The Defence Estimates

HL Deb 25 October 1983 vol 444 cc149-60

4.6 p.m.

Debate resumed.

Lord Mayhew

My Lords, the House may wish to resume the debate at this point, and I should like to begin on behalf of my noble friends by thanking the noble Viscount, Lord Whitelaw, for his clear and comprehensive survey of British defence policy. Perhaps I may add that I have a special personal interest in looking forward to the maiden speech of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Lewin, with whom I recall sharing some traumatic experiences in the Navy Department in the '60s, when the Cabinet instructed the Navy to scrap its aircraft carriers and to maintain all our commitments East of Suez without any seaborne air power. I expect that it is etched on his memory as deeply as it is on mine.

Having thanked the noble Viscount for his clarity and comprehension, I wish that I could go on to thank him for his reassurance, but I am sorry to say that on many of the points that worry my noble friends and myself he had no reassurance at all to offer. On the contrary, he himself in one part of his speech drew attention to the weakness of NATO in conventional terms and yet he had nothing to offer us as to how to handle this gap in the conventional balance. Indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, pointed out, we had to look forward—if that is the right term—to further cuts in defence as a result of the review of public expenditure that is being made.

We had no reassurance from the noble Viscount that we shall be able to maintain the pledged 3 per cent. real increase in our expenditure on our NATO commitment. Indeed—again, as the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, pointed out—we are actually diverting our conventional effort in the direction of the expensive Trident project and also in the direction of the "Fortress Falklands" policy, which is, in our opinion, of very doubtful viability.

Nor did the noble Viscount give us much reassurance on the most important and worrying part of the whole defence field, which is the worsening of East-West relations—quite a marked worsening even since the last debate on defence that we had in this House—largely as a result of the Korean airliner outrage. This is made more serious by the divisions on the Western side on the assessment of the Soviet threat and on the best course to take to react to it.

President Reagan and Mrs. Thatcher have declared that Soviet policy is aggressive and expansionist and that we should react with policies of strength rather than conciliation. But other Western leaders have given much more stress to the Soviet obsession with their own security and there is a school of thought which is arguing quite actively that there is no threat at all of Soviet expansion. This school includes a strange collection—the Greek Government, Monsignor Bruce Kent and Mr. Enoch Powell. I think that it was sensible of the North Atlantic Assembly at its recent conference to recommend the establishment of a NATO commission to survey the field of East-West relations as it is now, and the Soviet threat as it is now. I hope very much that Her Majesty's Government will give their support to this recommendation, if necessary taking the initiative to get it carried out.

One question, for example, that the commission might very usefully try to review is this: what changes have there been in Soviet policy and Soviet practice over the years? There have been major changes. The Soviet Union is still willing to contemplate aggression outside its borders, as Afghanistan shows, but not on the postwar scale. It is still willing to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries through its links with overseas communist parties; but this intervention is nothing like what it used to be, partly because the communist parties are weaker, more divided and less obedient than they were, but partly also because, quite plainly, in recent years the Soviet Union has given higher priority to its security objectives as against its ideological objectives. Its political warfare has changed in its message. It is still subversive, but it no longer calls on the workers of the world to unite and overthrow their capitalist régimes. It no longer even calls on the Western peoples to throw away their nuclear weapons. Its message today is that the peoples of the West should compel their Governments to negotiate disarmament on the basis of equality.

Finally, there have been changes in the field of human rights in the Soviet Union. The picture is still black, but it is not so horrific as it was. It fell to my lot as a junior Minister very many years ago to make the first speech at the United Nations attacking Stalin's slave labour camps. Owing to gaps in Western intelligence, I now see that I actually understated the scale and horror of the camps. But one could not make that speech today—not because the Soviet Union is not a police state but because the degree of tyranny is less than it was then.

I believe that these changes are important and that while the NATO countries remain vigilant they should take them into account in policy formulation. When President Reagan describes Andropov's Russia as "evil", when Mrs. Thatcher refers to the present Soviet leaders as "our sworn enemies" and when Mrs. Kirkpatrick delcares that the West should take its gloves off and attack human rights in the Soviet Union, one has the feeling that these views lack historical perspective and are a little over-simple.

It is surely important to know, for policy forming, whether we are dealing with a state which is evolving or whether we are dealing with a state which is set fast in its bad habits. One reason why we on these Benches support, as the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, suggested, top level decisions is so that President Reagan and Mrs. Thatcher may have a better chance of answering some of the questions of this kind. Then, when a new crisis comes, such as Afghanistan, Poland or the Korean airline disaster, the West can reach a more unified and a more objective view of the best reaction.

