(1 day, 12 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen
That this House takes note of the Strategic Defence Review 2025.
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen (Lab)
My Lords, I am looking forward to listening later in the debate to my colleague and noble friend Lord McCabe make his maiden speech.
Unusually, I will start my speech today with my conclusion. After a full year examining, consulting, challenging, inspecting and intently looking at every aspect of the defence of this country, and bearing in mind the difficult world that we live in and have to survive in, this is what I firmly believe: we are underinsured; we are underprepared; we are not safe. This country and its people are not safe. The British people are faced with a world in turmoil, with great-power competition now spilling over into conflict, with constant grey-zone attacks on our mainland, and with Russia—often with the co-operation of Iran, China and North Korea—challenging the existing world order. We in this country are simply not safe.
This review outlines graphically the threats that we face and describes our weaknesses and vulnerabilities, but it also—I emphasise that this is crucial—charts the way in which we can recreate the war readiness which alone will guarantee deterrence and safety for the future. The 62 time-specified recommendations in the report are the very minimum that we need to ensure that the country and our people will be properly safe in the future. That is why, in the report, we call for a national conversation in the country about defence and security, and the Prime Minister has endorsed that view. It has to be led from the top, and there must be no restraint on military and other people articulating the case to the country.
I acknowledge, as a long-time politician, that defence is still not sufficiently high in the people’s priorities. They rightly worry about the cost of living—a lot of which has to do with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine—welfare, education and the National Health Service. Denis Healey, who I used to work with, said in 1969:
“Once we cut defence expenditure to the extent where our security is imperilled, we have no houses, we have no hospitals, we have no schools. We have a heap of cinders”.—[Official Report, Commons, 5/3/1969; col. 551.]
All of us have an obligation now to change public opinion.
I preface what more I have to say about the review with some words of thanks. First, I thank the Prime Minister and the Defence Secretary for entrusting my excellent colleagues, General Richard Barrons and Dr Fiona Hill, and me to do an external review of the nation’s defence. It was a pretty bold move of theirs. This is my second strategic defence review, but the access we had to the Ministry of Defence, its people and its information allowed us to be both radical and profound in our 62 recommendations, and then to have the endorsement of the Prime Minister, the Defence Secretary, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the whole Government in accepting it.
Secondly, I put on record my thanks to the many experts who assisted us in this historic endeavour. Working with the three reviewers was the defence review team, six non-partisan experts with us the whole way: Robin Marshall, Ed Dinsmore, Grace Cassy, Jean-Christophe Gray, Angus Lapsley and finally, and importantly, Sir Jeremy Quin, who was one of the best Defence Procurement Ministers in the last Conservative Government. In addition to them, over 150 experts were involved in the review and challenge process, which was a crucial way of capturing and interrogating external views. We are grateful to all of them. I pay fulsome credit to the talented team who worked with us on this review, led by Ayaaz Nawab, Group Captain Matthew Radnall and our chief drafter, Ashlee Godwin. We had a staff of truly remarkable and dedicated people assisting us in this mission. They made a pivotal contribution to a review which, I am confident, will intimidate our enemies, inspire our friends, invigorate our defence industry and make our country safer. They can be proud of what they have done, and we are proud of them.
This is a truly transformational review. It does not tinker with the issues, gloss over deficiencies, or just marginally improve on business as usual. Our adversaries have given up business as usual, and we must do so as well. Over the years, we have allowed our forces and defences to become hollowed out. When we say in the report that we are unprepared, it is an understatement. We do not have the ammunition, the training, the people, the spare parts or the logistics, and we do not have the medical capacity to deal with the mass casualties that we would face if we were involved in high-intensity warfare.
Over the years—I suppose I must plead guilty to this as well—we took a substantial peace dividend, because we all believed that the world had changed for the better; that the values of liberal democracy had been cemented into our societies; that war between nations was outmoded; and that our military forces would be needed only for short-term, distant interventions. Sadly, we were not alone in that.
It may have been overoptimism, or at worst wishful thinking, but the brutal, full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Putin’s Russia three years ago was a savage wake-up call for all of us. This world we now live in has changed out of all recognition, and we have got to change as well. This review, comprehensive and detailed as it is, is therefore designed to bolster deterrence, both conventional and nuclear, by rebuilding war-fighting readiness. With a combination of homeland resilience, a new integrated force and new command structure, and by putting NATO first, we will, we believe, be safer at home and more influential abroad.
We ruthlessly examined every aspect of defence, and the review challenges preconceived notions and habits for the very different world that we now live in. We have concluded that we need a strong digital foundation and an effective digital targeting web, which underpins the lethality and agility of our forces across all five domains.
We propose a new, reinvigorated partnership with the defence industry, capturing innovation at wartime pace. With a powerful new national armaments director shaking up our procurement process we will ensure, therefore, that our fighting forces have the modern equipment that they need, on time and on budget.
The review proposes a major boost to the reserves and the cadets. It reinvigorates and modernises training, it tackles the chronic troop accommodation problems that we have, and it deals with the recruitment shortfalls with innovative new ideas. It confronts—this is important—peacetime cultures of risk aversion, lack of trust and bureaucracy. Importantly, it will capture the innovations that we all see emerging from the experience of Ukraine.
Indeed, the lessons of Ukraine do not just lie in the impressive ingenuity and tenacity of the Ukrainian people and their leaders. Britain has been in the forefront of helping Ukraine defend itself against the Russian invaders. We should make no mistake at all that if Putin prevails in subjugating his neighbour, we will all pay a heavy price. I dealt with Vladimir Putin on a number of occasions when I was in NATO. He once stood beside me and said: “Ukraine is a sovereign independent nation which will make its own decisions about peace and security”. He is now a threat not just to Ukraine but to the whole of western Europe. We have already supported Ukraine substantially, and it remains at the very heart of this review.
One of the most important recommendations that we make in the review is that defence has to be a whole-of-society matter. In a world where the homeland is already under attack, with our critical national infrastructure on a knife-edge, where over 95% of our international data comes from threatened undersea cables and 77% of our gas supplies come in one single pipeline, we cannot simply contract out our defences to the people in uniform. We need to learn the lessons of Finland, Sweden and Norway in obliging all of us to know our individual and collective roles in protecting our nation.
Let me address the question which I am pretty confident is going to be at the core of the speeches that come later in the debate. Is there the money for what we propose? I believe that there is and that there has to be, and the Prime Minister knows that as well. In the national security strategy, which was published only a few days ago, the Prime Minister says under his own name:
“That is why, as part of this strategy, we make a historic commitment to spend 5% of our GDP on national security by 2035”.
There are no qualifications or caveats involved in that statement. In the Commons, on 2 June, the Defence Secretary, John Healey, said,
“take it from the Prime Minister when he said that we will spend what is needed to deliver this review”.
He added:
“The vision of this strategic defence review now becomes the mission of this Government to deliver”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/6/25; col. 62.]
There is no messing in what either of them said, and there will be no messing in what the reviewers hold them to account on.
Finally, I say to Members of this House, who will all travel home after this debate in peace and safety, that three and a half years ago the European citizens of Bucha, Mariupol and Zaporizhzhia in eastern Ukraine also walked their European streets in peace and safety. Then came the sudden, unprovoked invasion by Putin’s Russia and with it the depraved violence of the Russian occupiers. In an instant they were not safe, at peace or free. Ordinary European people in ordinary European streets were doing ordinary things, until they were not. That is a warning for us all.
The British people need, more than ever in my lifetime, the renewed defence insurance that this review promises. Those of us, including in this House, who know the dangers and the answer must make the case with the people and decisively win that argument. I beg to move.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the very powerful introduction to this debate from the noble Lord, Lord Robertson. I thank the Government for facilitating this important debate. The strategic defence review is a very significant piece of work, with clear sight-lines as to what our defence capability should be in a world of multifaceted and fast-moving threat. So I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, for his skilled leadership of the review and to his panel colleagues, General Sir Richard Barrons and Dr Fiona Hill, for their valuable contributions.
I very much look forward to the maiden speech from the noble Lord, Lord McCabe. He got off to a good start in life by growing up near me in Port Glasgow, attending Port Glasgow High School, which has enjoyed a fine reputation. Whatever our political differences, I feel an affinity with the noble Lord and I wish him well as a Member of this House.
The SDR is such a comprehensive document that there is insufficient time in this debate to do justice to the miscellany of issues and proposals within it, the great majority of which I agree with. So let me try to reduce this to bite-sized chunks.
First, I commend the reviewers for a realistic assessment of the threats and challenges confronting the UK. In the foreword, this phrase struck a chord with us all:
“The international chessboard has been tipped over”.
Another phrase in the foreword hit home:
“With multiple threats and challenges facing us now, and in the future, a whole-of-society approach is essential”.
These two phrases summarised for me the holistic threat that we have to confront. One part is the geopolitical environment and the other is what can now hit us at home, with incalculable consequences. That analysis creates a solid foundation on which to construct a modern, flexible defence capability that reaches beyond the shapes and structures familiar to many. In recognising that simple, inescapable reality, this review deserves the gratitude of us all.
I welcome the logical conclusions that follow that analysis: commitment to our independent nuclear deterrent, explicitly identifying NATO as the bedrock of our defence, reinforced homeland resilience, a new model integrated force, boosting our reserves, innovating at a wartime pace, a new partnership with industry and the appointment of a new national armaments director. I certainly hope all that enables us to address the new character of threat.
My one note of dissonance is that, amid the language of readiness, immediacy and pace repeated this morning by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, there is a mismatch with reference to, for example, “when circumstances allow” or to essential equipment with no specific date. In that I detect the meddling fingers of the Treasury after the noble Lord had done his valuable work.
In this exciting and brave new world for defence, the elephant in the room is money. None of the excellent aspiration proposed by the review means anything without attaching pound signs to the proposals. Ambition must translate into specific financial commitment, so I make no apology for pausing in my plaudits to deal with funding, resource and spend projections. I direct these concerns and questions to the Minister. The Minister probably regards me as an unrelenting, irritating nag constantly pushing him on funding. I do so not as a political attack but as a constructive challenge to ensure that the Government are doing what they say they are, as repeated earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson.
Noble Lords will all know that the Government have committed to increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP—or 2.6% if one includes intelligence spending. We now come down to simple arithmetic. If one takes the projected GDP figures for 2027 of £3.134 trillion, and then takes the spending on the single intelligence account for 2027—set at £5.1 billion in the spending review—it indicates that spending on the single intelligence account will be 0.16% of GDP in 2027.
This throws up several questions. If the Government are claiming that they will spend 2.5% of GDP on defence by 2027, or 2.6% including intelligence, how does this square with 0.16% being spent on intelligence? The Einsteins among your Lordships will have already worked out that 2.6% minus 0.16% equals 2.44%. If the Government shift all intelligence spending into definitions of defence spending, it appears they will not hit their 2.5% target. Can the Minister clear this up for me? Are the Government reclassifying all intelligence expenditure as defence expenditure or only a particular portion of it? If the latter, can the Minister tell the House what proportion of intelligence spending, in numerical terms, they are shifting into the definition of defence expenditure?
My second question on the money is on the new NATO defence targets. The 2025 NATO summit in The Hague led to the new target of spending 5% of GDP annually on core defence requirements, defence and security-related spending by 2035. Of that, 3.5% would be allocated to core defence expenditure; this is obviously higher than the Government’s currently stated ambition of reaching 3% when economic and fiscal conditions allow. Can the Minister give an unequivocal commitment that the Government will meet that 3.5% NATO target by 2035?
The remaining 1.5% contribution is, in NATO’s words, to
“protect our critical infrastructure, defend our networks, ensure our civil preparedness and resilience, unleash innovation, and strengthen our defence industrial base”.
We need to understand what the Government will include in this. Italy has recently passed a resolution to reclassify a bridge over the Strait of Messina as a strategic project vital for NATO’s interests, so that it can be included in its 1.5% obligation. What will His Majesty’s Government be bundling into this definition? If the Minister could give some concrete—I use the word deliberately—examples, it would be very welcome.
My concern with this expanded NATO definition is that it will not actually lead to any new money being injected into defence but will represent little more than creative accounting. I hope the Minister will implore his ministerial colleagues at the Treasury and the MoD to ensure that the Armed Forces are not fobbed off with balance sheet wizardry but see tangible benefit.
In returning to the review, just as I welcome the reviewers’ blunt analysis of threat, I found refreshing the frank assessment found on page 12 at paragraph 3:
“In modern warfare, simple metrics such as the number of people and platforms deployed are outdated and inadequate. It is through dynamic networks of crewed, uncrewed, and autonomous assets and data flows that lethality and military effect are now created, with military systems making decisions at machine-speed and acting flexibly across domains”.
When, as a Defence Minister, I stood at the Dispatch Box warding off accusations that the Army was at its smallest size since Napoleon’s time, I responded as courteously as I could to the sheer inanity of that comparison. It implied that military strategy, equipment and technology had remained static for over 200 years—but in vain I made my argument. To some, numbers were all that mattered. So I say to the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, that it took courage for the reviewers to be bold, but what they said had to be said.
I could talk about a miscellany of matters—transformation, defence roles, war-fighting, integrated force model, reservists, industry and all the other excellent matters that are covered in the review. Each merits its own debate, and each gives rise to a separate range of questions. I anticipate that many of these will be reflected in contributions from your Lordships today. I also anticipate that we shall regularly return to all these issues within the House. Some of your Lordships may want to talk about what they see as omissions from the strategic defence review. We look forward with interest to the debate.
I will focus—and this is made possible by the thoroughness of the review—on the highlighted significance of two domains: space, and cyber and electromagnetism, or cyberEM. On page 20, at paragraph 31, the review says:
“With the Integrated Force fighting as one across all five domains, greater attention must be given to the space and cyber and electromagnetic (CyberEM) domains”.
It goes on to say:
“A reinvigorated Cabinet sub-Committee should set the UK’s strategic approach to space, maximising synergies between the UK civil space sector and clear military needs”.
I am delighted by that recommendation. When I was a Defence Minister, such a committee existed and, interestingly, was chaired by the then Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, because, astutely, he understood the need for strategic leadership and governance embracing government departments with primary interests in space. Quite simply, it meant that space—a domain with unlimited opportunity but which, if malregulated or non-regulated, could deliver catastrophic consequence—was at the top of government thinking and awareness. Sadly, my party and Government subsequently downgraded that committee. I urge the Government, in accepting this recommendation from the review, to give serious thought to restoring that top level of political leadership.
