Lords Sitting of 8 December 1998

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Birmingham.
Lord Crawshaw—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his brother.

Benefits Integrity Project
Lord Ashley of Stoke Lord Ashley of Stoke asked Her Majesty's Government:
When they intend to abolish the benefits integrity project and what are their plans for a replacement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Social Security (Baroness Hollis of Heigham): My Lords, the benefits integrity project (BIP) will be replaced by a new even-handed system of review, sensitive to people's circumstances and fair because it will provide for awards to be increased as well as decreased in line with entitlement. We are keen to introduce the new process as soon as possible but it is most important that we get it right. We are discussing the way forward with the Disability Benefits Forum.
Lord Ashley of Stoke: My Lords, I am grateful for that reply. Does my noble friend recall that when the Secretary of State made his announcement back in October that the benefits integrity project would be cancelled, it was very warmly received because of the distress and injustice that the project was causing? Many disabled people assumed that the cancellation would be immediate, but here we are in December and the project is still continuing and, with it, the distress and the injustice. Can my noble friend give the House a date on which it will be cancelled and an assurance that whatever replaces BIP will not become known as "BIP Mark II"?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, we inherited a system that was deeply flawed. It was based on incomplete evidence, so many of the decisions were wrong. Only the higher rates of awards were analysed, so people saw only cuts in their benefits. It was not based on consent. As my noble friend knows, we have been struggling with BIP for the past year. That is why we are determined that the system which replaces it will not make the same mistakes. That means that we shall be looking at under-claiming as well as over-claiming. It also means there will have to be full information, decent training of staff and revised literature. The system must be built on consent and consultation with the Disability Benefits Forum. That will take a few months. I am sure
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that my noble friend will want the new scheme to be appropriate, sensitive, even-handed and to command consent.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, do the Government accept that the primary function of any successor body should be, as before, to check the correctness of benefits being paid—whether too much or too little—as distinct from detecting deliberate fraud, which, of course, is another function? Will the new body, if there is one, also be able to investigate where claims are not being made for eligible people who need the benefits?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Yes, my Lords. That is precisely one of the reasons why I suggested that the new review process will seek to identify the problems of under-claiming, including the problem of those who do not claim, as well as of over-claiming. The noble Lord is absolutely right. The review has not been fraud led. Of the 149,000 BIP reviews undertaken, there were only 79 irregularities—and not one individual has been referred for prosecution. I am, indeed, happy to confirm that the review was not fraud based. We need to ensure that we address the problems that BIP has so far failed to address.
Lord Addington: My Lords, taking into account what the Minister has just said, should we not cancel the whole scheme now for the simple reason that it has failed miserably and is clearly causing distress? Should we not call a halt and pull the plug on it?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, obviously Ministers and my honourable friends in another place have considered that. However, it must be remembered that we have a fiduciary duty to ensure that people receive the right level of benefit. Until BIP was introduced, the disability living allowance was the only benefit of which I was aware that did not have a review mechanism. We had a duty to review that. We shall replace it with a much more satisfactory system. It is not right for a benefit not to be reviewed. The system should reflect the fact that people may get better or worse and will need to have their benefit entitlement checked.
Lord Morris of Manchester: My Lords, is it not striking testimony to the integrity of disabled people that of some 150,000 cases investigated, as my noble friend said, not one has been referred for prosecution? What action is proposed to counter the cruel libel still put about by some in the media that fraud is rampant among disabled claimants? Since under-claiming of disability benefits now exceeds £6 billion a year, what further action is being taken to improve take-up by people who are not receiving the help to which they are entitled?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I am happy to confirm my noble friend's statement about fraud. We know that the most common frauds in the social security system are where men claim unemployment benefit while doing work on the side; where women claim a

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single parent's allowance but are cohabiting; or where landlords manipulate the housing benefit system. Those are the main areas of social security fraud. Disability fraud is not a "person fraud". As we have found in BIP, any errors are systems errors. I am happy to confirm that.
Lord Higgins: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the views expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Ashley, are widely held outside the House? The Government seem to be perfectly happy to continue blaming the previous government for the existing situation, but have not done anything about it for a very long time. Indeed, why has it taken so long for any decision to be made? In response to the noble Lord, will the Minister give a clear date by which we are likely to have a definite decision?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, the Social Security Select Committee said last May that the DSS needs to be much more active in reviewing benefits once awarded. It was right. We inherited a deeply-flawed system. I was personally involved for nearly a year in trying to wrestle it back into shape and to turn a system which was about fraud and cutting benefit levels into something that was decent, humane and sensitive. However, the structure did not permit us to turn it around with consent. That is why my right honourable friend the Secretary of State said very clearly that we have to start afresh with a review system which is routine, unthreatening and built on consent but which will continue to check the entitlement to benefit of those under-claiming as well as those over-claiming. That is what we hope to do. But to do so we need to undertake the task sensitively and with the support of the DBF. However, we shall not be able to do it within a matter of days.
Lord Rix: My Lords, can the Minister assure the House that the special needs of people with a learning disability will be taken fully into account in any new review activity which takes place?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I am delighted to be able to confirm that. The areas which obviously require very sensitive and skilled interviewing and training are those which encompass people with special needs or learning disabilities. There are also people with mental health problems or with fluctuating medical conditions. We have benefited from the training and experience of the Disablement Income Group. However, in the new process which will replace BIP, we will need to strengthen even more the training that our staff has so far enjoyed.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, can the Minister say whether instructions have been given to draftsmen and whether a Bill is in the course of preparation in this respect?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I should point out to the House that changing the review process does not require legislation. The welfare reform Bill,
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which your Lordships will no doubt be discussing in the spring, will refer to some of the gateways on to disability benefits more generally. However, this is not a matter for primary legislation; indeed, it does not need to be.

Quality of Life: Indicators
2.46 p.m.
Baroness Ludford Baroness Ludford asked Her Majesty's Government:
Why their proposed "quality of life" barometer excludes indicators on crime and poverty.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Lord Whitty): My Lords, those indicators are intended to focus on the key elements of quality of life which are most relevant to achieving sustainable development; that is, maintaining economic growth, while achieving social justice and protecting the environment both now and for future generations. Choices had to be made in order to arrive at a limited number of indicators. No single indicator can capture poverty, but this and the underlying causes of crime linked to poverty and lack of opportunity are reflected through the indicators on education, employment, housing and health. However, as this is a consultation document, we will consider extending the scope of the indicators in the light of responses.
Baroness Ludford: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his reply; indeed, I believe that the Government deserve some congratulations in proposing indicators. However, can I press the noble Lord on why these two most important quality of life determinants have been left out as direct indicators? After all, we have had the recent report of Sir Donald Acheson on inequalities in health in which he identified low income, especially for families with children, as a major cause of ill health. Moreover, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation recently reported that one-fifth of householders perceived crime as a major problem in their area. Therefore, surely crime and poverty are two major indicators which should be included in this respect. Can the noble Lord assure us that the Government will include them in the final proposals?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, I am always happy to accept the congratulations of the noble Baroness on our general approach. However, on the specific indicators, I can say that we will consider representations during the consultation period. Clearly, both poverty and crime have an effect on the quality of life. There are already in the public arena a number of fairly clear crime indicators which are widely covered in the media. However, poverty is a much more complex matter and falls under education, health and employment sides as well as applying more generally to the quality of life.
Lord Dholakia: My Lords, will the Minister consider commissioning some sort of research which would indicate that the quality of life actually suffers because of the extent of crime and poverty in some of our inner-city areas? Indeed, that may prove to be a very good indicator to take into account on future occasions.
Lord Whitty: My Lords, I accept what the noble Lord says. However, crime and poverty are not headline indicators as regards particular aspects of sustainable development. There is a much wider government policy behind all this, particularly related to issues of social exclusion, which will tackle many of the problems in the inner-cities to which the noble Lord referred.

European Union Objective One Status: Wales
2.49 p.m.
Lord Roberts of Conwy Lord Roberts of Conwy asked Her Majesty's Government:
What progress has been made in negotiating European Union objective one status for Wales as a whole, or for part of it.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Williams of Mostyn): My Lords, EUROSTAT announced recently that the gross domestic product for the West Wales and Valleys NUTS II area over the period 1994–96 was about 71 per cent. of the European Union average. If the Commission's proposals for future eligibility criteria for objective one areas are agreed by member states, this will mean that West Wales and the valleys will receive objective one status for the period 2000 to 2006.
Lord Roberts of Conwy: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. Bearing in mind that three other United Kingdom areas qualify for objective one status under the GDP criteria—Merseyside, South Yorkshire and Cornwall—are the Government broadly content with this as a possible outcome of the final negotiations? Secondly, will the Government consider setting up special arrangements in the case of West Wales and the valleys—which, I think the Minister will agree, is a pretty disparate region—to ensure that there is an ample supply of projects over those years which are acceptable to the Commission and which will enable that region to have the full benefit of the resources available?
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, the noble Lord makes two extremely valid points. As regards his first question, objective one status would bring around £1.5 billion in structural funds to West Wales and the valleys. That would be a fortunate and justified outcome. On his specific question of having projects available, again he is quite right. I am happy to be able to tell your Lordships that the Welsh Office has already established a European task force to design a strategy
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for the use of structural funds after 2000. So we will have detailed, well-worked and well-conceived schemes to put to the Commission.
Lord Islwyn: My Lords, does the Minister appreciate that as well as its immediate ill effects, heavy unemployment brings about ill health, an increase in the incidence of crime and a general down-grading of the community? The news that West Wales and the valleys are in line for objective one status is to be warmly welcomed. I wish the Government every success in their efforts to bring this about.
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, of course the social consequences—not least in poor health—are extremely important. We have done extremely well to negotiate this likely outcome. The NUTS II area includes no fewer than 15 Welsh local authorities out of a total of 22. These 15 include Anglesey and Conwy—to forestall further questions—and include two-thirds of the population of Wales.
Lord Elis-Thomas: My Lords, I have to disappoint the Minister in that I am speaking as a resident of the county of Conwy, although not specifically on the issue of that county. I would like the Minister to convey our congratulations to the Welsh Office and to the task force on the work that they are doing. I would ask: what are the implications of any additional European funding on the block funding—which will be the funding for the assembly—bearing in mind the deliberations on these matters of the noble Lord, Lord Barnett?
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, at present the position is that, normally, additional public expenditure for matching would have to come from within the Welsh block grant. Negotiations on the future of structural funds are under way within the European Union and the arrangements post-2000 remain to be determined.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, will the Minister give the House an assurance that he will bear in mind during the course of the negotiations that are taking place in regard to this matter that after all it is our own money that we are claiming?
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, if it comes to assist West Wales and the valleys—and bearing in mind what the noble Lord, Lord Islwyn, rightly pointed out—I do not care whose money it is as long as we get it.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, is it not the case that, apart from Wales—to which I wish every success in the review taking place—there are areas in England, such as the north west, the north east and South Yorkshire, that are every bit as disadvantaged as anywhere in Wales, south or otherwise? Will the

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Minister ensure that the case for these areas in England does not go by default while these deliberations are taking place?
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, the criteria are general criteria and affect and relate to each relevant area within the United Kingdom. Therefore, curiously, Wales is not being unduly favoured on this occasion.
Lord Barnett: My Lords, will my noble friend clarify some of his answers? Does he mean that the funds received by Wales through the Barnett formula will not be reduced?
Lord Williams of Mostyn: No, my Lords. The position remains as I have indicated. There are negotiations under way within the European Union on the future of the structural funds for the United Kingdom as a whole. The future arrangements post-2000 therefore remain to be decided.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, bearing in mind the timescale of the baseline and the per capita income levels as criteria, will the Minister confirm that it is a sad reflection on the stewardship of the country under the previous administration that we end up having to claim these particular categories for any part of the United Kingdom? Will he confirm categorically that unlike the previous administration, who would not make matching government funds available so that European moneys could be claimed, this Government will ensure that matching funds are available if necessary?
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, we are dealing with the consequences of the stewardship of the previous regime. There have been long-term structural problems in the Welsh economy. I am not sure that I want to point the finger at any particular regime, but we are dealing with the situation which we found. The Welsh Office is doing extremely well building on the work, if I may say so, of our predecessors. It is extremely gratifying that in an area of grave social difficulty we are managing to get funds to put things right.
Lord Renton: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that under the 18 years of the previous government the Welsh economy prospered as it had never done before in this century?
Lord Williams of Mostyn: Well, my Lords, not really.
Lord Roberts of Conwy: My Lords, we are all very grateful to the Minister for the illuminating replies that he has given and for the quiet tribute that he has paid to the previous administration. In return, I can tell him that the real problem is the one touched upon by the noble Lord, Lord Monkswell—the problem of securing matching funds which may well fall to the assembly to achieve. Does the Minister agree?
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, the question of matching funds is critical. The funds will not be
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released from Europe unless we have the matching funds. But my noble friend Lord Monkswell was not applauding the previous government; he was stigmatising them for their meanness of imagination and reflective thought in not providing matching funds. I was far too gentle to agree with my noble friend Lord Monkswell in that proposition—but I shall now.

AONBs and SSSIs: Protection
2.58 p.m.
Lord Renton of Mount Harry Lord Renton of Mount Harry asked Her Majesty's Government:
When they will announce their decisions regarding future legislation for the protection of areas of outstanding natural beauty and sites of special scientific interest; and what is the proposed timetable for such legislation.
Lord Whitty: My Lords, we are still giving detailed consideration to the Countryside Commission's formal advice on protecting our finest countryside, including the future arrangements for areas of outstanding natural beauty. There is a great deal to consider but we hope to announce some conclusions soon. We are currently consulting on the protection of sites of special scientific interest and will consider those responses. We will look for a suitable opportunity to legislate once it is clear that that is required.
Lord Renton of Mount Harry: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that reply and I remind your Lordships that I am chairman of the Sussex Downs Conservation Board. Perhaps I may ask the Minister for his department's definition of "soon", bearing in mind that his colleague in another place, Mr. Meale, recently said that an announcement on these proposals would be made "very soon". In the noble Lord's department, is "soon" sooner than "very soon" or later? Is there not now such a logjam on environmental proposals in the Department of the Environment that there is a danger of all legislation regarding the countryside being pushed onto the back burner? Would it not be sense for the Government to commit themselves to bringing in a Bill in the next Session which simply deals with the protected areas and protected wildlife, ANOBs and SSSIs? Such a Bill might well get all-party support, get through both Houses of Parliament very quickly and thus show in the millennium year that the Government are doing something to meet their commitment to environmental protection.
Lord Whitty: My Lords, I note with interest and delight the noble Lord's offer in this respect. If it emerges in the next Queen's Speech that we are pursuing such a Bill, I am sure that it would receive substantial support in this House. However, some complicated issues are involved here. We are still making up our minds. The definition of "soon" as

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against "very soon" I will leave to your Lordships. But we would hope to make a decision "soon" subsuming "very soon".
Lord Bridges: My Lords, in considering this matter, will the Government, in the course of their review, examine the procedures being followed in the Department of the Environment for planning applications inside an AONB? At present, the procedure is that if such an application is made the Department of the Environment will not have anything to do with the consideration by the planning authority until that authority has decided that it is minded to approve. By that time, as I know very well from my experience in East Anglia, where a foreign developer is proposing to create a commercial airport within an AONB, the planning authority may have committed itself or may find it difficult to reverse its decision. Surely the Department of the Environment ought to have a constructive discussion with the planning authority to guide it as to its responsibilities, which, in the case which I mentioned, and as I know from my correspondence with Ms. Jackson, is not happening at the moment.
Lord Whitty: My Lords, the prime responsibility in all these planning matters rests with the local authorities and with the authorities within areas of outstanding natural beauty. However, my honourable friend Dick Caborn, the Minister for Planning, is reviewing all planning processes. That will include those which apply to AONBs and other areas of outstanding natural interest.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his encouraging reply to this important question. Does he agree that some areas require almost instant attention and that some areas must be given priority over others so that these parts of our country can be saved by his actions?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, I welcome my noble friend's support. There are always priorities involved. Nevertheless, we are clearly committed to protecting and enhancing the beauty of these areas of our country and protecting the areas of special scientific interest. This has been shown in our approach to infrastructure developments and road planning where we have greatly reduced the number of such sites that will be affected. This is a difficult area. As I said in my first answer, we will be making an announcement soon.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: My Lords, what steps are the Government taking on funding the AONBs so that they will not be relying on a medley of assorted partners to come up with what they think they might be able to afford?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, I am able to say that the new Countryside Agency, which is being created by the merger of the RDC and the Countryside Commission,
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will have an additional £2.5 million to spend on AONBs next year, which is more than double the amount available at present.
Lord Marlesford: My Lords, I wish to follow up the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, with regard to the quite astonishing proposal to convert the former RAF Bentwaters into a regional airport in an AONB in one of the most beautiful and tranquil parts of Suffolk. The council has been heavily lobbied by the commercial promoters. No infrastructure for transport by either road or rail is available in the area. If it were to go ahead it could be the end of the Aldeburgh Festival, one of Britain's major cultural events. In order to underline the Government's commitment to the protection of rural England in these special areas, will the Minister arrange for this application to be called in for determination by the Secretary of State in accordance with overall priorities for the country as a whole?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, what I can do is to note the noble Lord's remarks. However, were a decision to be taken for the site to be called in, it would not be appropriate for me to comment because the Secretary of State would then he acting in a quasi-judicial capacity.
Lord Hardy of Wath: My Lords, will my noble friend confirm that over the past 20 years astonishing damage has been done to large numbers of areas of outstanding natural beauty and to SSSIs? May one hope that the Government, when they complete their complex review, will be able to bring forward helpful arrangements which will meet general approval?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, there has been damage to some SSSIs. We would intend that whatever new policy we come up with as a result of this consultation will address the worst of those problems and, it is to be hoped, all of those problems.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: My Lords, can the Minister confirm that when the Government do produce answers to these very difficult problems—I admit that they are difficult—they will also produce answers to the questions about the future status as national parks of the South Downs and of the New Forest?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, your Lordships may know that the Countryside Commission has given formal advice on that as well. In relation to the New Forest, it is proposing that it should indeed become a national park. In relation to the South Downs, it is suggesting that the conservation board, of which the noble Lord, Lord Renton, is chairman, should be converted to a statutory basis. Ministers are still considering that advice.
Baroness Byford: My Lords, does the Minister accept that the contributions of noble Lords this afternoon have only highlighted the dilemma facing the department at the moment? The Government have no overall strategy for the environment. Will the

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Government accept the suggestion of my noble friend Lord Renton that on this issue alone there seems to be unanimity around the Chamber and that some form of legislation should come through sooner rather than later?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, I would refute the noble Baroness's original remark. The environmental strategy that we have adopted under my right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister has been one of the clearest and most ambitious programmes that the Government have embarked on both nationally and internationally. I think that, in different contexts, this House acknowledges that. I acknowledge that there are some dilemmas facing the Government, particularly with regard to this area. We hope to resolve them soon and report to your Lordships' House accordingly.
Lord Ewing of Kirkford: My Lords, as my noble friend is such a nice, innocent and generous sort of chap, may an old, hardened politician like me caution my noble friend about accepting, against the background of the events of last week, any offer from the Benches opposite of all-party support on anything? Has he not noticed that the Cross-Benches are becoming rather crowded?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, I appreciate that the context in which these measures may be brought forward next Session or beyond may be somewhat different. Nevertheless, I think that noble Lords here and in prospect will support the measures when the Government eventually come through with them.

Business
Lord Carter: My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m., my noble friend Lady Hayman will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement that is being made in another place on mental health.

Science and Technology: Select Committee
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Boston of Faversham): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That a Select Committee be appointed to consider science and technology and that, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the following Lords be named of the Select Committee:

L. Birdwood,

L. Haskel,

B. Hogg,

L. Howie of Troon,

L. Jenkin of Roding,

L. Kirkwood,

L. Nathan,

L. Perry of Walton,

L. Phillips of Ellesmere,

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B. Platt of Writtle,

L. Porter of Luddenham,

L. Ponsonby of Shulbrede,

L. Rea,

L. Soulsby of Swaffham Prior,

L. Tombs,

L. Walton of Detchant,

L. Winston (Chairman);

That the Committee have power to appoint sub-committees and that the Committee have power to appoint the Chairmen of sub-committees;
That the Committee have power to co-opt any Lord for the purposes of serving on the Committee or any sub-committee;
That the Committee have leave to report from time to time;
That the Committee and any sub-committee have power to adjourn from place to place;
That the Committee and any sub-committee have power to appoint specialist advisers;
That the minutes of evidence taken before the Committee or any sub-committee from time to time shall, if the Committee think fit, be printed and delivered out; and
That the Committee do meet on Tuesday 15th December at a quarter before eleven o'clock.—(The Chairman of Committees.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Strategic Defence Review
3.8 p.m.
Lord Gilbert Lord Gilbert rose to move, That this House take note of the conclusions of Her Majesty's Government's Strategic Defence Review (Cm 3999).
The noble Lord said: My Lords, at last we are having a debate on the SDR. It has been some time since the review was published. I will rhubarb for some time until noble Lords have removed themselves from the premises—all those who are not going to listen to my dulcet tones with the attention that they deserve. I think that we derive a certain benefit not open to the other House in having the advantage of the perspective of several months before we come to debate the provisions of the review.
There are one or two matters I wish to make clear from the outset. As your Lordships may or may not recall, on one of the first occasions that I spoke in your Lordships' House I said that to me it had always been a matter of the highest importance to try to make defence a bipartisan question within this country. We in this Government want to make it clear that we were building on success and not on failure when we inherited our responsibilities last year. Our Armed Forces have a record that is second to none. I have been most heartened by the generous response from all parts of this House to the Government's strategic defence review.
Having said that, it was of course obvious to us that modernisation and enhancements were needed in many key areas and that defence needed a coherent vision to

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revitalise it for the challenges of the next century. We were also encouraged by the welcome the review has been given not only from the service chiefs but also from men and women throughout the Armed Forces. However, what really matters, as your Lordships will be astute enough to realise, is that we follow through the review. I am sure that your Lordships will be diligent in monitoring our progress in that respect.
The review was, of course, foreign policy led. Set against a foreign policy framework, it was rigorous, unsentimental and extremely thorough in its approach. There was a broad degree of consensus inside and outside government about the international security context in which we found ourselves and the role that defence should play in support of our interests and responsibilities.
As regards the future of NATO and of European security in general, these were subjects in which your Lordships displayed considerable interest during the recent debate on the Queen's speech. The Atlantic Alliance has changed almost beyond recognition since the end of the Cold War. These days it is difficult even to remember the psychological climate in which we used to operate in those days. The Atlantic Alliance has been a prime mover in shaping our security environment for many decades now and, more recently, in creating new partnerships with our former potential enemies outside the Alliance and with the new candidate members who will be joining us shortly. There is, of course, increasing attention paid now to non-Article 5 activities in the run-up to the Washington Summit. We now have the opportunity, in the new strategic concept currently under preparation, to set out clearly a long-term vision for NATO's future.
Similarly we must demonstrate the relevance of a European security and defence identity. As every serious commentator now recognises, a stronger European identity is in no sense an alternative to the transAtlantic relationship, but a necessary and long overdue complement to it. Our challenge is to give Europe an effective military capability, which so far it has sadly lacked, to contribute to NATO operations when our friends across the Atlantic either do not wish, or do not need, to be involved. We need to recognise candidly the harsh fact that in many European countries military reality does not reflect the local rhetoric. This was recognised in the Joint Declaration on European Defence made at the Franco-British Summit in St. Malo last week.
The declaration identified the need for countries in Europe to strengthen their armed forces to provide a credible and effective response to the new security risks, but also made it clear that our shared understanding is that NATO is the foundation of Europe's collective security. As so many brickbats are sometimes thrown in a certain direction, I think it is pertinent for me to draw your Lordships' attention to the fact that France will provide between 1,000 and 2,000 troops for the extraction force in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia under NATO command. We feel that NATO will be strengthened by improved military capabilities
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and co-operation in Europe and by the implementation of the Berlin arrangements for a European security identity.
A number of noble Lords have mentioned in other debates, or in correspondence with the MoD, emerging risks such as information warfare, the problems of dealing with so-called asymmetric responses to our conventional capabilities, and the challenges posed by new technologies. I have touched on these subjects at this Dispatch Box over recent months and I do not propose to discuss them in greater detail today, but just to make it clear beyond peradventure that these are matters that have the attention of defence Ministers at this time. The Government take these issues seriously and will ensure that our defence capabilities are adjusted as necessary to cope with these challenges. These are, of course, issues not only for the Ministry of Defence; they are issues that concern government as a whole and they are kept under constant review across government. We have put in place a planning process that can address all aspects of the future evolution of warfare and our responses to it.
The process of modernising the Armed Forces has involved taking some difficult and sometimes painful decisions. However, the crucial test has always been that our forces must be able to deploy quickly, operate effectively and sustain and support themselves in difficult environments. They must be usable and relevant across the range of circumstances in which they might be required to operate. Consequently, we are restructuring our forces, shifting the emphasis towards an expeditionary and force projection capability of a kind that we have not had for many years. In practice this means a series of enhancements to build a capability fit for the next century. We need capable Joint Rapid Reaction Forces with substantial firepower and protection. We need the new strategic airlift and sealift to deploy those forces rapidly. We also need vital logistics, engineering and communications assets to support those forces once they have been deployed. To that end we shall add 3,000 personnel to the Army. A sixth deployable brigade for the Army and the development of an air manoeuvre brigade will be centred around the Apache attack helicopter.
One of the most difficult questions we have had to address is that of our legacy. I point no finger of blame at anyone when I refer to the state of the defence medical services. We shall invest some £135 million in enhancements over the next four years, including the acquisition of a new 200 bed casualty receiving ship. We shall bring forward more detailed proposals on the defence medical services very soon indeed.
We are also extending our power projection capability by fitting all our nuclear powered attack submarines with the Tomahawk cruise missile. Many of your Lordships may have seen that that was successfully fired off the coast of California a few days ago. We have plans for new, larger aircraft carriers and a joint Navy and Air Force unit to operate from them.
From time to time the noble Lord, Lord Burnham, has expressed a certain scepticism as to whether or not those carriers would ever arrive. I can tell your Lordships that

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I have already received the first papers in connection with the early work that we shall need to undertake in respect of procuring those carriers. Those papers are receiving my full attention. I have a number of questions to ask the admirals about those papers, but the process has already begun. These ships will give us the capacity to project power and to underline our resolve in crises, wherever they may occur around the world.
Joint service co-operation and integration will be vital both to maximise the military output from our defence expenditure and to improve our ability to support the front line. The Smart Procurement Initiative will be a key. That will not solve generations of procurement problems overnight, as I know very well, having had to wrestle with precisely those sorts of problems some 20 years ago in the Ministry of Defence. However, I am convinced that the new arrangements that we are putting into place, with, I am delighted to tell the House, the co-operation of both sides of industry, will produce major savings and greatly improve the service that we give to the front line, in particular with respect to maintain ability. I made it one of my first priorities a few days after taking office to visit Abbey Wood and to state that maintainability was an absolutely top priority. Although we propose overall to reduce our holdings of spare parts—when we have found out exactly what they are, given the inadequacies of our existing IT structures—I hope that we will make sure that some of the vital shortages that have occurred in the past will not recur.
We have set up a high-powered central SDR implementation team to track progress on these matters. We also have integrated project teams who will "live" with individual equipment projects from their concept stage, through their development and production aid through the life of the piece of kit that we are acquiring. We are revising our standard contracts with our defence suppliers so that they hold themselves responsible for making sure that spare parts are available right through the anticipated service life of the equipment that they sell to the department. Those contracts will of course attract financial inducement, and financial penalties should shortcomings arise.
I emphasise again that we have received enthusiastic support from industry in these new developments. We have already established some 10 integrated project teams and are on course to establish the new Procurement Executive as an agency by 1st April next year.
We decided in the SDR that individual service logistic organisations should be brought together into a unified organisation. General Sam Cowan has been appointed to take control of the new organisations and to develop the arrangements after an appropriate transition, which will take a little time, into one integrated organisation. His priorities will include not only the reduction in stockholdings but also reductions in the infrastructure for storage of those stockholdings. He will also be working to achieve the convergence of the different IT systems and processes used within the support area by the three services. That will be a key step in making the management of logistics a more efficient business.
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We are taking forward what is known as the Joint Force 2000 Initiative. This is intended to build upon the success of recent joint operations from our aircraft carriers involving the Royal Navy's air defence Sea Harrier FA2 and the Royal Air Force's ground attack Harrier GR7. This concept involves the formation of a joint force which will be deployable as a key element of the new Joint Rapid Reaction Force. The headquarters of Joint Force 2000 will be established in a new fixed-wing maritime group, which will also include Nimrod maritime aircraft, within RAF Strike Command under the control of a Royal Navy Rear Admiral. It will be commanded by an RAF Air Commodore and will be in place by the year 2000.
I have probably said all that noble Lords wish to hear from me on the restructuring of the Territorial Army. Noble Lords will no doubt wish to raise points for answer at the end of the debate.
So far as concerns Trident, we have signed an MOU with the United States covering revised Trident missile procurement and buy-back arrangements. Our requirement for 58 Trident missile bodies is seven fewer than under the plans of the previous government. With the MOU and buy-back plan we expect that our decisions will result in a saving of around £50 million.
We are extremely proud to have launched an equal opportunities centre at Shrivenham, and now have mandatory targets for equal opportunities training. All the chiefs have themselves either been or are about to go through the course at Shrivenham. We wish to make it absolutely clear that the Armed Forces and Ministers are determined to maintain a policy of zero tolerance on racial discrimination or harassment in Her Majesty's Armed Forces.
The equal opportunities training centre is the first of its kind in Europe. It provides equal opportunities training for service equal opportunities advisers and all senior service and MoD civilian personnel at one star level or above. In this context, we were delighted to receive the recent visit from General Powell from the United States and to be able to draw on his experience. I am hopeful that that visit, with his sagacious advice and many years of experience, will prove to be of great benefit to us in this field of activity.
We have also launched the Veterans Advice Unit. It opened within the MoD for business on 5th October. In the first eight weeks of operation, it has taken over 1,300 calls from ex-service personnel and their dependants. The unit is manned by five serving warrant officers. It offers advice on where to seek expert help on a range of issues of concern to former service personnel. So far, those have included issues such as homecare and housing, Falklands and Gulf War issues, finance, and how relatives might be traced. The largest number of calls have concerned pensions, employment, the provision of medals and inquiries about the unit itself. While we have done a great deal to publicise the setting up of the unit, I am confident that any help your Lordships could provide in that respect would be greatly welcomed by the MoD and by ex-servicemen's organisations.