This is made more necessary by the likelihood of the breakdown of the INF negotiations to which the noble Viscount referred. It is true that there is still some way to the actual deployment of the missiles—17th December was mentioned—and it is true that the negotiations are still planned to continue until 7th November, but there is no sign of either side making the concessions necessary to reach agreement. Ministers who were assuring us that it was only when the time came to deploy the missiles that the Soviet Union would start negotiating seriously are now telling us that it is only when the missiles have been deployed that the Soviet Union will start negotiating seriously. Neither of these statements was very persuasive.

Yet if we look at the talks and get them into perspective, surely the gap is not so wide as to be unbridgeable. The ideal solution, according to President Reagan and according to Mrs. Thatcher, is the zero option: no cruise, no Pershings, no SS.20s. That is to say, no cruise, no Pershings, no new step on the ladder of escalation in order to couple Western Europe with America. The ideal solution excludes that. On the other hand, we know that the Russians would settle for no cruise, no Pershings and 162 SS.20s. In terms of warheads, the gap is less than 3 per cent. of the total stockpile of the two powers. However, the United States, backed by the United Kingdom, declines to make any compromise offer whatever. It declares that deployment must go ahead. It declares that—again British Ministers support this—on the basis that the United States has been flexible in the negotiations and the Soviet Union has not.

Since this will undoubtedly be disputed for a long time to come, I think that it is worth looking briefly at this view that the Soviet Union has not been flexible and the United States has, because the record does not make this self-evident at all. Since the negotiations began, the Soviet Union has agreed (and it was a move towards the West) to reduce the number of SS.20s deployed in Europe to the number of French and British deterrent missiles—162—and to dismantle the surplus; whereas, leaving the frills aside, since the negotiations began the Americans have merely re-jigged the zero option. They have said that if the Russians do not like equality on the basis of zero, what about equality on the basis of 50 cruise and Pershing missiles and 50 SS.20s, or 100 of each? That is to say, the Russians should accept the deployment of the two new weapons systems, cut down their deployment and allow the Americans to increase theirs.

It can be argued that the Russians were wrong to reject the zero option. It can be argued that they were wrong to reject this re-jigged option. What cannot be claimed is that this re-jigging is in any sense a concession, because it is quite plainly less advantageous to the Soviet Union than the zero option itself. And what else has the United States offered in the course of these negotiations? It has simply adamantly opposed the figure of 162. It has adamantly and rigidly refused to allow any counting whatever of the missiles in the French and British deterrents.

It is easy to argue, and I agree with it, that the Soviet claim that the French and British deterrents should be counted informally and completely—warhead for warhead—is unreasonable, because they are conventionally regarded as strategic, as the noble Viscount said, and because they are independent. But that does not mean that the Russian case is pure nonsense. Although we call them strategic, in fact these missiles are of marginally shorter range than the SS.20s, which we call intermediate. And although the British Polaris fleet can certainly be recalled at any time to independent command, it has for years been deployed by NATO. It is under NATO command, is targeted by NATO and forms part therefore of the Western overall nuclear deterrent. Therefore it is unreasonable both to say that the French and British deterrents count completely and to say that they should not count at all, no matter how informally.

What should be done, surely, is that the United States and the Russians should look at what has been done in the Vienna negotiations to reach a conventional balance in Europe, because here the French troops are independent of NATO. Therefore it is agreed that they should not formally be counted in. But for the purpose of reaching an agreement the figure of 50,000 troops has been added to the NATO side of the equation. What common sense. Why can we not accept the precedent of Vienna in Geneva? It could still be done. When the United States refuses to contemplate making any other offer—say of zero-zero-80, or zero-zero-100—thus reducing the gap to what is really negligible (to 1 per cent. or 1per cent. of the warhead stockpile of the powers) that to me is very disappointing. One is indeed tempted to ask why this should happen. It is true of the Russians, and true of the Americans, I think, that they suffer from the failing which has led to so many disarmament negotiations failing in the past—because the negotiators on both sides, advised closely by military experts easily blinded by military science, fail to balance the military issues at stake with the political issues at stake.

The military issues at Geneva have been vastly exaggerated but the political issues are enormous. If we could get an agreement, it might be a whole breakthrough in East/West relations. It would certainly give a flying start to other multilateral negotiations—especially the START talks. It would end the rather dangerous divisions in NATO. And a successful multilateral agreement would put paid to unilateralism, to the peace campaign, to the neutralists and the anti-Americans in Europe. The political issues at stake at Geneva are enormous.