I had hoped for comparable recognition for the domain of cyberEM. Given the primary importance of this domain, I had thought that parity of status with space would be appropriate. In fact, the review has chosen to restrict its proposals to defence only; the creation of a new cyberEM command within Strategic Command, which is very worthy, but cyberEM is at the heart of government activity. With the best will in the world, sharing, thinking and awareness across government will not happen without strategic leadership and governance, as is proposed for space. The alternative is silos of varying knowledge. I urge the Government to consider replicating the new structure for space as applicable to cyberEM.
I have focused on these domains because of the rightful prominence the review has attached to them. They are the new defence territory in a fast-changing environment. But they have an umbilical connection with myriad other areas of government activity, and that must be matched by an appropriate structure at the top of government.
I look forward to this debate. I conclude with my overriding concern: the money. Unless the Government can be specific about amount and timing, this well-received, and justly so, strategic defence review will become an interesting but passive library exhibit. Our defence industry will wither in that vacuum. Our safety and security will be deeply compromised. None of us wants to see that. I ask the Minister to reassure us.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, today is a very welcome opportunity to consider the defence review. But I am sure that, as the debate develops, it will also cover the wider aspects, including the China audit, soft power and development policies. They all need to be integrated, as they all have a part to play in keeping our country safe and our values protected.
On behalf of these Benches, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, and his team, whom he credited, for all their work on the review. I also look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord McCabe. Given the fact that all three opening speakers are from north of the border, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, that another Scottish voice is very welcome in this Chamber.
My colleagues in this debate, with the experience that they bring, will rightly focus on various aspects in this broad area. I will focus on the wider safety and security landscape. My noble friend Lady Smith of Newnham, in winding up for us later, will focus specifically on defence.
We support a great deal in the review from the noble Lord. In the national security strategy, we accepted many of the judgments of the Government of the threats we face and the changing security landscape, both in potential conflicts and emerging dangers through technological change. We need to address them across all parts of government, the economy and society as a whole. We agree with that.
We have taken safety for granted, as the noble Lord said. There is to some extent a positive element to that. In a vibrant democracy, our people can simply to get on with their daily lives and take safety for granted, because of all the hard work of those within our Armed Forces and our security and intelligence communities. But, with conflict growing around the world, and with the climate emergency, conflicts abroad will have repercussions here at home.
Just yesterday in Grand Committee, we debated the tensions in May between India and Pakistan. That could have been an enormous conflagration, which would have had direct impacts here in the United Kingdom with the enormous diaspora community that we have. The Sudan conflict is being played out within our community here at home. Although geographically we are an island, we are not a security island.
There should of course be a high level of cross-party support. On defence, our Benches have a long and proud tradition of supporting our Armed Forces and veterans, as well as adhering to the view that the principal job of government is the maintenance of our national security. In that regard, I hope the Government will continue to engage and also bring regular updates on the many action plans proposed in the defence review and the national security strategy and the many workstreams that feed into its strategy. As the noble Lord said, this is not the work of one Parliament or one party. We all need to be engaged in that process, to ensure that the decisions made are sustainable and that we here in Parliament can appraise progress.
Parliamentary scrutiny is a part of our freedom that we seek to protect, and that is why many of us have been shaken by the lengths gone to by the MoD and the previous Government to avoid proper parliamentary scrutiny. I feel that this will have deep repercussions. With regard to yesterday’s revelations about the data breach and the extent to which parliamentarians themselves were not able to consider it, I hope that this Government will never follow that terrible example.
In many ways, the UK has a unique security need, but in most others we can act as a global, open and interconnected country—but only if we secure the support and partnership of others. In response to the publication of the national security review, I mentioned that, as an island nation, our shipping and data cables keep our economy alive. The noble Lord referred to that in his contribution. We were the first country to lay subsea communication cables, 175 years ago. Today, we are almost exclusively reliant on them for communications. Shipping contributed to our growth in the Industrial Revolution, and today our consumers are reliant on shipped imports and key sectors on shipped exports. Conflict between China and Taiwan would have an immediate repercussion here at home.
In order to defend this, we require our naval and maritime capabilities to be enhanced, our reach broadened, our intelligence services bolstered and our cyber resource reinforced. We agree that the way forward comes with the need for increased defence and lethal capability. We support the Government on increased defence expenditure, but it would be helpful if the Minister could indicate the breakdown of the sources of the overall 5% that was announced on national defence and security. What is the assumed level of growth of the size of the economy to meet the level of expenditure we expect to be necessary? Will the Minister provide more clarity on the timeframe and the certainty of the level of resources that will be available, rather than on aspirations? We need cross-party talks on this, too, if this is to be a generational approach, and a degree of consensus on planning and investment.
It is interesting to note Germany’s Zeitenwende—“sea-change”—in which Berlin has allocated €86 billion to defence, equal to 2.4% of GDP in this year. By 2029, annual defence expenditure is expected to reach €153 billion, or 3.5% of GDP—the most ambitious rearmament since reunification. Chancellor Merz has signalled a willingness to spend up to 1.5% on defence-adjacent infrastructure, as the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, referenced, with potentially a French bridge and the French Government doing so, too. There may be vitally important infrastructure upgrades that are necessary for our whole national defence, including transport corridors and strategic mobility projects, coinciding with NATO’s wider agreement to split the 5% target into 3.5% for hard defence spending and 1.5% for expenditures related to defence.
Bundling may be justified, but we need a plan. It needs to be transparent, and we need to see it because an aspirational approach now needs to come with specificity, planning and transparency on procurement. This is not necessarily something where the United Kingdom has been a world leader in recent years, and how we link our procurement with that in the European continent and the United States will be vital.
We do not, therefore, depart from the level of funding, although we want to see more detail. We say, with respect to the Government, that it should not have been transferred from the official development assistance budget. That is a strategic mistake. We are seeing considerable reductions in programmes that have been part of the UK national security platform—successfully so—for many years. It is no surprise to me that in recent weeks we have seen public statements from former defence chiefs, military leaders, diplomats and heads of the intelligence community in the United Kingdom appealing to the Prime Minister not to cut the very programmes that have been national security-focused in conflict prevention and conflict resolution and in supporting allies to build resilient civil societies and institutions against malign interference.
The western Balkans was raised in the defence and national security strategies. Three times in the Chamber I have asked for clarity on the continuation of the western Balkans freedom and resilience programme funded by ODA, and I hope that that is not under threat. The UK and USAID cuts to the World Service and Voice of America frequencies and spectrums were immediately filled by Russia and are doing damage. We know that in the very sphere that the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, referred to, within eastern Europe and in other countries within malign influence, when we cut support for resilient institutions, freedom of speech, freedom of the media and the rule of law, Russia and China will fill that vacuum.
The FCDO network and our excellent diplomats were mentioned in the security review and also by the noble Lord. We agree with that. That is why we regret that year-on-year funding for that very network is now being reduced.
On other threats, such as biosecurity, I believe that we are less of an island than many might hope. I looked back at the UK’s first biological security strategy in 2018 under the previous Government, and I thought it was a good strategy. DfID and ODA were mentioned on almost every page—a recognition that biosecurity in the UK is weakened if it is also weak in the countries where we have a large diaspora community or a travel relationship. There was a reason why 10 years ago Ebola did not become Covid. It was because of the UK, DfID and our official development assistance. Now we have only passing references from the Government. I hope the Minister will be able to say that development assistance is a critical part of our partnerships around the world.
The noble Lord, Lord Robertson, said, and I agree with him, that we are underinsured, unprepared and unsafe. To correct that, we need investment, partnership and for our allies to be safe also. We may well hear about the Commonwealth. The noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, speaks eloquently about our Commonwealth network, but the previous Conservative Government cut partnership support for developing Commonwealth nations by one-third and the incoming Labour Government have cut it further by 40%.
The Center for Global Development has already shown that those very countries are now moving to China, and in east Africa to Russia, for finance and more debt. It is not wise insurance only to spend on the eventuality of an emboldened adversary when we, by our very actions, are bolstering them. Official development assistance, according to the report on Tuesday by the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, will be 0.24% at the end of this financial year, the lowest in the 50 years of development statistics. Why is this significant for this debate? It is because we know that conflicts now are never fought on one front, with one technology, one tactic and one means, and that that will always be the case in the future. We need an approach for our defence and security that is also for diplomacy and development. All should be complementary. It is not too late for the Government to ensure that they are not set against each other.
Lord Stirrup (CB)
My Lords, I too congratulate the authors of this thoughtful review, and the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, on his eloquent and powerful presentation of it today. The key arguments it makes are compelling, and the recommendations are, in the main, well judged. There are, of course, points of detail that are open to debate, and these will no doubt be the subject of further scrutiny as the Government develop their policy in response to the conclusions.
In the limited time available today, I want to focus on the issue that threatens to undermine the effectiveness of the whole review: the Government’s unwillingness to face up to the urgency of the financial consequences. The authors were, of course, constrained throughout by the financial assumptions they were given, but, even so, their analysis demonstrates clearly that we face a quantitative as well as qualitative challenge. NATO has since agreed that these can be addressed successfully only by its members committing 3.5% of GDP to defence, and the Prime Minister has agreed that the UK will meet this target by 2035. However, the Government’s current proposition is that defence spending will be increased to 2.5%, or perhaps 2.6% of GDP, by 2027, and anything in the eight years beyond that remains vague and uncertain. In an answer to me at the Dispatch Box just last week, the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, confirmed that an increase to 3% of GDP remains only an aspiration and a matter for the next Parliament and that any further increases are for the Parliament after next; that is, around 2034 and beyond.
This is wholly unrealistic for a number of reasons. The first, of course, is the urgency of the need. On current assumptions, only about 3% of the total defence funding for the remainder of this Parliament will be available to fund the crucial capabilities identified in the review. On that basis, many of the proposed improvements will not be made until well into the 2030s, including the remediation of some of our current, very serious vulnerabilities.
The second reason is the need to build up the scale of defence orders over a number of years, matching them to the necessary growth in industrial capacity. If this is not done, if industry is faced with a sudden cascade of orders in the 2030s, the consequence will be a dramatic increase in defence inflation, seriously undermining the value of any budget increases. We have already seen this damaging phenomenon as a consequence of the demands of the war in Ukraine.
Finally, there is the wider fiscal position. There are only three ways of paying for an increase in the defence budget: taxation, borrowing or a reallocation of public expenditure. Increases in taxation, which look inevitable, are likely to be consumed almost entirely in sustaining the viability of the economy overall. This is already challenging given the high and volatile cost of servicing the national debt, so the scope for further borrowing looks very limited.
That leaves a reappraisal of public expenditure. We were spending 4% of GDP on defence in the early 1990s. By 2024, that had reduced to 2.3%, although accounting changes over the interim period mean that it would be more like 2.1% in 1990s terms. By 2023, health and social security accounted for about 41% of total managed public expenditure, while defence took just 4.8%. That latter share would need to increase to about 7.2% to bring the defence budget up to 3.5% of GDP. This would equate to a 5% reduction in total health and social security spending. Considering the scale of the challenge and the difficulty of the various options, it is clear that the kind of restructuring I believe is necessary could not be carried out quickly, so the process needs to start soon if we are to be anywhere near 3.5% of GDP for defence by 2035. As yet, however, there is no sign of any urgency on any side of the political divide on addressing this crucial matter. This is surely the key issue for public policy and debate over the coming months because unless it is resolved, and resolved quickly, the excellent work that has gone into this review will be wasted and the country will be left ill prepared for the risks it will face in this complex and dangerous world.
The Lord Bishop of Bristol
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, for bringing the SDR to debate to this House, and I look forward to continuing to hear this House’s wide-ranging expertise. I also look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord McCabe.
George Bell, formerly the Bishop of Chichester, thought deeply about the ethics of international relations and spoke, on occasions controversially, in this House about his conclusions. Speaking more generally of the Church in wartime—and I too believe that we are in a time of considerable risk of war—he asserted that the task of the Church, in its service and witness, was to be the Church, and often, that would be in practical endeavour within a whole-society response.
Last weekend the General Synod of the Church of England in York responded to the current international threat level very practically by providing new legislative arrangements to hold the records of military chaplains centrally, not locally. That will allow chaplains, regular or reservists, to be licensed to move much more rapidly into operation. I commend this new legislation to members of the Ecclesiastical Committee and to the whole House, as the Church seeks to support the aim of increasing agility in deployment.
Back in Bristol this week, I pondered the experience of the bombing of the city of Bristol in the Second World War and its remarkable resilience in the face of what felt like total war. The glass of the north aisle of the cathedral depicts volunteers: ambulance drivers, search teams, first responders and first aiders, as well as the WRVS providing not just tea and reassurance but hope. That volunteering spirit showed itself again in Bristol’s response to Covid and the whole community’s stand last summer against unrest.
Individualism may seem to be prevalent but care for neighbours, however different from us, is still strong in our cities. I believe there is scope for a new volunteer civil reserve of the sort frequently found across European states—in Poland, the Baltic states and Italy—of those recruited, trained and supported to provide an emergency response, not least in war. So alongside investment in weapons, I urge investment in the provision of civil resilience.
As your Lordships might expect, alongside a war readiness strategy I would welcome a conflict prevention and peacebuilding strategy, not least as overseas aid is depleted. If a crisis does lead to the brink of war, the UK must contribute to capability through development and diplomacy, in order to cool tensions and reduce the inevitability of armed conflict. This is both a moral and an economic argument.
Here is one small example: the Church, through its lead on the Global Investor Commission on Mining—working with the Anglican partnership for peacebuilding, based in Cape Town—is enabling local communities to be trained in dialogue work at the nexus of friction around extraction and armed groups, where conflict is fuelled by the demand for critical materials. This is an active development opportunity. Further north, the UN is working with Anglican leaders trained in dialogue skills to be peacemakers and social and civic builders in places where civil society has completely broken down.
So, while I welcome the strategic defence review, not least in its honesty and courage—though I too am concerned about the financial plans alongside it—I also yearn for a companion strategic peacebuilding review, and the Church, being the Church, stands ready to be a partner in that task.
Lord McCabe (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, I thank the earlier speakers for their kind remarks. Having spent 27 years next door, it is a pleasure to make my maiden speech in the sedate atmosphere of this place. I have not rushed to make this speech because I felt I needed some time to familiarise myself with the quaint and charming traditions of this House.
I thank those who have been so helpful as I wandered, often in circles, trying to navigate this building: the officers of the House, their staff, the police and security, the doormen, the catering staff and indeed everyone who has made me feel welcome. I am also grateful for the induction sessions for new Members, which proved extremely useful. I want to thank my sponsors: my noble friend Lady Smith, the Leader of the House, for her kindness and sage advice; and my noble friend Lord Kennedy, who has been most welcoming—while making expectations clear, with all the bonhomie that we associate with him.
I want to mention the people of Selly Oak and Hall Green constituencies. They adopted me as one of their own—perhaps an achievement, given my accent and that of the average Brummie. Despite the occasional mishap, like being offered peanut butter while trying to order a pint of bitter, I am proud to say that I am an adopted Brummie.
