 1532.]

He also warned that it might be used to justify a reduced American commitment. We cannot afford to find ourselves trying to solve Afghanistan with allies who operate under debilitating national constraints and with the focus of the United States moving away. I ask the Minister to address this issue in his remarks, as I think that we have yet to be reassured on these questions.
As we have heard, both Iraq and Afghanistan, although different operations, pose common equipment and personnel challenges. Lack of appropriate equipment to give safe mobility has been a common theme in a number of speeches today. Reflecting on his visit to Iraq, the chairman of the Defence Select Committee said in the other place last week:

“The number of helicopters there is tiny, and the number of vehicles is too small”.—[Official Report, Commons, 22/6/06; col. 1541.]

I was grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, for giving us the detail behind that. I agreed with everything he said. Whether it is vehicle protection on the ground or lack of helicopter lift, we are seriously hampering our operational capability.

In sum, I worry that we have a serious problem of not concentrating sufficiently on the needs of the two major operations in which we find ourselves engaged. The future of Trident, on which we had two speeches, FRES, new carriers, network-enabled capabilities, Future Lynx, JSF, Astute submarines, A400M, Type 45 frigates and the other new projects are important issues, but I fear—and, having listened to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Levene, am now certain—that they will arrive later than expected and cost more than we have budgeted for, as has been the case in the past. We have to get by in the mean time. As an example, my first operational tour was on the “Canberra”; next July, the “Canberra” goes out of service after 55 yeas of operations constantly waiting for replacement. We have to make do with the equipment that we have, and we need to focus on where to upgrade it.

We know that we are going to be in Afghanistan for at least the next three years, and it would be a brave forecaster who thought that Iraq would be all right in less than that time. What can we do to urgently improve the capabilities that are available now? As the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, reminded us, we need greater numbers of suitable troops and specialists to reduce the operational pinch points, which are defined as the trades where there is insufficient strength to perform directed tasks. The AFPRB identified those pinch points in its February report and I remind your Lordships of the astonishing figures: 20 different manning areas in the Royal Navy, 25 in the Army and 40 in the Royal Air Force.

This is a double whammy. We have the Armed Forces working continuously beyond the defence planning assumptions year after year. We also have a shortfall in the key specialisations for operational tasks, which is why we cannot achieve harmony levels in those areas in particular. That affects retention, which in turn makes shortages more acute and drives down experience levels. As the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, told us, it also affects the level of training that we can give these people, so they are less experienced and less trained.

We had the opportunity on 23 March this year, following a Statement by the Minister, to debate how the Reserves are being affected by this operational overstretch. I trust that he will give us an update on how that is progressing, particularly on the medical side. The lack of medical capability in the Regular Forces is likely to worsen because of growing pay differentials between civilian and military doctors. The AFPRB report on medical pay for this year has still not been published. Why not? Dr Brendan McKeating, chairman of the British Medical Association Armed Forces Committee, speaking at the conference this week, said that,

“if … a low or inflation-matching pay award for armed forces doctors is announced, it will have disastrous implications for a service which is already significantly undermanned in critical areas. It is also likely to cause many of these doctors who are the military’s deployable medical experts to resign from the armed forces to go into significantly better paid NHS posts where they will not have the added turbulence of repeated deployments”.

I turn briefly to the future equipment programme. I am tempted to get myself into the Trident debate, but time does not allow for that and I know, given the guarantees that Ministers have given, that we shall come back and have a proper debate on it in due course. I have a few key questions, though. We want the Eurofighter Typhoon to be air-to-ground. That is what we need it for operationally. When are we going to know what capabilities are going to be added to the Eurofighter to give it that capacity, and when will they arrive?

On the carrier programme, I ask not when will they come into service, but when the Minister anticipates that the first piece of metal will be cut. Where are we on JSF discussions with the US, which seem to go up and down on whether the technology transfer will happen? I have one question on the nuclear deterrent, which reflects a point that the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Boyce, made: what assumptions have been made about the funding profile beyond 2010? Has the Ministry of Defence already allowed for the Trident replacement, or must this be found at the expense of other capabilities?

On the defence industrial strategy, I remind your Lordships of the conclusion of the Defence Select Committee:

“Adequate funding will be vital for the success of the Defence Industrial Strategy”.

Does the Minister agree with that? The committee went on to say:
“This will be a key issue for the MoD to negotiate with HM Treasury in the Comprehensive Spending Review”.

That brings me to the defence budget. It is the key to how we manage all the problems that we have been talking about. In July 2001, the late Sir Michael Alexander and I wrote an article in International Affairs entitled “The Arithmetic of Defence Policy”. We looked back over 25 years of spending and forward for 20 years. Using forward projections and assumptions, we reckoned that defence in 2020 would receive 1.3 per cent of UK GDP. Five years on, the proportion of GDP is tracking our graph exactly. We then forecast a consequential front line of half the 2001 size after 20 years. Again, we have seen such cuts.
We offered a solution that looked much more seriously at sharing capabilities across Europe. Unfortunately, progress there has been too slow. Without any serious uplift in defence funds—which I think is unlikely—or deeper co-operation with allies, I fear that your Lordships will find themselves debating reductions in front-line capabilities every year.

I conclude by talking about the servicemen and servicewomen and how they are affected by operational, budgetary and equipment decisions. We keep speaking about their extraordinary dedication and how they put up with conditions of service that sometimes appear to come from a different age—perhaps the Victorian age. In that respect, I ask the Minister to look more carefully at draft Answers to Questions, because they are read by servicemen. If it sounds as though everything is okay, there is a feeling of disconnect between the MoD and the serviceman. I refer to Deepcut, Gulf War illness, new pension and redundancy arrangements, accommodation standards, which were covered very well by the noble Lords, Lord Luke and Lord De Mauley, or the latest incident of the joint personnel administration system, which has left various people not getting their additional pay when they should have done.

I was not going to talk about the Armed Forces Federation, but the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Inge, mentioned it. Other nations manage to operate serious militaries while having a federation. If there is no other way of solving some of the problems that we have been talking about than to raise their profile, that may be a reasonable way forward. Certainly, directors of public relations are important for internal and external PR. We need the services to feel good about themselves and that means that they need service people doing the public relations, both internally and externally.

We ask an incredible amount of the services and we mourn the continuing deaths and serious injuries, but the focus must be on the people and giving them adequate standards of care. The duty of care is greater than in any other sector of the community. If that means reducing operational commitments, that may be the price that has to be paid, or we will find ourselves with a great deal of shiny equipment but nobody to operate it.