I feel bound to ask how deeply committed are the United States to reaching an agreement at Geneva. We cannot help recalling that it took two years after the twin track decision before the Americans, under allied pressure, agreed to negotiate at all. We remember that the timetable they insisted upon was absurdly leisurely. Again, it was only tightened up later as a result of allied pressure. I have met or listened to almost all the top Americans handling these negotiations. With one exception, I am bound to say that they give me the impression of not being seriously committed to reaching an agreement. The exception is Mr. Nitze. Like his colleagues, he strongly opposed ratification of SALT 2 and was successful. Nevertheless, he did produce in the "walk in the woods" proposal the one and only instance of American flexibility during the negotiations. When this proposal was reported to Washington, it promptly had its throat slit.

I ask, then: what have the British Government contributed during these negotiations? There is absolutely nothing in our membership of NATO or in the twin track decision that obliges us to accept the United States' present negotiating position—nothing whatever. At the same time, the British attitude is absolutely decisive to the outcome of the negotiations. If we deploy, the Germans and the Italians will deploy. If we do not deploy, the Germans and the Italians will not deploy. The British position is absolutely crucial, and this means that any reasonable condition we attach to the deployment of cruise missiles in Britain will almost certainly be accepted by the Americans.

There is no evidence that the Government have laid down any conditions at all, at any stage. Ministers have been content to adopt a kind of public relations role—packaging President Reagan's rigid line and selling it to the British as a "superflexibility". They have not laid down conditions. They have not shown independence. As has been said, the negotiations are still going on and deployment will not take place until 17th December. If the Government had the will, they could insist even now on a last-minute attempt to reach an agreement at Geneva—a compromise offer which would reduce the gap to negligible proportions. And, at the worst, if it failed, it would put the blame for the deployment of cruise and Pershing squarely on the Soviet Union, for the whole of world opinion and European opinion to see. Ministers still have an opportunity for leadership in this vital matter; I trust they will not throw it away.

4.25 p.m.

Lord Lewin

My Lords, it is just a year since my name appeared among many others in the list of honours and awards for the campaign in the South Atlantic. I am humbly conscious that I owe my seat in this House to the men of all three services and the Merchant Navy who fought and won that victory. I am grateful. too, for your Lordships' welcome to this House.

I should like to take this first occasion to thank your Lordships and indeed all the people of this country for the support and encouragement which the services were given during that campaign. It was a great inspiration to us all.

As the noble Viscount the Leader of the House has indicated, I have with great regret to leave rather early this evening, before I expect this debate will be ended. I have a long-standing commitment to speak to a group of senior officers, both serving and retired. Sadly, I let them down at short notice earlier this year when I fell off a ladder and sprained my ankle and I cannot let them down again. I hope to be much more controversial with them this evening than convention will allow me to be this afternoon.

I should like to discuss three issues of vital importance to any current debate on defence; money, nuclear weapons, and our service people. First of all, money. Defence is a long-term business. Ships, aircraft and weapons systems take a very long time in development and production. It takes a long time to train our skilled people and to build up adequate stocks of munitions and war materials. It is all the more important, then, to be able to plan sensibly the defence programme ahead and to know within reasonable limitations the amount of money that is likely to be available.

Even short-term, small fluctuations, if compounded over the whole of the defence programme, can have a sizeable repercussion, causing us to review our defence policy, wasteful cancellation of projects already in development, a cutback in production runs, and shortfalls in the build-up of our stocks and reserves. I was very glad, therefore, to see that the Government had reaffirmed the commitment given during the life of the last Parliament to meet the NATO target of a 3 per cent. increase in real terms in defence expenditure until 1985–86. When given in the last Parliament, of course, that was the maximum life-span of that Administration.

I would remind your Lordships that, at the NATO defence ministers' meeting in the spring of this year, NATO defence ministers endorsed that NATO countries should endeavour to extend that rate of increase in defence expenditure until 1990. Therefore, I hope very much, now the Government have been re-elected, that they will continue to give the same priority to defence and will extend that commitment to increase defence expenditure at 3 per cent. beyond 1985–86 and into the future.