I have not always been a fan of the Lords, but I had the privilege of serving on the Joint Committee on House of Lords Reform, chaired by my noble friend Lord Cunningham, in 2002. It convinced me of the need for a revising Chamber. Of course, there are arguments about composition, which I look forward to debating on another occasion, but suffice it to say that democracy is better served with a second Chamber.
I am originally from Port Glasgow, which was a ship-building town when I was growing up. I am from a single-parent family, blessed by a mother determined to give her children opportunities she never had and who instilled in us a work ethic, ambition and drive. I understand that I am in a place full of experts—well, some, at least. But seriously, I look forward to learning from the knowledge and wisdom of those here.
I think of myself as a generalist with common sense, more interested in practical solutions than in ideological beliefs. I started as a social worker and spent many years working with young offenders and children who had experienced early-life trauma. We need to improve the interactions of our justice, social welfare and education structures. There is too much process and not enough problem solving.
When it comes to defence, we also need more joined-up thinking. As a former shadow Defence Minister, I welcome the SDR and congratulate my noble friend Lord Robertson on a fine piece of work. It is time to face reality about the risk of war. Only by preparing can we hope to maintain the peace. I agree that we need to up our contribution to Euro-Atlantic security.
I welcome stronger relationships with investors and defence innovators as the way forward, and I am convinced that increased defence spending can be a motor for growth. But as we have heard, it will not be easy to find the resources needed under current financial rules. Perhaps greater flexibility and innovation is required there—maybe defence bonds, or something designed to free defence expenditure from the constraints inherent in current Treasury planning.
As a former chair of Labour Friends of Israel, I take an active interest in the security of that country and the search for a just Middle East peace, which I believe includes the people of Iran. They deserve our support in their struggle to free themselves from the corrupt, barbarous regime oppressing them and exporting war, conflict and terrorism.
I am also a supporter of life sciences, a huge fan of the hospice movement, and keen on medical technology. Through my association with Heart Valve Voice, I support improved diagnoses and treatment for those with heart valve problems. I look forward to working with others across this House who share my interests.
Finally, may I say that it is a long way from Port Glasgow to this place, but if I can do it, anyone can. British values are something to be proud of, and opportunity really matters if we are to modernise and renew our country to face the challenges of the future.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I am delighted to follow my noble friend Lord McCabe and his excellent maiden speech. I have known my noble friend for probably more years than either of us would care to remember. We worked together in the All-Party Group on Policing, and in the PLP departmental group on home affairs.
He describes your Lordships’ House as quaint but charming. I wonder if that was how he was described in Birmingham Hall Green when, as an export from Port Glasgow, he was given his peanut butter. His many years working with young offenders and children who have experienced trauma may not seem like it would be immediately valuable in fitting into your Lordships’ House—then again, it might. That pragmatic experience of needing to find practical solutions to problems will certainly add value to the deliberations we have here. Indeed, his self-description of being a generalist with common sense, focusing on solutions rather than ideological fantasies, could be seen as encapsulating the very best traditions of your Lordships’ House. My noble friend is very welcome, and we look forward to hearing from him frequently in the future.
This House, and indeed the nation, owes a debt of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, and his team for the review we are debating. The assessment is candid: the UK is closer to the reality of war than it has been at any time in the last 60 years, and we are woefully unprepared for conflict.
As chair of the National Preparedness Commission, I particularly welcome the SDR’s focus on building a national defence effort that includes the whole of society, and the express reference to building
“national resilience to threats below and above the threshold of an armed attack through a concerted, collective effort involving—among others—industry, the finance sector, civil society, academia, education, and communities”.
The public have, to some extent, been shielded from the escalating risk, so the willingness of the Government to start the national conversation that my noble friend called for about national security, resilience and preparedness, is welcome and indeed essential.
Grey zone aggression is already threatening our daily lives. Cyberattacks against public and private organisations are detected daily. Russian submarines are encroaching into British waters. Geopolitical unrest is threatening continuity of supply chains, and disinformation campaigns threaten national cohesion. We have to improve our preparedness for all of these. The nature of these attacks will change and intensify. They will demand a nationwide response, a nationwide endurance, and, in the same way, we need to be prepared for all the other risks that we face.
Just think of what has happened in the last few months. We have had the cyberattacks on M&S and the Co-op, and four substation fires in five weeks—one of them shutting down Heathrow. They are probably not malicious but demonstrate the consequences of clapped-out, aged infrastructure and certainly highlight that vulnerability to future malign actors. West Nile virus has been detected in mosquitoes here in Britain. A wildfire shut the M25, following on from the driest UK March on record. Most recently, three ne’er-do-wells were found guilty of an arson attack on a warehouse that they carried out on behalf of the Wagner Group. I could go on. That is why the National Preparedness Commission has advocated the need for a threat-agnostic preparedness. As a nation, we must be ready for whatever may happen.
The SDR proposes a defence readiness Bill that would give the Government new powers to improve preparedness of key industries, support the mobilisation of resources when needed, and mandate annual reporting on our war-fighting readiness. Can my noble friend the Minister tell us when this will be introduced? The National Preparedness Commission has separately proposed a national resilience Bill, following the model of the Climate Change Act, that would place a legal obligation on government departments and public bodies to take account of and prioritise the need for preparedness and resilience in all their actions. Such an Act could establish an independent national resilience committee, akin to the Climate Change Committee, to advise the UK Government on their assessment of the progress being made and what additional measures should be taken.
So why not bring these proposals together? Let us have a national resilience and defence readiness Bill in the next Session of Parliament. This should spell out the respective roles of the UK Government, the devolved Administrations, mayors and local authorities. It would place explicit expectations on the critical national infrastructure and businesses more generally. It would strengthen and rationalise the network of local resilience forums and require them to engage with local businesses and the local voluntary, community and faith sectors.
We need the national conversation proposed in the strategic defence review. We must raise public awareness of the threats we face, the escalating risk of conflict, as well as the consequences of climate change, the associated extreme weather events and other hazards. The SDR has kick-started that process. The Government have acknowledged what needs to be done in the national security strategy, but now that must be turned into action. We have not got long.
Lord De Mauley (Con)
My Lords, I offer my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, for his role in leading the strategic defence review team and for delivering such a thoughtful and important contribution to UK defence policy. I am particularly grateful to the review team for appearing last week before the International Relations and Defence Committee, which I chair, to discuss the findings and recommendations of the review. Before I go further, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McCabe, on his maiden speech, to which I listened carefully.
I welcome the Government’s recognition that national security and defence must be the first duty of government and that today’s threat landscape requires an integrated response. The SDR’s recommendations come with serious financial indications, but defence is the best insurance policy we have. As General Sir Richard Barrons convincingly told the committee, the costs of war, both in human and economic terms, are considerably higher than the price of preparedness. If we fail to invest now in deterrence, resilience and technological advantage, we risk being outpaced by adversaries who will not wait for us to catch up.
The committee welcomes the ambition and breadth of the SDR, and we are pleased to see it echoes many of the conclusions in our report, Ukraine: A Wake-up Call. However, laudable ambition must be matched by credible delivery. There is, as yet, no comprehensive funding profile aligned to the SDR’s recommendations, or clear pathway to the Government’s ambition to spend 3% of GDP on defence, let alone to the Prime Minister’s NATO pledge of 5%. Without this, delivery of the SDR’s recommendations is at best uncertain. The defence investment plan due this autumn must address this and set out the trade-offs involved if the 3% of GDP target is not achieved.
The SDR rightly commits to a NATO first posture. Meeting NATO’s evolving investment benchmarks, enhancing interoperability with allies and reinforcing our forward presence in eastern Europe and the high north must follow. Domestically, the SDR’s emphasis on home defence and resilience is timely, but can the Minister set out what the Government will do to ensure that the
“more substantive body of work”
needed to the UK’s critical national infrastructure will be undertaken promptly?
Regarding the billion-pound commitment to homeland air and missile defence and the creation of a new cyber and electromagnetic command, how can the Minister be confident that this funding will be sufficient for the SDR’s objectives?
The SDR’s focus on innovation and digital skills is essential. The war in Ukraine has shown the importance of rapid procurement cycles and scalable technologies. We welcome the £400 million identified for defence innovation and the doubled investment in autonomous systems, yet SMEs still face major challenges in engaging with the Ministry of Defence. Radical procurement reform is essential, and concrete timelines for this are still lacking.
To return to the essential theme of resilience, defence in the 21st century is no longer confined to the battlefield; it requires the full mobilisation of society—an integrated approach that connects the population, industry, infrastructure and education. While there is much in the SDR that reflects a broader understanding of defence as a collective national effort, which the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, referred to, the MoD continues to show its complete misunderstanding of Reserve Forces, such an important part of connecting to wider society, and the pressures on those who seek to train while holding down civilian jobs. Can the Minister guarantee that the Reserve Forces will not be singled out, as they so often have been in the recent past, for cuts and so-called in-year savings?
The MoD is persisting in its efforts to neuter the Reserve Forces and cadets associations, whose council I chair, which could and would, if encouraged, rather than deliberately constrained as is proposed by converting them into a more costly NDPB, do so much to promote the resilience that the country so desperately needs. I know that Ministers simply do not understand the damage that they will be doing, especially to the SDR’s aspirations for the reserves and national resilience, if they follow what their officials are pushing them into, and I ask the Minister to look again at that.
To conclude, notwithstanding what I have just said, the shift in the strategic approach set out by the SDR is welcome. To turn its ambitions into reality will require strong and continuing commitment, especially on funding but also on improved relations with industry and sustained engagement with the public. I emphasise, though, the need for a fully costed road map and ask the Minister what plans he has to keep Parliament updated on the implementation of the SDR’s recommendations.
Baroness Coussins (CB)
My Lords, I shall raise two issues that were not covered in what is otherwise a thoroughly convincing and comprehensive review. The first is soft power. Perhaps the terms of reference were too tightly drawn or too narrowly interpreted, but defence is not just about weapons and Armed Forces—the hard power—and I do not in any case want to diminish at all the importance of what the review says about that. But defence is also about prevention and deterrence in the broadest possible sense.
A potential aggressor is less likely to attack you if you share a significant degree of intercultural knowledge, understanding and experience. To be “strong abroad”, as the review puts it, the UK must be appreciated, respected and even enjoyed abroad. Our soft power comes in many forms, including the World Service, the British Council, universities, the Royal Family, the Premier League and overseas aid.
It is also very sobering to note that Russia makes no such distinction between soft and hard power. Leaping into the vacuum to occupy radio frequencies given up for cost reasons by the World Service, as Russia has done in Lebanon, is just one example of Russian aggression on what I would call a seamless continuum of what we might call soft and hard power, which Russia just calls power.
Does the Minister agree, therefore, that soft power should be acknowledged as one important element within the broad sweep of defence, on the basis that prevention is better than cure? If he does, will he also agree that the Government need to take a strategic and generous view of the financial support that they give to the World Service, the British Council, higher education and the aid budget?
The second issue that I want to raise, which is missing in the review’s discussion of training, education and preparedness, is the importance of language training for the Armed Forces. The Defence Academy at Shrivenham, which I have visited, provides pre-deployment training in 40 languages for members of the Armed Forces. A report by the British Academy pointed out that the role of military linguists is particularly key to ground operations, is a vital component of defence diplomacy and is also essential for peacekeeping work and conflict prevention. As the BA report put it:
“The ability of military officers and patrols to communicate with local communities during ground operations can help not only with local engagement but might also mean the difference between life and death”.
Crucially, the MoD language training uses the NATO standardisation agreement 6001, which is a common framework for assessing language proficiency for military personnel and ensures that all member nations can communicate effectively in a military context, which is vital for interoperability in joint exercises and operations. Can the Minister reassure me that the SDR recommendation that:
“Defence should only run training and education itself when it cannot be obtained externally at suitable quality and cost”
will not apply to the language training currently provided by the Defence Academy? It is very difficult to imagine how local FE colleges could replicate the NATO standards or engage teaching staff qualified in both the military contexts and terminology, as well as all 40 of the languages currently offered. Will the Minister guarantee that the budget for the Defence Centre for Languages and Culture will not be subject to any cuts?
Finally on the subject of language skills, I have to say that I was alarmed two weeks ago at the closure without notice of the ARAP scheme and the ACRS. Since then, of course, we have also had the revelation of the ARR scheme, also now closed. All this will impact critically on the Afghan interpreters who worked with the UK’s Armed Forces and are still vulnerable from Taliban oppression. I have been told that no interpreters were included in the secret ARR scheme, as they were not thought to be at a high enough level of risk to qualify. Yet the Government’s own Explanatory Memorandum for its sudden withdrawal of ARAP admits that
“there is a risk that eligible individuals will remain at risk, or will seek to use irregular routes, including small boats, following the closure of ARAP”.
Is this really the way to treat those who have already risked their lives for us? The numbers are not vast, but these people are the very definition of a special case, and I ask the Minister to ensure that all the remaining interpreters have a viable option to relocate to the UK, subject of course to the relevant security checks.
Lord Soames of Fletching (Con)
My Lords, I start by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord McCabe, on his excellent maiden speech. May I also say how wonderful it is to see the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, in his place again?
I agree with practically everything that the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, said in his speech. I think that his review is largely excellent—although I share, as must anyone who has studied it, the anxieties expressed by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, about the requirements for the urgency and clarity of the financial profile of how these very expensive matters will be dealt with. I also shared many of the points of the speech from my noble friend Lord De Mauley, on whose committee I am honoured to sit, and in particular his views about the Reserve Forces, which really are such a fantastic asset to this country and so grotesquely underused.
The publication of the strategic defence review sets out with great clarity the nature of the threats in one single place. As it makes plain, the truth is that we are already embroiled in a one-sided war, under constant threat and sometimes open attack from the Kremlin. Most people think that we are not yet at war with Russia—and of course we are not—but Russia is at war with us and the whole of western Europe. Indeed, we are subject in this country to daily attacks, via efforts to manipulate information and undermine social cohesion and political will, and they will become worse—and they are highly effective.
Trying to make the public aware of the very pressing dangers is almost impossible because, quite understandably, nobody really wants to hear it. This is one particular part of the defence review that is very important. We need a whole-society effort to counter all this and to boost our resilience and preparedness. I strongly agree with the noble Lord on that part of the report and also with a great deal of what the noble Lord, Lord Harris, said in his admirable speech. It is imperative for the Government to take funded action and ensure that Britain is seen to understand the threat. It is not enough for security experts to issue warnings on television or for newspapers to publish urgent editorials. The truth is—and the task is—that we have to permeate the public consciousness. Unless the public have some idea of the sense of urgency, the only way really to wake people up will be to establish either a Minister or ministry of civil defence, charged with training millions of people on how to respond to an attack.