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Finally, as I am sure noble Lords recognise, it is beyond the power of this Government to implement the Strategic Defence Review in isolation from our allies. Our work has given us important insights with a broader relevance, which will be reflected in NATO's modernised strategic concept; namely, the blueprint for a new NATO to be adopted at the 50th birthday summit in Washington next year.
We intend also to work with our friends in Europe to turn rhetoric into practical defence co-operation. We are working to enhance the ability of the United Nations to conduct peace support missions. In that context, our increase in strategic air and seaborne lift capability will be extremely important.
We are also working to maintain the multinational interoperability on which our continuing operational success depends. These are areas where we shall have to invest heavily in the years ahead. That sort of interoperability does not come cheap.
Noble Lords need no lectures from me on today's agenda—Kosovo; the Gulf; people such as Mr. Milosevic; and the problems that we still have in Northern Ireland. But perhaps the greatest test of the Strategic Defence Review will be its ability to deal with challenges that we cannot yet even identify, let alone predict. In the Strategic Defence Review we have given the Armed Forces and all those who work in defence a robust vision of how our forces will be shaped through the first decades at least of the next century. We are now putting that vision into practice and, at a time when Britain's armed forces are once again in the headlines as a very real force for good, I am delighted to be able to commend our work to your Lordships. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House take note of the conclusions of Her Majesty's Government's Strategic Defence Review (Cm 3999).—(Lord Gilbert.)
3.29 p.m.
Earl Attlee: My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the Minister for giving us the opportunity to debate this important matter at what is realistically the first opportunity. I am grateful for the Minister's comments about building upon the success of the previous administration. I enjoy taking a bipartisan attitude, which I shall certainly have to do, with my new responsibilities.
I particularly look forward to the contribution of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Vincent of Coleshill, whom I first met when he was at NATO. It was a surprising visit for me because at the same time I also met at NATO headquarters a representative of the Russian Government. Developments since then have brought us to where we are now.
We on these Benches were extremely sceptical about the rationale behind the SDR, and indeed the outcome is a substantial reduction in the mobilised strength of the British Army. In addition, there is a planned reduction in expenditure of nearly £1 billion. However, it is nothing like as bad as we had anticipated. As the Minister stated, the broad thrust is to move away from a plan for all-out war in western Europe and instead to enhance our already unique expeditionary capability.
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I note the Minister's comments about the St. Malo declaration and its relevance to NATO, and I am sure that our FCO team will be equally interested.
It is unfair to criticise previous reviews that had different objectives, and I am pleased that the Minister has not done so. The Minister referred to DCS 15. It was partly a visit by the all-party defence study group and the HCDC that identified problems to Ministers some time ago. Unfortunately, the situation remains grim. I understand that there are still only about four orthopaedic surgeons in the Regular Army. Furthermore, morale in the defence medical services could be improved, to say the least.
There are difficulties with the SDR. It does very little, other than offer fine words, to reduce the overstretch. Indeed, much is made of the likelihood of further operations in the foreseeable future. The collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union has made peacekeeping operations all over the world much more prevalent than during the old Cold War days. The Minister talked of the welcome increase in regular forces, but that will not greatly alter the percentage of the Regular Army involved in operations. We doubt that the new aircraft carriers will be built, but I am grateful for the Minister's helpful comments. The TA has been decimated. The 3 per cent. year-on-year efficiency savings have been described as "challenging". Presumably this will equate to a further cut in budget if the savings are not realised. Can the Minister assure me that the MoD budget is on target for the next two years?
On these occasions we ritually heap lavish praise on our Armed Forces and we are, rightly, convinced that it is fully justified. In the past five years, as a civilian NGO aid worker, I have been protected by our Armed Forces in Bosnia and, more recently, I have had the honour to serve with them in that troubled land. If anything, our praise is understated. Unfortunately, I do not have time to go into more detail.
There are, however, serious manning and morale problems due to overstretch, which the SDR and the Minister recognise. But the SDR does not indicate any attempt to reduce operational commitments and we still do not know what is the foreign policy basis of the SDR. The SDR states that full manning for the Army should be achieved by around 2004. We know that the services, and in particular the Army, are experiencing very high rates of marriage breakdown. In addition, it is extremely difficult for young, single soldiers to establish durable relationships due to pressure from operations and training. Like all its predecessors, SDR contains fine words, but will they match reality?
Before speaking about the TA, I remind the House that I have an interest as I currently command a REME TA recovery company at Redhill, which has, fortunately, survived the SDR. In view of my direct interest, I shall leave it to others to comment upon the proposed size of the TA and anything to do with man training days. I detect a modest amount of spinning regarding training on battle-winning equipment, such as Challenger 2. This was referred to by the Minister when he repeated the Statement on the structure of the TA. Noble Lords will be aware that operating a main battle

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tank (MBT) is a highly specialised business. I believe that it would be a waste of time and resources to train TA personnel for this role when there will inevitably be far more crews in the Regular Army and the Regular Army Reserve than there are MBTs to be crewed. Furthermore, what regular unit would want to lend its carefully maintained MBT to a TA unit? I certainly do not believe that there is an intention to issue MBTs to TA units. Is there an operational requirement? If there is, why is it not identified in the SDR? If the TA is to have an enhanced armoured role, it should be with light armoured vehicles that would be useful for rear area security. Talk of MBTs is just a spin.
Talk of a more relevant, usable, integrated and rewarding role for the TA is welcome. Increasing use of the TA will help make the hard training much more worthwhile and relevant. All units in the new TA structure are now to be fully recruited. It was always my understanding that the target was that the TA would be 100 per cent. recruited; the difficulty was how to achieve that. What changes will the average member of the TA and the reserve forces see and experience?
I have been in the TA since I was 17½. I confess that, when I started, I practically hero-worshipped my senior NCO regular permanent staff instructors (PSIs). In the same way that one realises that one's parents are not infallible, this relationship with the various PSIs has changed over the years. Now that I am in command, I rely upon my PSIs to do the things that my TA NCOs cannot do. I also rely upon their wise counsel and experience. The non-regular permanent staff NCOs, who are effectively full-time TA, while very useful, are no substitute. They lack the Regular Army currency, rapidly experience skill fade and can have an "old soldier" attitude.
The optimum number of PSIs per unit has been determined with many years of experience and does not vary directly with the number in a particular unit, each PSI post having a particular function rather than a responsibility for a proportion of the soldiers in a unit. That being the case, can the Minister explain why there is a plan to reduce the number of PSIs at each surviving unit? Does he agree that this plan would fly in the face of all the spin on "improving" the TA and making it "more usable"? How can the TA become better integrated with the Regular Army if the Regular Army input and ethos is to be reduced? Furthermore, is the Minister aware that the Regular Army itself needs these high profile postings in order to create good career opportunities for the best NCOs?
I turn to a matter that is more the responsibility of the Minister of Defence Procurement. My point impinges on Smart Procurement and concerns MBT variants. The existing Challenger 2 is termed a gun tank but the REME and Royal Engineers also operate variants. The REME have in service the Challenger Armoured Recovery and Repair Vehicle (CRARRV). Automotively it is a Challenger 2. The Royal Engineers have in service Chieftain Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers (AVREs) and Armoured Vehicles Laying Bridges (AVLBs). Neither of these vehicles can keep up with the in service Challenger MBT and urgently need
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to be replaced. My understanding is that the Minister is seeking competitive bids for these equipments. He is certainly looking far and wide, to the extent that he is even considering a Polish T72.
Another option is to rework some Challenger 1 MBT hulls. Does the Minister agree that the cost of logistic support to anything other than a Challenger 2 variant would be prohibitive? This cost arises from the increased training requirement, increased Equipment Support facilities in any operational theatre and a massive increase in spares inventory of the formation holding these low population variants. As for the need for a competitive bid, he knows what was paid for the CRRARV recovery variant and the engineer variants will not be technically too wildly different. Will the Minister's procurement policy for MBT variants be under the Smart Procurement initiative, will it be competitive or instead will it be smart and recognise that technically there is no alternative to a Challenger 2 variant?
The Armed Forces face many challenges but a particular one is information technology. For example, the essay on the reserve forces stated that the IT system would be improved better to manage reserve forces. Presumably, this is a reference to the UNICOM system that is now being finally installed. Unfortunately, this system was first introduced in the late 1980s and has been overtaken by advances in technology. One must remember that the power of a laptop doubles almost every 18 months but that the MoD takes years to procure anything. I sympathise with Ministers who have to grapple with anything to do with IT policy at the MoD. I fear that the policy is one that is almost impossible to manage.
I enjoyed the Minister's opening of the debate. We are broadly pleased with the way in which SDR was undertaken and its outcome. I have identified some difficulties particularly with the TA. I am sure that other noble Lords will raise important and interesting points this afternoon. It is unfortunate that my role is to identify weaknesses and largely to ignore any good decisions that have been made that we wholeheartedly support. My real anxiety is that some of the fine words and sentiments in the SDR may prove to be just that.
3.43 p.m.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, we in the Liberal Democrats also welcome this review and its overall outcome in defence terms. It is far better to have a thorough going review like this than to continue with the death of a thousand cuts. In a number of ways this has reversed the minor mistakes which the previous Conservative government made in pushing Frontline First and thus cutting back on some of the necessary support facilities, in particular medical forces. Clearly, it is correct to invest in long-range sea and air lift and in more flexible forces.
We also greatly welcome the further extension of joint operations and command. It is efficient, saves money and reduces inter-service rivalry. We also welcome the reduction in the number of nuclear warheads and the general stepping back of our emphasis

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on the independent nuclear deterrent. In particular, as a party that has been much concerned with the promotion of equal opportunities in defence we also welcome the new stress on that matter, the excellent conference that was held and the presence of General Colin Powell. My noble friend Lord Dholakia informs me that the Ministry of Defence is moving forward in many ways on this front. Recently in Birmingham there was active Ministry of Defence participation in a programme to give awards to Asians who had done well in the Armed Forces.
We have however some questions. We are unsure exactly what the role of the aircraft carriers will be. Is it intended that the aircraft carriers when built will have joint floating command post capacities? That appears to be an important part of how we view their future role. We also have a number of questions about the future integration of reserve forces into the regular Armed Forces. If, as seems most likely, British forces will be engaged over the next 10 to 15 years in a number of awkward peace-keeping and peace-making activities, some of the points touched on by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee—the problems faced by soldiers on the ground who serve abroad and are away from their families for long periods—raise questions as to how far the Army should be encouraged to move towards long-term service for all of its infantry and support troops. As I have said in previous debates, I believe that the integration of reserve forces on short service, or even on three-year terms, is perhaps desirable because it deals with the problem of keeping people away from their homes and their loved ones for too long.
We also welcome the concept of defence diplomacy and the emphasis that is given to that concept in the report. I have seen examples in central and eastern Europe of the extent to which British officers help to train and retrain the armed forces of former socialist countries. There is a great deal that can be done in eastern Europe, Africa and elsewhere to educate the military to understand how to operate in a civilian-led world. There is a lot that we can do with our immensely good training base. We can invite others over here to take part in training with the British Armed Services.
As a university teacher I am struck by the commitment of Armed Forces personnel to peacekeeping and peacemaking. When I visited the Department of Peace Studies at Bradford two months ago, I was particularly struck by the number of people who had left the Armed Services and gone straight there to study as a clear indication that that was what they wanted to do next. At present a former Welsh Guards officer is studying European integration with me. He moved from the Welsh Guards to Carl Bildt's personal staff and now for some odd reason believes that the London School of Economics has something to offer him.
Our hesitation is concerned with the foreign policy framework. We were not entirely convinced that this was foreign policy led. The strategic framework was very loosely defined. There was almost no consultation with our European allies during the review. That has followed rather than preceded the review. There are
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some astonishingly loose references in the opening chapter of the review to the Gulf and beyond and to Britain's,
"dependence on imports of oil".
I thought that Britain was largely self-sufficient in oil.
There are some very big questions about the Middle East and the Gulf in particular which I do not believe the strategic review takes into account. The oil price now stands at an historically low level. The likelihood is that oil supply will exceed demand for the next five, 10 or possibly 15 years, with Venezuela wishing to expand its oil production very substantially and central Asia about to come on stream and predicted to supply some 10 per cent. of the world's oil demand in 10 years' time. This is not a strategic context in which we need to keep forces in the Gulf to protect oil supplies; rather, it is a context in which possibly the Middle East will be an area of considerable internal turmoil, but not necessarily one in which we should assume that we play the role of world policemen in the Gulf.
I have some very big questions as to how far American assumptions about Middle East policy are ones with which the British should necessarily go along. At lunchtime I heard Carl Bildt say that the new central front for NATO for the foreseeable future is south-eastern Europe and that we are going to have to commit troops long term to maintaining the peace there and to providing the framework within which civilian societies can grow, develop and become stable. That is clearly a commitment which we share with our other European and North American allies. Beyond that I found in the Strategic Defence Review a larger number of questions than answers. How far do we see British interests at stake in the Eastern and Southern Mediterranean? How far do we see British interests at stake in the collapsed societies of Southern, Eastern and Western Africa? Do we see ourselves playing a peacemaking and peacekeeping role there? These carry large implications for the kinds of forces and the long-range power projection that we might ourselves need.
There is very little reference in the Strategic Defence Review to the current immense American preoccupation with weapons of mass destruction and the American predilection for using long-range air power to suppress "rogue states"—the current American phrase—which seem to be developing these new weapons of mass destruction. I hesitate to accept the American perception that NATO now has to expand and take on a world role. Part of the argument that we need to have between a developing European pillar within the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the United States is precisely about the balance between NATO's regional responsibilities and the broader global responsibilities which we all share as members of the United Nations. I, and many others in this House, also share the nervousness on this side of the Atlantic about American determination at present that NATO should be able to operate outside its own area without UN supervision and some UN backing.

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Having said that, we on these Benches welcome very strongly the St. Malo agreement. It puts the horse after the cart, but nevertheless it is the right horse. There is nothing very new in closer European defence co-operation. After all, it is developing the European pillar which President Kennedy called for in his Declaration of Interdependence on 4th July 1962. There is nothing dangerously Euro-fanatic about it, though that is the way in which William Hague was reported as having greeted the St. Malo agreement last weekend. After all, Britain was one of the founders of the Eurogroup some 30 years ago. We have had a Dutch-British marine amphibious force now for 25 years. We have had joint naval forces in the North Sea and the Channel for 20 years. We have had a Franco-British air wing for nearly two years.
Clearly, it makes sense to work more closely with those with whom we may have to operate most closely. We are unlikely to be operating on our own in most conceivable circumstances over the next 10 to 15 years. There are not many specific threats to Britain and certainly there is no direct military threat to us. This is an area where Britain can legitimately take the lead in Europe and should do so. Sadly, it has failed to lead for much of the past 30 years.
Where then should the St. Malo declaration take us? I welcome its terms, which suggest that we move much of the limited capacities of the WEU into the second pillar of the European Union without unnecessary duplication. We should have a capacity for the analysis of information sources of intelligence and the capability for relevant strategic planning. That seems an extremely sensible way forward. We clearly need to reinforce that with a strong political figure as the new Secretary-General for the Council of Ministers, "Mr. CFSP", someone comparable to the Secretary-General of NATO in order to balance the European pillar with our American friends.
I and my party look to a further strengthening of European forces and, as we are talking about sources of intelligence, to greater European satellite intelligence capacity and perhaps towards some kind of AWACS model for joint, long-range air lifts. Coalitions of the willing are something that we should be doing our best to develop further. I also encourage the Government to make it more visible: for example, to have the British and Dutch Prime Ministers standing together inspecting the British-Dutch marine amphibious forces and perhaps joint British-French fly pasts where we can see them. As the Minister may know, I was one of those who expressed a wish that we should have a Guards Regiment march down the Champs Elysees on 14th July last on the 50th anniversary of the occasion when the Scots Guards did so in 1938. That is the kind of thing which makes it real to the Murdoch press and others—and even to William Hague—that we are in a European partnership and that we want to make it work.
This Franco-British initiative marks a very clear step forward, based on a Strategic Defence Review, which also marks a clear advance. On that basis we very much welcome what has been achieved.
3.55 p.m.
Lord Vincent of Coleshill: My Lords, it has been a special honour for me to join your Lordships in this House. I am very grateful for the warm welcome I have received. Maiden speeches have something of a daunting reputation, but I find the occasion slightly more relaxing than my first visit in a NATO capacity to Moscow where I spent two hours alone with the Duma Defence Committee.
As two years have now elapsed since I had my introduction into this House, I should perhaps make it clear that the delay in making my maiden speech certainly implies no lack of interest or respect on my part. It has occurred quite simply because, since the end of my full-time military service, I have found myself increasingly engaged in a variety of new and unexpected activities including, by invitation, the Strategic Defence Review. More specifically, I did not think it appropriate to speak on matters related to that review until it had been completed and I could judge both the process and its final outcome on its merits.
I have of course been directly concerned with reviews of this nature both on a national basis and in the wider international context of NATO. Therefore, I know from first-hand experience how difficult it is to structure and undertake them in a manner that avoids narrow vested interests and produces timely changes that are, above all, strategically and operationally sound. Such an undertaking becomes even more challenging as an ever smaller proportion of our population—maybe we should be grateful for this—has any experience of military service and the ultimate test of military operations.
It is an accident of history for me personally that my military career, starting with National Service in 1950, spanned almost the whole of the Cold War. Before that, as a young boy living with my parents in the outskirts of London, I have the clearest memories of the events of 1938 and 1939 and all that followed in the next six years of the Second World War.
In the last decade of my military service I also witnessed the largest ever military confrontation, born of the Cold War, come to its conclusion without an international conflict in the nuclear age. From a personal perspective, I have no doubt that nuclear deterrence played a key role in that outcome and that it still has a strategically important role to play in the uncertain years that lie ahead.
As we sought to respond to the momentous changes arising from the collapse of the former Soviet Union, I inevitably found myself comparing the effectiveness of our security policies and defence arrangements, which failed twice so catastrophically in the first half of this century, with those that on the whole have served us so outstandingly well ever since. For over the past 50 years, despite periodic alarms and upheavals, we have in western Europe and North America enjoyed the longest period of peace and growing prosperity in modern history. That has come about because since the end of the Second World War we have taken a broad view of our security. Apart from our military efforts, we have placed reliance on historic and cultural ties, trade and economic partnerships, and treaty arrangements where we thought them soundly based.

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Additionally, and most significantly, over the past 50 years we and our allies have formed through NATO the most successful security and defence alliance ever created. Those who doubt NATO's continuing relevance in the post-Cold War era have only to look at its effectiveness in Bosnia after the tragically unsuccessful efforts of the United Nations over the preceding three-and-a-half years.
Measured against that remarkably complex and changing strategic background, I judge the Strategic Defence Review overall to be a thorough, objective and relevant response to the new security challenges that confront us. If I have a lingering concern—it has been referred to today—it is born of recent events: that in trying to seek more effective European security and defence arrangements we should not duplicate the very costly defence overheads and capabilities already available to NATO where they have been honed and tested over nearly half a century. By all means let us encourage a more effective defence commitment within the European Union, but let us also set ourselves realistic objectives to avoid trading off short-term political and economic problems against our longer term security needs and to avoid a costly and inefficient security and defence bureaucracy being created within the European Union at the expense of our much needed operational capabilities. Those are already available within the proven multinational political and military structures of NATO. It is through NATO—unlike the situation in the first half of this century—that we have on the whole kept the United States constructively engaged in European security. That has made a fundamental strategic difference over the past 50 years.
The real test, as the Minister acknowledged, is to implement the Strategic Defence Review effectively at a time when our regular forces are still heavily committed to operations. It is an extraordinary statistic that at the ending of the Cold War we now find the Army relative to its strength more heavily committed to military operations than at any time since the late 1940s. We have to do something about that—it will require sound plans and adequate resources—and not least secure the major changes in the Territorial Army which, on the whole, I judge to be timely, relevant and necessary. My concern is that a smaller and more thinly dispersed Territorial Army will require more administrative and regular support than exists at present. That seems to be in doubt in some instances; it is a matter that needs to be urgently addressed.
I thank your Lordships again for the welcome I have received in this House and for hearing me so patiently today.
4.4 p.m.
Lord Cope of Berkeley: My Lords, I should make clear that in speaking from this position in the debate I do so personally, although I remain a loyal Member of my party's Front Bench on other subjects. I know that I speak for the entire House in being the first to express thanks to the noble and gallant Lord the Master Gunner for a fine maiden speech. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Vincent of Coleshill, brings to this House a fine military record and much wisdom, as he has
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demonstrated to us in his maiden speech. He joined the Army for his National Service and became a Field Marshal. I, too, was a National Service subaltern in the Royal Artillery, but that makes me all the more delighted and proud to pay a well deserved tribute to the Master Gunner of St. James's Park for his maiden speech. As the noble and gallant Lord mentioned, he has been quite a long time in getting round to speaking to your Lordships' House, but we look forward keenly to the benefit of more of his wisdom and experience on defence and other matters.
The noble Lord spoke appropriately on the wide front of the Strategic Defence Review; and the Minister rightly did the same. But as befits my infinitely more modest experience, I am aiming at a lesser target, but not, I hope, an irrelevant one. We all know that plans can go wrong if the strategy is not well conceived, politically and militarily. But we also all know that things can go wrong because on the ground the operation does not or cannot be worked out in accordance with the strategy.
I wish to discuss the plan for the TA which has been prepared under the Strategic Defence Review and the extreme difficulties which it seems to me it will present in practice, and which will be such as to jeopardise the possibility of fulfilling its objectives. The aims of the plan for the TA are set out in the foreword by the Secretary of State to Volume 1 of A Territorial Army for the Future and expanded in detail in later chapters in Volume 2. In essence, the Secretary of State wishes the TA to be available to back up the Regular Army in operations like Bosnia or the Gulf War rather than being available to provide the basis of vast citizen armies as it did so successfully in two world wars.
It is indicative of that back-up role that it is planned for the medical corps in the Territorial Army to be larger than the infantry. If the TA were still regarded as an army by itself, it would be an exceptionally pessimistic military leader who organised his army on that basis. But training is supposed to be of a higher standard. The links between the Regular Army and the TA are supposed to be strengthened both to ensure the necessary training and to assist the Regular Army in its recruiting. Ministers have set out the strategy and the Ministry has published the plans. However, in respect of the local TA in my part of the country the detail of the plans makes the objectives difficult to achieve.
The example which leads me to that conclusion is one that I know best: the city of Bristol. Your Lordships will know that Bristol is the largest city in the country south of Birmingham apart from London. We are to be reduced to a total Territorial Army strength in the city of 186 soldiers; 110 of those are to be Royal Signals; 44 are to be Gunners; and 30 are to be infantry. Those will be part of the amalgamated South West Battalion—with our part presumably wearing the cap badge of the Royal Gloucestershire, Berkshire and Wiltshire Regiment, an amalgamated regiment sometimes known as the M.4 Rifles.
Our 30 infantry soldiers are to be one-third of a company, the other two-thirds of which will be in Gloucester, nearly 40 miles to the north. The company

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will be part of the new South West Battalion, with its headquarters in Exeter, 85 miles in the other direction, and with other elements stretching all the way to Camborne, which is a further 100 miles beyond battalion headquarters. The headquarters must therefore try to train its troops on weekday evenings and at weekends, when they are spread over 200 miles over difficult roads. Any soldier towards the end of the line in either direction, as the Bristol ones will be, will not only have difficulties in receiving training but will not be able to try for promotion, whether as an officer or an NCO, unless he is prepared to undertake a fantastic travel commitment.
The proposed position of Bristol's Gunners is in some respects worse. They are to have half of a rather small battery—44 soldiers—with the other half 125 miles away in Croydon. Are they seriously expected to travel a 250-mile round trip after work on a Tuesday in order to train with their colleagues? It is bad enough to expect them to travel such a distance at a weekend in order to join with their fellows, but it is much more difficult during the week. A Gunner battery functions as a battery and needs to train regularly as a battery and not just occasionally. We all know that belonging to the TA is a team matter, both militarily and socially, but some individuals will meet their fellow members only a few times a year. Furthermore, they will effectively be denied promotion or the opportunity to become specialists. It will be extremely difficult to run an efficient unit that way.
The Secretary of State said in his foreword that he proposes to include training in the TA. I cannot see how that follows from the geography I have described. He also stated that he wants to see the TA more integrated with the Regular Army. The existing Gunner battery in Bristol is now a battery of a Regular Army regiment, the 7th Regiment Horse Artillery. That direct link with the Regular Army is to be broken. In future, its Regular Army staff will be 125 miles away. That is not increasing links with the Regular Army; it is the reverse of the Secretary of State's proposals and reinforces the general point made by my noble friend Lord Attlee. The only remark in the Secretary of State's foreword which is borne out by the proposals is that the TA should maintain as wide a spread as possible across the country. But I am not sure that the Secretary of State had in mind that that should be within a single unit or, indeed, a single sub-unit, but that is what has happened.
If anyone thought at all before deciding what to do about Bristol's TA, the real intention must be that the units will have great difficulty and be in danger of failing. That seems to be the most likely outcome. We have no Regular Army in Bristol, so if the TA's part-sub-units disappear or do not do well, the Army's presence in the city will almost vanish. That is a deceitful way in which to treat the Army, given what the Secretary of State outlined as his objective. Perhaps I have taken a bad example. Other cities are not treated as badly as Bristol; some have twice as many TA soldiers, although they are considerably smaller than Bristol. Even Croydon is to have more TA soldiers than
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Bristol. I believe that the detail of the proposals makes the Secretary of State's word into a spin-doctor's deception.
I want to end on a positive note. At least as far as our Gunner battery is concerned there is a solution. The Croydon half of the proposed new battery is to be found from the existing battery in East Ham. Those of your Lordships who know London will know that those who parade in East Ham are unlikely, to say the least, to want to transfer readily to Croydon. It is a difficult journey across London. It would be better if the part battery which is supposed to come from East Ham were to link with the HAC in Finsbury, which is far nearer and a much easier journey. That would leave Bristol free to find a whole battery, as now, for the Field Artillery Regiment. Proper training would be possible again, although the links with the Regular Army would still suffer.
I do not expect the Minister to give me a detailed answer to the plan tonight, although I made the suggestion last month in a letter to the Secretary of State, copied to the Minister, saying that I intended to refer to the issue. I trust that he will be giving careful thought to the suggestion and will write to me as soon as he has made the right decision.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, before moving to the Statement on mental health, I wish to take this opportunity to remind the House that the Companion indicates that discussion on a Statement should be confined to brief comments and questions for clarification. Peers who speak at length do so at the expense of other noble Lords.

Mental Health
4.16 p.m.
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Health (Baroness Hayman): My Lords, with the permission of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health. The Statement reads as follows:
"Madam Speaker, I should like to make a Statement on the Government's proposals to modernise the mental health services as part of our drive to ensure we enter the new century and new millennium with health and social services which are modern and dependable.
"Last year, we published our proposals for radical reform of the National Health Service. Last week, we did the same for social services. The strategy document we are publishing today brings together our proposals for far reaching changes and improvements in the treatment and care which both provide for people who are mentally ill.
"We are doing this to emphasise that mental health is not some marginal responsibility of the NHS and local social services. Far from it; it must be at the heart of both. That is because mental illness is not an

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obscure minority concern. It is just as important as physical illness and the two can be closely interlinked.
"Mental illness is as common as asthma—it affects as many as one in six adults at any one time. It ranges from a high level of anxiety or deep depression to severe and enduring illnesses, like schizophrenia, which affect one person in a hundred. Mental illness is extremely disturbing to sufferers and their families. It can leave people without insight into the consequence of their actions. That is very frightening. Mental illness is little understood. Those factors combine so that mental illness carries a stigma. The stigma in turns frightens sufferers and their families and can lead to the postponement of the treatment they need.
"Partly because of this, mental illness does not receive the prompt, effective and sympathetic attention it both deserves and needs. As a result people who are mentally ill, their carers and the professional staff responsible for their welfare have suffered from ineffective practices, an outdated legal framework and lack of resources. We want to deal with all those aspects to bring about a dramatic change for the better in the treatment and care of all those who are mentally ill. In particular we want to make sure that proper attention is given to the disturbing growth in the numbers of young people who are mentally ill and to the particular needs of certain ethnic groups.
"Most people who suffer mental illness are vulnerable people who pose no threat to anyone but themselves. Their condition may make it hard to keep a family together or to hold down a job but their behaviour is mild and inoffensive. Most of them are not getting the low intensity support they need. And that is partly because the whole system is in crisis, mainly because it is not coping with the small minority of mentally ill people who are a nuisance or a danger to both themselves and others. And this is where the policy of care in the community has failed. Its failure to deal effectively with the most severe cases has dealt a blow to all mental health efforts and lost the confidence of the public.
"Discharging people from hospitals brought benefits for some. But it has left many vulnerable people who find it difficult to cope. Others have become a danger to themselves and a nuisance to others. Too many have been left wandering the streets and sleeping rough. A small but significant minority have become a danger to the public as well as themselves.
"This cannot go on and we are putting in place a new strategy to tackle the problems faced by patients, professionals and public alike. We have to take steps to tackle the most extreme manifestations of mental illness because, if not, the other people who are mentally ill will not get the attention they deserve and need.
"That is why we must bring the law on mental health up to date. This was formulated when most mentally ill patients were treated in hospital; it now
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reflects the practices of a bygone era. It must be modernised to cope with the problems of today. At present some people who would once have been left locked up in a hospital are fine living in the community; others are safe only provided that they take their medication. But some of those who can become a danger to themselves and others refuse to comply with the treatment they need. This cannot be allowed to go on and that is why I have set up a review of the law on mental health. We need a law that works in a crisis, not one that fails in a crisis.
"Similarly there is a small group of people with an untreatable psychiatric disorder which makes them dangerous. At present neither law nor practice are geared to cope with them. They cannot be taken into a mental hospital if they will not respond to treatment. They cannot be put in prison unless they have committed an offence. And if they are sent to prison they can be a danger on their release. The Home Secretary and I are therefore considering proposals to create a new form of renewable detention for people with a severe personality disorder who are considered to pose a grave risk to the public.
"This raises all sorts of ethical and practical problems but we are convinced that the safety of the public must be the prime concern. People whose mental illness poses a threat to others are in a very small minority but we must be able to deal with them. Their illness is often an even bigger threat to themselves and our new system shall be better both for them and the public.
"Our mental health strategy goes much wider than this and there are huge developments in both policy and practice. We shall put in place a national service framework which will spell out for every part of the country the range of services which are needed to treat and care for the mentally ill and how best to deliver them. We are being advised on this by an external reference group chaired by Professor Graham Thornicroft from the Maudsley Hospital. I thank him and his colleagues for all that they are doing.
"In the meantime we are getting on with the improvements that are unarguably needed. There is a pressing need in some parts of the country for more mental health beds and for 24 hour services to be available. We want the services that are provided to be safe and sound and supportive: safe to protect the public and the most vulnerable patients; sound to ensure that patients get the best and most appropriate care and attention; supportive by working with the patients, users, carers and local communities to help mentally ill people live as independent lives as possible. This works best where patients and carers are involved in shaping services to meet local needs.
"These services, which back up informal carers, will be provided by the NHS, social services and voluntary bodies. All must work together to ensure people who are mentally ill get well organised and unified treatment. Proposals in the forthcoming NHS Bill and local. government Bill will promote this.

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"This year the planning guidance issued to the NHS was issued as joint guidance to the health service and social services to emphasise the need for them to work together. The national institute for clinical excellence which we shall introduce, will issue clear and authoritative guidance on the most effective drugs and therapies for use in treating mental as well as physical illness.
"At the same time that these general improvements are being made to the NHS, we are going ahead with much better support for patients and carers. These include: access to NHS Direct 24 hours a day; 24-hour crisis teams to respond in emergencies; more mental health beds of the right sort, in the right place; more hostels and supported housing; home treatment teams; improved mental health training for GPs and others responsible for primary care.
"New developments in the NHS including health action zones and the obligation on health authorities to prepare and implement health improvement programmes will all contribute to improving mental health treatment and care.
"I would like to pay a particular tribute to all of those who care for people with a mental illness. A great deal of this caring is done by parents, children, friends and neighbours. It is also done by dedicated professional staff. Their work can be very stressful and is sometimes dangerous. We owe them a great debt. They have to deal with the consequences of policy failures and shortcomings in the law and lack of resources.
"What needs to be done will clearly cost money. Last week I announced that we had found an extra £185 million to invest in mental health services provided by council social services. Today I can announce that that sum will be more than matched by our extra investment in NHS mental health services which will total £510 million over the next three years. That brings a total investment of around £700 million extra in mental health services over the next three years on top of the £3 billion already going in.
"All this is investment for change. The Government and the public will expect to see this extra investment make a discernible difference, helping people right across the range of mental health needs. At the end of three years we expect to see: more 24-hour staffed beds; more secure beds; access to new drugs; assertive outreach teams where they are most needed; more day and respite care; more supported accommodation; improved services for children and adolescents. All these and many more services will ensure that when people have a mental illness they and their families can turn to top quality professionals to offer the best possible treatment and care, a system that is safe and sound for both patients and the public".
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
4.27 p.m.
Earl Howe: My Lords, I welcome the Statement and am more than usually grateful to the noble Baroness for
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repeating it. It contains a great deal of substance and while, for that reason, I cannot hope to do it justice, I should like to focus on those areas which seem to me to represent the essence of it.
The first of those is the long-awaited review of the 1983 Mental Health Act. I welcome that review. The law should reflect the conditions of the present day. It manifestly does not do so at present. However, it appears from what the Minister said that the Government's starting point for that initiative is the widely perceived need to contain those psychiatric patients who are likely to pose a danger to the public.
We all recognise that that is an important issue. The debate in your Lordships' House on 19th October introduced by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln highlighted the appalling and distressing consequences of a failure to contain and supervise a paranoid schizophrenic who murdered a young man, Christopher Edwards, in prison in 1994. Such cases cry out for something to be done. The question is: what?
Government Ministers have been quoted as saying that care in the community has failed, praying in aid cases of the kind to which I have just referred. I notice that there is a section in the strategy document which has that sub-heading. During the debate in October, I argued that that is a mistaken view. Indeed, it is a view which seems to wish to convey the impression to the public that all mentally ill people are dangerous. To be fair to the Statement, it does not do that. But it is important to remember that a relatively small number of mentally ill patients pose a danger to themselves or to others. The vast majority are individuals who are quite harmless and whose lives have been transformed by the introduction of the care in the community policy. In fact, many thousands of men and women have been enabled to leave institutions and live supported, but essentially independent, lives perfectly successfully. I simply do not agree with the part of the Statement which says that the whole system is in crisis.
Violent or potentially violent patients are, as I said, an important issue in framing a mental health policy; but they are not the only ones. Equally, it is important, when we speak of mental illness, not to blur the distinction between the mentally ill and people with personality disorders. We welcome the current Department of Health and Home Office consideration of a new approach to help people with personality disorders outside the use of the Mental Health Act. We are also pleased to note the recognition that healthcare services in prisons need improvement. Clearly, any proposals emerging from either of these initiatives ought to be subject to the widest possible consultation.
The other strand of thought which seems to underlie the Government's initiative is the belief that the only safeguard against the possibility of violent behaviour is to lock people up. It is not. There are two principal reasons why the system breaks down. The first is the discharge process. All too often the root of the problem resides in poor decisions having been taken by psychiatrists on the discharge of patients from hospital. Patients who are clearly unable to cope with returning to society are nevertheless let loose. To the extent that