I hope that the basis of that decision will be the needs of NATO's security and not the performance of our allies, which is not always a good yardstick. Indeed, if NATO as a whole does not increase defence expenditure by 3 per cent. at least in real terms in the decade ahead, then we shall remain in our present unhappy position when, should the Russians attack, we would have the difficult choice between defeat and early recourse to nuclear weapons.

That leads me to nuclear weapons. I have no intention of discussing nuclear strategy because without doubt that would be controversial. I should like to set out some facts about Polaris and Trident and perhaps just an opinion or two based on my experience as a one-time operational commander of the Polaris force and as Chief of the Defence Staff at the time when the decision to replace Polaris with Trident was made.

I have a very great respect for the innate common sense of the British people, and it does not surprise me at all that a majority support the need for this country to have its nuclear weapons, its strategic deterrent and Polaris. But it does distress me that the same majority does not support Trident and it seems the Government have so far failed to explain that if we wish to retain our independent strategic deterrent into an uncertain future then we have no alternative but to embark on the Trident programme.

Polaris is a weapons system based on the technology of the 1950s. It is now uniquely in British service. As time passes it becomes more costly and more difficult to maintain. With its Chevaline improvements it will remain credible only until the mid- 1990s; but all the best professional advice shows that it is inconceivable that it could run beyond that time except at completely disproportionate cost and with very high risk of breakdown.

It is unfortunate for open government that the information required to make the choice of a successor to Polaris is hedged about with very high secrecy and much of it could not be published without prejudice to our own and our allies' security. But there can be no doubt that Trident is the most cost-effective replacement for Polaris if we wish to continue with our strategic deterrent into the future. Indeed, there is now no opportunity to switch to another credible alternative in the timescale. It is too late, even if we wished to do so, and even if we were prepared to spend the greater amount of money that a credible alternative would require.

There are those who would cancel Trident and keep Polaris against an uncertain future, perhaps for use as a bargaining chip in arms negotiations. This is in fact an option for unilateral disarmament. In the hands of such a Government that would cancel Trident but maintain Polaris, Polaris as a bargaining chip would be useless. The Russians would only have to wait and it would go—time expired—and in my view the sands of time would run out very quickly. With Trident cancelled it would make no sense to give Polaris the super-priority that it now requires, and has always required, to keep it operational. Nor I believe would it be possible to maintain motivation in the crews and all those who support the Polaris force. I also suggest that in those circumstances Polaris would lack credibility in our own eyes, let alone the eyes of a potential enemy. With Trident cancelled I would give Polaris two years at maximum before it withered away.

Neither would it make any sense for us to maintain the expensive research, development and production resources solely to produce nuclear weapons for the battlefield and theatre level. It is unimaginable that a Prime Minister would authorise the use of British nuclear weapons at theatre or battlefield level without the ultimate sanction of a strategic deterrent to back them up. Such British weapons would have no deterrent value; and nuclear weapons are possessed solely for their deterrent value. If we cancel Trident we will be out of the nuclear business and it seems to me that that is not what the British people want.

Let me turn now to people. I quote briefly from the Statement on the Defence Estimates now before us. The Falklands campaign…demonstrated the outstanding quality and commitment of our servicemen. Amen to that. Of course, it is the training that we give our young men that contributes to this quality; but it cannot be just the training. The raw material has to be there. There it is; there is nothing wrong with the young people of this country. I am against conscription but I very much hope that the training facilities of the services will be made available to volunteers among those unhappy young people who are unemployed because I am sure that they, and the country, will benefit greatly from their experience.

Seven years ago the chiefs of staff were in very distressing circumstances with manpower. I do not think I can recall a time when I have been more worried about the future defence of this country. Successive Governments had more often rejected than implemented the recommendations of the independent Armed Forces Pay Review Body. The pay of our servicemen had fallen some 30 per cent. behind their civilian counterparts. Recruiting was extremely difficult but, much more important, we were losing quite large numbers of highly skilled men in whom we had invested great quantities of money; men who were happy in service life and had no wish to leave but felt that they owed a responsibility to their wives and children to earn the rewards which they so obviously deserved.

In 1979 the incoming Government changed that. They implemented the recommendations of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body. Since that time they have accepted and implemented those recommendations year on year. Pay is no longer an issue and it leaves the services free to get on with the job. That is as it should be. I earnestly recommend that this state of affairs should continue in the future.