The first priority is information. Right now, for instance, most people have no idea of what to do in the event of a cyberattack that knocks out the internet or the mobile phone network. The next step is to build up natural resilience. We saw during Covid how quickly people were to panic. Every home ought to have a back-up of food as standard, and every household should have information about the basic steps that they should take. In my judgment, the national resilience question ranks at the very forefront of the challenges facing this country now. After all, our communications networks are being hacked; our social media is flooded with disinformation; our free elections are targeted; our undersea cables are cut; our military bases are buzzed by drones; our infrastructure has been sabotaged; assassinations have been carried out on British soil; financial and media companies are regularly blacked out; and bombs have been placed on cargo flights. Resilience does not just apply to the civilian population; it also applies to the military of all three services and the many excellent civilians who support them.
I conclude with a question to our excellent Defence Minister in the Lords: what sort of sign does it give to those on the front line, in Estonia, where things could slip over into real trouble, that we, Britain, should reduce our contribution to that very admirable force that has done so much good there? What confidence can it give to our allies that Britain should reduce its contribution at a time of really grave need?
Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield (CB)
My Lords, I thank my friend, the noble Lord, Lord, Lord Soames, for his kind words. It is a delight to be back, even as a kind of sandwich filling between him and another friend, the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford. It is very good to see everybody.
At the heart of the story of British governance since VE Day lies a pair of holy grails. The two are linked, and their pursuit has brought us much frustration and disappointment. The first is successive industrial strategies—about a dozen of them—each designed to pep up our productivity growth and the bounty we crave in the form of greater GDP per head. The second is a long line of defence and overseas policy reviews—again, about a dozen of them—each one intended to extract every fluid ounce of military and diplomatic juice from our struggling body economic to retain for ourselves significant clout in the influence markets of the world.
Ernest Bevin, our greatest ever Foreign Secretary, understood this symbiosis instinctively. In 1947, the year in which coal was nationalised and I was born, Bevin told the miners, “Give me an extra million tons of coal a year and I’ll give you a new foreign policy”. If Ernie’s very substantial ghost were to flit across the Chamber today, he would appreciate in a flash the significance of what we are debating and what was in the report of the noble Lord, Lord Robertson. My much-admired friend, the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, is but the latest in a long line of reviewers who have applied their grey matter and rich experience to breaking through the crust of these hard-baked problems. I congratulate him and his fellow reviewers, Dr Hill and General Barrons, on the penetration of their analysis and the candour of their risk assessment, the thrust of which I share, as I do the Prime Minister’s conviction that a sustained sense of collective national endeavour is required if the multiple dangers facing our land, our people, our values and our continent are to be reduced.
We really do need a sense of urgency of the kind that Bevin brought to the creation of NATO in 1948-49. We also require something that is missing in this document: a dash of poetry to enliven the plumbing. By this I mean the need to call up the English language to the colours to convey the moral arguments and to make them sing in the defence of our cherished open society and liberal democracy. There must, for example, be no short cuts taken with the rule of law at home or with the decencies of our constitutional conventions. The same applies to the conduct of military operations abroad. Defence reviews should say that firmly and without equivocation, for there is a moral front line that we must hold.
Our weapons are not just so much metal and ordnance. They carry the values of our society as well as explosives in their nose cones. The noble Lord, Lord Robertson, and his colleagues have sharpened our sense of what is needed for defence all around, against the multiple threats that the electronic revolution has placed in the hands of those who would do us harm, and of the fusing of civil and home defence with military defence if national resilience is to be secured. I add my support for the suggestion by the noble Lord, Lord Harris, about a new resilience approach.
I end with a final thought. Might this be the moment to revive something along the lines of the old central policy review staff created for Edward Heath in 1970-71 by, among others, my much-admired friend, the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford? I think I can see the noble Lord, Lord Waldegrave of North Hill—who at some amazingly young age was a founder member of the CPRS—smiling, I hope in appreciation. It could be part of the Cabinet Office, as it was previously, working alongside the National Security Secretariat and the Joint Intelligence Organisation. About 30 people would do, half insiders, half outsiders, all possessing a great fertility of mind, tasked to roam free across Whitehall to horizon-scan and, where possible, to forecast, and to speak truth unto power when necessary. Such a review staff should publish as much of its product as it can for the benefit of the public, of Parliament and its Select Committees. Its cost would be so modest as to barely disturb even the most sceptical of Treasury minds.
As for the other elusive grail—the industrial strategy—that is for another day. Before I sit down, I ask noble Lords to cast their minds’ eyes upwards with mine into the Gallery. Look closely—can you see him? Ernie Bevin, his huge face cracking into a smile of sympathetic and rueful appreciation of the noble Lord’s report. It is time, once again, to stand on the shoulders of giants.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, like others, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McCabe, on his maiden speech, which seemed to be robust and sensible. No doubt we will hear many more excellent words from him. I cannot conceal from noble Lords my extreme pleasure that we are able to hear again the tones of my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, who guides our thoughts so skilfully on the constant need for constitutional evolution and reform for our society to stay together. Indeed, he begins to cast a beam of light on the whole changing relationship between the state and the citizen, which of course affects everything else, including in particular the nature of defence in our society.
I hope that the excellent and wise reviewers, whom I greatly respect, will not in any way feel I am being deprecatory in saying that I see this review as very excellent in parts—there are many new insights and concepts about the changed nature of warfare in the digital age recognised in it, and about time too—but that, alongside those, there are some very curious omissions and flaws that challenge the value and thrust of the whole exercise. I will come briefly to those.
First, on the positive side, the emphasis the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, put on whole-of-society thinking is absolutely right and, of course, it is the same as the emphasis in the national security review. It is not a new thought; as noble Lords know, the Russians have made an open aim of trying to undermine civilian morale and destroy civilian facilities in order to undermine, in turn, the front-line troops. The aim, in all these things, is to destroy civilian life and morale—to put that first, and the military collapse will follow. That is what has happened in history: the Germans thought they could do it in 1939, and the Russians are trying to do it now. They are trying to kill the supply lines, kill civilian life and kill the nation. It probably fails every time, and it will probably fail again. But it is what the whole thrust of modern, as opposed to traditional, warfare has introduced.
Secondly, there is a marvellous emphasis in this review on new technology: microchips, hyperconnectivity, fundamental change brought on by drones of every shape and size in huge quantities, amazing missile accuracy, and enormous range. As the review itself says, technology is driving the greatest change in how war is fought for a century—I would say almost the greatest change in the whole of our history. Then there is a call for a new national armaments director, something we tried back in 1970 with Sir Derek Rayner and the new ministry of procurement. There were difficulties. We learned from it, but I am not sure we have yet learned enough.
There is the huge expansion of reserves, which the noble Lord, Lord Soames, has just welcomed—that is absolutely excellent—and of course the cadet forces as well. This sounds a bit like restored national service, and I would like to know more; this is a big move in the right direction. There is quicker recruitment and much better force integration, although I note there is no actual merging of forces, which is always a delicate matter with regimental loyalties. There is talk of the hybrid Navy: yes, the Navy will have to concentrate on undersea drones and unmanned submarines patrolling the seabed. These will be features 10 years from now, and they will require a whole new approach via the naval strategy. There were good remarks on space warfare. That is the good part of the story.
The bad side has briefly to be mentioned; I do not think it can be hidden. First, there is no reference in this whole document to nuclear proliferation, which the rest of the world is discussing. We have spent 50 years trying to prevent nuclear proliferation through the NPT, but now, suddenly everyone is talking about it and saying that, if Ukraine had hung on to its nuclear weapons, it would not be where it is now.
There is nothing on the central financial issue of Treasury overdominance, the need for a revised private finance initiative and the sort of ideas touched on just now by the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy—restoring a central drive to a budgetary strategy system at the very heart of government, one that is not always dominated and delayed by Treasury bean-counting. I would like to see much more island patriotism in this report. I do not mean nationalism; I mean that everyone needs a country to love, and we certainly do. I am worried about placing too much emphasis on NATO first: the next challenge may well come from a new war zone in the Indo-Pacific, which has now become the really dangerous crossroads of world trade and prosperity, with Diego Garcia in the middle of it.
The Commonwealth was mentioned. The coastal and island states of the Commonwealth are the ideal network for the integration of maritime data on movements of all shipping—surface and subseas—and they should be exploited. I could not find any reference to that in this report. Bearing in mind that the Red Sea entrance is now closed, the Strait of Hormuz is now threatened and the Cape route is now also being challenged, these are very dangerous times for this nation on the high seas. I would like to see a much stronger hand stretched out to Japan, which is anxious to merge with us on all sorts of new projects, including AUKUS and the combat aircraft it is working on.
Finally, what about the United Nations? Everyone says that it should either be reformed or replaced because it is not doing its job. We will not be safe until we have joined in and contributed powerfully to what should replace the international order for the new international issues in the present time: climate, energy, migration and all the rest. Populism is more assertive—
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Jones of Whitchurch) (Lab)
My Lords, the House has been very encouraging of the noble Lord, but he is two minutes over the advisory time, so perhaps he could wind up now.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
On all sides, the international rule of law and rules of war are being broken, and for that, above all, we must be alert, prepared and defended.
Lord Harlech (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a serving Army Reserve officer with the 1st Battalion London Guards and as a member of the APPG for Climate, Nature and Security. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McCabe, on an outstanding maiden speech.
We are right to recognise the scale of the threat we now face. As the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, outlined in his introduction, the world is becoming more dangerous, not less. Russia’s ambitions have not dimmed. Our adversaries’ reach is growing. As we have heard from other noble Lords, grey zone warfare is no longer a theory; it is being waged against us daily—from cyberattacks to disinformation, sabotage and political subversion.
The review sets out a bold vision: rebuilding the Armed Forces, lifting defence spending, investing in new capabilities and reasserting our role within NATO. All this is not only welcome but necessary. But, if we are serious about national defence, we cannot afford to let ambition outpace delivery. Nowhere is that more at risk than in our treatment of the Reserve Forces. For too long, we have treated reserves as an afterthought and a just-in-case solution, too often called on at short notice, handed outdated kit, sidelined from training opportunities and then expected to deliver at the same standard as regulars. That is not a strategy.
As my noble friend Lord De Mauley outlined, if we are to rely more heavily on the reserves, as the review suggests, we must be honest about what that actually requires. It means giving them the same standard of equipment—no more trickle-down hand-me-downs. It means equal access to courses and training opportunities. Too often, reserves find themselves bumped off areas by cadets or even airsoft groups. That is not how a serious military trains. It means securing the reserve estate itself. I have visited centres where the infrastructure is visibly crumbling, with leaking roofs, obsolete classrooms, and armouries and ranges that have not been safe or functional in years. That is not resilience; that is neglect.
This is not the fault of the RFCAs, which do what they can with what they have. We need a properly costed, funded and long-term plan to restore the reserve estate—not “patch and mend” or “fix it when it breaks”. From what I have seen, RDEL is too low and CDEL is non-existent in the reserve infrastructure context. What has happened to the reserve estate optimisation plan?
My first question to the Minister is: will the MoD commit to a strategic funded upgrade plan of reserve infrastructure that matches the SDR’s ambitions, with the facilities required to deliver training and operational capability? When the next war comes—and it will come—it will be too late to discover that the people we were relying on have been left behind by the very system that claims to need them.
So, yes, let us support the aims of this review; let us invest in a credible nuclear deterrent; and let us embrace the potential of AI, drones and precision long-range fires. But let us also remember that the Armed Forces are built not on capability statements but on people. When we want our reserves to be ready to fight alongside the regulars, they must be trained, equipped and respected as equals, not as a budget-saving measure.
I know that our Minister and the Minister for Veterans and People value reservists, but too often words are not matched by action. So I ask the Minister: if, in the words of the Prime Minister, we are to move to war-fighting readiness, will reservists be given legal job protection not only for mobilisation but for training, as in the US, Canada, and Australia? Will the MoD introduce a reservist skills passport in line with the army talent management system being rolled out to regulars, to tangibly demonstrate the value that reservists bring to civilian employers by giving equivalence to military courses and qualifications, as is also the case in our Five Eyes counterparts?
The fine work of the SDR cannot be another glossy document followed by excuses. This must be the moment we stop hollowing out our defences and start rebuilding properly, with purpose and for the long term.
Lord Alderdice (LD)
My Lords, in our debate on 9 October 2024 on the very welcome strategic defence review being undertaken by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, I appealed to the noble Lord—as I had done previously in your Lordships’ House—to see this review of defence as defence in its widest sense. He and his colleagues, General Sir Richard Barrons and Dr Fiona Hill, have done that, with the co-operation of a wide range of colleagues inside and outside government. With a great deal of energy and commitment, they have produced an excellent review document; I was most pleased to see that it addressed many of the issues to which I referred at that time.
I am very encouraged that His Majesty’s Government have accepted both the vision and the 62 recommendations in the SDR—with substantial upgrades to the Army, Navy and RAF—and a greater degree of integration of the services. Although I welcome this, I am less sure that the continued and deepening commitment to the F35 is the wisest choice. The investment in homeland air and missile defence and the creation of a new cyberEM command is necessary, not just for any future war but to protect us from the global cyber conflict that has already been under way for some years. The announcements about research and development in increasingly technologically sophisticated weapons and defence systems—including the huge increase in the significance of drone warfare, cyberwar, and space as a key domain for defence—are all welcome.
There is also an appreciation of less hi-tech requirements, not only the necessary replacement of ammunition for the weapons we already have but in looking after the people in the services on whom we are so dependent; for example, addressing the shameful deterioration in military accommodation. Your Lordships will not be surprised to hear that, as a doctor, I welcome chapter 7.10 on Defence Medical Services, with its insistence on greater collaboration between the government departments responsible for defence and health and social care.
Chapter 4.3 rightly emphasises that full-time and reserve servicepeople are key to our defence. In Chapter 6, home defence and a whole-of-society approach are rightly emphasised. Everyone in our country needs to come to understand that we all have a part to play.
In a dangerous world and at a time when the international rule of law seems to be dissolving before our eyes, we need to understand that the traditional boundaries of behaviour between countries in times of peace and war are being disavowed—even by some of our own close allies. I agree that we need to maintain and update our nuclear defence capacities. However, I also firmly believe that de-escalation is an essential feature of defence planning. If our only response to acts of aggression is to engage in ever higher levels of aggression, which then provoke a reaction by the other side, as has often been observed, an eye for an eye just leaves everyone blind; in a world of nuclear weapons, the consequences are potentially not only catastrophic but existential. We need to think, work and plan for how we use diplomatic and other relations with our enemies, as well as our friends, to be able to de-escalate dangerous situations. That requires the deployment of appropriate resources to defend our country.