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that is precipitated by a shortage of in-patient beds—that is by no means the only reason—I welcome the Government's announcement of further resources in that area.
The other main reason for the system failing is the inadequate availability of the latest psychoactive medication. That is something the Government could expedite straight away, but there was only a passing reference to it in the Statement. A recent report by the National Schizophrenia Fellowship and the Maudsley Hospital demonstrated that over 50 per cent. of patients were not even receiving Clozapine—a drug developed in 1975—and were instead receiving medication developed much further back in the 1950s which carries with it serious and damaging side effects.
Even less available in general terms in the health service are two more modern drugs—Risperidone and Olanzapine—which are not only more effective in controlling schizophrenia, but are also much less likely to result in serious side effects. The cost of such drugs is of course higher, but that does not account for the fact that such patients are less likely to require in-patient care than those on older medication. The National Schizophrenia Fellowship and Maudsley study found that patients were five times less likely to take their own life and much more likely to comply with medication when prescribed the newer products.
This last point is crucial to an understanding of the alternatives open to the Government in this area. Compulsory treatment should be a last resort. It will do damage to the relationship of trust between patients and medical staff; and it can only encourage the view—referred to in the Statement—that all mental illness has a stigma attached to it. From a purely practical standpoint the business of keeping track of patients (especially in urban areas) is likely to prove extremely difficult. But the key point is that devising compulsory mechanisms does not tackle the root causes of why the problem exists in the first place. Does the Minister have any comment on the type of psychoactive drugs which should be available under the NHS or must we wait for the National Institute for Clinical Excellence to pronounce on the question of best practice?
I worry too about assertive outreach teams whose job it will be to police any compulsory procedures. What representations have Ministers received about those ideas from the nursing profession? How are the new arrangements likely to affect recruitment? There is already a shortage of psychiatric nurses and many more will be needed to implement the policy. What nurse will want the task of seeking out patients, restraining them and returning them to hospital against their will? It is an invidious brief for a nurse to be given. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said in the debate on 19th October that,
"Any new arrangements must involve compliance within an appropriate clinical setting".—[Official Report, 19/10/98; col. 1265.]
But compliance, or at any rate docile compliance, in reaching the clinical setting in the first place, will be next to impossible to achieve. Can the Minister be any more specific about the safeguards to be put in place to ensure that the new arrangements provide adequate protection not only of the public but also of the rights
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of the individual? Are there any plans to enshrine in law a role for what are sometimes referred to as "independent advocates" who would ensure that the best interests of the patient were protected?
It is absolutely right and proper that care in the community should be looked at closely to ensure that it is working properly. We welcome the ingredients of the three-year programme. We welcome the fact that, contrary to previous government Statements, the policy is now seen to be relevant and appropriate for the vast majority of mental health patients. It is particularly reassuring to note the emphasis placed in the Statement on additional resources to be directed to mental healthcare services in the community. Can the Minister confirm my understanding that the extra resources represent new money? Can she also confirm what I thought might have been an addition to the text of the Statement handed to me that service users and their relatives and carers will be given a say in what new services are planned and funded?
I believe that in mental health, perhaps pre-eminently among all fields of healthcare, it is not enough to give patients what we think they need; we must also give them, as far as possible, what they want. I very much hope—though I am not yet confident in all respects—that the measures announced today will achieve that aim.
4.37 p.m.
Lord Clement-Jones: My Lords, from these Benches I thank the Minister for the Statement. We also welcome the White Paper mentioned in the Statement. This is an extremely important topic. The Statement states that one in six people suffer from some form of mental illness. It is therefore no surprise that some forecast that by 2020 there will be more people suffering from mental ailments than physical ailments. It is inevitable, as a result, that society as a whole is waking up to the implications. One sign of a truly civilised society is how it deals with mental health issues. That means not only in terms of what treatment is available, but also what rights those suffering from mental problems have and how the rights of the individual are balanced with those of the community.
In a sense today's White Paper may be either too early because it predates Professor Richardson's report, which will no doubt come in the spring, about the review of the Mental Health Act. It also predates Professor Thornicroft's external reference group report which will prepare the national service framework. But also, in a sense, it may be too late—too late in terms of being a late announcement of the resources that will be available following the July announcement by the Government giving a foretaste of their strategy. Nevertheless, from these Benches we welcome the Statement and the strategy. We welcome the priority being given to mental health and we welcome the review being undertaken of the Mental Health Act. But we hope that the Government are not anticipating the conclusions of Professor Richardson's review.
We also hope that Professor Thornicroft and his external reference group will re-confirm the benefits of care in the community if it is properly managed and

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resourced. We welcome many aspects of the approach adopted by the Government, in particular a commitment to 24-hour nursing care in hospital accommodation. That will ensure that those patients who are sometimes subject to quick deterioration are cared for properly. It may need to be for the long term, not just for the short term.
We welcome the concept of assertive outreach designed to ensure that individuals suffering from problems do not fall out of the care net, provided this does not become aggressive outreach. We also welcome the "partnership in action" approach which is designed to break down barriers between health authorities, social services and other providers. Liberal Democrats have been strongly supportive of that approach in many areas, particularly in Somerset where a county-wide mental health strategy has been agreed, and a joint commissioning body and single integrated mental health and social care provider created. But there is a huge job to be done in bridging the mistrust between health authorities and social services. The Minister will no doubt have seen a recent report from the Centre for Mental Health Services Development which shows that lack of trust and the hurdles to be overcome.
However, we do not welcome statements by Ministers that care in the community has failed. It is noticeable in the Statement today that such language has been rather toned down. We now hear that care in the community has failed a small minority of mentally ill people. That is much closer to what has actually happened. The original, bald statement that care in the community has failed caused considerable anger among mental health professionals. The implementation of care in the community has undoubtedly failed in several cases. A number of tragic circumstances testify to that, such as the case of Jonathan Zito, and we are, of course, all aware of the very hard cases involving Michael Folkes and Christopher Moffat.
We do not believe that the philosophy of care in the community has failed. It has not been tried or resourced properly. We do not welcome some of the punitive language used by Ministers. We must not return to the bad old days of thinking that every mental patient needs locking up in an institution. As has been well shown, alcohol and drug abuse are much more potent indicators of criminality than is mental illness.
With proper care and supervision, many patients can take their place in the community without danger to the public. The "safety plus" approach adopted by this Government must not mean treating all mental patients as criminals. We would be concerned if the Government shifted the emphasis unduly back to institutional care. The devotion of undue resources to medium secure units could mean, in practice, the simple locking up of more young black men who already constitute 80 per cent. of those in that type of secure unit in London and just under 50 per cent. elsewhere.
We are concerned about the clarity of responsibility for the commissioning of mental health services. Who is responsible: the region, the primary care group or the health authority? Ministers have said that the national service framework will make that clear. However, that
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will not be available until April. If the primary carers are to carry out the task, they must have the ability to do it properly. It is not clear that they, or the health authority, will have adequate resources to do so.
We are also concerned about whether the Government are giving adequate attention to the abolition of mixed-sex wards in mental hospitals. Surely that is even more important in such hospitals than in ordinary hospitals.
We believe that the key is more resources to the whole spectrum of care. Even the previous government started to move in the right direction on mental health at the end of their time in office. The essence is a balance or spectrum of different types of care. What they did not do was to devote adequate resources to mental health; hence all the current problems.
As we know, one of the key causes of high profile cases involving homicide and suicide has been the breakdown of care plans because of overstretched teams and lack of available resources; in other words, more resources are needed to provide more effective care and supervision. I welcome the addition of the extra resources announced today after years of under-funding. However, I am somewhat baffled, even after reading the White Paper, about precisely what figures are involved. The noble Baroness may remember the confusion about the precise additional sums involved in the comprehensive spending review. We would welcome clarification of precisely what additional funding is involved. We must improve the generality of services and bring poor services up to the standards of the best. That is why we support the principle of a legally enforceable right to a minimum standard of treatment.
Resources must be ringfenced for mental health. There are some 5,000 potential long-stay patients who need 24-hour care in the community. Psychiatrists have enormous caseloads and we are something like 400 psychiatrists short. For every five GPs there is only one community psychiatric nurse. Each community psychiatric nurse has an average of 80 patients to care for, of whom 35 to 40 are psychotic. We need more, and better trained, community psychiatric nurses. I am not convinced that that is properly addressed in the White Paper.
For assertive outreach to work properly, psychiatrists and GPs need to have proper IT systems to track their patients' treatment. How is that issue being addressed by the Government?
There is a shortage of acute beds. A recent Sainsbury Centre report referred to a "care vacuum" in psychiatric wards with overworked, undertrained and inexperienced staff. Another recent Sainsbury Centre report showed that in London almost 50 per cent. of nursing staff are casual and hired from agencies. Outside London the figure is 30 per cent.
The Statement mentions the joint venture between the Home Office and the Department of Health. We believe that focusing on mental health in prisons is of enormous importance. There is an extremely good case for integrating the services. We hope that the joint venture bears fruit in that respect.

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The noble Earl, Lord Howe, mentioned the funding of atypical anti-psychotic drugs. As the noble Earl said, the Maudsley Hospital and the National Schizophrenia Fellowship drew attention to postcode rationing of drugs such as Clozapine. We welcome the pledge of another £120 million for more effective drug therapies. However, we do not know whether that will seriously address the problem. We would welcome assurance on that point.
We welcome the recognition that mental health forms a central part of primary care objectives and that the health improvement programme is a vital tool. Consultation on the HIP must include the community, the voluntary sector and service users. The Government must recognise that public education is vital, and we seek assurance on that point. As we recall, one of the key objectives adopted by the Department of Health in 1993 was to reverse the public's negative perception of mental illness. That is more vital now than ever. New legislation, whether designed to make treatment more effective or the public more secure, is not enough. For treatment to be effective and for the right treatment to be available, we need the confidence of the community. We must increase understanding of mental health problems within the community and among individuals affected. How do the Government recognise that? And what do they plan to do about it?
4.46 p.m.
Baroness Hayman: My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for what I believe was a basic welcome for the additional resources for these services and the recognition of their importance. Perhaps I may give more detail on the financial issues about which the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, asked. We are talking about £700 million of new money being made available over the next three years in addition to the £3 billion which is already going into mental health services. That is £510 million of NHS money to complement the £185 million announced last week for social care services.
As far as next year's money is concerned, we are talking about investing £146 million. Some of that will be via targeted allocation to health authorities; some will be available as central funds and will need to be bid for; and some will be available through the mental health grant to local authorities. It is a complex situation. We shall be giving more details next week. I reassure the noble Lord that that money will go towards mental health services and, in that sense, it is ringfenced through its various funding streams.
I turn to the theme that ran through the contribution of the noble Earl, Lord Howe; that is, the issue of not stigmatising all people who suffer from mental health problems because of the very real danger that a very small minority of those patients pose to themselves and other people. My right honourable friend tried to make it extremely clear in his Statement that we recognise that such patients comprise a tiny minority of all the people who need to use mental health services in the course of any year. However, I should tell the noble Earl that,
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while I am happy to reinforce that point and to confirm that there is no desire to go back to institutional care for vast numbers of people who can be provided with adequate care in the community, it is our view that the failure of services and policies in the past to deal with some of the people who were most severely ill and who posed the greatest threat to themselves and to others—examples of which were given by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones—has not been in the interests either of those patients or the vast majority of patients who have been stigmatised. Indeed, services have been diverted into trying to deal with the very high profile areas in that respect. So there is no apology for trying to deal with those people who are most severely ill. I do not believe that that detracts from the services that we want to offer to the majority of patients in this area.
The same applies to the review of the Mental Health Act, to which the noble Earl referred. Perhaps I may reassure him in that respect. There is the issue about community treatment and the people who are outside an institutional setting who do not comply with medication and, therefore, become a danger both to themselves and to other members of the public. However, that is not the only area of concern. We need a root and branch review of the Mental Health Act because it does not reflect current patterns of care where the majority of care is not provided in a hospital setting but within the community. We are not only looking at community treatment orders, which are an important part of the process; we are looking much more broadly at the workings of the Act so as to make them reflect more realistically the patterns of treatment that people receive. I hope that that will prove to be a reassuring element of Professor Richardson's review.
Obviously there are difficulties to overcome and balances to be made here, as in the area of acute personality disorders to which the noble Earl also referred. It is important for us to strike a balance between the civil liberties of individual patients and the protection of the public. There are no simple answers. However, because there are no simple answers, I do not believe that we should be deterred from going into areas where we have only too tragic evidence of the failure of the system as it stands at present. This will need careful review and that is what it will have. We must ensure that we have a balanced approach, but we are determined to take action to improve the legal framework which is in place at present.
On the issue of assertive outreach services which was raised by the noble Earl, I can tell the House that there are very positive examples of where this is going on successfully—for example, in north Birmingham—and where it has been supported by all the professionals involved, including community psychiatric nurses. We want to look at how we can transpose that good practice elsewhere, where it is appropriate. But, again, it is one strand where we have the possibility of actually providing the right range of service within the community and preventing a crisis which can damage both other people and the patients themselves.

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As far as concerns the point about the need for local government and health services to work together, I can confirm that there have been difficulties in that area in the past. We have clearly said that we recognise that the institutional barriers do not reflect the needs of patients. We have to start off with the needs of patients. That is why the national priorities guidance this year was issued jointly to both health services and local authority social services. That is why the legislation on the local authority front and the NHS front will aim to provide a framework in which joint working in the interests of patients can take place, whether it is through pooled budgets, the commissioning of arrangements, or whatever, to ensure that the needs of patients are actually met across the institutional barriers.
The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, asked for clarification as to the commissioning of mental health services. At present health authorities are responsible for commissioning specialist mental health services. Primary care groups will be free to take on responsibility for commissioning services and will be accountable for their performance. However, the important area here is the national service framework. The noble Lord was slightly critical of the fact that we have produced the White Paper before the national service framework is finalised. Some findings have emerged in that respect and we are beginning to see the way forward. It will be a very potent weapon in ensuring that we do bridge some of the gaps between the best and the worst provision and make sure that high levels of quality care are available throughout the service.
That leads me to the availability of the new generation of anti-psychotic drugs, which was raised by both the noble Lord and the noble Earl. From next year, the Government will ensure that extra resources are available to assist in meeting the demands for new drugs by targeting health authorities with the highest levels of mental illness. We recognise that we must look at the costings in the round and that these drugs may be more expensive than other drug treatments. However, if we consider their potential for saving admissions, they may in fact prove to be very cost effective. That is why it is important that the National Institute for Clinical Excellence will assess them as well as other interventions and produce and disseminate clinical guidelines as well as clinical audit methodologies. Although these drugs are suitable for some patients, they are not suitable for all patients. We have to look at the range of interventions available.
I turn now to the issue of staffing. A point was made about the need for training and, indeed, for better trained staff. That is very much taken on board in the funding both as regards improving the training of local authority staff and also staff within the health service. We are beginning to see greater numbers of trained staff coming through in the medical profession where there were great shortages in the past. We have to look at the training both for clinical psychologists and for nurses specialising in mental health. The Government are looking very carefully at the situation with a view to ensuring that some of the additional places being made available will cover that need.
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Finally, I move on to the issue of mixed sex wards. Perhaps I may reassure the noble Lord in that respect. We recognise the great difficulties which such wards cause for patients, especially as regards mental health facilities. I can reassure the noble Lord that there is absolutely no going back on the Government's commitment to tackle the problem. As he may be aware, on two occasions where it was planned that new facilities would have mixed-sex wards my right honourable friend has intervened to ensure that they did not.
4.58 p.m.
Lord Thurlow: My Lords, like the noble Earl and the noble Lord who have already spoken, I most warmly welcome the Statement, which I hope and believe represents a very important milestone in meeting the deficiencies that have become so apparent to all of us ever since the 1983 Act. Those of us who were involved in the discussions in 1983, and since then, have always taken the line that, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, emphasised, community care has not failed; indeed, it has never been given a fair trial. We hope that the fairly massive resources that the Government will be putting into mental health over the next three years will do much to repair the situation.
I am most grateful not only for the content of the Statement but also for the process adopted by the Government in reaching their conclusions. They have taken their time and have consulted in the widest possible way. We await with hope and interest the results of the studies that are still in process. It seems to me that the whole package represents an enormously important step forward in remedying manifest deficiencies.
Of course we all have questions, but then this is such a wide canvas. One particular question I wish to ask the noble Baroness is whether she can give any indication of timing for the increase in new 24-hour nursing beds. When this was introduced by the previous government we first of all had fairly optimistic statements, but it all turned out to be a very slow affair. Although, I am sure, those which have come into operation have done excellent work, we need far more. I would like some indication of the timetable.
I warmly welcome the prospect of more beds in hospitals. Many of us have been gunning for them for years. We have deprecated the mad speed of the closure of the big hospitals. One hopes that that is a matter of the past.
Noble Lords: Question!
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, perhaps I may remind the noble Lord that discussion on a Statement should be confined to brief comments and questions for clarification.
Lord Thurlow: My Lords, I apologise. On the question of co-ordination between local authorities and

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the health service, is there any possibility of moving towards a single point of responsibility, as Sir Roy Griffiths originally said was necessary?
Baroness Hayman: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his welcome for what we have done. He used the word "package". It reflects a recognition that it is essential that we address all the necessary elements—the elements of extra resources for investment; of making sure through the national service framework what services are needed; of assessing needs in various areas; and of the necessary legislation that will underpin and provide a framework in which services can be provided.
As to the 24-hour beds, we hope to see action on those from the money already provided. Some of last year's winter pressures money, for example, was put into mental health. We hope to see a very swift response in relation to 24-hour beds. By making sure that the range of services, the 24-hour beds and the medium secure beds, are available, that in turn takes away some of the pressure on the acute beds, from which people cannot move because there are no alternatives.
There has been recognition in all the contributions made today that we need a range of services—both the community and inside hospitals, as well as half-way house type services—to reflect the range of need of a very wide group of patients.
Lord Renton: My Lords, does the noble Baroness accept that mental illness and mental handicap are quite different—because mental handicap is incurable—and that very few mentally handicapped people are aggressive? Will she confirm that the Statement does not broadly apply to the mentally handicapped people in our society? I hope that early in the new year she will make an equivalent Statement about the treatment of those who are mentally handicapped.
I wish to ask the noble Baroness one question with regard to mental illness? Will she confirm that the present small number of secure hospitals for containing people who are suffering from mental illness and extreme aggression will be retained, bearing in mind that the people in those hospitals are nearly always sent there by the criminal courts?
Baroness Hayman: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Renton, whose commitment to the needs of people with mental handicaps and learning disabilities is well known throughout the House. I am happy to give him the reassurance that he seeks. They are a completely different group of people, and we are dealing in this Statement with people suffering from mental illness.
High security services will continue to be based on the three special hospitals for the foreseeable future. We are committed to better integration of high security psychiatric services with other parts of the NHS. One of the measures we will be taking will enable better integration by removing the barrier currently preventing high security services being managed by NHS trusts.
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This will require primary legislation. I can assure the noble Lord that public safety will remain the prime concern of those who manage such services.
Lord McNair: My Lords, I am not sure whether the Minister has had a chance to read what I said on 19th October. If she has, she will be aware that I am unlikely to be convinced that the increase in spending on the mental health services will solve the problem. I wish to raise one point. The increase in the number of young people to which the Statement refers may well be partly the result of the tendency of the psychiatric services to seek out new clients by labelling different groups of people in society, in this case particularly children. For example, they label children with an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and then often proceed to introduce them to a life of drugs by prescribing them drugs such as Ritalin.
Baroness Hayman: My Lords, I recognise the concerns of the noble Lord. I read his contribution in October but I was not sure how well I had retained it until today. I shall revisit it. Regardless of the point the noble Lord makes about issues such as attention deficit disorder, there is a worrying rise in child and adolescent mental illness and a worrying disparity of services throughout the country. It is important that we deal with these young people as and when their difficulties arise. There are ways in which this can be done, but services are very patchy. That is why we have made it a priority. We are determined to see that those children receive the services they need. The preponderance of some of these problems has to be seen particularly in conjunction with children who live away from home with our broader response to the Utting Report and its recommendations.
Baroness Pitkeathley: My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness for this very welcome Statement. She will understand that I particularly welcome the support for the informal carers for the family, most of whom want to go on caring and are often subject to intolerable burdens. Recognition that family care, where possible, is not only the best but the most cost-effective form of care is welcome indeed.
I also welcome the Minister's assurance that community care has not failed in many aspects. Anyone who has worked on the back wards of the old mental hospitals—as I have—knows that much community care has been a resounding success, not only for those with mental illness but for older people and those with learning disabilities. It is important that we recognise that.
Does the Minister agree with me that any reform of community care law in order to make it stronger to deal with the small minority who are the subject of the Statement today should not be at the expense of preventive work to ensure that crises do not happen in the first place. Does she also agree that some of the money, the welcome extra resources, should be put into preventive services such as counselling, early intervention and family support groups.
Baroness Hayman: My Lords, I can reassure my noble friend that the national service framework will be

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looking across the whole range of services that are necessary. It is much more cost effective to put money into preventive services if we can be assured of their quality and know that they are effective than to wait for crises to occur. In the whole debate about provision within the community and provision within hospitals and institutions, what we are not trying to do—and what no one wants to do—is recreate the Victorian institutions of the past for everyone regardless of their degree of need. What we are trying to do is ensure that there is a broad framework with a range of provision that meets the needs of the most severely ill in order to protect them and society as a whole.
My noble friend asked about carers. There is a recognition of the enormous amount of care that is being provided by families within the community. As she is only too well aware, we will be producing in the new year a strategy for dealing with carers not only in the field of mental illness but across the whole range of provision.
Lord Annaly: My Lords, I wish to flag up two areas of importance, having spoken on this issue this morning to a psychiatrist who deals with mental health. The taking of medication causes problems to people with mental health difficulties. They fail to take their medication and then start to run into behavioural difficulties. I wonder how the assertive outreach teams will work in practice. I am delighted that, according to the White Paper, they are working well in Birmingham. However, will nurses have to go out and sometimes apply force in order to get people to take their medication, bearing in mind that a good deal of medication needs to be taken on a daily basis? How will that work in practice? It is almost a combination of a policeman's job, supported by a nurse, to actually achieve that.
Secondly, I see the renewable detention places, which will provide 24-hour beds, as being a problem of cost. If they are not to be on the scale of old institutions, I imagine that they will be quite small. Will they be a combination of a secure centre, like a prison, and something else? I see them as being costly to run if they are to be spread across different areas. They will be costly in manpower as well. Will the Minister comment on that point?
Baroness Hayman: My Lords, the extra resources we are providing over the three-year period are a recognition that it is a costly business to provide the range of care that is needed—whether it is the range of staff to provide beds manned for 24 hours, whether it is the appropriate drug treatment, or whether it is the counselling and preventive services to which my noble friend referred earlier. It is because of those cost implications that we are putting large sums of extra money into mental health services.
The noble Lord asked specifically about non-compliance with treatment. The assertive outreach teams are working successfully within the current legal framework in trying to persuade people to recognise their need to comply with treatment. However, by
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definition, non-compliance itself brings with it a lack of insight into the problem. That is why we have asked the expert group advising on the review of the Mental Health Act to make specific recommendations about how one aspect of policy, under which non-compliance with treatment for some patients is no longer to be an option, could be incorporated and supported. As I said earlier when this point was raised, we have to recognise that there are civil liberty implications. We have to have a balanced programme which ensures that patients who want to live independently can do so in a situation in which the safety of the community and of themselves is not threatened.
Lord Laming: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for a very encouraging Statement, encouraging both in its ambitions for the mental health services and for the extra resources to achieve those ambitions. As we are all agreed that the mental health services meet the needs of very many people, I should like to ask two questions about the needs of people who lead unpredictable lives and whose health fluctuates very considerably. Does the Minister agree that greater emphasis must be placed on a realistic assessment of need, especially for people who have few roots in the community and who are a danger to themselves potentially and a danger to other people? Secondly, does she agree that there is a need everywhere for community based multi-disciplinary teams which will be able to guarantee care and supervision to those people who have been seriously affected by mental illness and whose behaviour can at times be a threat to themselves and to others? Should not those teams be helped to strike a better balance between the rights of the individual and the safety of the community?
Baroness Hayman: My Lords, I am happy to agree with my noble friend on those points. We need a multi-disciplinary approach and we need people to work in teams and across the organisational boundaries that sometimes have impeded particularly hard-to-reach groups in getting the service they need. My noble friend is right to pinpoint the small number of individuals who perhaps provide the greatest challenge. In those cases, assertive outreach can be effective, but it must have a coherent and determined attitude in order to ensure that people get the help that they need. There is also the link that sometimes exists between serious mental illness and substance abuse. We need new investment in risk management, in early intervention, in 24-hour staffed beds and in assertive outreach services if we are to meet the needs of those individuals.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, I wish to raise a practical issue. Is the Minister aware that there is a great problem at the moment in two respects? Some hospitals have so many psychiatric cases that they cannot provide non-executive directors to sit, as they are requested to do, on the hearing of every case. Does the Minister agree that there will be an extra burden of decisions to be made in so many cases? One category has large numbers of patients and there is, therefore, a burden on the existing number of non-executive directors even if they are all available. I was reminded last night that in many parts of the country places for

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non-executive directors have been left vacant. That is imposing a great additional burden on those who remain. Can the Minister assure us that she will take back to the department the necessity for appointing people to these posts so that they can carry out this responsible decision-making?
Baroness Hayman: My Lords, I am certainly willing to give that assurance to the noble Baroness. We are making a great deal of progress this year—better than last year—but I recognise that in some areas there are still problems. We are certainly seeking to fill those vacancies.
The noble Baroness raised a broader question about the role and responsibilities of non-executive directors in trusts that have mental health functions regarding duties under the Mental Health Act. That area will have to be looked at by Professor Richardson's working group because it is an area that has concerned people for a period of time. It is one of the areas where we simply do not have in the 1983 Act a framework which reflects patterns of services as they are today.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, we have reached the end of the 20 minutes on the Statement. We need to move on now.

Strategic Defence Review
5.19 p.m.
Debate resumed.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, I am not so concerned about the content of the strategic review—although I understand that it is capable of being criticised, and has been criticised—because my noble friend in his usual efficient manner introduced it in a convincing way. Unfortunately the most important aspect of the whole defence world at this time receives no treatment at all in the document. I refer, of course, to the manifesto undertaking of my party that we shall seek the elimination of the nuclear weapon.
It is remarkable that a document of this kind should make no mention at all of the subject which divides the world at the moment. In effect we are divided between the nuclear powers and those who have an immediate ambition to follow in their track, and the vast majority who have no nuclear weapons. When the issue was discussed recently at the United Nations General Assembly, my Government joined in the opposition to their manifesto recommendation, rather than supporting it. Some 97 countries wanted to get rid of the nuclear weapon, but did our representative support them? Not a bit of it. Britain voted with the United States which does not wish to get rid of the nuclear weapon and has never pretended that it wishes to do so. However, I should say in parenthesis that there are many Americans who hold the same views on this subject as I do. However, they have not yet succeeded in persuading any United States government or potential government to change their mind on the matter. For some time America has been concerned with matters other than the nuclear weapon.
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We have recognised the importance of the nuclear weapon and the need to get rid of it. However, in the United Nations we voted against the commitment that was stated in the manifesto. We have issued a prolix document in the name of a senior civil servant; no Minister put his name to this explanation of why we decided to take this extraordinary decision. The document is more wordy than convincing. But there it is. Apparently there is now no effective government intention in sight to work hard and speedily—as the non-proliferation treaty provides—and with conviction to get rid of the nuclear weapon.
That is a sad state of affairs, particularly for someone like myself who served in the Royal Air Force during the war in SEAC (South-East Asia Command). The bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, but after the initial rejoicing was over some considerable concern was felt about this remarkable new weapon which had killed thousands of people in a moment. I shared that concern and I have shared it ever since. In the immediate years after that event I forgot about it, but in the 1950s a Labour government decided to make the hydrogen bomb, a bomb one hundred times more deadly than the one which had extinguished people in Hiroshima. At that point I became convinced that the world now had the power to destroy our entire civilisation. Nothing in man's past record on such matters has convinced me that this power will not be used.
For the past 17 years, ever since I have been in this House, I have from time to time stretched your Lordships' toleration when I have pointed out the danger that these weapons pose to us. I would not expect your Lordships to take any particular notice of what I say if I, alone, held these views, but I am not alone. One of the extraordinary features to emerge in the past few years is the conviction felt among what one might call the world's top brass that this is a weapon which cannot be used as a weapon of war without risk of incurring such destruction as might threaten civilisation itself.
Last year, for example, 60 admirals and generals gathered in Washington and declared themselves in favour of nuclear disarmament. Two most distinguished ex-chiefs of staff who sit in this House are convinced that the nuclear weapon must be eliminated. The Pope's representative has spoken more vehemently than I have with regard to why the nuclear weapon must go. The Pope's representative believes that humanity itself is threatened by the continued existence of the nuclear weapon. I believe that it will destroy our civilisation, but who knows whether we are talking about the destruction of our civilisation, or the destruction of humanity itself, or, indeed, of all life on earth? That is the kind of detail with which I do not wish to bother. However, if our civilisation is destroyed, all that we stand for will go with it. I do not know whether after that there will be any life on earth, or whether in 20, 30, 40 years or more there will be any more life on this earth than there is on the moon. However, I believe that the period of time during which we can carry on without a nuclear holocaust is pretty limited. My own guess, for what it is worth, is that probably the first century of the coming millennium will see the end of our civilisation, unless we change our course.

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I thought that my party had decided to change its course when it stated in its manifesto that it would pursue the elimination of the nuclear weapon. However, the document that we are discussing tonight on our strategic defence policy contains no effective undertaking in that regard. I should have thought that a substantial part of the document should contain the detail of how we bring about the elimination of the nuclear weapon, but not on your life! Instead of that, we vote against ourselves in the United Nations.
I shall not leave this subject alone; your Lordships have not heard the last from me. However, I do not wish to take up too much of the time that is available in this debate. Although this matter ought to be included in the document, it is not. Later in the debate, we shall hear from the noble Lord, Lord Carver, who can speak with considerable authority on this subject.
I hope that we shall begin to deal with this matter more seriously than we have done hitherto. There are two opinions on it. There are the opinions held in the non-nuclear world, which is wholly against nuclear weapons; and there are the opinions held in the nuclear world—opinions which are not widely held among the population. According to opinion polls the vast majority of people are in favour of the elimination policy which we declare ourselves to be in favour of but do not carry out. If that is the case, we have a duty to listen to what people are saying, particularly in those countries that do not have nuclear weapons, and to busy ourselves carrying out the policy on which we went to the country and won a magnificent victory.
I hope that we may be able to do something to heal the breach that exists between those with nuclear weapons and those without. That breach can be healed only by our joining the "withouts", not by the "withouts" joining us. That way lies perdition.
5.31 p.m.
The Earl of Carlisle: My Lords, it is a pleasure to salute and congratulate from these Benches the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Vincent of Coleshill, on his admirable maiden speech. It was wise, thought-provoking and shrewd. The noble Lord also issued a caution to the Front Bench. If anyone is unwise enough to doubt the need for distinguished servicemen in this House who have advised Ministers at the highest level, the noble Lord's maiden speech must have deterred them from that view. I hope that, next year, when we discuss the reform of this Chamber we shall ensure that there will always be five star officers to give us their breadth of experience in planning and executing dangerous operations of war. I am sorry that there are no naval or Royal Air Force five star officers present to give us their views on the Strategic Defence Review. Perhaps we need more of those two categories in this House. I should welcome that.
It is a daunting experience to speak after the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, and before the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Inge. The former is a well-known and much respected campaigner for nuclear disarmament; the latter has to my knowledge never been
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a nuclear disarmer. Likewise, the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, has never been Chief of the Defence Staff. I have been neither a campaigner for nuclear disarmament nor a defence chief. I had the privilege as a field officer to command sub-units in the Regular Army, an armoured car reconnaissance regiment and a TA infantry company. It is from that level that I make my small contribution. It will not be like cru champagne like that of the noble and gallant Lord; it will be something like Babycham—with no insult to Babycham!
We have been told that the Strategic Defence Review is bipartisan. I suggest that it is tripartisan. The noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, will speak as an independent from the Cross-Benches. I believe that our servicemen welcome politicians in both Houses agreeing on the broad principles of defence policy, because that gives them confidence. Woe betide us when we get into a situation like Suez, when there were arguments between the Front Benches in both Houses as to the efficacy of the operation while our servicemen were about to launch the "boat" from the blue. We welcome the Strategic Defence Review. It has been a long time coming, but it was worth waiting for. I hope that the services now have time to settle down.
I have a question for the Minister which he will not be able to answer, because the answer will not be known. Events over the years will provide the answer. Is this strategic defence approach sustainable? We welcome assurances about the great warships and aircraft carriers that are to be built. I am slightly more concerned that our amphibious landing ships will not be built soon enough. We await HMS "Bulwark" and HMS "Albion". We say that we are returning to last century, and the "boat" from the blue; we land our sailors, soldiers and airmen in order to carry out ground operations. But they need a "sea taxi", an amphibious landing ship to get them there. I understand that there will be a gap between building the new ones and the decommissioning of the old ones. How will the Government bridge that gap—beg, borrow or steal, or make do with something? Will it be a case of "débrouiller", a case of muddling through? Will it be improvisation? I am reminded by Professor Michael Howard, the distinguished professor of war studies both at London and at Oxford, who said during his Cheney lecture when considering a previous defence review, "I do not believe that Her Majesty's Government have got it exactly right. However, I can expect from this defence review that they have the ability to put it right, time, God willing, permitting". I hope that we can also say that about this defence review.
I wish to make three points. First, we are talking about defence diplomacy publicly in a Strategic Defence Review for the first time. I note the Outreach programme and welcome its expansion, including the greater use of attachments and short-term training teams and additional training courses particularly for those in central Europe. I refer to the land from the River Weser to the River Narva. A Lithuanian parliamentary delegation, under the deputy Speaker, Mr. Andrius Kubilius, is presently meeting officials from the Minister's department. They are discussing the

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enlargement of NATO. I hope that this distinguished group of Lithuanian members of parliament go away satisfied with what they learn from the Minister's officials. I suspect that they will be told that it will probably not be this year and that next year is unlikely. However, I hope that they will not be told that it will never happen, but that it will indeed happen at some time.
Will the Minister tell the House whether, following the Strategic Defence Review, we are to enhance our commitment to assist those nations that are recreating their defence forces on our own model?
I turn, secondly, to the Territorial Army. I experienced the undoubted sadness to be the sexton of a TA infantry company based at Hebburn on the Tyne. I was a sexton when it was wound up some eight years ago. Everyone in that 80-strong company found another home in another drill hall. The TA has now been cut again. Can the Minister give us some assurance, not that everyone who wishes to serve in the TA or whose commanding officers wish them to continue to serve in the TA will be found a home, but that his department will do all in its power to keep the junior and senior NCOs and the junior officers who have been expensively trained by the taxpayer and who still have a contribution to make?
Thirdly, we learn that we are short of 10,000 servicemen in the three services. The Minister was present in the Jubilee Room of the Westminster Hall on 25th November when members of your Lordships' defence group and members of the all-party defence group in the House of Commons listened to a presentation by Colonel Jackson, formerly of the Royal Green Jackets. Present to answer our questions were the Secretary of State, the Minister and the Chief of the General Staff, Sir Roger Wheeler. We saw an excellent film on that occasion. I believe that that film should be shown to a wider public, as should a naval one and a Royal Air Force one. Can the Minister assure us that we are using the media to present our defence forces in as good a light as possible? I suggest that there is no better way to present the defence forces than to get the soldier, the sailor and the airman to do it themselves.
5.41 p.m.
Lord Inge: My Lords, I start by congratulating my noble and gallant friend Lord Vincent on his maiden speech. I too congratulate the Government on the outcome of the strategic defence review. Ministers and the services were involved as a team from the outset and there was wide consultation. I know that the services feel that, within the constraints of the defence budget, it was a well-thought-out and successful review. In saying that, I include the Territorial Army, about which I shall say a little more in a moment.
I should like to highlight certain key points in the review that I think are important: the emphasis placed on the critical importance of NATO and this country's contribution as the lead nation within the allied rapid reaction corps; the commitment to, and the need to retain, a high intensity warfare capability—in other words, a true war-fighting capability; and the
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importance of improving our capability to project military power, which we need to be careful not to overstate. I was delighted by the attention given to sustainability, about which I should like to say a little more later. I was also delighted to see that real efforts will be made to try to reduce overstretch, but I have doubts about whether that is achievable.
I should like to say something about the Territorial Army. I understand the highly charged and emotional reaction that greeted the significant cuts to the Territorial Army. During the Cold War I was fortunate enough to command a division which had within it a significant number of Territorial Army units and individual reservists. Without their contribution, the Second Infantry Division could not have gone to war.
I think we need to recognise two significant facts. First, there have been major changes, which are well known, to the international security situation. Secondly, the Government made it clear that there was no additional money available for defence—wrong, maybe, but a fact. Given those two factors, significant changes to the Territorial Army were necessary to allow the TA to play a real part in meeting effectively the operational demands likely to be placed upon it in the new security situation. In all of this I recognise the significant contribution made by many individual TA soldiers in places such as Bosnia, Northern Ireland and elsewhere. However, the Territorial Army's ability to provide formed units at short notice is, for understandable reasons, less good, as the experience when we tried to fit them into the tour plot for the Falkland Islands illustrated. I hope that the Government will provide them with the kind of training days that they require and the training support and permanent staff that they need to allow them to take on these difficult and challenging roles.
Even something as successful as the strategic defence review raises certain doubts and questions which will in the end decide whether this was a successful defence review. Perhaps I may touch on a few. As the Minister mentioned, we shall know whether it was a successful review when it is tested in an operational situation. We need to recognise, first, that Britain's Armed Forces are of the highest quality but that they are now very small and have limited scope to undertake independent military action. Secondly, the defence budget is, in Sir Humphrey's famous words, "seriously over-heated" and there must be doubt as to whether the full SDR package can be delivered. Significant savings may have to be made in the forward equipment programme. On top of this, there are the so-called 3 per cent. efficiency savings demanded by the Chancellor, which may well affect operational capability in such areas as training, overstretch and quality of life. This must have a knock-on effect on standards and on retention.
I was interested in what the Minister said about the defence co-operation agreement that was signed between France and Britain. I share some of the concerns touched upon by my noble and gallant friend

