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Armed Forces Bill

I am pleased to add my name to this suite of amendments that cover a broad area. On Amendment 48, I am sure that any of us who have served as Ministers or council leaders will have appointed loads of people to different bodies over the years. One thing I have noticed in recent times is that a cohort has emerged of people who apply for a lot of different bodies, whether or not they have qualifications for or experience in any of them.

I understand that people are not necessarily expected to do things for nothing, or to be paying out money, and I would be more than content for people to get perfectly fair and reasonable expenses, whether that is for travel or whatever is required. I have no issue with that, but once you move from that level to somebody who, perhaps, almost has a career in sitting on public bodies, that changes the entire ethos and atmosphere around the establishment of these boards.

Therefore, I have not been convinced by what is in the Bill as drafted. Unless there is a complete absence of people applying, or unless there is an obvious shortage of people who are willing to sit on these boards, I cannot understand why we would want to engage in expense to do this. Noble and gallant Lords have far more experience than I have, but if you have an organisation that is working and staffed, what incentive are you giving those who do the grunt work on the ground if board members are being paid? I just think it upsets the balance.

The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, mentioned national resilience and, of course, the Reserve Forces—whether it is a weather catastrophe or something else—will inevitably be part of that. We all know that the Minister could sell snow to the Eskimos if he was put to it, but we have a situation where in the press, even yesterday, there were reports of our training budgets for soldiers apparently being reduced for public expenditure reasons.

We can imagine how, if you were sitting in the Kremlin, you would be looking at that. It sounds so preposterous. The Minister’s right honourable colleague in the other place, the Environment Secretary, is urging us all to stock up on baked beans and candles and to

be prepared for an emergency, and in the same breath we are apparently reducing basic training. You are preparing the country for an emergency, urging people to stock up on basics—what is the connection between these two things? I cannot make it out; it seems completely counterintuitive. The Minister knows that I tried to get a PNQ yesterday on that subject but the Falklands won out, quite properly. Still, it is a serious question.

The rhetoric coming from the Government, and from successive Prime Ministers, is that the defence of the nation is the number one priority of government. I do not necessarily want to bring this into it but I gently remind the Minister, if we are trying to save £30 million on training, that we are not trying to save any of the billions that we are spending on the asylum industry, which is just making a mockery of our country. We have to get serious here about what our priorities as a nation really are. This is sending out the wrong message.

With regard to the lords-lieutenant, I remember back home seeing our lord-lieutenant with a cadet, and the cadet was as proud as punch. This was a wonderful opportunity for a young person to take that role. You could see the enthusiasm; that young person was committed to serving as a cadet and it gave that person a wonderful opportunity of a career path moving forward. We would potentially take that away—for what? I do not know.

I ask the Minister seriously to consider that. I hope that, between now and Report, he will talk about these things with the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, and colleagues. I am sure that his door will be open. It would be most helpful to the House if that were to happen. I doubt that there is a huge amount of difference between all of us. We all want to see the same thing. I accept that you cannot go for ever without looking at change and so on; it is part of life.

On the issue of the report, we all know how local government works. If you are doing an in-house report, people will say to you in the corridor, “Maybe you should be a wee bit careful about that”, or, “Go a bit easier”. We want an accurate, independent report without any strings attached and without any ability to be pressurised financially or in any other way. I would have thought that that is fairly basic. We are not asking for anything that is not sensible or reasonable. This suite of amendments goes a long way to correcting some of the flaws. The drafting may need to be changed—fair enough—but I hope that, in the discussions between now and Report, some of these anomalies can be resolved.