Discussing this SDR in July 2025, we would do well to reflect that here in London, in July 1955—70 years ago this very month—the Russell–Einstein Manifesto was issued by Bertrand Russell in the middle of the Cold War. It highlighted the dangers posed by nuclear weapons and called on world leaders to seek peaceful resolutions to international conflict. Albert Einstein, who had written and spoken extensively on the issue, signed the manifesto shortly before his death on 18 April 1955.
Einstein had already realised that science and technology would take mankind along a road to the development of nuclear weapons so powerful and destructive as to be beyond imagination, and perhaps even beyond survival. In his later years, he devoted himself to thinking, speaking, and writing about the dangers for the future of humankind. In an article titled “The Real Problem Is in the Hearts of Men” in the New York Times in 1946, he wrote:
“Past thinking and methods did not prevent world wars. Future thinking must prevent wars”.
There may be various aspects to the new thinking that is necessary, but one aspect of our strategic defence is not just strategic deterrence, about which the review has a good deal to say, but strategic de-escalation.
Baroness Helic (Con)
My Lords, I welcome this timely debate and commend the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, General Barrons and Dr Hill for this ambitious review. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McCabe, on his maiden speech.
The review reflects a world that is more dangerous and less predictable, as others have already noted. While identifying challenges from China, Iran and North Korea, it rightly places Russia’s growing threat as the central concern for the UK and its NATO allies. I add that Russia is also a concern for others in Europe who are not protected by the NATO umbrella and find themselves at the mercy of both Russia and NATO’s appetite to help shore it up and defend it.
With the United States pivoting towards the Indo-Pacific, the review notes that the United Kingdom and our European allies must shoulder greater responsibility for European security, which I consider to be a long-overdue shift. We should not be unsettled by Washington’s asks. Our credibility as an ally hinges not on dependence but on dependability. The United States’s contribution should complement, not substitute for, European capability. Too often, some allies have been passive recipients rather than active contributors to our collective defence.
Technology, rightly, is at the heart of this review. In Ukraine, drones and automation have transformed warfare, and speed of adaptation gives a decisive edge. Our forces must keep pace with this transformation, and I welcome the review’s focus on innovation, autonomy and digital integration.
This leads us to funding. The Government’s commitment to 2.5% of GDP by 2027 is welcome, with an ambition for 3% in the next Parliament. However, if we are serious about rebuilding our industrial base, supporting Ukraine and preparing for prolonged operations, we should treat 3% as a baseline, not a ceiling.
Strikingly, the review fails to explicitly mention the United Kingdom’s commitment to international law. There is no reference to the UN charter, the laws of war or humanitarian norms. While the review acknowledges the erosion of international agreements and threats to the rules-based order, it omits any explicit commitment to defending or upholding international law. This is a notable and concerning omission. Previous reviews, the national security strategies of 2010 and 2015, and the integrated review refresh of 2023 all reaffirmed the UK’s commitment to international law. The current strategic defence review does not.
This matters profoundly. We are facing adversaries which reject the international rules that constrain aggression and promote peace. A rules-based system is in our national interest, whether in preventing the use of chemical weapons, protecting civilians, outlawing sexual violence in conflict or preventing nuclear proliferation. That system of treaties, conventions and laws is under unprecedented strain, particularly given the conduct of wars in Syria, Ukraine, Ethiopia, Sudan, the DRC and now Gaza. A world in which these legal constraints are ignored would be vastly more dangerous for the United Kingdom. We must take every opportunity to affirm our commitment to the rule of law and to oppose double standards, whether among adversaries or allies.
Delivering the aims of this review will not be achieved by statements alone. Its success, whether in rebuilding industrial capacity or deeper NATO integration, depends on political will, resources and public support. I welcome the review’s emphasis on national resilience and a whole-of-society approach, but public backing cannot be taken for granted. Defence has become too disconnected from everyday life. People often do not understand what we are defending, why it matters or how we intend to do it. Rebuilding that understanding is essential and it will rely on public trust in the UK’s defence policy and commitment to international norms.
This review marks a step in the right direction. It identifies many of the correct priorities and outlines a clear path forward. However, to meet its ambition, we must focus on funding what we promise, re-establishing the link between power and legitimacy, and making the case for defence not only in this House but throughout the country.
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
My Lords, to my noble friend Lord McCabe, I say, “Many congratulations”, and to the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, “Welcome home”. I am reminded that my noble friend Lord Robertson has form in that, uniquely, this is his second SDR, the first being in 1998. Much has changed since 1998. Then, there was less emphasis on homeland security and a whole-of-society approach. There was a very different—almost benign—view of Russia. After all, we had the NATO-Russia Founding Act, and Russian so-called parliamentarians were part of the NATO parliamentary assembly. Now, following Putin’s Munich speech, we have the more aggressive Russia threatening us with cyberattacks and attacks on underwater cables—and, of course, most aggressive of all has been the illegal invasion of Ukraine. Brexit has occurred since, and now we can look less at NATO and the US, and more at Europe and NATO. I will say in a moment how much I welcome the two recent bilateral visits by the German and French leaders.
There have been a vast number of other changes. China is more salient, certainly, and the nature of warfare has changed, as we have seen in Ukraine. In 1998, there was no mention of drones: now, 70% of the damage in Ukraine is caused by drones. AI has also altered the conception of warfare and the relevant weaponry. So the question is: since 1998, with all these changes, has the new SDR adequately risen to the task? I think the almost universal answer from commentators is, “Yes”.
I have two questions, on recruitment and alliances. On recruitment, there is what the Secretary of State for Defence describes in his introduction as a “recruitment crisis”. This has already been dealt with by some, including the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, who referred to the Reserve Forces. We have to recognise from the start that a military career is almost against the spirit of the age, in particular for the younger generation whom we need to attract into the military. A number of suggestions are made in the SDR, including making a military career more attractive to families, and looking at housing, education and qualifications that are portable and can be taken into civilian life. We need to relate more, as they say, to links with civilians and the industrial sector. There is a vast range of suggestions about how to recruit more. In the last similar debate, one Member of your Lordships’ House mentioned relying more on the Gurkhas, who now constitute 8% of our Army. Clearly, there has to be a point about the reserves, and a greater role for civilian staff in administration, to release men and women more for the front line.
My second point is about alliances. The Falklands War in 1982 was the last war which we carried out on our own. In future, it will be all about alliances. NATO has changed and we have to rely less on the US and more on our European forces—less US, more EU. During the last two very important visits, President Macron talked about a new nuclear alliance with us and Chancellor Merz talked about more industrial relationships, including exports. However, have the MoD thought about a more triangular relationship between the French, the Germans and ourselves? Perhaps missing from the SDR and recent utterances has been the question of the parliamentary dimension, which is important.
This is a very valuable SDR that takes into account the changes since the last one from the noble Lord, Lord Robertson. The question now is implementation, and we say with a loud voice, “Over to the Government—over to you”.
Lord Craig of Radley (CB)
My Lords, like other noble Lords, I commend the authors on a major and wide-embracing review. It looks well into the future, but draws the obvious conclusion that, without guaranteed funding and being strong enough with allies to deter aggression, our security is suspect. We are not safe—or, at least, we are not yet safe.
This must be the 12th major review I have been personally involved in, or followed from the sidelines. In 1952, a Chiefs of Staff defence review concentrated on the Soviet Russian threat, and how best to deter it in the depths of the Cold War. Here we are again, facing an angry Russia. It were spreading communism 75 years ago; today it chooses to fear and threaten NATO. In 1957, Defence Secretary Duncan Sandys was relying on the nuclear deterrent and had decided that the days of the manned fighter were rapidly ending. Getting it right is no easy task.
In the time available, I shall concentrate on two major issues covered in this review. The first is people. Recruitment has already been mentioned; it is showing improvement, but is well below needs. It must be sustained and enhanced over the whole of a decade and more. Recruitment success of course depends not only on getting the recruit signed up but on the training effort that can be made available over a decade-plus, and the trainers found to turn the recruits into front-line performers. Recruiting targets will take even longer to reach if there are many premature retirements. This aspect is well recognised by this review. All improvements that sustain retention must be fully funded. People are the sine qua non of the forces. It should be remembered that the senior military leaders of the 2050s and 2060s are today’s recent recruits, or are about to join. The calibre of that 2050s and 2060s leadership will depend on the ability to retain and reward the most able of these new arrivals at every stage of their career.
Various proposals, both in this review and in the 2023 Haythornethwaite one, will be considered, but the respect for and status of rank, as well as special rates of pay, must not be forgotten. The present pay review body for the Armed Forces needs new guidelines that will encourage and sustain full careers for the brightest, and that attract and retain the types and range of skills now so urgently required.
The second major issue, also fully recognised in this review, is the “broken” nature of defence procurement. Regrettably, it is a recurring issue in just about every single one of the reviews of the past 75 years. Each new Government have a review and usually point to the procurement failures of their predecessor. New procedures are devised and trumpeted, only to prove ultimately as inadequate as before.
While new procedures may well be necessary, lessons to be learnt from past failure do not seem to be so fully analysed. For me, it is the Treasury’s mandate to spend wisely and be averse to risk. This seems to be one reason why just about every expenditure is not solely the responsibility of the budget-holder; it must be signed off, and at its own measured pace, by the Treasury.
The experience of procuring and financing urgent operational requirements, shortening or bypassing the Treasury’s more measured tread, may have lessons for the future; but setting shortened all-MoD procurement procedure target dates—maybe proving unrealistic for cross-government approvals—is not likely on past experience to be the right answer.
The failure of past reviews to deliver on their authors’ proposals was largely due to an inability to finance and deliver to time on the outcomes proposed and originally accepted. I wish this review a better legacy.
Lord Tugendhat (Con)
My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, on his review, and welcome back the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, whose writings over the years have done so much to influence my own thinking on this subject and others.
Given the time available, it is possible to deal with only one or two subjects in this review, and I will deal with just two. The first is to take up the Prime Minister’s words in his introduction, when he says:
“A step-change in the threats we face demands a step-change in”
Britain’s
“defence to meet them”.
That is a theme many other noble Lords have spoken on, but it is actually only half the story. I am not even sure that it is the most important half of the story, because there has also been a step-change in the position of our great ally the United States, on whom we, like other European countries, have depended for our ultimate defence ever since the war.
President Trump has said many things about the United States and NATO, and he said many things about the United States and European defence, but one thing is absolutely clear: he does not see the world in the same way we do, and it is not now possible to rely on the US commitment to our defence under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, as we have done in the past. That means that, regardless of the threats we face, to which the Prime Minister refers, and regardless of whether Russia is a major, potential or actual threat, we can no longer assume that we will always be fighting alongside the Americans. That in itself requires a massive military expenditure, given the extent to which our Armed Forces would at present be incapable of mounting significant military operations without American support.
Other Europeans are in the same boat and recognise that fact, and we are working closely with them. I congratulate the Government on the way in which they have repaired relationships with Germany, France and our other European allies. To the extent that we and our European allies spend and prepare more and make ourselves more self-sufficient, we will in fact be encouraging the Americans to play a larger part rather than discouraging them. Whatever the truth of the matter, it is essential that we do everything we can to keep the Americans on board and closely involved.
My second point is of a very different order. Whether there will be another crisis that might lead to war, let alone another war, we cannot know, but we do know that our critical national infrastructure of pipelines, fibre-optic cables, wind turbines and IT networks is under constant threat. We also know from the review itself that what it terms the cyber and electromagnetic domain is
“contested by adversaries every day: the United Kingdom is in constant confrontation with adversaries in cyberspace, defending national infrastructure”.
Many other noble Lords have referred to that.
In this as in other areas, we will and do of course work closely with our NATO allies to the east and south of us; but what of neutral Ireland to the west of us, through whose territorial waters and territory the vast bulk of transatlantic cables pass? As noble Lords know, Ireland spends little on defence, has very small Armed Forces and has no submarines. Therefore, my question to the Government is: will our western approaches be as sufficiently protected as those to the east and south of us? If not, can that be fixed? I would be interested to know the Government’s views on this point.
Baroness Mobarik (Con)
The excellent strategic defence review of the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, rightly recognises that space is now a crucial and critical domain, one that underpins modern defence, national security and civilian infrastructure. What was once a metaphor for aspiration is now a domain of competition; and in that competition, space access is vital to our national defence, energy and national resilience.
We often talk about strategic threats, economic resilience and levelling up as if they are separate challenges, but space—specifically the UK’s ability to launch and manage its own satellite infrastructure—brings all three together. The Government’s integrated review, national space strategy and defence Command Paper all state that space is a vital national asset for security, sovereignty and growth. We now have UK Space Command and a clear ambition to become a meaningful player in the global space economy. There is recognition that without access to space, modern defence, global influence and protecting our satellites are all at risk. Ukraine’s reliance on Starlink is a case in point.
If we are serious about building sovereign launch capability and prosperity, what are we actually doing to deliver it? The recent SDR clearly acknowledges the strategic necessity of space access. It supports the development of enhanced military space systems, calls for greater civil-military collaboration and rightly positions space as central to modern defence operations. However, it does not explicitly commit to developing a UK sovereign orbital launch capability. That is a striking omission and a missed opportunity to align words with action.
Let us take Sutherland as an example. This is a proud and remote region in the north of Scotland, but one of the most economically fragile. According to Highlands and Islands Enterprise, it faces a 26% population decline by 2041. Youth outmigration is accelerating, and average weekly incomes are over 20% lower than the UK average. These are the long-term symptoms of underinvestment, and yet it is the site of one of the UK’s most forward-looking projects: a vertical-launch spaceport spearheaded by Orbex and backed by the UK Space Agency. This is not just a symbol; it is a serious potential sovereign capability.
The problem is that we still have no active vertical-launch capability in the UK. While the US, India and even New Zealand are launching from their own soil, the UK remains dependent on foreign providers. Over the last decade, the Ministry of Defence has spent £1.4 billion on space-related capabilities, yet the vast majority of this is still outsourced abroad.
If we want to support private investment, grants alone are not enough. We need to offer contracts and long-term, reliable military and civilian government procurement for launch and satellite services as a signal to markets that the UK backs its own capability. This should be an opportunity for regeneration and economic growth as well as national security.
Sovereign launch enables faster response times, secure ISR—intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance—and independence in crisis. Crucially, it allows us to root that capability in regions such as Sutherland, giving people new futures in sectors they once thought were out of reach. We have a chance to turn remote regions into critical infrastructure hubs and to turn industrial strategy into something people can see and feel in their communities. Launching from the highlands would be not only a technological statement but a national statement, one that says we believe in sovereign capability, in economic transformation and in the people and places that have for too long been overlooked. Why does the defence review place such important groundwork for UK sovereign launch but stop short of making it a core national objective?