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Lord Vincent. I would merely comment that I hope that Europe does not delude itself about its real military capability and does not forget the lessons that we learnt in Bosnia about the inability of the United Nations to provide such things as the strategic direction of a campaign, command and control of operations and real military fighting capability. I hope that this new co-operation agreement, about which the Minister will perhaps tell us more in due course, is more about reality than rhetoric.
I am also delighted that the Government have given such importance to sustainability in the Strategic Defence Review and are taking serious steps to improve it. Sustainability covers a wide field, including having properly manned logistic units, reserves of ammunition, thousands and thousands of spare parts and formed units. My worry is that Options for Change, which did not deliver the smaller but better armed forces that were promised, together with the various cuts that have taken place over a number of years, have resulted in deep cuts to our Armed Forces' sustainability. Noble Lords will remember how much ammunition we had to borrow to support our forces in the Gulf, and that was for only two brigades. I therefore have doubts about whether the defence budget can plug some of these major capability gaps.
My next area of concern is training. Effective training takes time, money and space. Given the operational demands on our Armed Forces and the tightness of the defence budget, there is no doubt that training, particularly for high intensity conflict, is suffering.
Finally, I should like to talk about people, who remain absolutely critical. We have touched on the problems of overstretch and the operational demands now placed upon our forces. Getting the balance right between operational tours of duty, time with family and friends and time on training is critical to retention. I believe that our servicemen and servicewomen have responded magnificently to a whole raft of challenges, but they inevitably feel buffeted, not only by the many reorganisations which they are undergoing but also by the other changes with which they are having to cope. The working time directive, the introduction of a Bill of human rights into British law, which will undoubtedly have an impact on service discipline and the chain of command, and the increased threat of legislation are but a few, and I have mentioned them before in this House. I ask the Minister to recognise that, although what I call short-term morale and spirit are fine, there are too many young, key servicemen and servicewomen, both commissioned and non-commissioned, who are seriously questioning whether they want a long-term career in our Armed Forces. They need a period of stability to regroup.
I have no doubt about the commitment of the Government to our small but very special Armed Forces. However, the armed forces need to feel that they have the wholehearted support of the Government, not just of the Secretary of State for Defence and his ministerial team. In conclusion, on a personal note, I know that defence cannot have a stronger supporter than the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert.
5.50 p.m.
Lord Vivian: My Lords, I welcome this opportunity to speak in today's defence debate. I congratulate the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Vincent, on his excellent maiden speech. I shall confine my remarks mainly to our future force capabilities, the medical services, including their TA element, military personnel policy and the Territorial Army and cadets.
At the outset I believe that the Strategic Defence Review has been a successful exercise and that the MoD and Chiefs of Staff should be congratulated on producing a review that has clearly studied with great care our future requirements. It has restructured our Navy, Army and Royal Air Force to meet the threats for the next 15 years. At this stage I should like to thank the Minister for keeping me informed of the progress and development of the review during the time that it was being conducted.
However, there are some areas that give me great cause for concern: the Treasury demand for an annual 3 per cent. saving and aid to the civil power in times of national disaster in relation to rogue states who possess weapons of mass destruction. It is in this area where the Territorial Army may have a very great role to play. I query whether the new establishment of the TA is now large enough to be effective in a national disaster role. Some noble Lords have spoken about the TA. I am aware that other noble Lords will speak about reserve forces in some detail. Therefore, I shall be brief. By and large I believe that the TA has been given realistic roles and will be able to train with up-to-date equipment for current operational roles. Although I have noted that some 87 TA centres will be closed, no single TA centre will be shut where there is not another in the same town in which it can be accommodated. The cadet forces have been protected and given some £12 million. The footprint across the country has been preserved. However, there are some concerns and it is still not too late to address them. By and large the TA has been brought up-to-date and will play a more useful part.
I turn for a moment to foreign policy. I am unable to detect any significant changes to existing policies, but the SDR concludes that greater attention is accorded to the Middle East. It has been estimated that 38 countries have ballistic missiles with a range of about 300 kilometres and 14 countries have missiles with a range of some 900 kilometres. In addition to those means of delivery, several countries possess weapons of mass destruction and are in the process of developing them. It is therefore disappointing to note that defence against a threat of this nature has not been addressed more fully or in any detail.
During Options for Change large reductions occurred, with manning levels reduced by 32 per cent. There were even greater reductions in equipment. The SDR imposes further reductions and additions, but these have all been agreed by the Chiefs of Staff. The Royal Navy has lost two further attack submarines, three frigates and three mine warfare vessels, but it has also been given a commitment by the Government that two large aircraft carriers will be built for it in the future. There will be a reduction in manpower of about 1,400 Royal Navy

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personnel. The Army has lost two armoured regiments but the remaining six regiments will now have 58 tanks each. The two regiments that have lost their armoured role will convert to an armoured reconnaissance regiment and an NBC monitoring regiment. The number of equipment support battalions and Royal Logistic Corps regiments has each increased from six to seven and Army manpower has been increased by 3,300 personnel. The RAF has lost 13 air defence aircraft, 23 offensive air support aircraft and one Rapier squadron but has gained four heavy airlift aircraft.
The greatest concern within the Armed Forces is overcommitment within the current composition and structure of the services which leads to overstretch. That is one of the main reasons for servicemen and women leaving early. The SDR does not bring any reduction in commitments. It has been agreed that the Armed Forces will continue to be trained for high intensity operations and to fight major conflicts. The SDR has restructured the Royal Navy, Army and RAF to ensure less overstretch. Among the measures taken by the Royal Navy to achieve this has been a much more flexible approach to programming ships and submarines to match their commitments and resources. Overstretch will be reduced by changing the deployment of frigates, destroyers and the attack submarine programme which will ease the strain on the fleet.
The measure taken by the Army to reduce overstretch is to base its force structure on manoeuvre and flexibility with two deployable divisions, one in UK and the second in Germany. The divisions will be equally balanced and have three brigades each. To achieve this a sixth brigade will be formed. In addition an air manoeuvre brigade will be created. This new force structure will enable the Ministry of Defence to undertake concurrently two brigade operations: one a relatively short war-fighting deployment and the other an enduring non-war-fighting operation, including fullscale operations. Providing the system can be made to work it should reduce separation of families, assist with retention in the Army, establish stability and prevent skill fade in a unit's primary role. The three services that have been restructured for expeditionary conflict will continue to train for war-fighting and by this reorganisation should reduce overstretch and improve retention and recruiting. The new concept of "Jointery" should secure a more efficient use of resources.
I turn to the medical services. In previous debates many of your Lordships have been most concerned that they have been reduced too much and would not be able to provide the necessary support in a major conflict. I have to declare an interest as I am honorary Colonel to 306 Field Hospital. The SDR concludes that
"we are committed to restoring operational medical capability to the required level as soon as possible, and a major investment will he made to achieve it".
These are very welcome words. It also concludes that a number of improvements would be made to address personnel and equipment shortfalls, provide a 200-bed hospital ship, with a second one on contract if required, ensure that additional hospital beds would be made available and enhance the Army's regular ambulance
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evacuation capability. All of these proposals are most welcome, including the addition of 2,000 Territorial Army posts to enhance this important service which would have an important role to play in any large conflict. However, here there is a matter of grave concern because out of the so-called 2,000 additional posts 1,222 have been lost. This loss is made up of a recent arbitrary cut of 476, a further reduction of 270 to be transferred to the non-regular permanent staff and 476 to be trained as combat medical technicians and held against the Royal Army Medical Corps Territorial Army establishment. In reality they will be the bandsmen of the yeomanry and infantry regiments.
The story gets worse as it has been decided to disband the TA RAMC band—the only band that it has—consisting of some 50 combat medical technicians. That must be a bitter pill to swallow when it has just been robbed of 476 TA posts for other Territorial Army bands. This is a most unrealistic, ridiculous and absurd arrangement without any logic. Furthermore, it will not be possible to sustain it and it will be a cause for plummeting morale just at the time when new recruits at all levels are required. I ask the Minister to reverse these decisions. Perhaps he could explain in any event why there has been this arbitrary cut in posts.
Some of your Lordships will recall from the defence group visit that we found that the Royal Hospital Haslar, the only military hospital. was located in the wrong place for the Services; was understaffed; had insufficient patients; and was costing an exorbitant amount of money. Furthermore, the wrong decision was taken to move the Royal Army Medical Corps training college from Millbank to Gosport, so that it could be close to the one and only military hospital. The future of Haslar is not known, but one possibility is that it could be closed and another Ministry of Defence health unit established in a National Health Service Hospital. If that is the course of action taken. I ask the Minister to ensure that a centre of medical excellence be created to cover military surgeons, anaesthetists, accident and emergency and other skills; and this new centre should be preferably close to London. That would enable eminent civilian physicians and surgeons to advise and visit this military centre of excellence. In fact, I can see no reason why this new centre of excellence could not be located on the present Millbank site.
The nation is proud and grateful to our Armed Forces who are well equipped and extremely well trained, but they are under-recruited, overstretched and with too much family separation, which leads to lower retention rates and high divorce rates. The Armed Forces will not continue to be so professional and efficient unless the right type of people are attracted to them. In this context the emphasis placed on a "policy for people" was timely and apt and right to have been a key part of the review. It is essential that the measures proposed to provide better terms and conditions of service; improvements in pay and allowances and pension terms; better quality of training; allowing service beyond the 22-year point; providing better education and opportunities to gain civilian recognised qualifications during their service; and the other policy proposals are all implemented with the utmost urgency. As soon as that occurs, recruiting

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will improve even more than it recently has done and retention rates will go up. These are some of the factors that will reduce overstretch.
There is an area which is of serious and grave concern resulting from the Human Rights Act affecting service discipline. This was raised previously in your Lordships' House and, as far as I can recall, we were led to believe that we were worrying unnecessarily about the possibility of undermining the powers of a commanding officer. The fact of the matter is that it is now a subject of major concern to the services, as a commanding officer may have his powers severely restricted when dealing with disciplinary matters and this may debase the special ethos so vital to the Armed Forces. It is further understood that because of the Human Rights Act there are now difficulties over premature arrests and investigations by the Royal Military Police. I would be most grateful to the Minister if he would clarify the matter and let your Lordships know where the situation stands at the moment.
The successful outcome of the Strategic Defence Review depends on when the conclusions and recommendations will be implemented. It would be helpful if a schedule were published showing the timeframe when the recommendations of this report would be achieved. The report is not convincing about the urgency which is required for implementation of new personnel policies. If these recommendations are not seen to be forthcoming very soon by the Armed Forces, undermanning and overstretch will continue. This review, as always, is highly sensitive and vulnerable to the defence budget and it is essential that short-term financial goals are not achieved at the expense of capabilities critical to the overall strategy. Any proposals for further cuts in real terms below the third year base line could cause the whole strategy to unwind and if any significant aspect ceases to occur on time the whole structure could fall apart. On balance, this is an excellent Strategic Defence Review and commanders at all levels must continue to explain the forthcoming benefits of this review to our loyal, courageous, professional and hardworking servicemen and women to whom the nation is always indebted.
6.4 p.m.
Lord Carver: My Lords, like other noble Lords, I congratulate my noble and gallant friend Lord Vincent of Coleshill on his maiden speech. Like him and my other noble and gallant friend Lord Inge, I in general consider the review to be a good, sensible document, and that despite a liberal sprinkling of those pious platitudes which the civil servants at the Ministry of Defence are so skilled in concocting. I also believe that most of the decisions about the future of the Armed Forces that the review contains are sensible in the light of the fundamental transformation that has taken place in the probable defence tasks that we face.
The most important transformation, in comparison to the time when I became Chief of the Defence Staff a quarter of a century ago—rather a long time ago—is that then we were irrevocably committed to a series of emergency defence plans in NATO, CENTO and
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SEATO to specific force targets. Today the Government are free to choose how much, when and what they are committed to. I appeal to them not to over-commit the forces for the sake of this curious policy called "punching above your weight".
I shall confine my remarks to only a few aspects of the review. I welcome the review's transparency about numbers of nuclear weapons, the missiles to deliver them and stocks of fissile material. I should like to see the Government press other nuclear powers to follow their example in this respect. I also welcome the reduction in the planned number of what it calls "operationally available warheads" and "missile bodies", and the announcement that submarine missiles will normally be, "at several days' notice to fire".
I welcome too the greater honesty in paragraph 74 about the costs of the programme. But while welcoming all this, I must stress that it makes no difference to my belief that we do not need such a system and that it would both save money and help to discourage proliferation if we gave it up. In fact, the reductions and change in alert status merely highlight the basic illogicality of the whole policy. The sole attempt to justify its strategic basis is in paragraph 60 of the review which merely states:
"Our minimum deterrent remains a necessary element of our security'.
The statements made in paragraphs 4 and 7 of supporting essay five on the subject add nothing significant to that.
In the debate on the Address on 26th November, the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, intoned the traditional mantras about why the Government believe our nuclear weapons to be necessary. As he is a trustee of the Council of Arms Control, I hope that he has read the article in its most recent bulletin by the vice-chairman, General Sir Hugh Beach, which effectively demolishes those arguments. If he has not read it, I suggest that he does so. So much for nuclear weapons.
I next turn to the reserve forces. I fully support the measures that the Government are taking to reorganise the Territorial Army and give it a relevant and realistic purpose. It has long been clear to me that, with the exception of certain logistic and medical units, units at regimental or battalion strength were never going to be employed as such; and that the real need was to make it possible for members, or possibly sub-units, of the TA to be able to reinforce regular units, preferably on a voluntary basis. It is absolutely right that in the Territorial Army, with the exception of certain logistic and medical units, the squadron, battery or company should be considered as the basic unit in which local or historical traditions should, as far as possible, be retained.
I have great sympathy for the problem so eloquently explained by the noble Lord, Lord Cope of Berkeley, particularly because when I commanded 4th Armoured Brigade in the whole of the north-west Europe campaign in the Second World War, one of my regiments was the 44th Royal Tank Regiment, which was a Bristol-based TA regiment.

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However, if the TA is to be reduced—as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Inge, said, it has to be reduced as the requirement is reduced—there are two ways to set about that inevitable dispersion over the country. One is to do more or less what has been done: to try to retain some presence almost everywhere. The other is to concentrate the Territorial Army on major population centres. I am certain that that would raise just as many objections as were raised by those who have been affected by dispersion. Having been closely involved in reorganising the Army's voluntary reserves, including the TA, over 30 years ago I know that one has to struggle against the serried ranks of local interests and conservatives (with both a large and small "c") to meet the real need. When Richard Haldane was trying to form the territorial force out of the yeomanry volunteers and militia 90 years ago he met with exactly the same resistance—and nowhere more strongly than in this House. I congratulate the Government on having firmly, and, I believe, fairly, grasped this nettle.
My next point is what is known as "jointery": arrangements to make the three services act together or share training facilities. The remarkable advances in electronics in every form, both in friendly forces and potentially hostile ones—in communications, navigation and many different aspects of weapon systems—mean that where all three forces are involved in the same operation or area they must act together. But I should add a word of caution. The review makes clear that it is unlikely that in any serious military operations our own three Armed Forces together would be acting alone, as they did in the Falklands, and certainly not for any great length of time. The Army and the RAF may often act together. Indeed, future developments in technology may make it sensible for them to be integrated to a greater degree than the review suggests; and the RAF and the Royal Navy may act together when the Navy is within range of shore-based aircraft. In that case also future developments in technology are likely to force a greater degree of integration between ships at sea and land-based aircraft supporting them. But occasions when the Army and the Royal Navy act closely together will be rare and of short duration.
More likely than any of those scenarios is one in which we shall be acting with allies, each service fighting alongside the same service of other nations, most probably and most importantly with those of the United States. The ability of each service to operate with, and probably under the command of, United States forces is of higher priority than integrating closely on a tri-service basis by ourselves. A high technology gap is rapidly widening between US forces and our own which threatens our ability to co-operate with or serve under them. Closing that gap is of great importance and will be expensive.
I have another word of warning. It is about the proposal in paragraph 194 to set a target of a 3 per cent. annual saving in operating costs over the next four years on top of the other measures designed to reduce expenditure. That must not be allowed to undermine the resources promised to the forces under the review or to force other changes. A very close watch needs to be kept to ensure that that does not take place. I hope that the
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Minister will be able to give us an assurance on this matter. There are already some disturbing signs that it is threatened.
As the Minister stated, there is to be a NATO summit next April on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the treaty which formed the North Atlantic Alliance. The meeting is due to consider a new strategic concept. What will be the Government's attitude towards pressure from the United States to formalise a military role for the alliance outside its present boundaries? It is a difficult matter. I hope that the government attitude towards it will be favourable. What will be their attitude to further enlargement? Do the Government still believe what was stated in paragraph 38 of the review: that the admission of the three new members is,
"a welcome first step in a carefully managed process of enlargement which will strengthen both the Alliance itself and European security as a whole"?
I hope that the rumours I have heard are true: that both the American Government and our Government are having second thoughts about further enlargement. I hope that the Minister can give us answers to those important questions.
Finally, I welcome the moves which the Government are considering, of which there was no hint in the review, to make a reality of a European defence identity in which we, Germany and France would take the lead. I have long advocated that, and I hope that the Government will put real and imaginative effort behind it. I noted with care the remarks that the noble Lord, Lord Owen, made on this subject in the debate on the Address. He expressed himself strongly opposed to the establishment of any new organisation, in particular if it were to have any link with the European Parliament; and he favoured a strengthening of the Western European Union. I agree with his first point but not his second. WEU has existed in a sort of limbo since the formation of the North Atlantic Alliance. In the past few years attempts have been made to breathe some life into it, largely in order to avoid any move towards an organisation linked with the European Union. But the right answer is not to try to resuscitate it but to wind it up.
On a number of occasions, both in this House and elsewhere, I have put forward my own solution. I do so again as briefly as I can. It is that the North Atlantic Alliance's military organisation, NATO, should be radically transformed so that it consists of three elements: first, the United States forces assigned to the alliance, straightforwardly—it is only recognising reality—under their own national command; and, secondly, a more or less integrated European military command and training organisation within the alliance, not separate like the WEU. Britain, France and Germany must be members of it and any other members of the alliance who wished could join. It should be capable of commanding operations either under American command or independently. The third element would be those members of the alliance who did not wish to assign their forces permanently to this organisation but who could do so for any operation in which they wished to participate. Adoption of that solution would make it possible to abolish NATO's huge bureaucratic

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headquarter staffs which are bound to grow if the alliance is enlarged and NATO, as the military organisation, remains in its present pattern. We do not want to create a new organisation outside the alliance, as seemed to be indicated by some of the comments from the recent Anglo-French meeting at St. Malo. If the transformation I have proposed were to be adopted, most of my objections to enlargement would dissolve, particularly if it were accompanied by the establishment of a nuclear weapon-free zone from the eastern borders of Germany to the western ones of Russia.
Apart from their general intention, it is not at all clear to me what the Government have in mind as a formal structure for a European defence identity. Bilateral agreements with the French are not enough. I therefore offer the Government my solution, with the compliments of the season.
6.18 p.m.
Lord Hardy of Wath: My Lords, this debate and previous exchanges in the House seem to demonstrate that the SDR commands considerable respect—rather more than the prospect of the review was afforded in the previous Parliament. It commands respect because it is justified; and it is justified largely because it is realistic. It is realistic because it recognises the fact that in this world there is insecurity, barbarism, horror and great instability. That has been the case since the end of the Cold War brought an intensification of regional rivalries and other uncertainties. During that period, British servicemen and servicewomen were heavily involved. Clearly, Her Majesty's Government expect that as crises, difficulties and disasters occur British service personnel will continue to be involved. Perhaps they will be involved on a scale which is inequitable in comparison with the contribution provided by other members of the alliance.
The SDR recognises those needs, but there are social and disciplinary difficulties, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Vivian. I am an amateur student of military history. It reminded me that on the morning before the Charge of the Light Brigade the general commanding ordered three troopers to be flogged for smoking in their lines. One of them was flogged after the charge. No doubt in the years which followed, Members spoke in this House in order to make military discipline more humane. But people might have asked, "What will the Army come to if generals do not have the freedom to act with a degree of arbitrariness?". I do not suggest that noble Lords who reached eminent rank in the Army would wish to see the return of the days of that particular general. We are seeing the Ministry and the services recognise that they can and will happily adapt to the new requirements which a more civilised society, rightly or wrongly, has placed upon them.
At least the debate will continue in this House and in Europe. There has been, and there will be, no lack of debate in Europe. An unfortunate aspect is that politicians from the countries which do little will continue to say a great deal. They will happily seize upon the suggestions made in the debate, not least from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Carver, about the
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future structure of European security. I listened with great interest because I took part in many debates on these matters in the WEU. On occasion one felt considerable irritation.
I shall not repeat a fairly long passage of a speech that I made in this House shortly after my introduction, when I described my horror at the sheer triumphalism of the debates in the WEU. The triumphalism was most expressed by parliamentarians from countries which had made no contribution. It was rather odious, in particular as some of us felt that the Gulf War ended a little too soon. Perhaps subsequent events have justified that view.
However, there is a difference now. No doubt it was a matter of relief to my noble friend Lady Symons at Question Time last week when she said that our partners in Europe appeared to have no objection to British involvement in the Gulf. That may represent a considerable step forward, but it does not give us a great deal of hope that there will be urgent improvement in a sense of commitment.
Although I criticise the WEU, I believe that it can be and should be an essential part of the European security structure. It needs to be improved. The parliamentary assembly needs to be far more willing to discard the posture of tamed docility in response to Ministers speaking on behalf of or to the Council of Ministers. The Council of Ministers should be far more willing to look at the detail rather than providing fine sounding statements every couple of years. The office of the Secretary General needs to be a great deal more robust. We must not have the situation that I encountered when I was told by the Secretary General that members of the parliamentary assembly can ask questions only about those forces under the control of WEU. It does not take a great knowledge of the organisation for noble Lords to be aware that the WEU has commanded little in the way of resources before the Armilla Patrol and not all that much since. The organisation needs to be made more meaningful.
I say that because I have real anxiety about the call to transfer the responsibility for foreign and security policy to Brussels. I am not critical of Brussels—I believe that Europe must develop and emerge—but Europe has a lot on its plate. I wonder at what point in its scale of priorities security and defence might be placed. The Commission has long been interested and involved in and sought responsibility for industrial matters. Yet we have a grossly unsatisfactory situation within the European defence industry. We find our partners complaining about a one-way street. It is not a one-way street. The Americans would be justified in complaining if we sought to divert traffic upon it, given the scale of their investment and the efforts which America has made in largely securing the consolidation of its defence industry. The steps towards achieving that consolidation in Europe have been too halting and too much delayed.
One could exempt the United Kingdom from many of the strictures that one could offer on that matter. British Aerospace is now the largest of the European companies, although not quite to the standard or scale

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of the American titan. But as a result of investment and skilled operation it has emerged as the leading player in the defence industry scene within Europe. National interests, hesitation and inadequate prioritisation have left the European industry in a less competitive state than the American giant which invested a great deal.
My noble friend, who is far more expert in these matters than I, may wish to comment on some aspects of the present and developing state of co-operation within the European defence industry. He may be able to comment on the Eurofighter—or the Typhoon, as it is now called—and tell us, as it is an extremely important development, a little about its commercial prospects.
It might also be appropriate for us to look ahead as well as at recent events. There is a great deal of concern and interest in the next generation of military aircraft; in the fighter and strike aircraft which will emerge in the next century. Are we to see adequate European and transatlantic co-operation in these fields? Is it possible to say when public debate, because public debate there must be, can reasonably begin on these matters? It may also be appropriate for my noble friend to refer to the future role of unmanned vehicles and aircraft.
I and a number of noble Lords, some of whom are or were present in the Chamber, recently visited the British Army in Germany. It was a most impressive visit. If I left with one anxiety it was that we are seeing, and quite properly, the deployment of large numbers of strike helicopters. But it is equally obvious that the Royal Regiment of Artillery and presumably other artillery units in other countries are also developing an increasing capacity to respond to the strike helicopter. Whether they can respond to the faster ground attack aircraft such as the Harrier is doubtful at this stage. But one should understand that human ingenuity is considerable and the strike helicopter may receive a ready response by the development of new modern anti-aircraft capacity.
I do not want to stray far because I wish to make two or three other points. First, I and many other noble Lords will be happy when our servicemen can once again walk about in uniform. I am not at all convinced that the general public in this country are fully aware of the quality and existence of our service people. It is all very well having military soaps which may be interesting on television, but really our public coverage of the work and role of our Armed Forces is grossly inadequate.
During the Gulf War, I spent a good deal of time in Paris, attending a series of WEU committees. Each time I went back to my hotel and switched on the television, you could have sworn that no one else was involved in the Gulf War except our friends, the French. And yet, if one watched television in England, you were more likely to see an F-18 flying than a Tornado. You were more likely to see American personnel. That is quite right because they provided the great bulk of the forces, although one would not have deduced that from the French experience.
However, people should be aware of the service given and the achievements made. For example, I doubt whether 1 per cent. of the people of this country are aware of the contribution which Royal Air Force aircraft made in the airstrikes which compelled the Serbs to
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reach the Dayton Accord. And yet, those particular missions were of enormous importance for they demonstrated beyond doubt that it was possible to deliver the smart bombs with absolute precision, something which had never until recent years been available to anybody's air force. I accept that the Cruise missile may have the same degree of accuracy, but my noble friend may be able to confirm that it costs 20 times as much as a bomb which could achieve the same purpose.
We need to see people in uniform and we need to promote an understanding, awareness and appreciation which our services should command. That is particularly important if we are to ensure that the future reserves not merely recruit but retain. It is of considerable importance because the retention rate in many TA units—and no noble Lord has mentioned it—was quite deplorable.
My final point is that as a boy, before I joined the Royal Air Force, I was in the Air Training Corps for three or four years. I found it extremely enjoyable, and since I left the other place I have been delighted to be linked again with the Air Training Corps. I am president of our squadron in the Rotherham area in South Yorkshire. There I meet keen, healthy, concerned and active young people who are responding to challenges and seizing opportunities in a way which I find is quite delightful. In our local newspapers, we see too much of crime, drugs and the irresponsibility of some of our youngsters. Those in the cadet organisations—and I have seen something, too, of the Army cadets in recent months—are doing a great deal. I hope that any committed territorial who now finds his unit weakened, reduced or based many miles away—as the noble Lord, Lord Cope explained in describing the South West—will be brought in to work with the cadet organisations.
We need to see more adult voluntary commitment and involvement, not merely in the cadet forces but the same applies across the whole area of youth organisations in this country. The cadet organisations are doing a great deal. Obviously, many of the cadets will provide first-class servicemen when they become older. But the contribution to the community is much wider than that. I hope that that contribution can be continued and, indeed, enhanced. I was particularly grateful that the cadet organisations in my area can look forward to the future rather than face the anxiety which they may have felt before the SDR. In my view, that part of the SDR is extremely important. Perhaps I may say that among the people involved in our local Air Training Corps, there is a great deal of gratitude.
6.33 p.m.
Lord Monro of Langholm: My Lords, after such a galaxy of five-star generals, we are now reduced to a one-star air commodore. Immediately, I begin my remarks by congratulating the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Vincent, on a very fine maiden speech. I believe that the noble and gallant Lord and the noble and gallant Lords, Lord Carver and Lord Inge, were hinting diplomatically that they hoped that we should stay much

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closer to NATO rather than the European Union in relation to defence. I am sure that that message will be taken up by the Minister when he winds up the debate.
With Options for Change, the Royal Air Force took a severe knock, as indeed did the other services. In line with that, equal pain was prevalent within the Royal Auxiliary Air Force, of which I happen to be the honorary inspector-general and have been for some years. We lost four defence force flights and three squadrons, including the two which had the Oerliken guns which we had captured in the Falklands, and two wing headquarters. Since then, there have been years of steady development. The RAF realises that the auxiliaries are well-trained, efficient and part of the line of battle and, most important, are cost effective.
Therefore, we faced the SDR with a great deal of confidence and that was certainly not misplaced, with an increase of 10 per cent. in the Royal Auxiliary Air Force as proposed in the announcement made recently by the Minister. We are now able to develop the Royal Support Squadrons. I visited the Helicopter Support Squadron on the Isle of Wight recently and was impressed not only with the training facilities but also with the squadron itself. There is also the Air Transportable Surgical Squadron. The noble Lord, Lord Vivian, will be interested to know, because he was talking about medical support, that we have very long waiting lists for our two medical squadrons. There are many consultants queuing up to join and, I believe, even moving their practices from England to Scotland so that they can join the squadron there at Leuchars. That demonstrates that there are many senior and highly-qualified doctors anxious to serve their country if the facilities are right for them. In addition, we have two training squadrons developed over recent years.
In 1997, there was the significant and welcome amalgamation between the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve and the Royal Auxiliary Air Force into the single Royal Auxiliary Air Force. That added to our strength with two intelligence squadrons, a photo-interpretation squadron, a PR squadron, and a met. squadron. Many individuals from those squadrons have been providing extremely valuable service in Bosnia. I am glad to say that we have not only had strong support from Ministers, and in particular from the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, but we have had support also from the Chief of Air Staff, Sir Richard Johns, and the Air Force Board.
All those auxiliaries are active volunteers. They must not be mistaken for the full-time reservists or, indeed, the many ex-regulars who appear on the computers but not on the parade ground. I am glad to say that the flying training programme has been going very well indeed. We have air crew and helicopters. We have a Hercules and now, at last, some fast jets as well. They bring back memories of the 21 flying squadrons that we had up to 1957 and the 16 squadrons which behaved so heroically during the Battle of Britain.
So it is good news that I am reporting to the Minister and I am grateful to him for the help that he has given since he took up his post.
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However, there are two issues which I ask him to consider this evening and perhaps he will write to me about them as soon as he can. I know that the Royal Air Force is going through a strategic manpower review as part of the total force concept. A moratorium has been placed on our Royal Support Squadrons in relation to recruiting and training. A solution must be reached quickly because those volunteers do not wish to sit there marking time and wondering what is to happen to them in the future. I hope that we may be given approval to go ahead in the very near future so that we can proceed again with recruitment and the full training programme and know exactly where we are going.
Secondly, I wish to talk about the ethos of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force. There seems to be an impression in the Ministry of Defence, and perhaps elsewhere, that auxiliaries will be called out only in a major conflict. That is wrong. We would not be called out for short-notice operations or on humanitarian tasks. When a Royal Auxiliary Air Force serviceman or service woman joins up and signs on, they give that right for immediate call-up and are operationally trained to fulfil any role. It is important that it should be appreciated by Ministers in the Ministry of Defence that they are ready to go anywhere at the drop of a hat.
There are good procedures for when an individual is not able to go. For instance, when we sent two squadrons to the Gulf only two members were not able to go—for very good reasons; they had university final exams a few weeks ahead and were granted leave of absence. The Gulf conflict showed how effective the squadrons could be, particularly the movement squadron 4624 which did so much in the way of loading aircraft in this country and abroad.
Therefore I hope that the Minister can give me an assurance that the Royal Auxiliary Air Force will be called out for any operations for which their services are required. If we do not do that—this was prevalent after the Gulf conflict—not only will those auxiliaries who are not called out feel aggrieved that they were overlooked, but their employers will say, "We allowed these servicemen leave for 14 days continuous training, weekends and so forth, yet when a conflict arises such as that in the Gulf, they are not wanted". That is a wrong impression to give employers. I know NELC worked on this and we want to make sure that it does not happen again.
As I said earlier, we are the first line of reserve to the Royal Auxiliary Air Force and we want to remain that way. We have a high retention rate. Many members of squadrons in the Royal Auxiliary Air Force have served 10, 15 or more years. That is good for recruiting and for promoting and it brings stability. We want stability and we want to have confidence that there will be no more changes in the future.
My message to the Minister therefore as we approach the year of our 75th anniversary is that the Royal Auxiliary Air Force is in very good heart and pleased at the way things are going at the moment. But I want to make two or three quick points on a broader front. First, I read in the newspaper at the weekend that there was further talk about the air-sea rescue service being taken

