Armed Forces Act (Continuation) Order 2017 — House of Lords, 2017-03-21
Topic: Defense
Julian Charles Roland Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, this is an important debate about the very serious international situation facing the UK in terms of its capacity to defend itself in collaboration with its allies. I declare an interest as a scientific consultant to a defence contractor working for the MoD. I am also a consultant with a university in Toulouse, working on new wings for Airbus, and some of these Airbus facilities are of course important for the UK now. When I was head of the Met Office, I also saw a bit of how the MoD works— some of which made your hair stand on end—and, during that period of focus, the ability of the Met Office to forecast the atmosphere and oceans greatly improved. I should also declare that, when I was a professor at Cambridge, one of my research students used our research techniques to provide high-tech shelters for all the women protesting at Greenham Common Since this is a debate on the politics of defence, I should begin by asking HMG whether they are satisfied with the understanding and support of the British people for the main aspects of UK defence strategy. The first point of controversy has been about the size of the Armed Forces, which is now smaller in total than for many years and significantly lower than is needed to confront the main opponents to the UK and its allies, in Asia and the Middle East especially. This is a technical and financial question, depending on the choice of strategic goals, but we should learn more about the arguments The second major controversy, which is much more political, concerns whether the UK armaments should continue to depend on nuclear weapons systems. I believe that this is essential. It is of course the official Labour policy, as my noble friend Lord Touhig mentioned earlier this afternoon. The Labour and the Lib Dem parties continue to be split about this, with many members inside and outside Parliament being opposed. Also, of course, many countries in the NATO alliance are opposed to the use of these weapons A lesser but more recent controversy about the UK’s defence is to what extent it should be used to support Governments in the Middle East and Africa where civil war is taking place, or where there are outbreaks of disease and civil emergencies such as the breakdown of government systems in Libya and elsewhere. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, in his introductory speech commented on how our defence forces are used for these civil issues—and very effectively too. There is very little political controversy about the use of the UK’s world-class defensive capability in cyber and security services to protect the UK and our allies I should like to make a suggestion that the Government need to build up support of their defence policies among all parts of society, including schools, universities, industry, trade unions and so on, in order to have support for their defence forces and their infrastructure within government. There is also a need to build up understanding about the role of the private sector I believe new approaches are necessary. I came to this conclusion when visiting with my grandson the excellent Royal Air Force Museum at Hendon, and I have told the noble Earl, Lord Howe, about this story. The technical and scientific aspects of the RAF over the past century were well displayed, and I assume that there will be some centennial celebrations at this museum in a year or two. But there needs to be more emphasis on current operational policies, as well as the developing technologies, and the existence of nuclear weapons in UK defence should not be ignored. It is also important, in museums and other places providing public information, to explain why the UK has defence forces in 2017—giving information about countries which are the UK’s allies and, controversially, which countries are not our allies In some schools, I am afraid to say, the governors prevent school visits to defence facilities. The RAF Museum, as an example, provides information about our former enemies. Surely there should now be considerable emphasis in all such information displays on how these former enemies are now our allies. There is a great misunderstanding by many young people on these issues. I look forward to the Minister’s response to this question Demonstrations, museums, and videos about modern defence forces and their infrastructure should also include displays and information about their use of technology and scientific developments, including systems collaborating with our allies. An example is the large Airbus transport plane I mentioned, one of which is used by the UK Prime Minister now, who, I am glad to say, no longer goes on a Boeing However, it is not realistic to pretend that our forces depend only upon UK industry and technical products. For example, the Met Office, which provides world-class meteorology and environmental data and forecasts for the UK forces, benefits from information provided through NATO from other forces, but it also provides its information to allied forces—such as weather forecasting, which is now used by the US Air Force. It is important that technical defence collaboration between NATO forces should not be impeded by the UK withdrawing from the current EU technological projects, which other noble Lords have mentioned. That may happen without considerable diplomacy. Perhaps the Minister could say how this issue is also being addressed Finally, there should be greater collaboration between UK defence scientists and those of our allies. When I was at the Met Office—perhaps it is not the case now— there were none on the Defence Scientific Advisory Committee, DSAC, and I hope that may have changed by now.