To be truly sovereign we must be resilient, and that means developing multiple launch sites across the UK—real, tangible support for a plurality of options. In today’s world, leadership in space depends on the ability to launch from our own soil. Without access to space, modern defence and prosperity are at risk. If we are to secure our future in this domain, sovereign access to launch must become a national imperative.
Lord Bates (Con)
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow my noble friend Lady Mobarik. I join others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, for introducing this debate and the review, and in paying tribute to the noble Lord, Lord McCabe, for his excellent maiden speech.
I will address my remarks to paragraphs 7 and 8 of section 7.1 on page 100 of the review. Paragraph 7 reads:
“The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is the cornerstone of the non-proliferation and disarmament regime”.
Paragraph 8 states:
“To maintain international confidence in the nuclear non-proliferation regime, continued UK leadership within the NPT is imperative”.
That section is highlighted in bold font. The review concludes that the NPT is the cornerstone of our national security and that UK leadership is imperative to it, yet the prospects for agreement at the next NPT review conference in New York in April 2026 are bleak, with some predicting that the NPT regime is on the brink of collapse. The reason is the lack of great power responsibility and leadership being exercised by the five nuclear states of the NPT, of which we are one. The NPT is the cornerstone of the non-proliferation regime, and yet it is in crisis because of a failure of leadership by the P5, which includes us.
There seems to be a rather obvious solution for that, which is oddly missing from the review: the P5 process. The P5 process is a British initiative in nuclear diplomacy that owes its existence to two visionary and courageous speeches—by the noble Baroness, Lady Beckett, then Foreign Secretary, on 25 June 2007 in Washington, DC, and by the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, then Defence Secretary, to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva on 5 February 2008. I commend these to the House, to the Minister and to his officials. In those speeches, they outlined a plan to bring the P5 nuclear powers of the NPT around a table for the twin purposes of reducing nuclear risks and misunderstandings and providing co-ordinated leadership for the non-proliferation regime. They met for the first time in the Locarno Suite at the Foreign Office in September 2009. Initially, it worked. The 2010 NPT review conference was one of the most successful ever. Yet, for geopolitical reasons with which we are all too familiar, that process has been downgraded.
However, in April this year, the UK took over the chair of the P5 process and will carry the leadership baton for the P5 nuclear states in the run-up to the crucial NPT review conference next year. This is a chance to use our immense international standing and influence to make a real difference when it is desperately needed again. Defence and security are not just about upgrading the military machinery to fight wars; they are also about upgrading the diplomatic machinery to avert them.
My request of the Minister is a simple one, and one without cost. Will he agree to meet not me—he will be relieved to hear—but his esteemed colleagues, the noble Baroness, Lady Beckett, and the noble Lord, Lord Browne, to understand their original vision for this great British initiative and to consider how to grasp this moment of opportunity to reinvigorate the process, which we started and which holds so much promise? If he does, he will be realising the mission set out in the review of making not just Britain but the world safer. I wish him well.
Lord Dannatt (CB)
My Lords, I am conscious that I am about the halfway point in our debate and therefore I risk some repetition, although repetition lends emphasis. I add my welcome to the majority of the 62 recommendations in the strategic defence review but emphasise that without sufficient and timely funding, the review will not make the impact to which the authors aspire and which the nation needs.
I believe we universally agree that the current funding plans are woefully inadequate and threaten to deliver the dire security outcomes that the review sets out to avoid. Irrespective of the many other funding pressures the Chancellor is juggling, this review must be fully funded to 3.5% of GDP by 2034 at the latest and not deferred until sometime after 2035.
At risk of further repetition, I remind your Lordships of the key figures relating to the late 1930s, a period of history with worrying analogies to today. In 1935 we were spending less than 3% on defence and failed either to deter or appease Hitler. In 1939, when the war broke out, that figure jumped up to 19%. In 1940, when we were fighting for our very survival, the figure was a staggering 46%. That is the cost of having to fight a war. Surely the Minister would agree that it is much better to pay the correct premium for capable Armed Forces now and insure ourselves against future war. Deterrence must be our strategic objective.
Funding is the big issue, but so too is our agility to respond quickly to new circumstances. If the war in Ukraine has taught us anything, it is that war drives the pace of innovation in ever-accelerating cycles. Changes on or above the battlefield, change on or under the surface of the sea and change within the characteristics of new threats are highly dynamic, but they do not amount only to embracing new technologies as the means for the future. Mass matters, whether it is masses of drones, masses of firepower or masses of soldiers on the ground. As the bloody front lines of Ukraine testify, quantity has a quality of its own. This applies equally to the quantum and timing of change in the defence-industrial sector, as well as in the zones of conflict. We must produce more and do it quickly.
An aspect of the SDR that is particularly to be welcomed is its emphasis on national preparedness and resilience, as a response not just to direct confrontation but to the kaleidoscope of threats in the grey zone. But, as president and founding chairman of the National Emergencies Trust, I am alarmed to hear that the timetable for delivering a more resilient nation mirrors the timelines of spending on hard aspects of defence—not until the mid-2030s. I am told that resilience planning is focusing on the nation being prepared to face new threats domestically—but not before the mid-2030s. I fear that in this area too, the no-money/spending tail is wagging the threat-response dog. Can the Minister comment on the timetable for strengthening our national resilience?
Of course, plans, when made, can be accelerated either for deterrence from threats abroad or for resilience to threats at home. But what intellectual justification can there be for not increasing our capability at home and abroad until the mid-2030s? I am not alone in believing it more likely that, following some form of ceasefire in Ukraine in the coming months, Vladimir Putin, with his armed forces reconstructed through the clear focus on his war economy and defence industry, will be in a position to test NATO’s resolve in two or three years’ time—perhaps sooner but certainly before the mid-2030s. Putin may not want to occupy one or all of the Baltic states again, but a serious incursion into one or other would test the viability of NATO’s Article 5. Would we fight for Estonia, and with what consequences at home or abroad? More to the point, would the United States fight for Estonia? Vladimir Putin, that unreconstructed KGB colonel, would love nothing better than to drive a wedge into NATO and shatter the cohesion that defeated his beloved Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union in the late 1980s.
Our Prime Minister said earlier in the year that he was ready and willing to put British boots on the ground in Ukraine; he may have been willing, but can the Minister tell the House when we will be ready? I submit that not until the mid-2030s will be too late and that it represents a huge risk to our cherished way of life.
Viscount Stansgate (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Robertson and his colleagues on the report that we are debating today. I congratulate my noble friend Lord McCabe on his maiden speech. If the House will allow me, I join the many other people who are so pleased to see my noble friend Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield back in his place. If nothing else, he always brings poetry to our proceedings.
In some ways, it is difficult to grasp the changes we are living through, but the SDR is nothing if not a wake-up call. It must be the start of a sustained debate within this country; I support the whole-of-society approach.
I belong to the generation born after the Second World War. I have lived all my life under the broad protective umbrella of the United States and the post-war international rules-based order, which is now changing before our very eyes. Everything is less certain than it was, and that includes Article 5.
I am also all too conscious of the sacrifices made by the generation above me that made that security possible. My own uncle was an RAF fighter pilot who was killed shortly after D-Day. In grief, my grandfather, who was an air commodore and a Member of this House, was driven to join RAF operations as a rear gunner until he was discovered and stopped. Of course, there have been many wars and conflicts in the decades since then. My first political memories were of Suez, and I remember, as a boy, seeing the headlines during the Cuban missile crisis, which was a time of extreme danger. It is a very old-fashioned view to think that nuclear weapons do not remain an extremely grave threat.
But the situation we face now is different. For the first time in my lifetime, we face the possibility of state-on-state war with a peer adversary. People generally—I include myself—have no real idea of what that would be like were it to occur. It certainly would not be a rerun of the wars we have seen in the past. The next war will not be won by bullets; it will be won by data. That is why things such as the digital targeting web, the cyber and electromagnetic command and even the so-called secret cloud will be so vital.
At the beginning of this year, when I was still a member of the Joint Committee on National Security Strategy, we agreed to conduct an inquiry into undersea cables. As my noble friend and others have remarked, an enormous proportion of all the world’s financial data—up to 95%—is sent by undersea cables. We know all about the attacks, which sometimes take place daily, the cables that have been cut and the cyberwarfare that is being conducted against us.
However, a real war would be absolutely catastrophic. A major attack would be aimed at destroying our energy capacity, our financial capacity to conduct transactions, and our communications, not to mention inflicting damage of a kind that would dwarf anything we have seen before. Social cohesion and social order might be at serious risk of collapse, which we did not see in World War II. The capacity for an enemy to spread disinformation, especially online, could utterly undercut the nation’s ability or willingness to carry on. If people could not communicate with each other, use their phones, get money out of machines or pay for anything by bank or credit cards, what would happen and how would people react?
I have a number of specific questions relating to the RAF, which my noble friend probably will not have time to cover in his reply. We are to acquire new F35A planes with nuclear capability; how will they be resourced? How will these new planes change the RAF’s approach to basing? Do we have enough early warning aircraft? Given the legendary Ukrainian attack on Russian airbases using drones, does the RAF have sufficient hardened shelters to protect our own aircraft, and do we have enough bases to ensure that we can distribute our forces evenly and operate effectively?
In the short time left, I want to raise the question of space, which my noble friend over there has already raised. I attended a briefing recently with the Air Chief Marshal, and he said that we cannot assume that we will have control over our airspace in any future conflict, and I think this applies even more to our control of space itself. In any future real war, the realm of space will be where the crucial battle will need to be fought and won.
Members may know that a committee of your Lordships’ House is looking into our engagement with space. Although we are not primarily looking at the military aspects, we have learned a very great deal. I am now of the view that space, together with cyberspace, would be the key domains were we to be engaged in a state-on-state war. If my noble friend can comment further on this, I would be very grateful. We have seen the effect of this in Ukraine.
Perhaps my noble friend can also give the House any official view from the Government on how integrated the new UK Space Command and cyberEM command are going to be and whether they think we need a sovereign launch capacity. I have run out of time, but if eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, this debate and the SDR will be very worthwhile.
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, it is a great privilege to speak after the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate. His points on data are extremely well made, and I thoroughly endorse them.
I will restrict my points to the subject of health, because Britain’s defence absolutely relies upon the health of its people. That is not just from a recruitment point of view—we remember that in the Boer War, the First World War and the Second World War we struggled to recruit because our people just were not healthy enough—but because healthcare is now a key component of national resilience and competence. Adversaries realise that destroying a nation’s healthcare is a way to break the purpose and ability of different countries to support themselves. Russia made this point very clear in its wars in Chechnya, in Syria, and now in Ukraine, where hospitals are targeted twice a day by Russian drones, and Hamas embeds its fighters in hospitals, making them battlegrounds.
In future conflicts, health will be very much as decisive as weaponry. We have several vulnerabilities. The first is fitness to serve. The health of the recruitable population has declined to crisis levels. A third of young adults are overweight. Rising chronic disease and mental health conditions are now the leading cause of Army rejections; many more young people are required to care for themselves than are able to serve for the nation. The second vulnerability is the fragility of our healthcare system. Last June’s Synnovis ransomware attack was not simply an IT issue in a pathology lab; it very nearly brought the NHS to its knees. Thirdly, there is biothreat: new gene and cell-editing technologies increase the risk of bioweapons. Russia’s Sergiev Posad-6 facility demonstrates the global trend towards biowarfare capacity, and if it is horrendous to contemplate, that does not mean it is not significant. As the strategic review notes, we live in an age of gene and cell editing, where it is easier than ever to make biological weapons. But, despite the UK biological security strategy, UKHSA’s budget, lab maintenance and surveillance systems are all mothballed or cut.
The third is medical supply chains. The review rightly points out that the pandemic exposed the vulnerabilities of relying on international just-in-time supply chains, and I know, from my experience at the front line of the Covid response, how terrifying it is when you cannot get your hands on the medical supplies that you need. I ask the Minister for four actions: first, that we establish strategic reserves of medicines; secondly, that we set up health security command within defence equal to cyber and space; thirdly, to fund the defence medical services appropriately; and, fourthly, to prioritise new investment in biological threat surveillance to keep pace with adversaries.
Talk of a whole-of-society defence, as the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, very clearly laid out in his introductory remarks, cannot be meaningful unless a society can heal its wounded, maintain its health infrastructure and support its health system. Medicine is as essential as ammunition; hospitals must be as resilient as the Army. The lesson is visible internationally. Taiwan, for instance, co-ordinates health security across all sectors, Finland makes health a priority and Israel integrates its health with its security.
Without comparable focus and investment, the UK remains vulnerable not just to missiles but to the cascading effect of poor health, neglected infrastructure and weak prevention. Modern warfare is won or lost not just on the battlefield but in clinics, supply warehouses and in the health of potential recruits. I therefore urge the Minister to address these specifics and to make health security an urgent and fully funded component of our national defence. There is diminishing time to close the gap. Our national security depends not just on missiles, aircraft and ships, but on every well-maintained hospital bed, strategic medicine reserve and healthy young person to serve.
Baroness Hogg (CB)
My Lords, I warmly congratulate my old friend, the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, on his excellent review, but, as he is well aware, the economic and social challenges, as well as the military ones, are immense. A brief comparison with the 1930s may help to bring these into focus. Ninety years ago, we started to rearm from a defence baseline which was as low a proportion of GDP as today, and with a debt-to-GDP ratio as high—indeed, even higher. Today, however, we spend far more on the other public services, making it that much harder to raise defence spending without swamping the economy. The tough choices highlighted by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, cannot be ducked.
In the 1930s, very high unemployment made feasible Keynesian policies of spending to grow the economy. But today, we do not have a lot of spare human capacity. Even our recent, barely visible, economic growth has been achieved only by sucking in hundreds of thousands of migrants. Of course, nuclear power, advanced weaponry and AI have shifted defence some way from a human numbers game to a technological one. But there are already serious people-shortages in the Armed Forces, while our defence industries need more STEM-qualified entrants. In our relatively tight labour market— despite the recent rise in the jobless rate—filling those gaps will not be cheap. That is how labour markets work.
As the defence review points out, recruitment also faces a cultural challenge. In so many parts of our country, any link with the Armed Forces has simply gone. Fortunately, however, not in all parts: in Lincolnshire, we retain a broader connection with the Royal Air Force than any other county, and we work hard to maintain it. Over the past 10 years, with the help of such generous people as the noble Lord, Lord Glendonbrook, who I am sorry to learn is retiring from this House, we have developed a £16 million memorial and digital museum. On a hill just south of Lincoln, this commemorates 58,000 men and women who died in the service of Bomber Command during World War II, a higher mortality rate than in any other British force.