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from the Royal Air Force and given to the coastguard or privatised. That would be a retrograde step. The reputation of the Royal Air Force in search and rescue is enormous. All of us, particularly in Scotland where there is so much mountain rescue as well as sea-borne rescue, feel that it would be a great loss to public confidence if the Royal Air Force ceased to be in the lead. That is no criticism of the coastguard which does a very good job with helicopters itself.
Secondly, I know the Minister is being cautious to get it right in relation to TAVRA. It is important to us in the Royal Auxiliary. We receive tremendous support from the vice-chairman and her organisation. I know it is a tri-service, but people tend to think it is just an Army organisation. It looks after the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy Reserves as well. I hope the Minister will look carefully at the geographical changes in mind for TAVRA so that it comes out in the best way for all those who are interested in it.
I join with the noble Lord, Lord Hardy of Wath, in saying "Well done" on behalf of the cadets. All their headquarters are being retained and from my enquiries I understand that they can count on the full flying programme in the future. It is an important incentive to allow the Royal Air Training Corps cadets to fly each year with the Royal Air Force. I believe too that the Government are right to support the Army and Navy cadets which do so much along with the Air Training Corps for outward-bound activities and all the aspects mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hardy. We want to make certain that that continues in the future.
Finally, like the noble Lord, Lord Cope, I was concerned with my area which I represented for a long time in the House of Commons. It ran from Berwick to Stranraer—240 miles—and had one platoon and one company. It seemed a huge distance for whoever was doing the training, but at least they managed to retain the headquarters in Dumfries, to be shared with the cadets of the three services. By and large I give the Minister support for what is achieved in the review, even though it may have left many unhappy people in the Territorial Army. I am sure that at the end of the day many of those problems will be resolved and it may not then be as bad as it seems.
6.45 p.m.
Lord Chalfont: My Lords, I wish to add my congratulations to my noble and gallant friend Lord Vincent on his excellent maiden speech. The good sense and thoughtful nature of his comments will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with his distinguished military career. Perhaps I may say also at this point that the House is fortunate to benefit from the views of two other noble and gallant Field Marshals who have spoken this evening and who add so much to the debates of this House on military subjects.
I want to concentrate my few brief remarks today on a subject which is crucial to any defence policy (the noble Lord, Lord Vivian, mentioned this in passing) but to which we are not giving sufficiently high priority; that is, the question of missile defence both in a national
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context and in the context, perhaps more importantly, of the security of our armed forces when they are operating overseas.
The Strategic Defence Review was, in my view and that of other noble Lords, a courageous and constructive blueprint for creating defence forces appropriate to the new strategic environment. It is possible to have reservations about the detail of any review—for instance, the wisdom of substantial cuts in our reserve forces which have already received considerable attention this evening. But, more importantly, the Select Committee on Defence in another place warned us that the,
"Strategic Defence Review was very finely balanced"—
which indeed it is. But more significantly, it went on to criticise the SDR for failing adequately to consider the need for ballistic missile defence systems,
"to protect expeditionary forces and the UK mainland".
It is that concern which I want to underline and highlight today. In the Strategic Defence Review that matter received only one brief mention and that was in one of the excellent supporting essays that came with the review.
The Strategic Defence Review moved this country towards the concept of expeditionary force structures allowing a greater freedom of action in a wider range of theatres around the globe. Indeed, the Secretary for Defence said in his introduction to the Strategic Defence Review
"In the post Cold War world we must be prepared to go to the crisis rather than have the crisis come to us".
But if the Gulf War taught us anything, it was that any future expeditionary force of that kind might well come under crippling attack from missiles, ballistic or otherwise, possibly armed with warheads of mass destruction—chemical, biological or even nuclear. That threat has been described on so many occasions that it is otiose to repeat it in detail. The best recent analysis for those who wish to go into it more deeply is a document called the Fundamental Issue Study, written and edited by Professor Neville Brown, which was published in February of this year. But that was a dense and closely argued document.
It is enough for the purposes of this debate to underline the fact that in 1995 the United States Central Intelligence Agency estimated that at least 20 countries had or may be developing weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile delivery systems. Of those, North Korea, Iran, Iraq and Libya already possessed, or may have been developing, weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile systems which could threaten the security of any of our expeditionary forces operating in any future conflict. If they continue to develop such systems, they could in due course threaten our own national territory or at least that of our allies.
As recently as 17th November this year, thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, and the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, the Ministry of Defence issued a document which was an assessment of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons stockpiles. I remind noble Lords that those stockpiles, together with the Scud missiles which the Iraqis possessed, inflicted more than 20,000 casualties

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in the war with Iran. It is therefore vital that we should examine, with some urgency, a means of defending any British expeditionary force against a threat of that kind. I do not think that it is too early to ask ourselves whether we need to contemplate the possibility of a national missile defence system. I know that that would be prohibitively and cripplingly expensive, but it may well be necessary in any future conflict with what has already been described as a "rogue state".
Before I leave the subject of Iraq and the paper on that country's weapons of mass destruction, can the Minister in his reply tell the House anything about what is happening at the military installation at Ibn A1 Haitham near Baghdad? He will know that that missile plant has recently been substantially expanded and might well be—indeed, according to some intelligence reports, already is—producing longer-range missiles than those which Iraq has possessed in the past. Have the UN inspectors been given any access to that installation? If so, what have they found? It would be enlightening if the Minister could say a word about that when he replies.
Perhaps I may say a word on the nuclear striking force. I congratulate the Government on the firmness but flexibility of their policy towards our nuclear deterrent. As the Strategic Defence Review states, that is an essential element of our national security. As the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, recently stated in this House, it may have to be used in extreme circumstances of self-defence, which includes the defence of our NATO allies. Perhaps I may say with the greatest of respect to my noble and gallant friend Lord Carver that I think that far from demolishing the Government's case, the views of General Sir Hugh Beach in the latest issue of the Bulletin of Arms Control go a long way to underline its strength. Perhaps my noble and gallant friend and I can take up that argument at some future date.
I see that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, is no longer in his place, but I think that it is worth saying, for the record, that I too was in the Far East when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Our intelligence estimates at that time indicated to us that if we had to invade Japan in order to bring the war to an end, hundreds of thousands of allied soldiers, sailors and airmen would have been killed. That invasion was made unnecessary by the use of the atom bomb. Whatever others may say, I have no difficulty at all in deciding in which direction my moral and ethical judgments lie on that argument.
I move away from the question of the nuclear deterrent because, for the purpose of defending our expeditionary forces, the threat of retaliation by use of the nuclear deterrent is not relevant. The question has already been put by an American analyst in the following form—and I hope that it is one that our military planners have asked themselves:
"Suppose that a ballistic missile with an anthrax warhead were fired at our armed forces in an expeditionary operation, is it credible that we would be willing to turn Baghdad into the next Hiroshima in retaliation?"
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The answer must be perfectly obvious to anyone. There is surely only one alternative: the need for ballistic missile defence to prevent our forces being destroyed by such a potential enemy.
The need for such defence has already had a wide measure of endorsement. In October, the United States announced that it had allocated an additional 1 billion dollars to step up the development of its theatre and national missile defence systems. It was announced only last week that the Ballistic Missile Defence Office in the United States was analysing potential sites across the country for its own national missile defence system. Meanwhile, it has been announced that Japan has agreed to join the USA in a joint research programme on theatre missile defence. Earlier this month a memorandum was signed by the United States and Israel aimed at strengthening Israel's defence against the threat of long-range missiles and non-conventional weapons. The United States is fully committed to a programme known as the Theatre High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) which is conceived principally for defence in overseas tactical situations rather than for national defence. Finally, there is the Medium Extended Air Defence System (MEADS) in which the United States, Germany and Italy plan together to develop a mobile defence system capable of intercepting and destroying theatre ballistic and, indeed, cruise missiles. Attempts to persuade the United Kingdom to join that system have so far been in vain.
In the Strategic Defence Review, that whole vital question was relegated to virtually one sentence. The Government have said that it would now be premature to decide to acquire a ballistic missile defence capability. However, the Ministry of Defence has committed itself to monitoring the threat, participating in NATO studies and working closely with our allies. That is most encouraging and those are unexceptionable sentiments. It is certainly of vital importance in working out a ballistic missile defence policy of the kind I regard as essential to proceed on an alliance basis. I should like to ask the Minister whether we are not being a little too cautious and conservative about that, if I may use that word. The three-year programme which the Government have undertaken on technology readiness and risk assessment is one way of approaching the problem, but does the Minister agree that it may well be overtaken by events?
Finally, apart from the important matter of the security of our expeditionary forces, which is at the heart of this imaginative and constructive Strategic Defence Review, there is also the important matter of the security of Europe. Planning staff in the German defence ministry published a paper as long ago as 1990 which contained the following sentence:
"A strengthened deployment of missile defence capabilities against the potential threat of Third Countries is in the interest of global stability and is preventive protection against new threats to all the states of Europe".
I should be grateful to know whether the Government agree with that assessment and whether they are content that the UK, almost alone among the major powers of

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the Atlantic alliance, should have only what seems to be a watching brief in one of the vital strategic issues of the post-Cold War world.
6.58 p.m.
Baroness Cox: My Lords, I offer my contribution with considerable trepidation as I have no military background whatever. However, I want to focus on the Defence Medical Services for two reasons. The first arises from my professional background as a nurse. Because of that I inevitably hear many and repeated expressions of concern from both nursing and medical colleagues. The second reason stems from the specific reference made to the problems of the DMS by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, in his contribution to the debate on the Address. The contributions of the noble and gallant Lord are, of course, always highly significant and immensely powerful. I was therefore especially concerned when he drew parallels between the Territorial Army and the DMS, fearing that the stuffing would be knocked out of the TA,
"just as the last government, despite warning after warning, also with plans hatched in the Ministry of Defence, justified with exactly the same exhortations about modernisation and relevance in the modern world, virtually destroyed the Armed Forces' Medical Services with disastrous consequences which this Government are now desperately trying to tackle".—[Official Report, 26/11/98; col. 148.]
I am reassured that the noble and gallant Lord believes that this Government are now trying to tackle the problems besetting the DMS. I was also pleased to hear the Minister refer in his opening speech to some of the initiatives already under way, some of which are identified in the SDR.
However, my noble friend Lord Vivian has highlighted some continuing concerns about the DMS. I have to say that there does not seem to be much sign that the proposed initiatives are yet having any significant effects on the men and women now in these services—perhaps I should say "still in these services". Many have left or are leaving, disillusioned and demoralised. One medical officer said to me only last week, "If the situation continues as bad as it is, you won't be having this debate on the DMS much longer, as they will have ceased to exist." Just two days ago, another medical officer reeled off a list of names of several colleagues who have either just given notice or are about to do so. I was also told that a senior executive officer working within the DMS recently claimed that it would take only three or four more consultants to leave for the medical service to implode.
Those are just a few examples of a disturbingly large number of representations I have received, all reflecting acute concern at the implications of the current situation for those still in post, and, more seriously for the future, fears that the capacity to maintain a viable medical service will be so diminished that our Armed Forces will not have the medical back-up they need to provide essential support in the event of future conflict.
Your Lordships will be well aware that those engaged in action must have confidence that, in the event of injury, they will receive immediate and comprehensive treatment. The knowledge that this treatment is available
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is vital to the morale of fighting forces. It must be a national priority to ensure that those who risk life and health in active service are entitled to the highest possible quality of medical and nursing care.
In addition, in keeping with the Government's commitment to an "ethical foreign policy" and their increasing commitment to the work of the United Nations, this "support service" is being required to make a major contribution to the peacekeeping and aid operations which are increasingly occupying service personnel.
Some of the major concerns relating to the DMS are interrelated: the recruitment and retention of staff; career prospects; terms and conditions of service; and adequate clinical facilities for the provision of appropriate care. I offer your Lordships a few examples to illustrate the general issues. I begin with recruitment. I am aware that there may have been some recent improvement in this respect. However, there is still a very serious shortfall; for example, in 1996–97 there were 25 entrants to the RAMC, compared with a projected target of 55. Moreover, even an improved recruitment rate cannot compensate for the reductions which have already occurred and which are destroying the training base of the medical and dental services, and the seriousness of the problems caused by the large numbers of more senior personnel who have left the services. It is impossible to run a medical service on junior and relatively inexperienced staff.
The Defence Costs Study of 1994 reported that about 1,400 uniformed doctors and dentists were employed by the regular Armed Forces and proposed that up to 750 should be made redundant. In 1997, there were only 870 uniformed doctors left and there are now serious shortages in key personnel such as surgeons, anaesthetists and general practitioners. In the RAMC, the requirement is for 511 doctors. I understand that the current number in post is only 434. This deficit has serious knock-on effects. For example, the greater the number of shortages, the greater the pressure on those still in service with a subsequent further decline in morale. This may lead to more resignations and a downward spiral of falling retention and recruitment. That is why the cumulative effects of previous and current policies and mismanagement are so serious.
The problem of morale is exacerbated by diminished promotion prospects for medical personnel in both primary and secondary care. These are relatively poor and slow compared with those of non-medical colleagues. For example, in the Royal Navy a competent seaman officer may well become a captain by the age of 40 whereas a well qualified medical officer, who will have spent a great deal of time and effort working for specialist qualifications, may have to wait until somewhere between the age of 43 to 47 to obtain comparable promotion, if at all.
It may be thought that disaffection caused by such poor promotion prospects may be bought off by salary increases. But I have been told again and again that this is not the case. Medical personnel who see their peer group seamen officers being promoted well ahead of them feel that they are being discriminated against

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unjustly. Noble Lords will be aware of the significance of rank in service life and of the importance of the authority which accompanies rank in relationships with other officers. It is ludicrous to adopt a policy of reduced promotion prospects for an already demoralised DMS, especially if it will not cost more to recognise their seniority and expertise by appropriate promotions on a time-scale comparable to their non-medical colleagues.
Added to truncated and discriminatory career prospects are problems of frustration caused by apparent mismanagement. For example, in recent years, with one exception, doctors' pay rises have been several months late. This year, the delay was four months—from April to August. As one medical officer said:
"It is not clever to treat an already disaffected and worried service with such inefficiency and apparent contempt".
There is also acute anxiety over the possible closure of Haslar Hospital, reference to which was made by my noble friend Lord Vivian. This is the only remaining main military hospital in this country, together with a subsidiary hospital at Catterick. The closure of Haslar would mean virtually complete dependence on MoD hospital units (MDHUs) attached to National Health Service hospitals. It would be interesting to know how many other western countries with sophisticated armed services have abolished all their military hospitals. While the arguments for combining military and civilian facilities may make sense to the Treasury, the knock-on effects for service personnel and for the provision of adequate medical care in the event of war must be potentially very serious.
I shall give your Lordships two brief examples in that respect. The first concerns service personnel. If all medical services are to be provided by MDHUs in NHS hospitals, there is a real danger that military medical and nursing staff will have all the disadvantages of service commitments with none of the advantages. They will find themselves working alongside NHS staff who may be better paid than they are; they will have the inevitable disruptions to personal and family life of postings away from home, but none of the advantages of the distinctive ethos of service life and "mess" facilities. Many are therefore asking why they should stay in the services. If Haslar is closed, some predict that the present steady flow of resignations could become a flood.
I turn now to my second example. It is, of course, difficult to maintain a balance between provision of adequate clinical services for situations of peace and war. But there is serious concern over a shortfall of medical and nursing staff, especially those with expertise in highly sophisticated specialties such as the care of patients with burns, or with facio-maxillary surgery. The NHS already suffers severe shortages in many such specialist services, even without having to care for the influx of casualties which would occur in the event of conflict. The enormous changes to the DMS, with concentration in DHMUs, have been made far too hastily, causing confusion and even lower morale among service staff who have not yet opted to leave, while a disturbingly high proportion of those who are leaving are newly appointed consultants and well-qualified general practitioners—the senior
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personnel. Many doctors and nurses in the services have been angered by the perception that their concerns have been belittled by senior executives and by medical management at the highest levels.
I turn briefly to the situation in Germany where secondary care is now provided by the German hospital service. The notes provided by German doctors have to be translated back in Britain, and translations may take up to three months. Also, German doctors are using different drugs in different combinations from their United Kingdom counterparts and their instructions have to be amended in order to take into account drugs made in the UK.
The cumulative effect of these recent changes and of the current shortages are reflected in problems associated with reservists. Shortages of regulars have highlighted the problems which can arise when undue reliance is placed on the reserve forces. During the Gulf War it was clear that the regular medical personnel were inadequate in numbers and in composition. As a result, a large number of territorials and other reservists had to be called upon. It would appear that the Armed Forces are being allowed to make savings without regard to the impact on the NHS. Conversely, many NHS trusts are reluctant to allow key personnel the time they need to pursue medical military training with the reserve forces and many reservists had difficulty obtaining release from their National Health Service posts during the Gulf War. It is the BMA's view that the Reserve Forces Act does not provide adequate support for reservists needing release from their civilian employment.
These tensions in the NHS are exacerbated by the emphasis on competition through the internal market, and problems with recruitment and retention of both consultants and GPs have led to a climate in which NHS employers are equivocal about the commitment they make to employee reservists asking for time off for military training. Your Lordships will be aware that regular training is an essential requirement for reservists, and there is fear of insufficient safeguards to ensure that NHS employers are obliged to give the necessary time off to enable reservists to maintain the training they need to be available as an effective resource in time of need.
We live in a world where many unstable situations could erupt into further serious conflicts involving this country's Armed Forces. It is clear that at present there are very serious problems with regard to the availability of an adequate DMS to provide essential care for service personnel in the event of such conflicts. Therefore, I hope the Minister will today be able to offer reassurances, not only to noble Lords but to the many personnel in the DMS—doctors, nurses, medical assistants and others—who are currently experiencing anxiety, demoralisation and disaffection.
I understand that an independent market research survey is currently being undertaken to ascertain the views of all service medical officers about conditions of service and career intentions. I believe that the results of the survey will be very informative and important. Will the Minister undertake to make the findings of the survey available to Parliament so that subsequent debate can take this very significant evidence into account.

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While recognising that many of the problems confronting the DMS are a legacy of the previous government, there has not as yet been much to reassure it from the present Government. I hope that tonight the Minister may be a harbinger of good tidings, in keeping with the spirit of Advent, and begin to reverse the downward spiral of frustration and discontent before it is too late and the DMS deteriorates beyond the point of resuscitation.
7.13 p.m.
Baroness Strange: My Lords, I feel a little strange speaking from exactly the same seat in the House from which I made my maiden speech 12 years ago. In fact, I had half intended not to speak, until persuaded by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, at tea yesterday. But of course if I did not feel Strange at all there would be something seriously wrong.
It is a privilege, as always, to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Cox. I would like briefly to congratulate my noble and gallant friend the Master Gunner, who is no longer in his place, on a clear, authoritative and brilliant maiden speech, with every phrase of which I personally agreed. The Strategic Defence Review is an excellent document, not only because the noble Lord the Minister, Lord Gilbert, has been so supportive of this House by asking your Lordships for your opinions, and acting on some of them, but because it starts from the premise "What do we need defence for?" It follows on from that. There are, as I see it, only two flaws in it, and they both spring from ignoring the unexpected, which, alas, in this world is what usually happens.
The first flaw is in cutting down the Territorials. I shall only mention this very briefly as it was so excellently and brilliantly covered by my noble and gallant friend Lord Bramall when he was speaking after the gracious Speech two weeks ago. Not only did he speak much better on the subject than I could have done, he was also much fiercer than I should have dared to be. He made the point—and as he is not speaking today, I shall make it again—that the Territorials are the only reserves we have got. However, he did not perhaps emphasise as much as I should have liked the Scottish Territorials. On this subject the right honourable gentleman the Secretary of State for Defence has already made very considerable moves and concessions in the right direction. It is excellent that there will still be territorial centres in Fife—at Baltimore Road in Glenrothes, at Bothwell House in Elgin Street, Dunfermline (though not at Bruce House), at Hunter Street, Kirkcaldy and at Yeomanry House in Cupar. There will still be a territorial presence at RAF Leuchars, though not, alas, at RAF Kinloss or Lossiemouth. Having had many happy associations with it in its naval days, I am saddened that HMS Camperdown in Dundee is now finally to be shut down and not even used to store vehicles any more. I am delighted that the Black Watch is to retain its territorial presence in Perth at Queen's Barracks, although a diminished one with 25 men and a band strength of 34. My great-great uncle and my father both served in the
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Black Watch, and my husband's uncle won the VC serving in it during the First World War, so I do feel a very strong attachment.
There is an old Victorian ballad about the army volunteers, which I can only remember in part—perhaps mercifully—so your Lordships are very largely spared. But it is, in many ways, relevant. It begins:
"A queer wee man wis Jimmy Shaw
And he and his wife and his mither-in-law
They keppit a wee bit shoppie in Dundee."
But he joined what I believe must be the Victorian equivalent of the Territorials, for the chorus is:
"Noo Jimmie's jined the Volunteers,
A pair of tartan breeks he wears,
Marching off to fame and glory."
However, after many vicissitudes and much fighting, in which Jimmy distinguished himself, there was clearly an Options for Change, or merely a Strategic Defence Review, for the final verse—which ends happily, your Lordships will be relieved to hear—is:
"Noo here he is at the Queen's Review,
What though his troops are terrible few,
A sergeant, and a piper, and one man.
The Queen she says, "Weel, Mr Shaw,
Your men are as fine as ever I saw,
Though they're no sae very numerous it seems.
But gie's the lane o' your sword," says she,
"And doon ye get on yer bendit knee,
And I'll mak ye Major General Sir Jeems."
The other flaw in the Strategic Defence Review is that either there are not enough people in the services or there are too many commitments—whichever way one looks at it—to avoid overstretch. Unlike many noble Lords, I have no personal service experience, but I have been privileged with the Defence Study Group to visit many of our Armed Forces and their families, both in this country and abroad. What has always emerged, like a shining light, is how brave, skilled, professional, uncomplaining and dedicated they all are. But let us not forget that, however many rare virtues they possess, they are still people and they need to spend time with their families. Twenty-four months between front line tours is all right. Anything less is not—and the time between front line tours, combined with away-from-home training, is often very much less than that.
Christmas is a time for thinking about families, for being with families. Let us at this special time think how we can help the families of those who are not only dedicated to defending us but to preserving peace all over the world.
7.19 p.m.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, with not long to think about it, the only naval ballad I can recite which might possibly match that of the noble Baroness, Lady Strange, is as follows:
"The boatswain we had was apparently mad
For he sat on the after rail
And he fired salutes with the commodore's boots
In the teeth of a roaring gale".
I often feel like that boatswain. However, less so tonight than usual: I am going to be a great deal more friendly to the Government.

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In the past few weeks, there have been a number of most interesting shifts: the defence Ministers in Vienna, St. Malo and ministerial statements and remarks all seem to be signifying a change of course which I believe will be greatly to the benefit of the British people. Here at last is the foreign policy which we had been told would lead the Strategic Defence Review but did not; and it has now become visible.
What did emerge in that and in the Strategic Defence Review was a useful piece of housekeeping. The great question has been: will the European members of NATO find their voice in time to prevent NATO becoming a heedless extension of US power around the world, expensive to its members and threatening to everyone else? Now it looks as though the answer may, after all, be yes. We appear finally to have realised that we cannot keep "defence" facing in one direction while our other interests and activities face in another. Our "security" involves the whole comprehensive gamut of our external affairs, and, in a globalising world, that means their economic, environmental, cultural and legal dimensions as well as the purely military.
As the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, reminded the House only yesterday, the Prime Minister called at the North Atlantic Assembly last month in Edinburgh for,
"a more effective Europe in foreign policy and security",
and,
"a European decision-making capacity and command structure".
On 3rd December the Foreign Secretary said in the Commons—I am sorry if I am robbing my noble friend Lord Gilbert of all the punchlines he was going to give: they are very good ones and I am sure he will not grudge me them:
"We are exploring how we can make decisions within the common foreign and security policy more effective, and more rapid, and how we can ensure that there is a better transmission between the security policy decided by the Foreign Ministers of the EU and the defence policy that we implement through the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation".—[Official Report, Commons, 3/12/98; col. 1083.]
Note here the use of the word "decide" for what the EU Foreign Ministers do and the word "implement" for what happens in NATO. That is right. For us Europeans, this language should be seen as a most welcome advance.
A question which should be addressed now is whether the United States retains its present veto over the use of NATO equipment of American origin, or whether the rest of us will have to develop our own surveillance systems, and so on. It is interesting and reassuring that so much effort is now going into the creation of a proper European defence industry through the joint agencies of the European Union and the WEU. It will have the advantage of being able to be no larger and no stronger than is required by actual events and dispositions.
Another task facing us Europeans is to define in advance what is to be the relationship between an active European force, engaged in something the European governments judge to be a European interest—under the UN and under international law—and a US-NATO component which may be inactive because the issue in
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question does not touch American interests. How are those relationships being envisaged? In such cases, we must be sure that the US does not just provide cruise missiles while the Europeans fill the body bags.
I turn now to relations with Russia. In June last year my noble friend Lady Symons was emphatic, in a debate I initiated on NATO and the Russian Federation, that during the course of the negotiations for the Founding Act on mutual relations the two sides agreed that it should take the form of a solemn commitment, made at the highest level, similar to the Helsinki Final Act. She went on to say:
"anxieties in Russia about NATO … are based on a profound misunderstanding of the character and intentions of the alliance, which are strictly defensive. The best way to achieve a thoroughgoing and lasting change in perception is to … find a way of involving Russia in discussion of European issues that corresponds to her legitimate security interests".—[Official Report, 23/6/97; col. 1456.]
How strongly we may all endorse that!
There has been since then the matter I raised last June of the conditions Senator Helms imposed on the Clinton administration as his price for Senate approval of NATO enlargement, conditions which were in many ways incompatible with the Founding Act—specifically, his insistence on, "a fire-break" between NATO and the Russian Federation. NATO would inform Russia of its decisions, not discuss them in advance. The Government's view of the Helms' conditions was that they were—I quote again my noble friend Lady Symons—
"of course an internal matter for the United States",
and that,
"The new strategic concept will take account of NATO's new co-operative relationships with Russia".—[Official Report, 19/6/98; cols. 1849–50.]
It was presumably on the basis of this expectation, and on a perhaps too traditional view of military affairs, and on the assumption that the NATO of the future would be little different from the NATO of recent years, that the Strategic Defence Review took place. But since then the US administration has been trying to persuade NATO to accept all the Helms' conditions, which are hirsute, into the revised NATO strategic concept. What we now see, and what the Government, I believe and hope, have now seen, is that the terms of the new strategic concept the US administration has been proposing for NATO are incompatible not only with the Founding Act—the part about not discussing the concept with the Russians until it is finalised, when we will brief them on it—but also with international law, with the United Nations Charter and with any common foreign and security policy the European Union is likely to decide on. It would even intrude into our own responsibility for the level we may choose for our defence budget.
The doctrine behind the Helms' conditions, now embodied in the US strategic concept proposals, is simply unsustainable. Not many governments in the rest of the world believe US hegemony would make for a just world system, let alone an efficient or enjoyable one. Naturally, the American people, when asked, do not wish to rule the world. Those among us who would

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really rather like an American-run world have to recognise that is not actually an available future. In the debate on the Queen's Speech, I was delighted to hear the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, mention "asymmetrical warfare" and the dangers we all face from our "vulnerability to information warfare". This is the future, and it is incompatible with any particular country running the world.
I have been raising both these points for some time, in the House and in correspondence, but parliamentary audibility, as all Members of this House know, is not very easy. We could, the Government believe, defend against this kind of thing. It is still said that the Ministry of Defence has never been hacked into, as if one would know. For commercial firms, presumably even the major utilities, it is a commercial matter, and so on. The Pentagon now, for reasons of cost, buys its electronics off the shelf, and so increasingly do we. Worst case analysis says, "You do not know if there is anything else, equivalent to the millennium bug, in what they have sold you. You cannot know"—and worst case analysis is what we pay officials in our Ministry of Defence to do. When some expensive piece of equipment blows up on launching—for example, the 1 billion dollar Mercury Sigint spacecraft that exploded on 12th August—we cannot know that some unfriendly hand was not in it.
To say that is far from saying that it was. It is just that when computer-run equipment fails, it is usually impossible to establish any exact cause or identify any guilty party within the kind of period that makes military sense.
Meanwhile, the relatively modest millennium bug approaches, and one of the US Federal Communications Commissioners says:
"We're are definitely past the period of where you're are going to solve the problem. We're into mitigation".
At the same time, the technological disconnect between the US and its European allies continues to widen, and sophisticated communications between our militaries becomes increasingly almost impossible.
I would like to think that somewhere, and some time soon, imaginative and informed thought will be given to considering the effect of electronic war on the future of warfare itself as an institution. It has now got about as far as nuclear weapons had when imaginative and informed thought was first given to the effect of nuclear war.
The essence of the dilemma is that without communications you can do nothing, from ordering more jam to airlifting an army, and communications now are electronic: the old modes have been stood down. Now add to this that their disruption is easy, including undetectable disruption. The Pentagon has hired hackers for both external and internal exercises and has detected a great many disruptions, and failed to detect many more. Very, very, few were identified. I have raised all this before. But the fact is that your armed forces are subject to the undetectable disruption and corruption of their communications. The equipment needed to do this is small and cheap and it is made in low wage countries, where the motives and the opportunities exist for political hatred of us.
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Of course the danger is the same with weapons of mass destruction: the equipment goes in a suitcase, and such suitcases have been found. This fact has led to the elephants of NATO and of the US armed forces elsewhere in the world chasing the flies of international terrorism.
To the uninformed, it often seems as though all these dangers and counter-measures are simply more reasons to get ahead with abolishing the institution of war. The informed, unfortunately, largely live by its perpetuation.
This makes me say, let us get beyond the division of humanity into the "Don't know but do cares" and the "Do know but have my job to think abouts". That is difficult. We have to recognise that the arms industry is the only one in the world which is devoted to producing the means to destroy value. A job is good, the goods created by a job are good, and the jobs created by a job are good. But the products of the arms industry create no jobs and no value even when they are not used. When they are used they destroy jobs, value, values and life with blind efficacity. Solving crises before they turn violent should be our first purpose, and that means a far greater concern for justice and for the relief of oppression, which means the rule of law.
It would be good if just as the Prime Minister declares "Education! education! education!" in domestic affairs, so in foreign affairs he would declare "Justice! justice! justice!"
7.32 p.m.
Lord Clifford of Chudleigh: My Lords, I am delighted to be one of many to congratulate the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Vincent, on his maiden speech today. It is a privilege to see my name alongside that of such a knowledgeable military historian as the noble and gallant Lord, Field-Marshal Lord Carver, for whom I acted as ADC when he was Chief of the Defence Staff. For his military genius the noble and gallant Lord was correctly awarded a life peerage. For my part, though I served only 10 years for Queen and country, I inherited one. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, presumed that anyway!
Like so many noble Lords in this House, and most in Her Majesty's Armed Forces, one has read the paper, Modern Forces for the Modern World: A Territorial Army for the Future. The text prompted telephone calls and correspondence with those volunteers within the T&AVR units, and with a recently retired general in my regiment. I served with him in Ulster in 1972. He was a captain and I a mere subaltern. Suddenly, I feel my age.
The Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Roger Wheeler, wrote a letter on 9th November 1998 which stated,
"The Defence Review highlighted an increased emphasis on supporting and sustaining expeditionary operations".
It referred to a Territorial Army which will be,
"part of our deployable order of battle".
Will the Minister help to clarify a statement which was reported to have been made by the Secretary of State

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for Defence which implied that the TA was not required for NATO or home defence purposes? I quote General Wheeler again,
"The Territorial Army is a key part of our country's military capability; we must all ensure that it goes from strength to strength".
Perhaps he could explain why infantry in western Wessex is being reduced from two-and-a-half battalions to one battalion spread over five counties.
This reduction has substantial implications. First, it reduces the base for reflation of the Army in a time of future crisis, which undoubtedly will occur at some time. Secondly, it weakens the already weak link between the services and the civilian population. Thirdly, it reduces the amount of back up support available to the Regular Army in time of need; for example, in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, where substantial numbers of the TA have already been serving. Fourthly, it drastically reduces the amount of manpower available to assist in bringing military aid to civilian community tasks—for example, in a time of major flood. Fifthly, it greatly reduces the opportunity for those who wish to render voluntary services to their country. Sixthly, it minimises the reinforcements available to the Regular Army in times of future conflict.
It is true that a few elements of the Territorial Army are being increased. An example is the medical services of which we have heard much already this evening. However, as these are already under strength and are having difficulty in attracting doctors, it is unlikely that the proposed increase will have much impact.
Once again I stretched out my hand for A Territorial Army for the Future. It stated,
"Infantry, yeomanry and supporting combat services are no longer needed to the same degree and will be reduced".
Perhaps no one showed that sentence to the Chief of the General Staff. I repeat that this reduction has substantial implications. I believe that the bent towards computerised warfare—a desire prompted by our closest ally, the United States—has led those in the highest echelons in the Ministry of Defence to try to match that mega power weapon for weapon, all at the expense of the soldier.
I quote from a senior military commander, recently involved in Bosnia, who states,
"the Territorial Army cutbacks, especially those in the infantry are the most dangerous for the future defence of the United Kingdom in that in any future war or peace support operation, volume is needed".
That can be provided only by a strong reserve.
That same officer, a general of international note, made another remark which contradicts the principles, the idea supposedly proposed by the Secretary of State for Defence in relation to NATO:
"It is nonsense to say that because the Home Defence and NATO roles have disappeared we can get rid of the Home Defence and NATO roled battalions. It was the Conservative Party who insisted on mission orienting the Territorial Army, against Ministry of Defence advice. It takes 30 Territorial Army soldiers (a platoon) to keep the Regular Army supplied with one man in the front line for
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a year. Statistics being currently quoted are flawed as they do not count the men who transfer from the Territorial Army for a three year engagement [in the Regular Army]".
NATO has been mentioned on several occasions. We are aware that European countries, as well as the United States, are our partners in NATO. However, it should be remembered that our Common Market partners made no reference to common security or defence until 1992, when it was mentioned in Article 17 of the Maastricht Treaty. That was amended by the Amsterdam Treaty. There it was stated that the common (European) defence and security policy was to include all questions relating to the security of the Union—let us remember that early in the next century it will be a matter of five plus one—including the framing of a common defence policy which might lead to a common defence force, should the Euro-Council so decide.
Bearing that last statement in mind, our position in NATO underlines the vital role of support troops such as the Territorial Army. Article 18 of the Maastricht Treaty states that at international conferences where not all member states take part,
"those who do shall uphold the Common Position".
Until recently we could speak as the United Kingdom. I question that sovereign solidarity now, and I question the Ministry of Defence's existence post-2004.
How many of us can remember the opportunity—or was it enforcement?—of being in the Cadet Corps at school? Today it is the Territorial Army that makes possible such training, such as understanding of respect for rank, cleanliness and good order. It is the Territorial Army that is the "recruiting sergeant", that encourages youth to test themselves alongside their elders and contemporaries in difficult, awkward, unusual situations, so that, when called upon to assist in military aid to the civilian community (floods, ambulance strikes, rescues at sea) they can work as a team, complementary to one another, to the benefit of others.
It would cost the nation £3 million to bring the TA to the required level of 45,000 supporting troops. Yet I am told that we are spending £250 million to refit a naval frigate which is destined to be scrapped in two years' time. As Rudyard Kipling said,
"It's 'Tommy this' and 'Tommy that'
and 'kick him out, the brute'.
But it's 'Hero of the country'
When the guns begin to shoot"
Only prepared people can provide peace.
7.44 p.m.
Lord Gisborough: My Lords, I am glad that the cadets have not suffered in the review. Apart from the benefits that they give to their own members, they provide a very valuable, indeed essential, bridge to the community for recruiting for the Regular Army. But more recently they have been providing another service. By means of the youth and community project, they have been offering to disaffected youth discovery days and weekly attachments to try out and see whether they enjoy all the sports that the cadets can offer. Indeed, some detachments have been intentionally formed in