Finally, may I again quote from the Statement: The Falklands campaign underlined the importance of the flexibility, mobility and readiness of our forces". In fact, in the years before the Falklands campaign we had ignored the priority that flexibility and mobility require. Our flexibility and our mobility were not as they should have been. It was only thanks to brilliant improvisation and initiative, not just on the part of the services but of all those that support them, including the defence industries of this country, that we were able to succeed. If a few more years had passed we would certainly not have been able to undertake that campaign. I very much hope that that lesson has now been learned. In fact, the noble Viscount, the Leader of the House said in his speech that it had and that we were now providing the flexibility and mobility that we need.

That must also apply, I suggest, to the Merchant Navy, which must be kept strong and diverse if we are to meet the future. All history shows that it will be the unexpected that will test us again.

4.39 p.m.

Earl Cathcart

My Lords, it is my priviledge to follow the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Lewin, and to be the first to congratulate him on his outstanding maiden speech. He speaks with a very great experience which covers the whole range of defence. The forthright and non-controversial manner in which he has spoken today leads us all to hope that we shall hear him on many more occasions. I can assure him that he will always be listened to with very great interest and very great respect.

In debating this Motion on defence today there are two particular aspects of the 1983 Defence Statement which I should like to acknowledge with emphasis. The first is the remarkably clear and forthright way in which chapters one and two of Part 1 of the Statement highlight the difficulties of arms control negotiations and the need for sound agreements with the Soviet Union on disarmament, both nuclear and conventional, which if achieved would be of enormous benefit to the whole world.

The 1983 Defence Statement states the Government's policy on these matters and includes essays on NATO strategy and nuclear disarmament which not only discuss alternative approaches to these problems but state very clearly the arguments against a unilateralist policy—arguments which the CND choose to ignore. These first two chapters and their accompanying essays on the arms control negotiation and nuclear forces are well worth careful study. I hope that in this debate this afternoon any noble Lord who argues for unilateralism will respond to the words of the Motion which we are debating by paying full regard to what is said in these two chapters.

The second aspect of this latest Defence Statement with which I am particularly pleased is the continued reference to the lessons learned in the Falklands campaign. We are often criticised for not learning the lessons of history—even fairly recent history—but the Falklands campaign clearly demonstrated to the nation, and indeed to the world, as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Lewin, said, that we can have nothing but pride in the courage and professional skill of our armed forces. The operational and administrative planning of that operation by both staff and civilians was of the highest order.

But we did learn valuable lessons about our equipment and ships, and these lessons have been splendidly documented in the White Paper on lessons learned in the Falklands, issued shortly after that campaign was so successfully concluded. The White Paper was fully debated in your Lordships' House. However, these lessons on improving and modifying our equipment will take some considerable time to be put fully into effect. The point that I wish to make is that I hope that future Statements on defence will continue to refer us back to these lessons until they have all been satisfactorily resolved.

The particular Statement we are discussing today has suffered from two drawbacks. First, its publication was delayed because of the General Election, and, then, when it was published soon after the new Government took office the Treasury immediately cast doubts on the total defence bill which it presented, and these doubts and discussions still continue. Inevitably, coming so soon after an election, it has been accused of offering up the same medicine as before, but that is exactly what one wants from a Defence Statement. We do not want a new broom at the Ministry of Defence radically altering our defence policy each year. However, it must be said that the calibre and content of these annual Statements have improved very greatly in recent years, and the one we are debating today gives very full and detailed information indeed.

The point that I wish now to try to make is that I do not believe that we in your Lordships' House do adequate justice to these excellent annual Statements and the very many aspects of defence with which they deal. Defence expenditure currently stands at nearly £16 billion a year, and it is rising. I believe that this makes it the third largest demand on our national budget. Partly because of these high costs, but above all because national defence and security are so important, proper attention must be paid in debating the matter fully. In another place they invariably allot two days for debating Defence Estimates. In addition, they have separate debates on each of the individual services.

Finally, when approving the Army, Air Force and Naval Discipline Act continuation orders, which must be renewed by Parliament each year, the other place invariably take the opportunity to debate pay, conditions of service, promotion prospects and other matters concerning the welfare of the men in our armed forces: whereas in your Lordships' House we allocate only one day to debating a Motion such as my noble friend the Lord President has moved today, to take note of the Statement on the Defence Estimates. Today's debate has attracted 23 speakers, but there have been in the past—and in the recent past—as many as 32 speakers taking part in our defence debates. I think that probably it is rather lower on this occasion because it is only the second day after we have returned from our holiday.