Despite opening just before Covid, the memorial and museum, of which I am honoured to be a trustee, have attracted more than 600,000 visitors. Many more schools want to visit than we can accommodate, so we are now seeking support for a dedicated education centre. Visitors are drawn by our balanced message of remembrance, recognition and reconciliation. A recent school visit, for example, came simultaneously from Scampton, the home of the Dambusters, and the Möhne area in Germany, where their raid killed so many. Not for nothing is it called the International Bomber Command Centre.
We are also developing STEM programmes. We reach deep into primary schools, where the battle to engage children with STEM subjects is so often lost. Mathematics is much more enticing when related to flight patterns or aircraft design.
Just this year, we have installed 10 giant silhouettes of iconic World War II women, honouring not just their contribution but their successors now that all Armed Forces roles are open to women. Among today’s female leaders in the Armed Forces and business who came to the launch were the chairs of our three biggest defence companies, all women. They brought female apprentices with them, and the RAF honoured us with the first all-female fly-past. I strongly believe that it is by such events that we can engage young people, women and men, with the defence of the realm to add what my noble friend Lord Hennessy so rightly called the poetry to the plumbing, and attract what we will need most of all: the talent to put this review into effect.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)
My Lords, I recognise the much more dangerous and difficult world outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, which is particularly difficult at a time when the nuclear non-proliferation treaty is at its weakest. Will the Minister say exactly what the Government are going to do at next year’s non-proliferation treaty review conference to reinvigorate the treaty? As the noble Lord, Lord Bates, pointed out, as one of the P5, we are in a particularly good position to do that.
The relevance of this question was underlined last week by an event at the Royal Society that marked 70 years since the Russell-Einstein manifesto mentioned by my noble friend, Lord Alderdice. The manifesto says:
“We have found that the men who know most are the most gloomy”.
One of the men in this House who knows the most about nuclear non-proliferation is the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton. I am certainly not saying that he is gloomy, but his address at the Royal Society reflected the progress that can be made on non-proliferation, given the leadership and political will. The UK was energising and leading the non-proliferation agenda in the late 2000s and achieved some material advances on verification. I thought the noble Lord, Lord Bates, came out with a very good question when he asked the Minister whether he will consider using all the expertise and experience of the noble Lord, Lord Browne, to address the very real issues that the NPT faces next year.
We also have a particular responsibility to do that not only as one of the P5, but because in this strategic defence review we have changed our posture on nuclear weapons and they are playing a more important role for us. The Government are thinking of reintroducing an air-launched nuclear capability. At the same time, however, the UK seems to be burying its head in the sand about the effects of nuclear war, and I do not think that is helpful. The UK was one of only three countries in November last year to vote against creating a UN scientific panel on the effects of nuclear war. It was said that the scientific study
“will deliver a stronger evidence base that will inform the world and contribute to constructive dialogue with a view to convergence in work on nuclear disarmament and arms control”.
That is exactly what we need.
The noble Lord, Lord Howell, pointed out powerfully in his speech the current dangers of nuclear non-proliferation. There are states with nuclear weapons with which we trade that do not belong to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. There are now deep divisions in the world between the nuclear weapons states and other countries, and the other countries have felt deep frustration at the failure to progress the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. That has led them to create the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which has been signed by 94 countries and ratified by 73.
The last Government refused to engage with the ban treaty. I ask the Minister whether this Government will heed the wise words of your Lordships’ committee on international relations in its report, Rising Nuclear Risk, Disarmament and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which said that
“the dissatisfaction of the Ban Treaty’s proponents with the status quo on disarmament should be taken seriously. We therefore recommend that the Government should adopt a less aggressive tone about this treaty and seek opportunities to work with its supporters towards the aims of Article 6 of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty”.
What does failure look like? Well, of course, it looks absolutely terrifying. In a recent book on nuclear warfare, Annie Jacobson, who interviewed 47 of the US top brass for her conclusion, discovered that if, at minute nought, North Korea launched a weapon, by minute 92 the northern hemisphere would be a wasteland and the rest of the world would be facing a slow death. We need the NPT to succeed.
Lord Glenarthur (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the deep analysis, thoroughness and hard-hitting contents of this review. Many have made speeches here and elsewhere over the years, raising concerns about the depleted state of our defensibilities in an increasingly volatile world. But if this report can reinforce the need for Governments now and in the future to act upon it and fund what is required, the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, and his co-authors will have done a great service.
I will dwell on an aspect of chapter 4.3, entitled
“‘One Defence’: People, Training, and Education”,
and particularly on the crucial matter of reserves. The strategic defence review acknowledges the essential role of the reserves, as of course it does the regulars. It highlights the theme:
“‘whole force’, outcome-focused, and skills-based”.
For several years, I was a member of the National Employers Liaison Committee or chairman of its successor body, the National Employer Advisory Board for the reserves, under the acronym NEAB. Our purpose was to take informed advice to the Secretary of State and the Chiefs of Staff on how to win and maintain the support of employers for whom deployment of their employees on operations was required. In the case of Iraq and Afghanistan, these operations might involve an employee being away from their civilian occupation for up to a year, which was of course very often to the employers’ economic disadvantage.
We worked closely with a body of marketing and other very skilled individuals who were under the acronym SaBRE, Supporting Britain’s Reservists and Employers, which in turn worked very closely with the Reserve Forces and Cadets Association, which my noble friends Lord De Mauley and Lord Soames have highlighted. NEAB and SaBRE no longer exist, but this review indicates to me that in due course some similar organisations will need to be reinvented.
During the Iraq and Afghanistan operations, about 10% of those deployed were reservists, some of them in very niche roles. As a former honorary Air Commodore of a Royal Auxiliary Air Force medical unit, and as honorary colonel of an Army Reserve medical unit, I can give personal testament, from visits I made to them in the field, to the amazing fortitude and skills that medical experts brought to bear on casualties in those campaigns, and how the skills they acquired were highly relevant to their peacetime work in the NHS. That organisation could benefit from their experience.
In our delicate economic climate, we must find ways of constantly bringing the enduring employer aspect into the mix. Whether within the public or private sectors, among so many other aspects of our public life, it is they who help to generate the funds for or sustain the skills that reservists provide.
My advisory board at the time developed the concept of defence career partnering. It aimed to achieve a much more flexible—some might even say radical—route for individuals to move between being an employee and a reservist and even into regular service, together with the support and understanding of employers, as well as of the regular and reservist chains of command. Something imaginative along those lines might now be a fruitful and enterprising way of helping to find and developing the personnel necessary to source at least some of the varied and essential roles necessary to fulfil our military manpower requirements.
I have no doubt whatever, as I and my former colleagues, as employers, have seen with our own eyes when visiting deployed reserves abroad, how much their employers gained from the skills and enterprise that their reservist colleagues developed on operations. However, we must recognise that their sacrifice in terms of their day-to-day work was also marked. The recommendations in chapter 4.3 go some way towards this, most certainly in the necessity of the whole-force concept—or indeed, as has been described by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, the whole-society concept.
However, while again congratulating the authors of this excellent report, I believe there may be even more imaginative ways of developing what is recommended in the people, training and education aspect, which this excellent review highlights, and which the Government should consider.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, if we were holding this debate in normal times, I suspect that it would be something of a lap of honour for its three authors, led so ably by that veteran of defence reviews, the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, who introduced this debate in such a masterly manner. It clearly marks a major shift from the excessive complacency of what was called the post-Cold War era and spells out convincingly why we need a new, hard-headed approach to defence and security—one that not only requires a major intellectual shift but that will change the resources we devote to these matters, not just in words but in deeds, if our own national security is not to be put at increasing risk.
However, the times are not normal. They are volatile in the extreme. Wars are being waged in Ukraine and across the Middle East—and could be waged in the Far East—which have brushed aside with apparent impunity much of the rules-based international order that was so laboriously and necessarily put together after the two world wars of the 20th century, not least the UN charter itself. The speed of change is being accelerated by the policies of Russia, the United States and China, and by a chaotic clash of long-term foes in the Middle East, whose hostilities are expanding rather than diminishing. So my remarks are in no sense a criticism of the adequacy of the review, merely a recognition that we are being swept along at speed by a tide of affairs that bears an uncanny resemblance to that which first engulfed the world in the period leading up to the outbreak of the First World War.
First, for a number of years after the Cold War ended in the 1980s, we fell into the trap of treating soft power as somehow a substitute for hard power. It is not. Now we risk swinging back in the reverse direction, shrinking the elements of our soft power in order to finance the resources for our hard power. In that category I place the decision to finance most of Britain’s necessarily reinforced hard power by shrinking an essential part of our soft power: our overseas aid budget.
It surely makes no sense to load the cost of the BBC World Service—a unique contribution to countering the tidal waves of misinformation and disinformation in today’s world—on to a regressive tax on the licence fee holder rather than onto the taxpayer. It is surely time to reverse that lamentable decision.
The world-leading role of our higher education institutions risks being hamstrung by misleading fears linking overseas students with illegal immigration. It is long past time that we stopped treating overseas students as immigrants and scaring ourselves stiff with the resultant net migration figures. We really do need to take another look at the balance of hard and soft power, recognising that we need them both.
My second point is that we risk failing to understand—and several noble Lords have mentioned this—how close we are to the collapse of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and to the consequences of such a disaster. I am not talking about our own decision to join other European members of NATO in returning to a tactical air role, which has no proliferation risks and could play a valuable role in strengthening deterrence against a resurgent imperialist Russia.
If Iran were to follow North Korea in obtaining nuclear weapons, the consequences of that disastrous development would very possibly be not only regional, but global—hence the need for the E3 to resume their efforts with perseverance to avoid that outcome by peaceful, negotiated means. I do agree with those who have mentioned the P5: at some point, the dialogue on strategic stability between the recognised nuclear powers—broken off quite correctly at the time of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine—will need to be resumed.
We do need to proceed with determination on the initiative to strengthen the European pillar of NATO on which the Government have so laudably embarked. This is not just a matter of responding to legitimate pressure from successive US Presidents, but a simple recognition of the need to react to Russian aggression via strengthened deterrence so that hostilities can be avoided as they were throughout the Cold War. That is why the review—quite rightly—chose “NATO first” as its motto.
All three of the points I have raised require that essential tool of soft-power diplomacy. We need to ensure that our diplomacy is properly resourced and does not fall short, as it is at some risk of doing.
Baroness Goudie (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord McCabe on his excellent maiden speech today, and I welcome my noble friend Lord Hennessy here. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Robertson on his leadership of the strategic defence review, arguably the most consequential reassessment of our national security in a generation.
It is a document of ambition and urgency. It defines the threats we face and it sets out a bold rearmament plan: 76,000 regular troops, AUKUS submarines, drone warfare capabilities, a digital targeting web, and even a new command for cyber-electronic operations.
But, amid all this ambition, I must ask: where are the women? Where is the commitment to the Women, Peace and Security agenda—an agenda that this country proudly helped to shape? We have seen time and again that the exclusion of women from peace processes does not lead to stability; it leads to relapse. Yet, the review is silent on the role of women in preventing conflict, building peace and securing human dignity. In 2000, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1325, reaffirming the crucial role of women in conflict prevention, resolution, and peacebuilding. It emphasised the importance of their equal participation and full involvement in all efforts to maintain and promote peace and security.
As the international community increasingly recognises the value of elevating women’s participation in these processes, I recall that the United Kingdom was among the first to reaffirm this commitment. Under Foreign Secretary William Hague, alongside the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Britain took a leading role in placing this issue firmly on the global agenda. We were leading, and I would very much like to see an undertaking today that Britain will continue to lead and to advise other Governments on this front. That is why it is so important that women are at every table, in every room, and every place where peace and security are being discussed.
Yet this review does not mention gender at all. There is not a single reference to sexual violence in conflict. Britain was, and should remain, a global leader in stamping this out. I refer colleagues to the House of Lords Select Committee report, Sexual Violence in Conflict: A War Crime, published in 2016, which remains highly relevant today. There is no mention of the UK’s national action plan on Women, Peace and Security, which we launched with great confidence and momentum only two years. This stands in contrast to previous reviews, the 2015 SDSR and the 2021 integrated review, both of which acknowledged human security, gender-based violence and the inclusion of women in peacekeeping.
We know from UN data that, when women are involved in peace processes, agreements are 35% more likely to last at least 15 years. Yet women still make up fewer than 13% of negotiators in major peace processes worldwide. We know that when women participate in peacekeeping forces, there is greater trust between peacekeepers and local communities, reduced incidences of abuse and improved intelligence-gathering outcomes, which enhance not just human security but operational effectiveness.
In Liberia, Northern Ireland and Colombia, the involvement of women not only helped secure fragile ceasefires but also shaped post-conflict recovery policies on land rights, justice and education, which directly addressed the root causes of instability. We know from our Armed Forces, thanks to the work of Rachel Grimes and the development of Joint Service Publication 985, there will be greater security.
I am running out of time, but I will just say that, in meeting the threats of the 21st century, we must be not only armed, but wise. A wise defence is one that draws on the full strength of our society, women and men, equally, working together at home and abroad.
Lord Sarfraz (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the review—I read the whole document—and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Robertson. The country is very lucky to have his expertise and leadership.
While I, like many noble Lords, am all for increased defence spending, I still cannot get my head around why the ODA budget was the only place we could find some of the money. The matter has been debated at length, but it is really hard to get away from the fact that the optics remain very poor, and this is not going to go away. But that is old news now.
The new news is our new slogan—“NATO first”. It is pretty catchy, but I think it is a communications mistake. There are 32 NATO member countries and none of them—not a single one—is using a slogan like “NATO first”. Why is it just us? It sends completely the wrong message that we are deprioritising other theatres, such as the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa. Just a couple of years ago we were travelling the world talking about the “Indo-Pacific tilt” and now it is “NATO first”. Of course, NATO is a priority and Russia is a threat, but why could we not have just stuck to something like “UK first”? Nobody would have minded that at all. Anyway, even if we accept the new branding, my single biggest concern is that we have not produced a single defence industry unicorn in this country yet—a tech company with a valuation of at least $1 billion. Not a single one has come out of the UK.
We have had many from the US, several in Germany and even one from Portugal, but none here. Whenever we talk about increased defence spending, we end up fattening the primes—that is what we do, each and every time. We need hardware, not just software, which is not from the primes. We need money to go to the smaller, innovative firms, not the primes. The review by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, in 1998 struggled with procurement, even back then, and today’s review still does. We do pilots with SMEs, but they never go into production. The fact is that spending money on defence innovation leads to advances across the entire economy. If we had not invested in the mid-20th century in integrated circuits and semiconductors for defence, we would have none of the consumer technologies that we have today.