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distressed areas in order to provide the opportunity for young people to attain the motivation and occupation to keep them out of trouble.
The cadets have been signally successful and have so far been prepared to fund the cost themselves or out of funds from charitable organisations. If the cadets are to be more widely used as a social medicine as much as any source for Army recruits, surely that service to the public order should be on contract to the civilian sector budget and not a total charge on the defence budget.
The cadets rely heavily on the TA for training aid and administration, as well as for their drill halls. With centres closed, who will give them that support in the future? If it is to be the Regular Army, what an expense that will be. For example, in my own home town of Guisborough, the Territorial Army is to be closed down. It serves some seven cadet units, yet the TA centre does not currently have, and has not for some years had, any permanent staff. That TA centre also provides a focus for many social benefits, as a function location and a venue for charity work. People in the area are extremely upset that it is to close.
Likewise, the Territorial Army has been helping society at a higher age group. The TA has drill halls and has trained staff available. They are valuable resources which at many times of the week are inadequately used. The TA is hoping to teach unemployed no-hopers many skills such as vehicle maintenance and IT, and to encourage and help them to return to the labour market. These are the youngsters who otherwise may cause nothing but pain and trouble to the community, and who have been referred to as a "ticking time-bomb".
I could single out the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, who are pioneering on their own initiative a scheme to assist disaffected youth. They run one to five day courses for unmotivated and "dropped out" 16 to 24 year-olds, many with criminal records, where they are instructed at drill halls and taught life skills. The Army manages to motivate them, and several may join the Army instead of drifting into crime. Funds come from various trusts, including the Prince's Trust, and involves the Gateway and the New Deal. But the cost ensures that it is run on only a small scale. What a shame it would be if the scheme should take off just as drill halls were sold to be pulled down and redeveloped. They would be the ideal sites for courses to be run and the instructors could be both regular and territorial soldiers. Indeed, it would be one of the greatest peacetime contributions to the country that the TA could make, but it would be quite wrong and just would not happen unless the cost was borne by a Vote other than the defence budget. Yet the cost of the use of drill halls to train young tearaways to become good citizens would be amply justified by the reduction in the cost of potential crime.
The MoD has a couple of officers concerned with the youth initiative, but the potential success is too valuable to be limited by the cost to the defence budget, and the Home Office should be buying the services from the military. Further thoughts might lead to assistance with community service, prisoner training, assisting with probation and so forth. The military could make a huge
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contribution against crime and it would be cost-effective. But again, the help should not fall on the defence budget, or the military would naturally decline to provide it.
The military corrective training centre, or glasshouse, is another area that could be contracted out for civilian use. Built to a high specification, it is, unlike the prisons, designed to raise spirits. Perhaps as a result, the rate of re-offending is only 12 per cent. as opposed to 50 per cent. in civilian prisons. The training not only deters re-offending, but many military inmates go on to become NCOs. It should be said that most military inmates are not violent or vicious disturbed criminals, as are many inmates in civilian prisons. But likewise, there are many in civilian prisons who are not vicious or disturbed and who would benefit from such a regime rather than being in overcrowded cells or being abused in ordinary prisons. The staff of the MCTC are highly trained and proven leaders, never below the rank of sergeant.
Surely it would be worth considering sending those civilian prisoners who might be thought able to benefit from it to the MCTC. The idea could be pursued, with prisons run on army lines, entirely devoted to civilian tearaways, with military or ex-military staff, but financed by the Home Office. These would not be boot camps but training camps from which inmates could emerge as responsible members of society.
The training is military, demanding and concentrated, but it is also interesting, and soldiers return to their units well motivated. Civilian prisoners might equally be motivated. It is, of course, expensive, but the cost must be compared with the cost that would be incurred if the offender were, without that training, to become one of the 50 per cent. who re-offend having come out of an ordinary prison, rather than one of the 12 per cent. who received the better training. If suitable offenders were to be directed to the MCTC or a civilian equivalent run by these trained leaders, their offending rate might be drastically reduced.
There should be no reason why the military should not be able to contract out their expertise and any spare capacity to the civilian market. With that funding, the military could budget for extra staff and would therefore not be able to use the argument that they were already overstretched. The services would gain from having a larger pool of staff to mature and rotate. This would be in accordance with the wish of the Government that all departments should adopt a more entrepreneurial attitude.
Bands are also to be drastically reduced. That is a great shame. Bands are a very important part of public relations, and the interface of the Army with the public will be greatly reduced.
An interesting point in the review is that the TA establishment of medics should be increased. In my TAVRA we anticipate that it will be very difficult to achieve the required strength. When doctors attend camp it interferes dramatically with their system of appointments, and hospitals are loath to let them go. We do not expect that our establishment will be reached for

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some years, if ever. It may well be that if civilian medics are required for emergencies, as they will be, some system other than through the TA will have to be found.
On a more direct defence matter, I was very concerned to read in a brief that top Chinese General Mi Zhenyu told the Chinese two years ago:
"We quietly nurse our sense of vengeance. We must conceal our abilities and bide our time".
We have lived through the aggressive aspirations of the Germans twice and those of the Russians, the Japanese and now the Iraqis. It seems that China may well be the next to threaten world peace. They are powered by a strong feeling of wounded nationalism, with the xenophobic conviction that they are the superior race and that their grievances have not been avenged. China already has the largest army in the world and, having studied the Gulf War, has spent billions on military equipment from Russia alone in the past two years. I read that China admits that it plans to occupy islands almost as far south as Singapore. Vietnam and the Philippines are no match for China's 9,000 tanks, and they know it. China is already using its fire-power, as in 1988 when it sank three Vietnamese ships, and in 1994 when it warned off a US naval force. I sincerely hope that my brief is unduly alarmist and untrue; but let us cultivate friendship with China and ensure that it does not feel any further loss of face. However justified it may be, let us not do a Pinochet with the next Chinese leader to visit the country.
But let us be fully aware that history could repeat itself and that the day may come when there will be a showdown and the whole of the Far East could flare up into warfare. Whether this country and the US would be sucked into any such conflict, I do not know, but one thing that is sure is that we must maintain the military capability to respond in whatever way the political decision may be taken. Thankfully, this country keeps up its technological expertise, but only time will tell whether we shall rue the day when we disbanded so many reserves from our Territorial Army. Napoleon said:
"When China awakes let the world tremble".
China is waking.
7.54 p.m.
Lord Redesdale: My Lords, I should like to begin by congratulating the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Vincent, on his fine maiden speech and by broadly supporting the SDR. I had hoped that I could claim to be the most junior military person present, having managed the rank of lieutenant, having turned down a captaincy in the TA because it would have meant leaving a light aid detachment. However, I am informed by my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire that he only managed to reach the rank of sergeant-major in a CCF, so I outrank him.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, perhaps I may cap that by saying that I only reached the rank of volunteer sub-lieutenant in the Navy.
Lord Redesdale: My Lords, I note the point that the noble Lord puts forward. It will come as no surprise to
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the Minister that I shall focus on the issue of the TA, as many noble Lords have done. It is a subject that I raised in the debate on the gracious Speech and one to which I should like to return.
An aspect that surprises me about many of the speeches about the TA by Regular Army officers is the attitude that the TA should be the first to be considered when there are to be cuts, as if the TA, rather than the Regular Army, could somehow absorb the cuts. This is a problematic area and shows the inherent divide between the Regular Army and the Territorial Army, which is well exampled in the attitudes of regular soldiers and territorial soldiers to each other. I believe that healing that rift is very important for any future role that the TA will undertake within the Regular Army.
The cutting of the TA will have a number of devastating impacts. Although I realise that the cuts are less severe than they might have been, one of the problems that they will cause will be a loss of the skill base within the Territorial Army. A major problem with closing Territorial Army bases and reducing the number of establishments is that a number of posts will disappear. Many territorial soldiers will be unable to move from one position to another and gain experience in different units. I speak as a member of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers and as someone who has seen the loss in the skill base at first hand. It is difficult to build up the required number of courses on the limited man training days available, especially when one has to put people on courses which will last a number of weeks but, because of the limited man training days, they cannot do those courses and meet their camp commitments.
The second impact will be on the link to the local community. I was pleased that in the previous Session the Minister declared that the link with the ACF would not be affected by the cuts. I was gratified that the ACF, which has an important role, especially in recruitment, was to be saved and that drill halls associated with it would be preserved. However, if the link with the community is broken in too many areas there will be a direct impact on the recruitment ability of the Regular Army. For many TA soldiers, especially the younger ones, the TA is their first brush with military life and quite a number go on to the Regular Army.
The required change in the attitude of the Regular Army to the TA will also be reflected in the position of the regular Army after the SDR. The TA will have a far more important role because so many posts are left unfilled in the Regular Army. The role of the territorials as a base for large numbers of troops can be changed by way of the terms of service accepted by territorial soldiers. Rather than train for a need that no longer exists among units that will never go to war, the Territorial Army can focus far more on training individuals to undertake short-term postings within Regular Army units.
There is a great deal of sentimental attachment to the idea of the Territorial Army having a regimental basis. I understand that that provides a sense of purpose and history to members of the Territorial Army. However, having visited officers' messes to attend Territorial

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Army regimental dinners, a good indication of the history of the particular unit can be seen from the amount of silver on display. A large amount of silver usually indicates that many units have been amalgamated.
To express a personal view and not that of my party, I hope that the regimental system can be taken out of the Territorial Army. This will cause a great deal of consternation. However, it is extremely important that the individual soldier has a purpose in joining the Territorial Army. What is important is not the maintenance of regiments that may have had a glorious history although little impact on the individual soldier, but the individual unit and the training of the individual soldier. One of the major difficulties of retention of Territorial Army soldiers is that after a period of time they realise it is very unlikely that they will ever have the ability to serve in an operational capacity. That is one of the major difficulties of retention in the Territorial Army.
If members of the Territorial Army could be given a greater sense of purpose or role in the Regular Army it would have two effects. First, it would mean better retention among the Territorial Army. Secondly, it could also prevent the overstretch that often occurs within the Regular Army.
One area that has been focused on by many noble Lords is the medical service. The noble Baroness, Lady Cox, referred to the frightening position in which the DMS finds itself. I hope that the 2,000 in posts in the new formation of the Territorial Army will be new posts. The noble Lord, Lord Cope of Berkeley, has indicated that they are not new posts. I hope that the Minister will be able to indicate that they are real new posts. One of the major problems faced by the medical services in the past is that their use has been underestimated. For example, thankfully we did not need the medical services in the Falklands War or in the Gulf War. I have some personal experience because my brother-in-law was in the RAMC during the Gulf War. The picture he painted when he returned was that the Territorial Army provided the backbone to the medical service. Without the Territorial Army is there a backbone to the medical service? Because it has not been needed so far does not mean that in a future conflict it will not be needed.
We come to another issue relating to the Reserve Forces Act which was touched upon by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox; namely, the fear that the NHS and health trusts will place obstacles in the path of surgeons in particular and anaesthetists in training with the medical corps. Bearing in mind that that Act came into force some time ago, can the Minister give an indication whether the NHS or health trusts have imposed conditions? If so, it may cause real difficulties. I do not believe that it would be for any reason other than that the health trusts themselves were overworked and recognised the value of their surgeons.
Many noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, with remarkable tenacity, made reference to nuclear weapons. The SDR sets out the need for a deterrent. We on these Benches support that.
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The explosive force of the deterrent has been reduced by 70 per cent. Can the Minister tell the House whether at some future point Britain's arsenal will be reduced unilaterally as a positive indication of disarmament? It may also have significant cost implications. If the Russians and Americans are considering a reduction in their nuclear deterrents due to cost implications this must have implications for our nuclear weapons.
Another issue that has been raised is the provision of aircraft carriers. In view of the agreement that has been concluded between France and Britain is it possible for us to share our carrier fleet with the French? I realise that this may be a new concept. One of the major problems with the carrier fleet is that if we have two on line at any one time we will probably require three carriers in case one is in dry dock at any particular time. Is there any possibility of linking up with the French rather than having the duplication that exists at the moment?
Many noble Lords have made reference to the WEU and in particular the question of greater co-operation. We on these Benches support greater emphasis on the WEU rather than on NATO. It will be extremely difficult for us to act in countries like Bosnia if we must rely on the Americans who are not prepared to put troops on the ground. I have witnessed the interaction of the troops of many nations. Recently I was an observer at the Bosnian elections and had the pleasure of witnessing a visit by large number of SFOR troops to my polling station as a grenade had been reported there.
I was disappointed that the SDR made little mention of future warfare. The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, raised the issue of cyber warfare. The SDR refers to it as information warfare. Given the terror that the millennium bug is creating at the moment, it would be unfortunate if little work was being done to counter that threat. Can the Minister give any indication as to what preparations the MoD is making in this area of warfare, if any?
I congratulate the Government and the Army on the recent declaration of zero tolerance as regards racial discrimination. Such a statement was given very recently and it is a massive step forward. I believe that the success of the SDR will be seen quite soon, not by the Army but by a very simple indicator; namely, whether people who join the Army see it as a valuable and attractive career for the future.
8.10 p.m.
Lord BurnhamMy Lords, I cannot resist asking the noble Lord, Lord Redesedale, that if we are to share an aircraft carrier with the French, who is going to steer it? Your Lordships have been asked today to, "take note of' the review. In another place six weeks ago MPs were asked to, "approve the conclusions" of the review. I wonder whether that variation in wording is because of the financial implications, which remain ultra vires for your Lordships because there is no doubt that money and the Treasury have had a large part to play. Nevertheless, I am sure that there is general approval for the large amount of work that has gone into the review and also approval for the degree of consultation

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referred to by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Vincent, which took place before the review was published. I am one of those who complained consistently of the delay in getting it out. It took an extraordinarily long time. The amount of detail may excuse that delay.
I underline that we on these Benches support the bi-partisan approach to a defence policy, for which the Minister asked. I hope that we shall be able to help and that he will take all that is said in the spirit that we are trying to help. It is only as regards the Territorial Army where we may be said to have a fundamental disagreement. My noble friend Lord Cope has clearly laid down as regards one area of the country what seems to be an extraordinary and impractical reorganisation. Your Lordships have discussed the TA at some length. I ask the noble Lord whether adequate attention has been given to its role as a recruitment centre for the Regular Army; as a supplier of reserves and as a centre for social activity in many parts of the country where such a role is urgently needed. The noble Lord, Lord Hardy of Wath, has pointed out the relationship between the regular and cadet forces. I believe that the Territorial Army has much the same role.
It is the convention of your Lordships' House that only the succeeding speaker should pay tribute to a maiden speaker. Almost all of your Lordships ignored that and I intend to do the same. We have had the benefit of the advice of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Vincent. He is the most recently retired soldier. He is very welcome as a partial begetter of the SDR itself. We have had the benefit of hearing from three noble and gallant Lords today. I am only sorry that the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, was not here. I know that he deeply regrets that he was unable to speak and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley. I regret that they have been unable to give us a nap hand. I would like to express my personal regret that, following the sad death of Lord Fieldhouse, there is not in this House a recently retired and senior naval officer to advise your Lordships on naval affairs.
In listening to all three noble and gallant Lords today, it has been interesting to note that all three are satisfied with the Government's actions as regards the Territorial Army. That has been reflected in the Regular Army itself. I wonder whether, now that many regular soldiers have had the opportunity of working with territorials, particularly in Bosnia, that they may feel that the Territorial Army has a more important role to fill in its current form than had been previously thought.
The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Inge, spoke about the company as being possibly the minimum size of a desirable unit for the territorials. I support that. My noble friend Lord Cope spoke about platoons and almost single guns. The Territorial Army must be given the benefit not only in the accounts of working together if it is to be able to act as a formed unit.
Throughout the review we have been told that it is foreign policy based and I accept that. The frontiers of foreign policy are continually moving. Even so, some of the ideas of 1997 and the early part of this year have radically altered. The recent St. Malo concordat, in which the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State
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were deeply involved, may well bring about a change in what is required. It may cause those responsible to reflect. Here I note that the love-in in St. Malo is countered by the demands of Aero Spatiale that it should have 50 per cent. of the joint company, which has been set up with British Aerospace and the Germans. Life is not easy for any defence or trade and industry Minister. I hope that when the noble Lord winds up he will be able to bring your Lordships up-to-date on all these matters because there is so much that has changed.
In welcoming the SDR, the House of Commons Defence Committee has been fairly critical of some aspects. In its response to the committee the Government have in fact disagreed with the concern expressed that Russia still poses a potential military problem. Let us hope that they are right. In the immediate future that would seem to be undoubtedly the case, but it would be unwise to discard the possible danger entirely. Thus, long-term procurement should be based on a possibility that things may go wrong again. Equally, too much reliance should not be put on the conviction that never again will there be trouble in the Ukraine or Kazakhstan. There must be a significant danger that the desperate economic situation in Russia and the former countries of the Soviet Union, may bring about a desperate political reaction. We have to watch not only the states of the former Soviet Union, but many countries with equal "rogue" tendencies.
We still do not appear to have had a sufficiently informative exposition of the foreign baseline although it is interesting to note that by approving the conclusions of the SDR, honourable Members in another place have given the Prime Minister carte blanche to conduct a foreign policy which would have been the envy of Lord Palmerston.
Apart from foreign policy, there remains a conviction that the Ministry of Defence is still finding great difficulty in keeping its books straight. The recently published Performance Report of the Ministry of Defence for 1997–98 notes the criticisms of the Commons Public Accounts Committee in respect of the MoD accounts for 1996–7. Some consolation is given, but the audit account for the following year still shows things going wrong in 1997–98, with a fairly notable deficit. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, who is not in his place, has tabled a Question with regard to the £34.6 million written off on an aborted MoD computer project. I hoped that the House might have had the reply by today so that we might comment on it. That has not been possible. We await it with interest.
The Minister was reassuring in his speech about the smart procurement initiative. His comments on the development of integrated project teams and a more logical system of spare parts holdings must be welcomed. I wonder whether he can make any comment on something I have been told that despite the idea that everyone should be working together, the RAF is still buying its own vehicles.
On procurement, the layout of Abbey Wood, where so much of this is carried out, still presents problems both physical and in terms of the methods adopted. I hope that the Government will look carefully at the way

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in which personnel are moved backwards and forwards in particular between London and Abbey Wood. Is any consideration to be given to the decision not to construct No. 6 building at Abbey Wood which would solve many of the problems and enable more people to work together? Having said that, the decision to make the management of logistics a more efficient business is most welcome.
The Minister referred to the number of times I have asked about aircraft carriers. I have indeed done so—almost as many times as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, has asked about nuclear disarmament. However, in the summer the Minister gave your Lordships the assurance that the two aircraft carriers would be built rather than that we "intend to" build them. That assurance was more categoric than anything said in the SDR. It is not doubted by me or any noble Lord here, but we and colleagues in another place have heard many rumours which have cast doubts on the Government's resolution. For that reason I am more than grateful for the reassurances that the Minister has given the House today, with evidence of concrete progress—even if it is concrete only in terms of pieces of paper.
I ask him further to confirm that the design delivery date is still 2012. Advertisements for tenders for the refit of existing carriers seem to suggest that the conunissioning of the new ships might be put off until 2022. The building of the aircraft carriers is crucial to the success of the SDR. Long discussions on whether the air assault force which has been planned should be land or sea based—I believe that argument to be critical to the whole of the Government's foreign defence policy—can only have been resolved in favour of a sea-based defence force which can only be maintained by the building of the new carriers.
The noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, said that it was essential that we should go to the crisis. We cannot go to the crisis unless we have equipment in which to do so. Even by 2012 the existing carriers will be well beyond their sell-by date. In any case, they are much too small.
There remains the question of what aircraft to put on the new carriers. I ask the Minister for any comment he cares to make. I am advised that it is unlikely to be the Eurofighter although it could be used in an emergency. There are major problems with the airframe if Eurofighter is to be used for sea-borne take-offs and landings, and the deck of the carrier would probably need to be strengthened.
It seems that the SDR figure of 232 Eurofighters to be built is adequate for foreseeable needs provided that the estimated 80 per cent. in service at any one time can he maintained. It is important from the point of view of the international construction industry that numbers should not be reduced and that a regular programme of building should be maintained. Not only must the aircraft be European, we must have European missiles to put on them. Any difficulties which in an unfortunate set of circumstances might cause the Americans to cause trouble with their export licences would most seriously damage the ability of Europe to maintain an independent defence system.
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The Minister was asked in another place yesterday whether Eurofighter was on target for delivery starting in 2002 given the estimated overspend in the air equipment budget of £1 billion. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, to comment on the figure and to state whether it will have any effect on the delivery of the Eurofighter.
As I mentioned in the debate on the gracious Speech, the European countries are the allies and not the clients of the United States. Undoubtedly and properly Her Majesty's Government have stood behind the United States, but they should not be expected to do so unquestioningly—even if that is the only way one can obtain equipment.
Another area where there are potential problems is the supply of transport aircraft. Here I hope that Her Majesty's Government will succeed in getting the German Government totally on side with regard to the production of the FLA. The C130J is an excellent machine, but it is too small and one cannot put a Warrior on it. The FLA is an ideal size and can carry anything up to a small battle tank or an Apache helicopter. All these are details of equipment. In general we cannot criticise the thrust of the SDR. However, the SDR seems not to have given sufficient attention to recruitment, overstretch and retention although the Government's intentions are impeccable. We are looking for a small increase in numbers. But will the money be available for them before the designated year of 2004? How are those people to be obtained? I do not believe that equal opportunities legislation, desirable as it is, will do much good in this field. The Government will have to do more in planning and marketing for long-term career opportunities for servicemen and a satisfactory lifestyle for their wives and families if we are to recruit and keep the servicemen we need.
However, with the exception of the plans for the TA, we welcome the review. We take note of it. Your Lordships may and almost certainly will come back to it in the near future. However, I hope that as regards all the fundamental points the Government may be able to carry out their policy with determination and expedition.
8.26 p.m.
Lord Gilbert: My Lords, the first and very agreeable task I have is to congratulate the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Vincent of Coleshill, on his maiden speech. I am a little aggrieved with the noble and gallant Lord. It has taken him two years to make his maiden speech in this House, and during that time we have had quite a lot of defence debates. I hope that he does not intend to go AWOL in any future defence debates now that he has made his maiden speech. I cannot understand why the noble and gallant Lord suggests that making a maiden speech in this House was particularly intimidating. Having done so myself, I can tell the noble and gallant Lord that it is nothing like as intimidating as having to follow three field marshals, one after the other, as a Minister. We were all delighted to hear the noble and gallant Lord. I am particularly gratified at the agreeable remarks he made about the Strategic Defence Review. Needless to say, I share with him a view of the importance of the nuclear deterrent. I shall come to that

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in a moment in response to some remarks by my noble friend Lord Jenkins of Putney and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Carver.
However, I very much agree with the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Vincent of Coleshill, on the importance of NATO, and in particular that it has kept the United States constructively engaged in the affairs of Europe, and, coincidentally, in other parts of the world. I fully understand his concerns—we heard them echoed around the House by many noble Lords—about the degree of overstretch which to some extent will still exist in the Army even after we have recruited up to 3,000 more men and women. I entirely accept what he says about the Army being more heavily committed relative to its total strength than at any time since the 1940s.
The noble and gallant Lord also made the point that the Territorial Army needs more administrative support than is at present available. I am sure my right honourable friend in another place will take careful note of what the noble and gallant Lord had to say on that.
There were so many detailed contributions that it would be impossible for me to attempt to reply to them in the degree of detail that they deserve. I think in particular, but by no means exclusively, of the contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Vivian, and the noble Baroness, Lady Cox. They spoke in great detail. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for sending me a copy of the remarks she intended to make. I received it only a few hours ago and was horrified to think how on earth I was going to reply. I hope that she and other noble Lords will accept that if I cannot reply to detailed points I shall deal with them in correspondence.
I have received a note from the Box concerning a remark made by the noble Lord, Lord Vivian, about 2,000 posts in the medical services. I am informed that the 2,000 represents an increase over the existing establishment. However, we are double-hatting 476 bandsmen to augment the medical services. Those bandsmen will perform non-specialist medical roles and the remaining 1,500 will have to be recruited separately, together with the 1,000 or so who are needed where the service is under strength.
Many references were made to the Territorial Army. The Government recognise the concern felt about the future and importance of the Territorial Army. At the risk of repeating myself, I must say again what I said in our previous debate on the TA. The determination of the required strength was made on operational grounds. That came out at about 25,000 men. We then added about another 6,500 men to assure ourselves that we would be able to produce 25,000 whenever necessary. We increased that 31,500 to the present total by a series of add-ons as a result of representations made to us during the consultation period. We wished to ensure that we had as wide a footprint as possible and that the administrative arrangements were as sensible as possible, including arrangements for nuclear, biological and chemical units. So we did listen and considerably expanded the operational requirement of the TA over and above that which was universally agreed by the service chiefs to be necessary.
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Everything over and above the figure of 31,500 is designed to meet the points made about footprints and aid to the civil power which your Lordships have raised today. I realise that we have not satisfied all your Lordships. The noble Lord, Lord Cope, spoke in great detail about the problems relating to the Territorial Army in Bristol and surrounding counties. Other noble Lords made similar points. On a previous occasion, points were made about North and South Wales and having a single headquarters covering the whole of Wales. We had to try to compromise between getting as wide a footprint as possible and stretching units very thinly. We could have had the units more condensed and of a larger size, but we would have had to sacrifice the degree of footprint which we sought to achieve, and have achieved, over the United Kingdom as a whole.
My noble friend Lord Jenkins of Putney asked about the absence from the SDR of anything about nuclear disarmament. As I have said previously at this Dispatch Box, I can assure him that it is the policy of Her Majesty's Government that we would like a world without nuclear weapons. I have no hesitation in standing at the Dispatch Box and saying that. When we are likely to see it is another matter, but the Government have placed no obstacles in the path of future nuclear disarmament.
At one time I thought it was somewhat improbable to find the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Carver, as a bedfellow of my noble friend Lord Jenkins of Putney in relation to nuclear matters. The noble and gallant Lord invited me to read a recent publication from the Council of Arms Control, of which I am correctly identified as a trustee. I regret to say that I have not found time to read that publication. However, I have had time to read the publication CND Today, the summer edition of 1997 of which contains a blurred picture of the noble and gallant Lord, who is described as an unlikely ally in the fight against Trident. The interesting thing is that the noble and gallant Lord, who I hope is correctly quoted in the document, says,
"I have never seen"—
"never" is the word—
"any point in this country having its own nuclear weapons system at all".
Clearly, the noble and gallant Lord, as he successfully made his way up the slippery pole of advancement in Her Majesty's Army, succeeded in persuading his superior officers and successive Ministers that he was a fellow very worthy of advancement while not concealing from them that he had no interest whatever in the fundamental policy of NATO. I have some news for the noble and gallant Lord—
Lord Carver: My Lords, I thank the Minister for giving way and hope that he does not mind my correcting him. It has never been a fundamental policy of NATO that this country should have its own nuclear weapon.
Lord Gilbert: My Lords, it has been the fundamental policy of NATO, as the noble and gallant Lord would accept, that the nuclear deterrent was the basis on which NATO strategy was determined. I have to say to the

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noble and gallant Lord, in contradiction of his views, that personally I have always believed in the validity of the nuclear deterrent and I do so to this day. I do not say that just because it is government policy. Unfortunately, I can think of many occasions between 1945 and the break-up of the Soviet empire when we might well have had a third world war break out in Western Europe had nuclear weapons not been available to deter the hotheads on either side of the Iron Curtain.
The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, asked about procurement. We have a project for future Engineer tanks to replace the existing Chieftain-based armoured vehicle launcher bridge and the armoured vehicle Royal Engineer from 2005. We are currently considering bids for feasibility studies. We have also considered carefully an offer from Vickers Defence Systems to supply future Engineer tanks under a Smart procurement proposal. We hope to reach a decision soon.
The noble Earl asked whether the MoD budget was on target for the next two years. The resources needed to achieve the priorities which we set out in the review will in part be achieved by making savings from rationalisation in support areas, a continuing programme of efficiency improvements and Smart procurement. I have no reason to believe that we shall not meet our targets, though that will be difficult. We have accepted them.
I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, welcomed the review and in particular its comments on sea and air lift. He asked about the role of carriers and whether they would incorporate joint floating command posts. It is impossible to answer that question at this time. The suggestion is certainly not excluded. We are at the earliest stage of considering such questions. In fact, we have not yet reached that stage; we are formulating our studies on the shape and size of carriers. However, the possibility is not ruled out at this stage.
The noble Lord, Lord Burnham, asked what kind of aircraft would be on the carriers. Again, it is far too early to answer that. It might be of help to him and your Lordships to know that we have a menu as regards the fast jets of possibly a navalised Eurofighter, which I understand is a physical possibility; of a conventional take-off and landing joint strike fighter; of an advanced form of Harrier, a STOA VL—short take-of-and-vertical landing aircraft; or of a STOA VL version of the joint strike fighter. As I am sure the noble Lord knows, the joint strike fighter may come in as many as three or four versions. There will also be helicopters and air-borne early warning vehicles.
As regards the question of airborne early warning aircraft, I wish to take up a question which my noble friend Lord Hardy raised with me about UAVs. That gives me a great opportunity to embark on one of my hobbyhorses. It is certainly one of the possibilities for the future carrier that the airborne early warning aircraft may itself be an unmanned aerial vehicle. I am told that the United States is already undertaking experiments with the United States Navy for unmanned helicopters in a supply role. I hope that I am gaining a reputation as a fanatic for developing unmanned systems over the
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whole range of air power and particularly, but not exclusively, for offensive aircraft when it is a question of delivery of munitions.
Many years ago, we saw the first drones come in as target aircraft. Since then, many countries have introduced unmanned vehicles for tactical reconnaissance and target acquisition roles. It will not be very long before we are seeing unmanned air platforms dispensing munitions. It is quite conceivable that we shall also see them fulfilling, in part at any rate, an air-to-air role. As we move into a scenario in which forces are to be armed with beyond visual range air-to-air missiles, with a range of over 100 miles, the question of whether or not you need a man inside the platform which launches that air-to-air capability is a very moot one.
I have asked a question to which I have yet to receive a thoroughly satisfactory reply. I want to know why, if we can make an unmanned vehicle go prancing around Mars on its own, I cannot have one going around Salisbury Plain on its own. I have yet to receive a satisfactory answer to that. As soon as I do, I shall report to your Lordships accordingly.
I am very sorry to see that the noble Earl, Lord Carlisle, is not here. He did give me the courtesy of telling me that he could not be here at this stage. I was sorry to hear that he had never been a chief of defence staff. The only way that I believe that he ever will be is when we have a Liberal Democrat government. I am quite sure that he will be high on the list of candidates when the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, is the Liberal Democrat Defence Secretary. I hope that that message will be passed on to the noble Earl.
The noble Earl asked me whether we are applying all the media resources available to us in order to represent the forces in a good light. We certainly are. I hope that those of your Lordships who attended the Army presentation in Westminster Hall a few weeks ago were satisfied and gratified by the quality of that presentation and will see that the Army yields to nobody these days in the sophistication with which it advertises its wares.
I was gratified to have the support of the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, and other noble Lords in relation to what we said about zero tolerance for racial discrimination in Her Majesty's Services. Recently, we had the benefit of a splendid visit from General Powell, who gave us many good ideas in that respect, many of which we shall be implementing in due course.
My noble friend Lord Hardy asked me some questions about the state of the European defence industry. That is a matter with which I find myself quite frequently involved, not only in terms of procurement but also in terms of considering the strategies involved. Co-operative procurement is an extremely difficult and tricky task. I find it no easier today than it was when I was responsible for producing the Tornado some 20 years ago. Regrettably, we had to pull out of the Trimilsatcom project recently because we decided that it was not going to come in on time to meet our requirements. We are proceeding with a national solution.