This House now includes five most senior officers of our armed forces who have had very distinguished careers and recent service in the highest echelons of command, both in our national armed forces and in NATO. Besides them, many of your Lordships have ministerial, diplomatic and industrial experience in defence matters, and others have served in the regular or reserve forces or have particular interests in various aspects of defence. I think there can be no parliamentary chamber in the world better qualified to review the details of our defence structure than this one, and yet confined to one single debate each year I do not believe we do justice to the wide scope of data and other information provided by these annual Statements.

I believe that in trying to cover all the defence matters in one single debate noble Lords naturally speak to those elements of defence in which they have personal experience or personal interests, with the result that the debate is not cohesive but tends to be a series of disjointed and unconnected opinions, often unrelated to what has been said by previous speakers. Furthermore, with the intense political interest which the deployment or upgrading of the nuclear deterrent now quite rightly stirs up, this important subject often monopolises much of the debate, to the exclusion of the many other aspects of conventional defence which need our attention.

Finally, I think that a single day's debate to take note of as wide a subject as defence is unsatisfactory. The task which it sets the Minister who winds up at the end of perhaps an eight-hour debate, with 30 speakers, averaging 15 minutes each, is unsatisfactory both for the Minister and, if I may say so, his audience. I am not suggesting that we should have a two-day debate on the single Motion to take note of the Defence Statement, because I believe it is the experience that the second day tends to be an anti-climax. What I believe we should consider doing is to debate the Annual Defence Review on two separate days, each day responding to a different Motion which defines a part of the Defence Statement to be debated. Obviously there will be areas of overlap between the two Motions, but if they are properly drafted I think that much of this overlap could be kept to the minimum.

In considering how these Motions might be phrased I quickly discarded the idea of one nuclear and one conventional debate. However, as a possible suggestion—and there must be many others which will come to your Lordships' minds—I believe that it would be practical to have one day's debate when the Motion would be to consider the United Kingdom defence contribution to NATO, including the nuclear deterrent, both national and United Kingdom based. In this Motion it would be quite in order to discuss our contribution to NATO on land, sea and air, and also that part of the Territorial Army designated immediately to NATO.

The second Motion is not quite so tidy, I have to confess. It is rather more all-embracing, but it might refer to taking note of and considering the defence and security of the United Kingdom base. In this Motion it would be proper to discuss air defence of the United Kingdom. the maritime arrangements around our coast, the defence of the Western approaches, the strength and training of reserves, and so on.

Since the annual continuation order (to which I have referred), by which each year Parliament renews the discipline regulations to be enforced in the armed forces, imposes on them conditions over and above the law of the land, it is absolutely right that that occasion should provide an opportunity to discuss the conditions of service, pay, accommodation, and those matters concerning service well-being. The other place invariably uses the occasion to do so, but in your Lordships' House we very rarely do so. We have done so, but only on very rare occasions. It is a very convenient way of spreading the total subject of defence over more than one day. It gives one another chance to discuss personnel matters on a separate occasion.

Thus, if we spread our debate over two days, with two separate Motions, and when necessary make use of the continuation order, I think that there will be very few topics not covered in the Defence Statement. I have in fact thought of two which would not be very well covered. One is defence activity beyond the boundaries of NATO, and the other is research and development, but I think that both of these subjects are probably best covered by either taking a chance and balloting for a short debate, or by means of Starred or Unstarred Questions.

There is one other factor which I think is worth mentioning in regard to the problem—if indeed your Lordships agree that it is one—which makes it difficult for proper time to be allowed for defence debates. In a normal year the Statement on Defence is issued in March, and we usually debate it in May or June. Of course, in a normal year by May or June our own programme and timetable is growing very overcrowded, and it becomes very difficult to fit in satisfactory defence debates at that time of year. I merely state that as a problem which we must consider.

I do not think that today we need to worry too much about the actual wording of the two Motions which I have suggested, because I think that your Lordships may well have much better ideas. Nor will I expect my noble friend the Minister who will be winding up today's debate to respond to my suggestion. But if there are sufficient of your Lordships who agree that there is some scope for discussing how best we can debate defence matters in the future, then I would ask the all-party Defence Committee if it would arrange a discussion on this matter upstairs in committee, among its members, and if the committee is able to develop a suitable recommendation, it should submit it to the Chief Whip for discussion through the usual channels.

My Lords, I must apologise if my speech has been rather irrelevant to the Motion on the Order Paper, but I thought that it was right that I should raise this matter during a debate which is attended by so many Peers who are interested in defence. I am extremely grateful to your Lordships for listening to me despite that irrelevance, and I very much hope that you will consider my suggestions.