Brexit: Armed Forces and Diplomatic Service — House of Lords, 2016-12-08
Topic: Defense
Jeffrey Sterling (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, on his maiden speech. I have every intention of getting together with the noble Earl, because I share completely his views and am very interested in his ideas on using reserves. I also take this opportunity to say how grateful I am to the noble Earl, Lord Howe, who, in his usual, most courteous fashion dealt with all the questions and answered everything in the light of his great experience and knowledge of all these subjects. However, I am not saying that I totally agree with all his replies I have a couple of minutes, so I shall bring up a couple of things whether it is unusual or not. I do not agree with the viewpoint that somehow, when we leave Europe we will be in a mess. Business-wise I operate in every single European country. If we take the example of the FCO, it is not just in Brussels: it operates in 27 countries. In our business, we do not go to Brussels to ask what people want; we operate completely. In many of the organisations in Brussels, increasingly, it is Berlin which calls the tune, not Brussels. I posed a question yesterday to the Secretary of State and others about the amount we allocate. I am troubled that there is no interest in considering increasing the amount of money for the armed services. I said, "As a matter of interest in these troubled times, if the Prime Minister asked you to call the chiefs together to say that tomorrow morning, we are going on to a war footing, what would you do? What does that really mean? That we wait? That we say, ‘Hang on a moment—we have some figures coming through in 2030’. What does it mean?" In these debates, it is an enormous pleasure to hear so much experience and knowledge of so many subjects, such as diplomacy, that is much deeper and greater than mine. I shall tell noble Lords of an experience I had which had a huge effect on me. I head up Motability and a few years ago we had a gathering at Royal Hospital because I decided that we wanted aid for all the veterans who had been wounded, whom we help with mobility. The Queen and the Duke came to that. It was all military. We were walking among all the people on a beautiful June day and headed up to some young soldiers who were, sadly, at Headley Court Military Hospital recovering from some very serious wounds sustained in Afghanistan The Queen was ahead, and as I passed I saw a young marine in a wheelchair whose colour, sadly, was like this piece of paper in my hand. His carer was nearby, so I took him to one side and asked about his background. He said, "It is an absolute tragedy. This young man passed out as a Marine in Scotland nine months ago. His family went up and everybody went to see him and were absolutely proud. He was captain of the school, captain of cricket, captain of rugby. Nine months afterwards both his legs were blown off" I looked at him and thought, "That could have been my grandson". I remember it as if it were yesterday. I leave with everybody the thought that, for all our people serving us in the way that they do and the risks they take, the least we can do is to make certain they have the firepower and enough people in the armed services to help them do their job.