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We also have several other projects with our European friends which are offering varying degrees of difficulty; for example, the MR Trigat and the HORIZON Frigate, just to name a couple. As I say, these are extremely difficult matters to handle and they require the greatest concentration both by Ministers and officials in this country and by our allies elsewhere.
Determination of the way in which the defence industry of western Europe is to be restructured is a matter for the boards of the companies involved. They come and talk to us. We merely tell them that we believe that they will have to restructure. They must operate in larger units to survive in the future. That is not only so in areas like aerospace, where it is obvious to everybody that however large a European firm may be, it will still be fairly puny when compared with the resources of Lockheed and Boeing, but also in other activities, particularly in relation to armoured vehicles, where I think I am right in saying that there are something like 16 different manufacturers in Western Europe and only two in the United States. It is clear that we shall not be able to survive if we continue to produce penny packets in individual firms making such equipment.
The noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, asked me—and he was kind enough to give me notice of this—about national defence but more particularly theatre defence against missiles. As I understood him, he was more interested in incoming ballistic missiles rather than incoming Cruise missiles. Our attitude to such an attack on our forces in theatre, were it to come about, would depend on the type of warhead being used against us. If it were an incoming conventional warhead, it would be treated just as one treats incoming artillery fire. The fact that it is launched from a greater range does not have much to do with the matter.
If it were—which is rather unlikely because those things are not very effective in a war-fighting scenario—a warhead which contained a weapon of mass destruction—a chemical or biological agent—then we have means of responding. I am quite sure that anybody who was thinking about launching chemical or biological warheads against British troops would think twice about it when he knew the range of fire power and delivery systems available to Her Majesty's Government.
The noble Lord asked me whether I had any information about a specific site just outside Baghdad. The answer is that I do not. If I did, I am not sure that I could tell the noble Lord in this House because that information would probably be highly classified. However, the fact is that I do not have any such information.
It is very unusual to see the noble Baroness, Lady Strange, over there but she is very welcome on those Benches, I am sure. I quite agree with her that there are not enough people in the services. I only wish that we could spend more money on defence. That has always been my message. However, health Ministers want to spend more on health and education Ministers want to spend more on education. I should like nothing more
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than to have a larger defence budget so that we could recruit more people and reduce the problem of overstretch.
I was glad to receive a welcome, again from my noble friend Lord Hardy and also elsewhere in this House, for the Government's decision that it is possible for our servicemen and service women to walk on the streets in uniform. That will add greatly to our recruiting strengths over the years ahead. It is also an important ingredient in attracting and retaining more recruits to our educational programmes, which are referred to in the Strategic Defence Review. Welcome was given also to the firmness with which this Government are determined to stamp out racism, bullying or harassment of any sort in the services. That is a message not only to those who might be recruits, but also to their parents. I hope your Lordships will play a part in making it clear that this Government, as did our predecessor, have no intention of tolerating practices of that sort in Her Majesty's Services.
I believe that the most important people to influence are the senior NCOs and the commanding officers of regiments. As General Powell said, we must make it clear that their career prospects will be affected if there are any instances of racial intolerance in their units.
Earl Attlee: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. He has been extremely informative. However, will he kindly respond to my question in relation to permanent staff instructors? It is particularly important to the background policy of the TA.
Lord Gilbert: My Lords, I did not come armed with figures in regard to permanent staff instructors. I assure the noble Earl that I shall write to him on the subject as soon as I can.
I have probably trespassed on your Lordships' time long enough. This has been one of the most instructive debates that we have had in the short time that I have been in your Lordships' House. I want to respond to one remark of my noble friend Lord Kennet. I do not agree with him that the Ministry of Defence is not able to protect itself against a hacker's attack. I have reason to believe that we have managed to isolate ourselves to such a degree that it would not be possible for any amateur hacker to obtain entry to our central systems in a way that it is apparently possible in the Pentagon.
There are other systems vital to our national defence, not necessarily in the Ministry of Defence, that could be vulnerable. As my noble friend was pointing out, one of the difficulties is identifying an aggressor or even knowing that there has been an aggressor in the microseconds or nanoseconds in which an attack takes place. We must recognise that the physical security of our IT installations is just as important as the electronic security. I say that to indicate that Her Majesty's Government are seized of the types of threat that may face this country in the future.
I do not advance the proposition that we have solutions, let alone defences in place for all the threats that may be coming down the pike towards us. However, we are seized of the fact that we are living in

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a technologically fast-moving environment and we are determined to see the defence of the country being put on as firm a basis as possible in the light of the new threats. No country has the answer to them. I am sure that this Government, along with our allies—particularly our American allies—will invest considerable resources in this area.
On that point I agree with the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Carver, about the importance of keeping up interoperability with our American friends. It will cost us a great deal of money to do so and that is something that we shall have to consider in the years ahead. I thank your Lordships for your attention.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Police Act 1997 (Notification of Authorisations etc.) Order 1998
8.55 p.m.
Lord Williams of Mostyn Lord Williams of Mostyn rose to move, That the draft orders laid before the House on 19th November be approved [1st Report from the Joint Committee].
The noble Lord said: My Lords, with the leave of the House I beg to move the Motions standing in my name on the Order Paper en bloc.
Part III of the Police Act gives the police, the National Crime Squad, the National Criminal Intelligence Service and Customs & Excise a firm statutory base for their intrusive surveillance operations. These involve entry on or interference with property or wireless telegraphy and that, Parliament has decided, is an essential weapon in the fight against serious crime. The decisions to authorise these sensitive but extremely important operations will continue to be made by chief officers of police, the directors general of the National Crime Squad or NCIS and designated senior Customs officers. But the public interest will be safeguarded by independent oversight in the form of commissioners who are to be serving or former High Court judges.
We had a vigorous debate in this Chamber about these provisions and, significantly because of that, the draft legislation was changed and measures introduced providing quasi-judicial oversight of this process. An Office of Surveillance Commissioners has been established and a computer database developed to support its work. The Prime Minister appointed Sir Andrew Leggatt as Chief Surveillance Commissioner in July and recently announced the appointment of six Surveillance Commissioners—Sir Christopher Staughton, Sir Michael Hutchison and Sir Charles McCullough for England and Wales, Lord Bonomy and Lord Davidson in Scotland and Sir John MacDermott in Northern Ireland. They will be responsible for scrutinising all notifications of authorisations and for giving their prior approval, except
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in cases of urgency, to authorisations involving the intrusion of dwellings, hotel bedrooms and offices as well as intrusions likely to involve confidential information of various kinds. They will have the power to quash or cancel authorisations which they feel have been improperly given and to order the destruction of records (other than those required for pending proceedings) and the payment of compensation. They will also be responsible for investigating complaints.
The two draft orders therefore represent the final steps in the implementation process. One order relates to the code of practice which will underpin these provisions and the other to the information which must be provided to commissioners on notification of an authorisation, its renewal or cancellation. We had extensive public consultation and considered the responses carefully.
The second draft order gives details of the information which must be provided, as I indicated, with a notification of authorisation, renewal or cancellation of an authorisation. A notification of an authorisation given by an authorising officer—that is, a chief constable or equivalent—must record whether it is a case for which prior approval is required: if it is a case which would otherwise require approval but in which intrusive surveillance has started because of urgency, the grounds on which the case is believed to be urgent; how the authorisation criteria have been met—for example, how the case fits within the definition of serious crime and why the purpose which the action seeks to achieve cannot reasonably be achieved by other means; the identity or identities, where known, of those to be targeted; the property against which surveillance is to take place; the nature of the surveillance authorised and the reason why; whether the intrusive surveillance is considered likely to lead to collateral intrusion on or interference with persons other than the person being targeted by the authorisation; and whether or not it will be necessary to retrieve any equipment used in the surveillance.
The notification of renewal must, in addition, record whether this is the first renewal or every occasion on which the authorisation has been renewed previously; every respect in which the information in the previous authorisation has changed; why it is necessary to continue; the content and value to the investigation of the product so far obtained; the results of periodic reviews carried out by the authorising officer; and an estimate of the length of time the authorisation will continue to be necessary. Any cancellation of an authorisation must record the time and date when the instruction was given to cease surveillance; the reason why; the outcome of the investigation and the nature of any criminal proceedings contemplated; and the arrangements for the storage of material obtained as a result of the surveillance, for its review and destruction when it is no longer of use and for the immediate destruction of unrelated material.
These provisions are welcomed by chief officers. They do not see them as hampering their work or as an additional unreasonable administrative burden. They are very positive about the provisions which they believe will help satisfy the public about the accountability of their decisions. They understand and fully appreciate

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that any decision they take has to be fully justified to a commissioner or, should the surveillance result in a criminal prosecution, to a court. I commend the orders to your Lordships.
Moved, That the draft orders laid before the House on 19th November be approved. [1st Report from the Joint Committee].—(Lord Williams of Mostyn.)
Viscount Astor: My Lords, we welcome the two Motions. The orders take forward our policy which emanated from the Police Act 1997, part of which the noble Lord, Lord Williams, supported when in opposition.
I have questions on three brief points. First, there are to be six surveillance commissioners. I wonder whether that is enough. Have the Government considered how many cases they will have to look after? Will the commissioners be spread geographically? Will the Government review the number?
Secondly, I note that the annual report will be made to the Prime Minister by the Chief Commissioner. That is provided in Section 3(5) on page 15 of the code. I wonder why it is to be made to the Prime Minister and not to the Home Secretary. If the report is to be on the operation of the whole system, and not just on the detail, I wonder whether that report will be laid before Parliament.
Thirdly, I presume that the whole policy will be kept under review, but I wonder whether there is a plan for the Home Office to conduct an annual review of this new policy and therefore whether a report will be made to Parliament.
Lord McNally: My Lords, when the Home Secretary had the courtesy to send me the code of practice, he wrote:
"I have sought to achieve a balance between the operational needs of law enforcement and, at the same time, ensuring safeguards to protect members of the public from unnecessary invasions of their privacy".
We accept that approach to the orders.
Nevertheless, from these Benches, we make no apology for emphasising the need to take care over civil liberties. That does not mean that we doubt the civil liberty credentials of Ministers any more than we accept the criticism that we may be soft on crime. The point is that when giving power to police authorities, such as this, it is very necessary for Parliament to be aware of threats to civil liberties. That is why, from these Benches, we were extremely vigorous in expressing our concerns during the passage of the Bill.
We have considered the outcome of the consultation. In the main, the Government have listened and have made substantial changes, which we welcome. We believe that the consultation process and the pressure for consultation was worthwhile. It produced some good results. My brief lists some 16 improvements to the code but, as I note the Sudanese team straining at the leash, I shall not detail them now. However, I think that the Minister will be proud to note that we have listed at least 16 improvements resulting from the consultation.
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There are still problems about a clear definition of "urgency". There is a continuing problem about targeting property where the consent of the owner has been obtained, but where the tenant is the target. In another place my right honourable friend, Mr. Alan Beith, suggested that although the approval procedure is not formally required if a property owner has given permission, the police could still use the procedure anyway. That would not only improve protection for the tenant, but would also benefit the police operationally. We put that forward, as did my right honourable friend in another place, as a constructive suggestion about the codes.
I am sure that the Minister will also be aware that Justice has expressed disappointment at the code's lack of transparency. Justice has urged that the internal review process should be rigorous—that is something about which the Minister has just assured us—and that the range of information to be included on authorisation and notification forms should be broadened.
Within those terms, we see that Ministers have listened and tried to improve the provisions. We say both to them and to the police authorities which will have to use the powers that we understand the operational need for them. We hope that they will understand our continuing surveillance of how they use them in terms of civil liberties.
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Lords. Perhaps I may deal first with the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord McNally. I entirely accept his point that we must strike a careful balance here. It should be not just a cosmetic balance; there should be a continuing, rigorous investigation of whether we have got the balance right. We took a little time over the consultation process and I believe that that was time well spent. We did the same on the Human Rights Act, the Data Protection Act and the Crime and Disorder Act. The outcome benefited from the discipline of listening to other people's views. I am grateful for the noble Lord's generous observations on that point.
The noble Lord will remember the debates in which we both participated in which it was suggested that perhaps circuit judges might be the appropriate reviewing bodies. I never favoured that proposal. The seriousness that we attach to this matter can be seen from the fact that we have appointed Sir Andrew Leggatt, a recently retired Lord Justice of Appeal, as Chief Surveillance Commissioner, and as commissioners Sir Christopher Staughton, Sir Michael Hutchison, and Sir Charles McCullough who is, of course, a senior former puisne High Court judge. We have gone to the same level in appointing also Lord Bonomy and Lord Davidson in Scotland, and Sir John MacDermott in Northern Ireland. I believe that is a fair indicator of the fact that we regard this work as extremely important and serious.
Perhaps I may deal with the points raised by the noble Viscount. We believe that sufficient commissioners have been appointed. When questions were raised during the passage of the Bill, it was difficult to identify precisely the number required. That is the weakness of the existing "non-system". At that time, nobody was

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certain, but our best estimate following a review a little later was that there would be about 2,550 cases per year. We think that there are sufficient commissioners to deal with that number. However, we can appoint more commissioners if that proves necessary. The report is made to the Prime Minister because these are Prime Ministerial appointments.
If it seems that there are insufficient commissioners, that is a point that one would expect to be raised in the annual report. We shall keep the matter under review. After all, the chief commissioner will report annually on Part III provisions. If he believes that any further tightening or balancing ought to be carried out, we would expect such a senior person as Sir Andrew Leggatt to bring that immediately to the attention of the Prime Minister in the annual report.
As regards more general review, the Home Office will obviously be keenly interested in how things work in practice. We shall have an overview rather than a formal review. I believe that that is the best way to deal with the matter. As I said, I am most grateful for the welcome that has been given to the orders. In respect of any Home Office legislation that I bring forward, I give the following undertaking and repeat what I said the other day. After Second Reading, I give a general invitation to all colleagues in opposition from any part of the House to come, with advisers if they choose, to have ministerial and official briefings before the Committee stage. I believe that to be a useful way of going forward. I am happy to repeat what I said.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Sudan
9.8 p.m.
Baroness Cox Baroness Cox rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what is their policy towards recent developments in Sudan.
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I am most grateful to noble Lords who are contributing to this debate because I know that there is widespread concern in your Lordships' House which will, I hope, encourage the Government to strive for yet more robust and effective efforts to achieve solutions to the long-running catastrophe besetting Sudan, which has suffered from civil war for most of the time since independence. But the situation deteriorated sharply when the National Islamic Front (NIF) regime ousted the democratically elected government by military coup in 1989.
I work with Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), which is a human rights organisation working for victims of oppression regardless of creed. We always endeavour to hear the viewpoints of different parties to a conflict before undertaking advocacy. Therefore, in the early days of our work in Sudan I visited Khartoum. I met many of the NIF leaders and was present at the celebrations of the fourth anniversary of the NIF' s coup. I and my colleagues submitted our report to our NIF hosts to ensure that they thought it was a fair representation of their views.
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It was clear from that visit that the NIF is committed to a jihad. Although that word has diverse meanings, the evidence we have subsequently obtained on repeated visits to many different regions in Sudan has demonstrated that the NIF jihad is the most brutal kind. The regime has the blood of countless numbers of its own people on its hands. In recent years of this civil war, over 1.5 million Sudanese have perished, over 5 million have been displaced and the numbers grow daily.
The policies of the NIF regime include military offensives against, and cold-blooded massacres of, innocent civilians; the politics of hunger to drive people from their land—either to perish from starvation or to have to migrate to NIF-controlled territories where those who are African and/or Christian will be subjected to forced Arabisation or Islamisation; the use of slavery on a widespread, systematic scale; and, for those living in the north who oppose the regime, arrest, imprisonment, torture (often in "ghost" houses) and extra-judicial killings.
Those gross systematic violations of human rights have been well documented and widely reported and are incontrovertible. They form part of the indictment of the NIF in UN Security Council resolutions. The regime also stands condemned for supporting international terrorism and there is disturbing evidence of close alliances between the NIF and other terrorist regimes and personnel such as Saddam Hussein, Colonel Gaddafi and Bin Ladin. There are credible reports that Saddam Hussein may have transferred some of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to Sudan, as well as experts and materials for the manufacture of those weapons inside Sudan. Many experts, such as the US Congressional Task Force against Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, have raised questions which need to be taken very seriously, as there is widespread concern that the NIF may be developing a terrorist regime in the heart of Africa similar to the regime that Saddam Hussein has imposed on the people of Iraq. The Sudanese people are suffering in ways very similar to the Iraqi people, and the NIF has supported international terrorism, harbouring and training terrorists, and been associated with terrorist activities abroad.
It is against this disturbing background that I highlight some recent events, based on evidence obtained from visits to areas designated by the NIF as no-go areas by United Nations Operation Lifeline Sudan and other aid organisations—areas in Bahr-El-Ghazal in southern Sudan; in southern Blue Nile; in the Nuba mountains; and in eastern Sudan from Kassala province to the southern Red Sea region. Earlier this year, the media exposed the suffering in parts of Bahr-El-Ghazal, with heart-rending pictures of famine caused by draught and/or floods. The NIF regime then opened up previously designated no-go areas to UN OLS and was praised for so doing. This was undeserved because they should not have been no-go areas in the first place.
However, while the NIF was enjoying those accolades, CSW visited areas still designated as no-go and we saw events that the world was not meant to see.

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We flew over large areas of Bahr-El-Ghazal and saw smoke rising from numerous villages, set alight in massive raids undertaken by NIF government soldiers, the popular defence force mujahadeen and murahaleen. At Wonruk, we found evidence of massacres on a scale that we had never seen before. The nearby market of Aweng Dau had recently been subjected to one of these raids: civilians were attacked by hundreds of soldiers with kalashnikovs, jeeps, fast horses and camels from three sides and were driven into a cul-de-sac where they were slaughtered. We saw those who had tried to escape. We saw that they had been followed into the bush and mown down. We saw hundreds of bodies crudely buried under branches of thorn trees, or bloated corpses lying in the river Lol or scattered through the bush as they tried to flee. They were civilians wearing beads and necklaces.
We followed the swathe of destruction left by the raiders as they spread their carnage from Wonruk to Mayen Abun 20 kilometres away: everywhere burned homes, burned crops, and the cattle which would not go with the raiders were slaughtered their carcasses intermingled with human corpses.
Civilians who had fled to the swamps, where they could not be followed, were living with no mosquito nets and only roots from water lilies for food. It is estimated that between 30,000 and 40,000 were living in those swamps. Others were hiding in the bush with no food and no protection from mosquitoes. They told us that many of their women and children had been taken as slaves. It is too early to obtain accurate figures but credible sources estimated that many thousands were enslaved.
Our pilots told us that they saw similar destruction covering hundreds of miles. The populations of four counties in these Dinka homelands had been subjected to entirely government-made famine and to massacres. The scale and scope of these attacks merit, we believe, the term "genocide"—a term I do not use lightly.
We returned in July with medical supplies and heard that further raids had taken place. We also met many women and children who had been enslaved in recent and previous raids and who had been brought back by peaceable Arab traders. We saw evidence of their maltreatment: African women sexually exploited, with half-Arab babies; scars and beatings; children who had been enslaved for two or three years, only able to talk Arabic and unable to speak their native language. Slavery is widely practised by the NIF regime. How much longer will the international community tolerate this?
I move briefly to a visit a few weeks ago to southern Blue Nile. Our previous visit was in January 1997, when the NIF had just been driven out. It had inflicted a scorched earth policy. Now the situation has greatly improved under SPLM administration. The people can grow crops and their nutritional status is much better. The area is predominantly Moslem, with a Christian minority. There is religious freedom for everyone and both Moslems and Christians live in harmony. The local
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Imam told us that he is very happy that the NIF regime was driven out. He and his people now enjoy a new freedom. I quote a few words:
"Now, we can pray in peace with no repression. The NIF regime was not pure Islam; it was highly politicised. The regime talked about a jihad. But that is not true Islam. Their jihad was to take freedom away. I would myself be ready to fight against them because as an Imam I do not believe this is a true jihad".
This encounter with the Imam is a reminder that the war in Sudan is not a Christian-Moslem conflict but that Christians, Moslems and traditional believers are united in opposition against a totalitarian regime, which they see violating human rights and ruthless in its determination to exterminate all who oppose it.
This situation is mirrored in the Nuba mountains, where NIF offensives try to force civilians off to peace camps which are little better than concentration camps. Also it is mirrored in eastern Sudan, where the Beja Moslem people also suffer at the hands of the NIF. We have seen many of them driven off their lands into the desert, where they have to scavenge for a living in harsh conditions, with little or no water, food or medicines. We saw evidence of aerial bombardment of civilians with cluster bombs.
The NIF has continued its aerial bombardment of civilians, even during the ceasefire which the Foreign Minister, Derek Fatchett, helped to broker in good faith. The hospital at Yei has been bombed six times this year, on some occasions during the ceasefire. The Roman Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Torit, Bishop Paride, addressing the Eighth Assembly of the World Council of Churches on December 5th, said:
"I witnessed two bitter bombing raids carried out by the Khartoum Government … There was no military presence in either of the centres where I witnessed the bombs fall. The recipients are simple. struggling, uninvolved civilians … they plant food. They want to eat; they do not want to depend on relief food. Yet … the devilish bombs from above continually rip their ambitions apart. The planes from Khartoum come almost daily".
The Bishop continued with questions which form part of my concluding questions, so I will ask them in his words as a Sudanese Bishop speaking on behalf of his own people. First:
"The suffering people of Sudan hear that great nations have imposed a no-fly zone on the Iraqi Government of Saddam Hussein to protect the Kurds in Northern Iraq. Our people ask: are we not worth human life to be protected from the Sudanese airforce by imposition of a no-fly zone?".
Secondly:
"Recently, we heard that the President of Yugoslavia was forced by Europeans and Americans to stop the massacre of the people of Kosovo, and to pull out his troops or face the wrath of NATO … What about us in Sudan?".
These are the questions that the people of Sudan are asking through their Bishop.
May I add one or two more. First, while supporting the principles embodied in the IGAD initiative and encouraging continuation of peace talks, will the Government ensure that these talks are not being used by the NIF to play for time while it continues to violate the ceasefire and to bomb innocent civilians? Secondly, will they press the international community to redouble its efforts to prevail upon the NIF to open all of Sudan to humanitarian aid organisations and to human rights

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monitors? Thirdly, while the NIF persists with its policy of no-go areas for UN OLS and other aid organisations, will the Government step up their support for organisations that are willing to work in these places? Fourthly, will the Government strive to maintain and even increase sanctions against the NIF regime if it continues its policies of gross violations of human rights? Concern has been expressed over the Government's apparent willingness sometimes to violate the spirit of existing sanctions—for example, by granting visas to representatives of the NIF. Finally, will the Government pursue more vigorously a commitment to encourage the representatives of the democratically elected Government of Sudan, now in exile, in ways similar to those adopted for the Iraqi opposition?
I conclude by pointing out that there are many similarities between the regimes in Khartoum and Baghdad. Both represent serious threats to international peace and stability; both have inflicted incalculable suffering on their own people and continue to do so. Their people are crying out for peace with justice. Will this Government, committed to the eradication of global poverty and the promotion of human rights, step up their efforts to relieve the suffering of the peoples of Sudan and Iraq? Will the Government see it as in the interests, not only of the people of those countries but of other countries including our own, to increase their efforts to curtail the threats of national and international terrorism posed by those regimes? Until those regimes are brought to account, there can be no peace for their own people, except the peace of the dead; and no peace for the rest of the world, except the deluded peace of the ostrich.
9.20 p.m.
Lord Cocks of Hartcliffe: My Lords, I am glad once again to be able to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, for bringing this subject to our attention and enabling us to talk about it. Perhaps I may say how very much we all appreciate her courage and persistence in bringing us absolutely invaluable first hand evidence of just what is going on.
I have spoken on the Sudan in the past. In July I was elected to be a joint vice-chairman of the All-Party British Sudanese Parliamentary Group. At that meeting there was mention of the British-Sudanese Public Affairs Council, which has an address in London. I asked about the council because it was new to me and I asked how it was being funded. I was told that it was being funded by the Sudanese Government. If that means that the Sudanese Government are becoming increasingly interested in what is said about the situation there, I welcome that. If at least they want to know what is being said here, we may be beginning to have some possible effect in making them think again.
If a report is going back to Khartoum I hope it might mention that there is widespread development of the whole question of devolution. In this country we have had a great deal of it lately, in Scotland and in Wales, and preparations are in hand in Northern Ireland. There are also signs of increasing awareness in England itself about breaking down into smaller units. We know, too, how the independent countries of the former Soviet Union have been established. There seems to be a
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worldwide trend towards recognising the diversity of religious and ethnic groups. Let us hope that that message goes to Khartoum saying that it is a worldwide trend and that it is not helpful to stand out against it.
We know that the area of Sudan is some 10 times that of the United Kingdom, although the population is only about half of our own. It is an enormous country. The frontiers are to a large extent a relic of the colonial times when some of our colonial administrators were drawing boundaries for fairly arbitrary reasons. I think that the Government in Khartoum should remember that and not necessarily regard their country as one homogenous entity but recognise its increasing diversity. They should recognise in particular that because of the different religious groups it is folly to try to enforce a uniform regime. The specific problems of the Christian and the animists in the southern part of the country should be recognised. It must be said that they are entitled to have their human rights respected.
There is a need for a rethink. The increasing awareness of diversity will not go away because, as the almost exponential growth of communications technology develops, more and more people in that country will become aware of conditions elsewhere. They will become aware of the increasing emphasis on human rights. Therefore a great pressure will build up which the Government really should face up to.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Salisbury intended to participate in this debate, but unfortunately is indisposed. We regret that because we have had a contribution from the Bishops' Bench in these debates. We all recall the value of the visit of the most reverend Primate to the Sudan and the influence of that visit which gave great encouragement to the Christians there and did much to draw attention not only in this country but also in other parts of the world to the situation there.
I wish to mention the persecution of Christians. A report was published in the spring of 1997 by the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, Issue No. 1426–1693, Volume 5, No. 2 which states,
"Though religious persecution is being experienced by people of different faiths (Moslems, Hindus, Jews, Christians, Bahais and others) the overwhelming majority of cases worldwide have to do with Christians. This situation reflects the fact that Christians are today the single most persecuted religious group in the world".
As we have heard, nowhere is this truer than in the Sudan.
I urge the Government to concentrate their efforts to try to get across to the Sudanese that the situation in their country will become increasingly the focus of world attention, not only in the United Nations but also in other fora. Whilst we welcome the efforts of the aid agencies which have borne some fruit, nevertheless the underlying situation must be tackled.
I hope that what we hear about possible executions of Christian ministers and priests, possible crucifixions, and, of course, the slavery which has been mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, will be assiduously pursued by our Foreign Office Ministers and that they will make the most urgent and strenuous representations to prevent any further such barbaric acts in the Sudan.

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I am grateful to the noble Baroness for introducing this debate and for enabling us once more to draw attention to this dreadful situation.
9.27 p.m.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, I was interested to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Cocks, said about the Sudanese foundation appearing at the annual meeting of the British group, as I wrote to Mr. Hoile, the director of that foundation, on a couple of occasions, to ask him to let me have a copy of the report and accounts of his outfit. I never received a reply. It is good to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Cocks, that Mr. Hoile receives all his money from the Sudanese Government. I hope that those who receive his literature will take careful note of that.
I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Cocks, has said about the fantastic work undertaken by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, and her immense energy and courage in pursuing the cause of the oppressed in many areas of the world, not only in Sudan but also in Burma and Armenia. We know of her courage under fire in such places. The work that she does in Sudan is only one of the many examples of her courage. Therefore it is a great privilege to take part in this debate and to discuss once again the important matters that the noble Baroness has raised.
Although I hold no brief for the NIF regime, I contend that the US attack on the alleged chemical weapons factory in Khartoum was not justified by international law and was a political error. I said that to the Foreign Secretary at the time. The Americans produced only the flimsiest evidence for their claim and did not agree to a Sudanese proposal that an independent investigation should be commissioned to which they would have given facilities for conducting tests on the spot. The UN Charter prohibits the use of force by one state against another except for action taken collectively with the authority of the Security Council under Article 42, or in the exercise of self-defence under Article 51, when an armed attack occurs on a member state. In the latter case, the use of force is expressly limited to a period before the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. That means that the circumstances must be such that if the Security Council had had the time, it would have taken measures broadly in line with those taken by the state claiming to act in self-defence. In the case of the bombings of the US embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, the UN would not have authorised military action on the lines of that taken by the United States, and the American action was therefore unlawful.
The NIF regime has an appalling record of human rights violations, of which the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, reminded us again. She mentioned the policy of deliberately causing mass starvation by excluding the UN's Operation Lifeline Sudan or any other relief operations from Bahr El Ghazal at the beginning of this year, affecting a quarter of a million people in that area as well as 400,000 people in the Nuba mountains. That
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issue is highlighted in the annual report of Human Rights Watch, just published. The report states that in the Nuba mountains,
"the government continued its efforts to starve civilians out of rebel-held areas into government 'peace villages'. Army troops and Nuba collaborators captured and relocated or killed civilians. They looted and burned villages, animals and grain. A permanent government blockade, in place since the beginning of the war, barred all UN relief operations and even traders from the rebel areas of the Nuba mountains. A private assessment in March estimated 20,000 civilians there were at risk of starvation".
As a result of the world's expressions of horror at the pictures of emaciated people in rural Bahr El Ghazal on the TV, the government of Sudan were compelled to allow relief operations in that part of the country, and the most recent report from Mr. Mohammed Saleheen, the Khartoum representative of the World Food Programme, says that the area is now out of intensive care but still in need of treatment. However, he says that a new humanitarian crisis was developing in Juba, the largest town in the south, as a result of clashes between government troops and the SPLA in eastern Equatoria. Barges are on the way down the Nile carrying 1,000 tonnes of food, which was formerly enough to feed the inhabitants of Juba for some two months, but may not be enough for a population swelled by internally displaced villagers fleeing the conflict areas and dependent entirely on aid. Mr. Saleheen also says that the rainfall was late this year and floods damaged the crops, impairing the region's ability to contribute to its people's sustenance.
Mr. Saleheen does not even mention the Nuba mountains. Perhaps the Minister could say whether that is because the World Food Programme does not have access to the region and thus no information is available to it. What efforts are we, and the European Union as a whole, making to persuade the NIF to open up that region and allow international agencies to save the people from starvation and massacre?
The noble Baroness, Lady Cox, mentioned the case of Kosovo, where we were prepared to use force if Milosevic had continued with a policy similar to that being conducted in the Nuba mountains. The Minister said during a discussion on Kosovo that in a situation of extreme humanitarian disaster we should have been justified in using force there if Milosevic had continued with his policies, in order to prevent extreme humanitarian disaster occurring in that territory. But we cannot depend on such statements, even when they are as authoritative as those of the Minister.
There is an urgent need to define a "right of intervention", a term that authorities sometimes use following Resolution 688 on Iraq. At that time I asked the then Secretary of State, now the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, whether he thought we should seek to amend the Charter to clarify the circumstances in which the international community should have the power to intervene to prevent megadeaths. He thought it would be virtually impossible to get agreement on this issue because states had acceded to the Charter readily for the protection it gave them against international intervention. But, if we do not make the effort, there will be collective action in only a very limited number of cases where the interests of the great powers are not

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affected. Are the Government prepared to give some thought to this problem in the light of the difficulties that have arisen in Sudan?
It is not only in the south that human rights are violated by the regime in Khartoum. There were many detentions following a series of bomb explosions in Khartoum in June and a high-profile trial of 20 detainees and another six in absentia started on 5th October. The ringleader of the plot was alleged to be Father Hillary Boma, Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Khartoum, and there was another priest among the accused, Father Lino Sebit. It was reported that Father Boma was made to confess in order to stop the torture of his priestly colleague. None of the defendants was allowed to speak to counsel before the opening of the trial, which was before a military tribunal, even though all but one of the defendants were civilians. Eighteen of the 20 were Christian. According to the Washington Post of 3rd December, the two priests could face crucifixion if they are convicted, and this trial is seen as part of the general policy of persecuting Christians, to which the noble Lord, Lord Cocks, referred.
Since 1983 nearly 2 million people have died from war and war-related causes in Sudan. Four and a half million have been displaced or have fled the country and 2.5 million are threatened by starvation and disease, largely created by the government and its warlords. This situation cannot be tolerated on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I urge the Government to do everything in their power to bring about a settlement of the conflict which will allow the people of the south to rule themselves and to spread to the whole of Sudan, in the words of the FCO mission statement, the human rights, civil liberties and democracy which we demand for ourselves.
9.37 p.m.
The Earl of Sandwich: My Lords, it is remarkable that in a country with one of the worst records for human rights and civil liberties the ordinary civilian people are so patient and long-suffering. It is also remarkable that humanitarian aid is getting through and that the NGOs and UN agencies are able to sustain life, perhaps more constantly and cost-effectively than has ever been the case in Bosnia or Iraq. There is a desperate war going on. Most Europeans are unaware of it. The world has failed to resolve it. But contact between the Sudanese and outsiders is as warm as it has ever been. It is a tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, and others who visit Sudan that friendship and hospitality are so often highlighted. I should like to mention here the courage of the noble Lord, Lord Deedes, who still makes a habit of visiting war-torn areas of Africa.
We need to preserve this other, positive image of Sudan. To quote briefly from two young teachers from the Sudan Volunteer Programme:
"The Sudanese are the most friendly people I've ever met … they are so warm and welcoming despite the hard conditions";
and,
"Sudan left me feeling privileged to have access to a country which has so much to offer me which beforehand had been so unknown".
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I visited Sudan in the 1980s on behalf of Christian Aid to see the work of the Churches in the north and the south. There is something unusual about a country devastated by years of war which still allows aid workers to travel and diplomats to search for solutions at every level. I too am sorry that the right reverend Prelate is unable to be here to describe his recent visit to the Episcopal Church. Many NGOs and Churches are actively working for a peace agreement. It is primarily for the Sudanese to find their own way, but it is not impossible, as it sometimes seems, for outsiders to make a contribution.
With 1.5 million deaths, 4 million to 5 million displaced inside and outside the country, 2.6 million still at risk of starvation, of whom 1.2 million are out of reach in war zones, and the war spilling further into neighbouring states, it is surely time for the outside world to take a more active interest.
There are many parties to the Sudan war beyond the advertised struggle between the GOS and the SPLM/A. There are factions on both sides that are hopelessly split into warring divisions. In the south and east both the Dinka and the Nuer peoples are tragically divided by their sponsors and are now fighting their own brothers. The GOS was recently so frustrated by its militia in Juba that it disarmed it. The maverick former SPLA commander, Kerubino Bol, has managed to change sides at least three times. It is said that when both sides of a conflict are weary and torn apart that is the moment for reconciliation. Yet so long as outsiders, including major powers, provide military support there will always be someone somewhere with enough arms to carry on.
There are some amazing stories of rescue operations, and I shall mention just one. Some noble Lords may have seen a BBC2 programme last month made by Sudanese film-makers about the de-mining work of OSIL (Operation Save Innocent Lives) to provide a safe passage for both local people and relief aid on its way to Bahr-al-Ghazal. In the past year the OSIL team has removed and destroyed 110 anti-tank mines, 1,421 APMs, 609 unexploded cluster bomblets and over 12,000 pieces of unexploded ordnance. One night in September a cluster bomblet dropped by a GOS Antonov entered the leg of a woman who was holding her baby in Yei hospital. It did not explode. A Sudanese engineer from OSIL removed it, without the help of any anaesthetic, so that the mother and child survived. This is a story of Sudanese courage that is repeated many times by the NGOs who work there.
The Sudan war is not confined to Sudan. I was recently in Uganda and again heard stories of atrocities by the Sudan-based Lord's Resistance Army. As part of its grisly war with the Ugandan Army it abducts teenage Ugandan children on the Gulu-Kitgum road, forces them into conscription and brutalises them into compliance. The army must now escort buses and taxis to ensure that the children get to school or take their examinations. Stories about the LRA are well documented. A couple of aid agencies are involved in helping to rehabilitate the children, but no one is trying to prevent it happening. There are many stark cases of human rights abuses in central Africa, but surely this is one to be followed more closely.

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Aid has continued to reach the people of Bahr-al-Ghazal through the UN and larger aid agencies despite the civil war. However, as the Secretary of State often says, the problem is one of access. At this moment a convoy of seven barges, organised by WFP as part of Operation Lifelife Sudan, is carrying 2,500 tonnes up the Nile from Kosti to Juba. On the way it will deliver food across battlelines and distribute it to some 400,000 people on both sides of the war. These operations recall the Sarajevo convoys. They are among the most courageous being attempted in any war zone. Apart from occasional breakdowns, as occurred in January, they have been remarkably successful. Thanks may be due to the GOS and the SPLM for co-operating with OLS. Yet there are many areas outside the extended ceasefire lines like the Nuba mountains where there is no co-operation, where fighting continues and where over 1 million people are at risk from starvation because they are unable to go back and plant in time for the harvest.
The Minister will set out the UK's record, which will speak for itself. It is a good record. On the humanitarian side, the Government have supported the NGOs throughout, in spite of the Secretary of State's well-publicised intervention during the emergency which may have even helped the appeal. The pro-US position of Her Majesty's Government following the bombing of the Shifa pharmaceutical factory in August has been an embarrassment, as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, implied, especially as no one has seen any of the US intelligence reports about the alleged involvement of bin Ladin. However, if the Government can even now make a clean breast of it, surely the way ahead is open for a resumption of normal diplomatic relations.
The humanitarian agencies have a strong interest in the return of our embassy staff to Sudan. I have heard nothing but praise for the way in which Ambassador Alan Goulty and his staff took the side of aid workers and found ways through labyrinthine bureaucracy to secure permissions and safe transit through Sudan. Although I acknowledge that they can still do much, even at a distance, I am sure that the Minister will do everything that she can to ensure that they return to the Sudan soon.
We read a lot about the IGAD process, but years have elapsed and, useful as it has been, many believe that it is time to look at alternatives. Both the GOS and the southern forces have a strong respect and affection for Britain. It may be possible for us to take a more independent line in the Security Council. The Government's response to the report of the International Development Committee urging a new initiative was perhaps, with hindsight, too cautious.
As a result of a powerful recent briefing by four leading aid agencies calling for a more effective peace process and a new humanitarian initiative, the United Nations may finally be notching up Sudan at least above its lost cause status. In some ways only countries like Britain, directly involved and working through the Security Council, can persuade the US to revise its confrontational stance.
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In conclusion, there are signs that the parties would like a new way out, which may be possible for outsiders to help to negotiate. Every effort must be made to extend the ceasefire from Bahr-al-Ghazal to other areas to allow aid through and to restart the peace process with greater political will demonstrated at the highest level.
9.45 p.m.
Viscount Brentford: My Lords, I, too, would like to thank my noble friend very much for introducing this debate once again to your Lordships' House. Again, I would like to express my immense admiration for the courage and energy which she shows in bringing this matter before us after her trips made in great danger through that country.
As in the debate a year ago, I would like to concentrate primarily on the peace process. To pick up two points which the noble Earl has just made and endorse them to the Minister, I, too, have received requests that surely the ambassador can return to Khartoum. As I understand it, only Sudanese are currently manning our embassy there. Are we not yet ready to take that step and send the ambassador back, which would be a positive move in the peace process?
Following on what the noble Earl said about the four international NGOs meeting representatives of the Secretary General's office, I would like to say what an encouragement it has been that the UN has sent Sir Kieran Prendergast to visit that region of the Sudan. He has great experience throughout eastern and southern Africa. His going there seems to have been of encouragement to the Sudanese, even if only because it symbolises that the UN is now paying attention to the Sudan.
There is also great encouragement from the fact that the ceasefire in Bahr-al-Ghazal is holding, allowing food to be distributed for relief in that area. In any event, there would be a serious food shortage in that part of the Sudan because of the weather conditions. But the shortage has been made catastrophic and approaching mass starvation because of military action in destroying villages and crops and forcing people out of the areas, as has been said.
I ask the noble Baroness what proposals the Government have for the IGAD meeting in February. I was helped by a letter I had from her right honourable friend the Minister of State about the Government's proposals in the summer, but I wonder how that is moving at the moment.
Previous ceasefires in the Sudan have broken down. I am wondering—and other people have mentioned this—whether there should be an international monitoring team to monitor the ceasefire in the Sudan. I do not know whether many of your Lordships watched the "Panorama" programme on Rwanda last night showing the disaster of Unimar there. I certainly have doubts. It came over to me during that programme that as long as Unimar was in Rwanda many thousands of lives were

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being saved. The genocide in Rwanda accelerated enormously from the time that Unimar was called out. Therefore I believe that there is a serious case for having an international monitoring team at the right moment in the Sudan.
My second point is for IGAD to extend the ceasefire to all other contested areas. I hope that the Minister will be able to say that that is government policy.
One proposal mooted by the Sudanese Churches is to bring the southern troops south of the 1956 boundary line and to keep the northern troops on the north side. That is a possible historical boundary for a ceasefire. It might also have the advantage of clarifying which group of fighters is on whose side. As the noble Earl said, people change sides and it is not always clear who is fighting for whom. A fixed boundary line could clarify the issue.
Thirdly, I hope that in February IGAD will settle the process towards self-determination for the south. All parties in the process have agreed it in principle. Monitors would be needed to assess the process. However, I hope that in February concrete steps can be taken towards the self-determination process. If so, the grassroots peacemaking and reconciliation that are taking place could lead towards development and reconstruction.
I ask the Government three questions on their policy. I appreciate that on Thursday in Vienna they aim to bolster human rights. I warmly welcome that aim and hope that the result will be positive for all those nations which suffer so drastically. First, will the Government consider supporting NGOs where Operation Lifeline Sudan is not working? I believe that to be the case in the southern Blue Nile region. Food, medicine and education are badly needed in those areas. I know that at one stage the Government were limiting their support to OLS. I hope that they are now moving more widely afield.
Secondly, there is a great need to help civil administrations in those countries which have been set free from the NIF. I hope that the Government can give support in the setting up of the administration and in training people to administer those areas of the country.
Thirdly, I warmly welcome the recent meeting between the Government and various agencies, Churches and societies working in Sudan. I hope that it will be an ongoing programme. I am grateful to the Government for asking for co-operation and partnership between government and the Churches, and warmly welcome the help that I received on a number of issues. I hope that it will be an ongoing relationship, because the Churches can achieve a great deal. The economic and social infrastructure is damaged almost but not entirely beyond repair in many areas and the support of the Government would be helpful.
From its historic as well as current position, the UK must play a leading and positive role. Two million lives have been lost in the past 40 years in the Sudan and it is important that once and for all we put a stop to that. I very much hope that when the noble Baroness winds up she will be able to give encouraging news on the Government's policies in the Sudan.
9.55 p.m.
Lord Birkett: My Lords, I join noble Lords in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, on introducing this short debate and on her continuing courage and determination over the issue of Sudan. I cannot add to her graphic description of the misery and plight of the Sudan. However, one thing in particular appals me. It is that the atrocities she described and the tyrannies which prevail should be in the name of religion. The idea that a holy war should have anything to do with this appals me. I have always thought religion to be a matter of private conviction, private conscience and private philosophy. Once it becomes a tool of government policy, or is urged as a form of patriotism, tyranny is the invariable result. Religious wars and religious persecutions throughout history have produced as much slaughter and human misery as territorial greed, dynastic vengeance or ethnic hatred. And not just ancient history. The last decades of the 20th century have been as bloodstained and ignoble in that direction as any in the chronicles of man's inhumanity to man.
I urge on the Government everything that the noble Baroness urged. I can only echo her plea to them to do whatever they can. But I ask myself, how is one government to persuade another of their inhumanity when that other government are armoured with all the paraphernalia of fundamentalist righteousness? I side with the noble Lord, Lord Cocks of Hartcliffe, in believing that the government of the Sudan must somehow be persuaded that the rest of the world, not merely your Lordships' House, regard their behaviour as intolerable in any modern society. Something must be done to stop it. If they cannot stop it themselves something else must be done. But until they realise that the world regards them as anathema to ordinary decent behaviour nothing much will happen. I wish the Government in that endeavour every possible success. I hope that they will be able to pursue the matter with all the diligence at their command.
9.57 p.m.
Viscount Torrington: My Lords, some 30 years ago I had the privilege of flying a small single-engined aeroplane from Uganda to Cairo. In the course of that trip, I flew up the Nile, visiting most of the towns in the Sudan from Juba in the south to Atbara in the north. The thing that most impressed me about the country, in particular in the south, was how lush and green it seemed to be. It was probably the rainy season at the time. One saw a land with enormous potential for agriculture, tourism and wildlife. It is with a terrible sense of sadness that for the past 30 years one has watched an almost continuous civil war and its appalling escalation since the arrival of the NIF government.
My noble friend Lady Cox has adequately described the terrible events which are taking place and there is nothing much I can add. However, I wish to touch on an issue which, in the face of all the human suffering, is perhaps rather minor. It relates to the effects of the Sudan conflict on the neighbouring countries. I am a trustee of several wildlife charities, in particular of Save the Rhino International. That charity has given considerable funding to the last population of northern

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white rhino which live in the Garamba National Park in the north eastern corner of what used to be Zaïre, now the Democratic Republic of Congo. Unfortunately, the recent events and civil war there caused the administrative personnel in the park to have to be withdrawn. During that time, the rhino and the elephants—the last rideable elephants were the remnants of King Leopold's elephant corps—have largely vanished, disappeared. That is due largely to poaching from starving people coming across from the Sudan.
As the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, mentioned, the effects on Uganda have been appalling. I had first-hand experience of that in June, in that I am a director of an oil company which was undertaking a seismic survey in the Western Rift Valley. Just outside Fort Portal there is a school where 80 children were herded by the Lord's Resistance Army into a dormitory. The dormitory was then set on fire and all the children died. That is an extremely evil terrorist group which tries to give itself an air of Christian respectability but is reputed to be financially and logistically supported by the NIF Government as a way of deflecting Ugandan Government support away from assistance to the SPLA. Whether or not that is true, the cost to Uganda in providing a measure of security in the north-eastern part of the country is a very heavy burden indeed.
I believe that it was the noble Lord, Lord Cocks, who said that the fundamental problem in the Sudan is that we have a Moslem north tied to a Christian and animist south by the stroke of a 19th century bureaucrat's pen. So many of Africa's international boundaries are merely the result of administrative convenience. Little account was taken of ethnic identities. I found it extraordinary that so few African countries have fallen apart. I can really only think of Ethiopia and Eritrea and that was perhaps not a colonial accident. One remembers the Biafran civil war and the Katanga secession attempt. But all of those seem to have been sat on by centrist governments wanting to hold on to resources quite regardless of the ethnic discontent.
Elsewhere in the world, the break-up of Czechoslovakia and the separation from Russia of the Caspian republics, although sadly not the break-up of Yugoslavia, show that separation, devolution, can be achieved without unacceptable strife, often to the benefit of all parties. Even in this country, I fear that we may have a fault line for a future break-up.
However, there must be a strong case for loosening the formal links north and south in the Sudan—devolution, as the noble Lord, Lord Cocks, called it. Clearly, the Sharia legal system is anathema to the southerners. It is possible—we know it in this country—to have two separate legal systems operating together. We have English and Scottish law. There is a splendid example in China now with the basic law operating in Hong Kong separate from the People's Republic of China. Therefore, it can be done. Surely some sort of federal arrangement which recognises those ethnic realities must be the answer for the Sudan.
We all have a few doubts about whether a fair solution to the country's problems is possible under the present NIF government. Their occasional charm
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offensives do nothing to suggest that they have any commitment to real democracy and, if my noble friend Lady Cox is right, they surely do not. I hope that Her Majesty's Government, with their commitment to an ethical foreign policy and a fresh approach, can bring real weight to bear on that problem and a solution for that unhappy country. I look forward to hearing whether the noble Baroness has any thoughts on new initiatives in that regard.
10.2 p.m.
Lord Moynihan: My Lords, I too take this opportunity to thank my noble friend Lady Cox for securing this important debate this evening. I pay tribute to her for her timeless work for victims of oppressive regimes with the organisation Christian Solidarity Worldwide.
It is almost exactly a year since your Lordships last had an opportunity to debate events in the Sudan and government policy towards it. In the year that has passed, the brutal policies and practices of the NIF regime continue to put at risk the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people both in Sudan and abroad. In the past 12 months, the regime's vicious war strategy, which continues to bankrupt the country financially and spiritually, and its support of international terrorism have both delivered deadly consequences.
On the one hand, the famine has locked southern Sudan in its fatal grip while on the other, the United States was provoked into launching an air strike against a suspected chemical weapons facility in Khartoum. There have been some small sparks of hope in the past year and I pay tribute in particular to the work done by the Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in his efforts to secure the extension of the limited ceasefire in Bahr al Ghazal. In the short term that has without doubt alleviated a humanitarian catastrophe of unthinkable proportions.
In his absence the noble Lord, Lord McNair, asked me to place on record his personal hope for closer links between the British and Sudanese Governments, and I do so. However, in June the United Nations officially declared the situation in Sudan to be one of famine, as almost one-tenth of the entire Sudanese population face the prospect of starving to death. The famine has been no arbitrary act of nature; of that there can be no doubt. It is true that southern Sudan is at risk of chronic humanitarian problems every year when droughts devastate crops and displace populations. But the primary cause of this year's famine was war and the tactics of war in which the men, women and children of southern Sudan were used as human pawns as access to vulnerable populations was denied by the Sudanese Government earlier this year.
It is also true that the situation in Sudan raises important questions as to the effectiveness of the current international response to humanitarian disasters. Nevertheless, whatever the cause of the disaster, when people are starving to death they must be fed. They must not be forced to pay the price for the follies of their leaders.

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The humanitarian aid operation in the ceasefire-for-famine zones has begun to pay dividends. But we are only too well aware of the potentially transient nature of this improved situation. In this House we are all agreed that the only long-term solution to the cycle of humanitarian disasters in Sudan is lasting peace agreed through a negotiated political settlement. A long-term solution to this conflict which, as noble Lords pointed out, has killed over 1.5 million people and devastated the Sudanese economy, remains regrettably as elusive as ever.
Reports have been received that fighting has intensified in recent weeks and that aerial bombardments have been resumed in the south. Given that the Foreign Secretary said that the Government will make it a priority for diplomacy in Africa to build peace and prevent conflict, since without peace nothing else is possible, can the Minister say what action the Government intend to take in the future to instil in both parties—that is, the government of Sudan and the factions in the south—the confidence to pursue peace negotiations within the IGAD framework? What efforts are the Government making to persuade both sides to extend the ceasefire beyond January?
I turn briefly to Sudan's status as a rogue state and a refuge for foreign terrorists. It is a matter of record that the government in Sudan actively sponsored international terrorism and continue to do so. We give our full support to the Government's position that terrorism must be fought in all its forms wherever it may occur and whatever its motivation. However, given the questions raised over the use of the facility following the attack both before and during this debate, is the Minister in a position to confirm the belief of the US Government that the Al-Shifa factory site in Khartoum was indeed a chemical factory, capable of producing a deadly series of chemical weapons and not a pharmaceutical plant as claimed by the Sudanese Government?
Furthermore, can the Minister tell the House what reply the Government have given to the invitation from the Sudanese Government for a United Kingdom verification mission to examine the Al-Shifa factory site? What assessment have the Government made of the reports of dispatches of the German Ambassador to the Sudan, Walter Daum, that the Al-Shifa factory made only medicines and that it was neither protected nor kept secret? What action are the Government taking to investigate the grave concerns that the NIF is working closely with both Saddam Hussein to develop both chemical and biological weapons and with the terrorist Osama bin Laden to launch new terrorist attacks in the future? Does the Minister now have independent substantiated evidence to back the United States' view that, first, Iraq helped Sudan to develop chemical warfare capabilities, given that in March the Foreign Office was unable to confirm that? Secondly, do the Government have evidence that the export of veterinary drugs from the Shifa factory to Iraq may have been used to help cover the export of agents of chemical weapons?
In conclusion, I pay tribute to the work of the British Council which this year celebrated 50 years of operating in the Sudan. I mention also the work of the Malik
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Society through its project to bring back the last of Lord Kitchener's famous gunboats—the "Malik"—for preservation and restoration in this country. In its way the society does much to foster a spirit of co-operation and understanding between the United Kingdom and the Sudanese people. I hope that the Minister will agree.
10.10 p.m.
Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, I too pay tribute to the work and witness of the noble Baroness, Lady Cox. I am delighted to take part in the debate which she has instigated. It is a further tribute to her that at this late hour so many of her noble colleagues have stayed to contribute. I believe that is primarily because of the inspiration she has given them and because of their desire to support her in every way that they can. She is an outstanding example of that famous quotation from the great Burke that it is enough for injustice to triumph that good men remain silent. The noble Baroness is a good woman who does not remain silent and she encourages others not to remain silent either.
It would not be appropriate for me to repeat what has been said so eloquently by so many noble Lords on the terrible record of what is happening in Sudan in terms of lives lost; refugees who number, we are told, between 4.5 million and 5 million, and the number of people now registered as facing starvation. It is perhaps one of the worst records of any country in the world in a deeply blood-stained and in many ways profoundly disturbing century which is now reaching its end.
Having said that, I echo what was said most eloquently by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan: this is not, as some people pretend it to be, an act of God. This year's Economic Nobel Prizewinner, Professor Amartya Sen, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, has pointed out that there are no known records of serious famines in any democracy in the world. Famine is, in many ways, an outcome of a brutal government, combined with natural problems and natural disasters. However, in a democracy, the attention of the whole society is drawn to the problems of those confronting hunger and starvation. Virtually any decent state attempts to deal with that situation. Even India, for all its poverty, has not suffered the systematic famine and starvation of a potentially richer country, such as Sudan. Therefore, one cannot allow the government of Sudan to escape substantial responsibility for what is happening. That government know very well that the opportunities to deal with the suffering of their people lie before them and that many members of the international community would be more than happy to try to take part in alleviating such suffering.
There has already been much description of the destruction of farmland, crops and animals and what one can only describe as something close to genocide. The noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, referred to the destruction of the environment and nature in what was once a relatively rich and plentiful country.
We need not rely on only our own evidence; there have been consistent and continuing reports by the former United Nations special rapporteur, Mr. Gaspar Biro,

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about what has happened over many years in Sudan. It is perhaps worth mentioning that only today an article appeared in the New York Times written by that distinguished leading academic lawyer, Mary Glendon, in which she described Sudan as,
"the worst human rights violator in the world today".
I believe there is a serious problem which perhaps has not yet been addressed in the debate. I refer to the willingness of the government of Sudan to manipulate the goodwill and charity of many non-governmental organisations. I would not be critical of the Secretary of State for International Development for drawing attention to the fact that in her view it was not so much yet more charitable funds that were needed, as willingness and political intent on the part of that government to facilitate access to the poorest parts of the country, to enable transport to be provided, and to direct to their citizens the results of the charitable reaction of much of the world.
Looking back, there is little doubt about the way in which the government of Sudan have literally manipulated Operation Lifeline Sudan by, in effect, blackmailing non-governmental organisations with a terrible choice: either allowing people to starve because of an unwillingness to accept the conditions laid down by the government of Sudan; or, alternatively, accepting those conditions and, therefore, becoming unwillingly in part complicit to the very policies that that government have conducted. I believe this to be one of the most difficult moral questions that anyone has ever had to confront. Indeed, I do not blame the Secretary of State for drawing attention so bluntly to this particular and terrible dilemma.
Perhaps I may repeat the question that was so eloquently asked by the noble Lord, Lord Birkett. Something must be done: but what can be done? I believe that many bodies are involved and I should like to say a few words about each of them. First, the United Nations is involved but, in my view, it has not given as much support over the years to the Special Rapporteur it has sent to the Sudan as it should have done. I hope that the present Secretary-General of the UN, Mr. Kofi Annan, will make every possible attempt to indicate that he cares very much and takes most seriously the reports coming out of Sudan.
Secondly, and still in the context of the UN, we need to look very sharply at the massive exports of small arms—bluntly, some of it from both the US and Europe—which are swamping the Sudan. Indeed, I understand that over 90 per cent. of its budget now goes for the purchase of weapons. The Sudan is as good an example as any in the world of those who put kalashnikovs ahead of bread and those who put warriors ahead of children. It is time we drew attention to that fact and attempted to stop the source of arms supplies to that country.
Thirdly, there is the responsibility of the regional body; namely, the Organisation of African States. Over the weekend I had the privilege of attending a conference on human rights in Valencia, which was attended by, among others, the Secretary-General of the
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Commonwealth, Chief Anyaoku. He made the point that it is important that regional organisations take responsibility increasingly for breaches of human rights within their own region. Frankly, it is important that those who are parts of a region, whether it be in Africa, Asia or Latin America, recognise their responsibility for ensuring that the rule of law in their region is upheld. Therefore, because I think like a politician, I ask: what can we actually do? I hope that the Government and others will draw the attention of the regional body—the Organisation of Africa States—to the need to ensure that standards are maintained in the Sudan. That will eventually reflect favourably on Africa.
Fourthly, there is the United States. I believe it has a large responsibility in the matter, not least because in 1994 the administration of President Clinton went along with the attachment of conditions by the then government of the Sudan—indeed, the current government—to the operation of the NGOs through the Sudanese lifeline. That administration accepted the idea of access and, for that matter, of provision of aid being essentially conditional upon the will of the government of Sudan. If we draw the attention of Congress to the outrages in the Sudan, not least against Christians, I believe that we could get a response that might surprise us. In any event, the United States has a major responsibility not just to punish what it may regard as events in Sudan about which there is perhaps not quite enough proof but also, more precisely, what is happening internally to Sudanese citizens.
Finally, there are the NGOs themselves and the question about how far they can indicate that, at the very least, the International Red Cross and other bodies should have access to the so-called "peace camps"—that ironic phrase—which house the peoples of the south in what can only be described as something like modern concentration camps.
I conclude by asking the Minister a question. We are told by some, including, among others, my noble friend Lord McNair, that there is now some light dawning in Sudan; that the ceasefire may last beyond the end of the year; that the government have announced their intention to adopt a new constitution which allows multi-party politics; and that, in addition, seven factions of the opposition have now signed the Khartoum peace agreement. I must express some scepticism. Will the Minister say something about these more recent developments in Sudan in her reply? Will she say whether, in her view, they mean anything very solid? Finally, will she say whether Her Majesty's Government will seek the support of the United Nations, the OAS and others in trying to bring about the resumption of civilised and humane behaviour in a country which was held up as a model of what could be the case in Africa, and has now perhaps the lowest standards achieved in that troubled continent.
10.20 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean): My Lords, I too am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, for bringing the recent developments in Sudan to the attention of this

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House. I thank her for the advice that she continues to offer to the Government. As the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, said, the House knows that the plight of the Sudanese people is a subject close to the heart of the noble Baroness. I applaud her for continuing her efforts to improve their situation and indeed for her great courage in doing so.
It is also a subject to which the Government attach great importance and one to which we have devoted a great deal of effort in recent months. This year has indeed seen appalling levels of human suffering in Sudan. Humanitarian agencies assessed that famine threatened some 2.6 million people with starvation, and fighting continues in a war that has gone on, with only one significant break, for more than 40 years.
The Government were quick to respond to the humanitarian crisis. In February, we pledged an initial £4 million in response to the United Nations 1998 Consolidated Appeal for Sudan. At that time, we made it clear that we stood ready to provide further assistance. We have since allocated a further £24 million. The UK is one of the largest bilateral donors. We have committed, both bilaterally and through the EU, over £180 million to the Sudan and Sudanese refugees since 1991, and we stand ready to provide more assistance as the need arises.
But money is only one part of the answer and is only one part of the Government's response. Pictures of starving children in the press and on television are extremely moving—I am sure that we all respond to them—but they do not explain the context of such tragedies, nor do they approach the real roots of the problem, as many of your Lordships have pointed out.
The only long-term solution to this ghastly catalogue of humanitarian disaster detailed by the noble Baroness is the solution advocated by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan—a peace settlement that respects the rights of all the people of Sudan and allows them to rebuild their lives. There will be no end to the horrors of starvation, displacement and other innocents suffering until there is an end to the civil war, as the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, wisely told us.
The Government have therefore been active in promoting the peace process in Sudan with the international community and in the region. Only if Sudan is moved up the international agenda so that interests and efforts are focused on the war and not only on the humanitarian situation will consistent pressure be brought to bear on all sides to the conflict to convince them that a peaceful settlement is the only solution. That was a point made forcefully by the noble Lord, Lord Birkett.
Her Majesty's Government have therefore raised the issue within the EU on a number of occasions. As presidency, on 1st May we issued a statement calling on all parties to implement an immediate ceasefire and urging them to make every effort to come to a comprehensive peace agreement. At the end of June my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary chaired a discussion in the GAC on proposals for a mission that was about to take place. A number of member states are now, as a result, taking a more active interest in the Sudan.
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In addition, at our instigation, Sudan was discussed at the UN Security Council in May and we have taken part in briefings in July, October and November. The Secretary General now has an excellent Special Envoy for Humanitarian Affairs in Ambassador Vraalsen and, following a visit to the region in November by the Under-Secretary General for Political Affairs—in answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Williams—the UN is now actively considering what further role it might play.
However, such international interest needs a focus. The UK has long supported the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development—IGAD—peace process as the best chance to bring to an end the civil war in Sudan through a negotiated settlement. As well as encouraging IGAD directly, we have also played an active role this year as members of the IGAD Partners Forum—the IPF—of western donors.
My right honourable friend the Minister of State, Derek Fatchett, attended a meeting of the IPF in June in The Hague at which he put forward a proposal for a mission to the region to explore the possibilities of securing a break in the fighting in the areas most affected by the humanitarian crisis. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, for his generous words about my right honourable friend which I shall be very happy to convey to him. Following that meeting, my right honourable friend visited Nairobi and Khartoum in July. During his visit both sides agreed to a three-month ceasefire in Bahr-al-Ghazal which, following further representations, has been extended for a further three months.
This agreement has allowed much needed food and medicine into the areas badly affected by famine. In answer to the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, about humanitarian aid, the United Nations agencies now tell us that the situation has stabilised in most of that region. But it will be some time before people are able to feed themselves and there will be a substantial and continuing need for humanitarian assistance in 1999. We shall continue to work with the United Nations to ensure that this is delivered effectively and efficiently. I can specifically assure the noble Baroness that we shall also continue to press for access to all areas where there is such a need for humanitarian assistance. In answer to the important point raised by the noble Viscount, Lord Brentford, it is essential that the ceasefire remains in place and that it covers as large an area as possible.
We hope also that the ceasefire will give confidence to the two parties to pursue broader humanitarian and peace agreements within the IGAD framework. The noble Baroness is of course right. We must not see a delay. That is why Her Majesty's Government have been pressing hard for this to happen now, seizing on what we see as a real window of opportunity created by this initial progress and the focus that is now being brought to bear by the international community.
In answer to some of the specific and important points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, perhaps I may go into some of the detail of what has happened most recently and cover, too, some of the

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important points raised by the noble Viscount, Lord Brentford. Only two weeks ago, two important meetings took place in Rome. First, the IGAD Technical Committee on Humanitarian Affairs met. Out of that meeting came two tripartite agreements—between the Government of Sudan, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement—the SPLM—and the UN. One a security protocol; the other an agreement on means to operate road and rail corridors—the key to tackling the issue of land delivery of relief and an issue raised during the visit of my right honourable friend to which I referred earlier. Again, these not only addressed vital humanitarian issues but should also give further confidence to the parties to tackle more difficult issues.
The second Rome meeting of the IPF, which includes the United States, Canada and Japan as well as the western European countries, sent a clear, strong and, I hope, united message from the international community to the parties and to the mediators. Recognising the current weaknesses of the IGAD regional grouping, we welcomed Kenya's intention to resume "shuttle diplomacy" and urged IGAD to enter into an accelerated and sustained negotiating process.
In answer to the points raised about the IGAD in February, we believe this is an urgent matter. It is a matter that needs addressing now. That is what Her Majesty's Government are intent on doing. We also offered financial and technical support to strengthen the IGAD structures and we shall follow this up with considerable vigour.
Questions have been raised during your Lordships' debate, notably by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, about access. While there is some NGO presence in the most vulnerable parts of the Sudan we remain concerned that there are some areas, notably in the Nuba Mountains, as the noble Lord pointed out, where the Government of Sudan refuse access to OLS and where there are clear humanitarian needs. To answer the specific point of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, Her Majesty's Government continue to press the Government of Sudan to allow access to all vulnerable areas in the Sudan and are working closely with the United Nations towards an improved OLS operation to strengthen the UN's hand in dealing with the Sudanese authorities.
In answer to the point raised by the noble Viscount, Lord Brentford, we are willing to support agencies outside of OLS where there are unmet priority needs, but we shall work only with those international organisations that are experienced in working in an effective and impartial way with the complex political emergencies that have emerged.
In answer to the points raised by my noble friend Lord Cocks of Hartcliffe—I am sure we all join with him in regretting the absence of the right reverend Prelate, who I am sure would have brought much wisdom to bear this evening—the British staff from the embassy in Khartoum keep in close touch with the Churches. They have done so in the past and are now doing so in the rather attenuated circumstances which prevail. HMA Khartoum raised the subject of the
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destruction of the Churches with a National Islamic Front leader. Certainly there is discrimination, but the case for persecution is, I think, less clear.
The noble Lord also referred to the difficult case of the two Catholic priests who may face crucifixion. The two priests are among 26 defendants currently being tried for plotting and carrying out the Khartoum bombings in late June and the trial is still continuing. The law in the Sudan provides for corpses to be crucified after hanging, although I should point out to the noble Lord that in recent trials the President has commuted the death sentence to a sentence of imprisonment. I assure my noble friend that we are watching this difficult, unpleasant issue as closely as he would wish.
Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, before the noble Baroness leaves that point, I hope I may ask her one other question. Does she know whether there are any non-governmental organisations or others observing that trial in view of the fact that a new group of people was substituted for those first apprehended with quite different charges being brought for the same crime? That seems, to say the least, a little troubling.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I do not know what NGO access there is to the trial. As I am sure the noble Baroness will appreciate, NGO access to trials is often a difficult issue. However, I shall make inquiries among officials and write to the noble Baroness on that specific point.
I turn to the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, on the attack on Al-Shifa. The Americans told us at the time that they had compelling evidence proving that the plant was involved in the production of chemical weapons. They said that they had physical evidence of key chemical weapons precursors. We believed that the United States would not have taken the action it did unless it had evidence that it believed was compelling. I am sure the noble Lord does not expect me to go into the details of intergovernment communications and intelligence reports. As the noble Lord is aware, no governments ever do that. But that is what we believed to be the case at the time.
We have raised these issues of the use and manufacture of chemical weapons with the Sudanese Government in the past. Her Majesty's Government strongly believe that the solution is to encourage the Sudan to become a party to the Chemical Weapons Convention. Given that, we could circumvent the endless cycle of allegations and denials as to whether weapons of mass destruction are being made in the Sudan, because a proper verification regime would be put in place.
In that connection, as the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, said, the United States is a key component in making significant progress in the Sudan. We work closely with the United States in all our initiatives. It, too, believes that the solution to this issue is a peace process that actually works. We are keeping our lines open to the opposition. The noble Baroness, Lady Cox, asked specifically what we are doing in that regard. My right honourable friend the Minister of State has met

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the former Prime Minister. We respect the integrity of governments abroad. We have been through these issues before in relation to other countries, but we keep our lines open in a way that I hope the noble Baroness finds helpful.
The noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, raised the issue of Sudan's neighbours. We are aware of reports of involvement of the Sudan with neighbour states, and vice versa. Again, we return to the central point that a resolution of the civil war would facilitate peace in the region as a whole, and that is the key to the Government's policy.
I therefore hope that our objectives are clear to your Lordships: an end to starvation and suffering in the Sudan and hence an end to the fighting. At the same time as continuing to press for improvements in the way relief is delivered, we shall pursue the peace agenda
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with the IGAD and with international partners. We shall also maintain a dialogue with all parties, including pressing them to respect human rights. I recognise that we shall be in a better position to pursue these objectives when we have British staff back in Khartoum. I assure the noble Viscount, Lord Brentford, that we are working towards that end. We are looking to the future and the benefits of dialogue.
To answer the final specific point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, I suspect that I have been rather more upbeat this evening in giving the Government's assessment of what is happening. I do not apologise for that. Her Majesty's Government believe that we have given peace in the Sudan a new priority in our thinking, efforts and policies, and we shall continue to do so.
House adjourned at twenty-three minutes before eleven o'clock.