Finally, while it is wonderful to see a renewed focus on tech and innovation, you cannot run a world-class defence force from a base where the wifi does not work and the plumbing is leaking. Let us please bring our bases into the 21st century. I have been to maybe a dozen across the country in the past 18 months, and almost all of them need help; from canteens to restrooms to social areas, we need a giant base renovation programme. I would love to hear the Minister’s views on that, and I am sure that he would agree that our soldiers deserve to come home to bases that reflect the pride that we have in them.
Lord Skidelsky (CB)
My Lords, I have a long-standing respect for the noble Lord, Lord Robertson. In the early 2000s, we were both engaged in trying to build better relations with Putin’s Russia—he as chair of the NATO-Russia Council and myself as founder of the UK-Russia round table, whose efforts were then openly encouraged by the Prime Minister, Tony Blair. Since then, our paths have diverged. I have huge reservations about the report that the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, so ably presented earlier—mainly because I believe that it greatly exaggerates the threats that we actually face.
I am perhaps the only person in the House who takes this view, but I am happy that complete unanimity is not a requirement of membership of our august assembly. On one thing we can all agree—that we should spend more on our own defence, if only because the United States is no longer a reliable guarantee of our security. However, this salutary prudential note is overwhelmed by the report’s concentration on the need to guard against a supposedly imminent and potentially lethal Russian danger. The SDR states:
“Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 … irrefutably demonstrated … the threat, with state-on-state war returning to Europe”.
It goes on to say that the UK and its allies are “under daily attack” from Russia—note that word “daily”—
“with aggressive acts—from espionage to cyber-attack and information manipulation”.
We are told that Russia has demonstrated
“its willingness to use military force, inflict harm on civilians, and threaten the use of nuclear weapons to achieve its goals”.
The conclusion from all that type of argument is that Britain must rearm to deter and, if necessary, “fight and win” a war against Russia. As Mark Rutte, NATO’s Secretary-General, put it, the British had better rearm or “learn to speak Russian”. This view of the matter is wildly overwrought.
The report then argues that, since Russia has intentionally blurred
“the lines between nuclear, conventional”
and sub-state warfare, an integrated British response should combine both conventional and hybrid forms of war preparation. So great stress is placed on the need for a resilient home defence to guard against
“espionage, political interference, sabotage, assassination and poisoning, electoral interference, disinformation, propaganda, and Intellectual Property theft”—
and all these weapons are daily used by our adversaries.
To my mind, the tone is dangerously over the top. Let me point to two specific defects. First, the SDR wants to prepare the UK for “high-intensity, protracted war”, but it says nothing about its possible duration. The Cold War ended with détente, but there is no peaceful endgame in these pages, only a continuous state of armed alertness. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol asked: where is the peace strategy? Secondly, to keep the UK in a constant state of war alertness requires, as Prime Minister Keir Starmer has frankly admitted, a radical “shift in mindset”, a transformation of culture and the eradication of unacceptable behaviour—in short, acceptance of defence and security as the “organising principle of government”. Have the authors of the SDR stopped to consider the Orwellian implications of gearing up the nation for permanent war preparation?
The SDR rightly draws attention to the increased, and often subterranean, threats of harm opened up by rapidly accelerating technological innovation. But I draw the opposite conclusion: the multiplication of technological threats provides a compelling argument, not for a nuclear or an AI arms race, but for global co-operation to limit the malign use of technology. It is the joint responsibility of leaders of all the great powers to act as adults and not as children playing around with their lethal toys. It is the duty of those with the greatest power—for good or ill—to behave in such a way as to maximise the chance of a peaceful future for us all.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I will focus on two themes in the SDR: the commitment to “NATO first”, and the concept of “whole-of-society” defence and security. NATO first now means sharing European leadership within NATO to keep the US committed, not standing half-in and half-out of Europe through our beloved special relationship with the United States. The UK’s security ties with the USA are vital, but we face an increasingly transactional, and not particularly friendly, US Administration.
I spent nearly four years in the USA in the 1960s, studying government, international politics and defence. I was taught partly by professors who had been born in central Europe. In Washington, I met politicians and policymakers who had spent the war in what I now realise was Bletchley Park, or fighting in the allied armies across France or through Italy. They had deep affection for Britain and for European security. But that generation, most of whom had grown up on America’s eastern seaboard, died long ago. Policymakers we meet now more often come from America’s west coast, or Texas, Arizona or Florida—they look across the Pacific or south to Latin America. There is no special bond with Britain: they want to know how we can be useful and how much we are contributing to Europe’s defence.
NATO’s future rests on European leadership, which has to come from the closest possible co-operation between the UK, France and Germany. I welcome the latest UK-German treaty, building on growing UK-France co-operation, but we cannot achieve all we want through what is inelegantly called in the SDR “minilateralism”. We must integrate back into European multilateralism—the EU as well as NATO.
Putting NATO first also means putting second the dreams of again becoming the United States’ military partner in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea. The SDR bluntly states in chapter 5:
“Finite resources mean the UK cannot be everything to everyone”.
A previous Labour Government withdrew from east of Suez 59 years ago. Boris Johnson dreamed that we could leave Europe and be a global power again; and I have observed in the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, a certain nostalgia for naval deployments in the South China Sea, as well as for the affectionate special relationship of the past.
The SDR clearly states:
“A renewed focus on home defence and resilience is vital to modern deterrence”.
Its first priority defence role is indeed to defend, protect and enhance the resilience of the UK, including reviving civil defence and improving the resilience of our critical national infrastructure. The concept of a “whole-of-society response” to the multiple threats we now face—from transnational crime and terrorism, pandemics and climate change, as well as state threats—requires engaging with the wider British public, local government, voluntary groups and newly trained reserve bodies.
I looked at the UK Government Resilience Action Plan to learn how well this has been integrated with the SDR, and I found it very disappointing. A whole-of-society response has to grow from the ground up, rather than being imposed from the top down. The resilience action plan is thin on how to mobilise civil society and says almost nothing about the value and role of local government. Meanwhile, the Government have just published their English devolution Bill, which takes power from local government and gives it to elected mayors remote from Britain’s towns, villages and local communities.
As to mobilising civil society to respond to our insecure environment, we are promised only a “national conversation”. In terms of mobilising the more public spirited and patriotic, the review cautiously suggests that
“it will become necessary to increase the UK’s Active Reserve forces by at least 20%”—
I think that is about 10,000 soldiers—
“when funding allows, most likely in the 2030s”.
There is a great deal more work to be done here to engage the public in improving our national security and resilience. So far, it looks to me much more like the traditional Labour assumption that things are best left to the experts to organise a passive society, rather than the liberal view that democracy and security are guaranteed best by encouraging all citizens to play an active part in the common endeavour in communities throughout the country.
Viscount Trenchard (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests as stated in the register, and I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McCabe, on his interesting maiden speech. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, for giving us this opportunity to debate the most thorough defence review for a long time, and I congratulate the noble Lord, General Barrons and Fiona Hill on their work. They have had to conduct it against a constantly evolving defence landscape, influenced by the lack of clarity and consistency shown by the US Administration, the continuing conflict in Ukraine and the enlargement of the conflict in Israel, Gaza and the Middle East.
The noble Lord and his colleagues were also hampered by the Government’s prevarication on the proportion of GDP that will be spent on defence and the timings of the increases. It is true that, under pressure from President Trump, the Government have committed to increase defence spending to 2.5% by April 2027 and have made a further commitment to increase it to 3% during the next Parliament, when
“economic and fiscal conditions allow”,
as stated on page 10 and repeated on page 13. So, worryingly, it remains only an ambition.
I am a little surprised that the Secretary of State has been so dismissive of the Levene reforms, introduced by Lord Levene of Portsoken. I remember that he also proposed that defence must continue to take the opportunity that a joint approach can offer to enhance operational effectiveness and administrative efficiency. It seems to me that the SDR does not refute the Levene reforms but develops them further and brings them up to date to reflect today’s needs.
The SDR announced MoD’s intention to build six new energetics and munitions factories during this Parliament, at a cost of £1.5 billion. Given the depletion of our munitions stocks as a result of the Ukraine war, this is welcome news. Will these be government-owned and government-operated factories, or will they be outsourced to the private sector or public-private partnerships?
There is a new defence investment plan which, inter alia, will maximise the benefits of defence spending to grow the economy. But how can there be a plan before the MoD knows when it will receive 3% of GDP, which remains simply an aspiration? The review informs the reader:
“A billion people in the Euro-Atlantic area sleep easily each night, protected by … Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty”.
But does the Minister think that Article 5 can be relied on, having heard the speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, and other noble Lords?
It is good that the review recognises the importance of working with partners other than NATO in the Middle East and Indo-Pacific regions. Perhaps more thought should be given to the development of organisations similar to NATO in both those regions. Our Japanese friends are certainly most interested in this, especially as they are somewhat sceptical that we remain completely committed to the Indo-Pacific tilt, given that much of the talk is now about an EU reset. Does the Minister think it likely that consideration will be given to including Japan in both the five-powers defence arrangements and the five-powers intelligence pact?
The review includes the word “lethality” 20 times and “lethal” a further 10 times. It stresses the need for our Armed Forces to “increase their lethality”. I always thought that lethal meant “capable of killing”. I think it now has a new meaning, “capable of total destruction”. Indeed, a huge benefit of the introduction of advanced precision weapons is that, theoretically at least, fewer people are killed through collateral damage.
As the honorary air commodore of London’s Air Force Reserve squadron, I am interested in what the review has to say about the reserves. I agree with what my noble friends Lord De Mauley and Lord Glenarthur said about the reserves, and new ways must be found to encourage employers to support them. Whereas discussion within the reserves in recent years has suggested a blurring of the line between regulars and reserves, and a gradual move towards a regular to reserves ratio of 1:1, as is the case in the United States, the review suggests only that the active reserves should be increased
“by at least 20% when funding allows”.
But increased dependence on reserves is supposed to ease funding pressure, not the reverse. In addition, surely having more reserves very much assists the building of society’s understanding of what the Armed Forces do and provides increased visibility of defence. That should help us to answer the call from the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, to persuade the public that we must prioritise defence in order to make our country safe.
Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)
My Lords, in trying to summarise the debate so far, I suggest, roughly speaking, that the sentiment of the House is huge support—with the exception of one contribution—for the strategic defence review, but with a big question mark about whether we really mean it: what would it actually take to get it done? The noble Lord, Lord Sarfraz, did not like the “NATO first” slogan. I suggest an alternative might be “NATO for real”—in other words, we stop kidding ourselves. We knew that the claims we made in recent times about the capabilities we were declaring to SACEUR and other resources were essentially phoney. SACEUR knew they were phoney; our adversaries knew they were phoney; the only people we were not straight with were the British people. The defence review is straight with the British people: that needs to change.
For that to happen, we have been having a significant debate about what the phasing of the extra resourcing will look like. Unlike the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, I took the commitments that the Prime Minister made at the NATO summit to be a watertight commitment to 3.5% by 2035, rather than the prior aspiration around 3%. Picking up on the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, though, I wonder whether the Government can be clear with us as to the incremental spend that we are talking about. I think they are saying that, by 2027, we will be spending 2.6% of GDP on core defence spending and 4.1% on security in the round. That implies that, by 2027, we will already be spending 1.5% on the non-defence infrastructure and other security spending and, therefore, that we have 0.9% to add to core defence spending between 2027 and 2035.
The question for the Government is: when will they show their workings on that? Will we see in autumn what the incremental sequencing of the 0.9% is going to look like for the next three years over the balance of this Parliament? Without that, as the debate has revealed, we are quite unlikely to make progress.
In light of the announcements made alongside President Macron last week updating the 1995 Chequers declaration to include greater operational co-ordination of our strategic nuclear deterrent and—as the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, and others referred to—the readoption of a tactical nuclear capability through the F35As, do the Government intend to clarify the United Kingdom’s nuclear defence doctrine? We all understand that nuclear deterrence is a subtle combination of explicit signalling and studied ambiguity, but are the Government planning to do more than these incremental announcements and actually set this out as a new UK doctrine?
Do the Government believe that legislation is required to implement any elements of the SDR? We have previously talked about the requirement for a new Armed Forces Act to help manage the permeable membrane between active duty and reserve members of the Armed Forces. Likewise, within StratCom there has been talk about the need for a new category of Crown servant—who would be non-military but not civil servants—to do some of the cyberwarfare. That presumably would take an Act of Parliament. Are we going to see that statutory framework brought before us in the next King’s Speech?
Finally, on the executional capability required to get the SDR done, there has been some mild criticism that there is a degree of ambiguity about when some things are going to happen. Actually, there are one or two extremely ambitious commitments apparently nailed in for next year and the year after, one of them being the digital underpinning of the integration between the different branches of the Armed Forces, the digital targeting web and so forth. This apparently is going to be an MVP next year and is going to be in place by 2027. It has taken the Americans 20 years of effort in this space, and they still have not got to a situation where a US naval vessel can communicate in real time with all the US Air Force jets that might be in the same battle space—let alone pilots of different planes being able to communicate with each other. So the idea that we will have at least a light version of this in place from next year is a truly laudable and ambitious goal. It would be superb to hear more about what it will take to get it done.
In a nutshell, like others I strongly support the direction set out by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, and welcome the Government’s commitment to it. It is all about executional bandwidth, whether that is money, law or the sheer implementation muscle required across the military.
Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the timely publication of the strategic defence review, and I agree with its analysis that the UK faces generational defence and security challenges, whether from Russia, Iran, China, North Korea or non-state bad actors, criminal gangs and terrorist organisations.
The strategic defence review rightly recognises that we need to engage our wider society to deal with the threats and keep our country safe. However, it is alarming that recent polling by Ipsos conducted ahead of the review revealed that almost half of Britons say there are no circumstances in which they would be willing to take up arms to defend the country. There is one silver lining, though, in that seven in 10 Britons— including many young people—still believe that the Armed Forces can provide a good career path for the next generation. How are we going to change the way the country, its history and its Armed Forces are spoken about to make people feel that this country is a place worth defending?
As some noble Lords may know, I am a proud honorary colonel cadet of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, so supporting and promoting the cadet movement means a great deal to me. I recognise the positive impact that the cadets and the courses they study and undertake have on our society. I therefore take this opportunity to congratulate the Army cadets and Royal Air Force cadets who graduated recently from the Cadets in Enterprise programme at the London Stock Exchange.
It is particularly welcome that the strategic defence review has concluded that reconnecting defence with wider society should be the cornerstone of our home defence and resilience strategy. It could
“be achieved in part through expanding Cadet Forces by 30% by 2030 (with an ambition to reach 250,000 in the longer term) and working with the Department for Education to develop understanding of the Armed Forces among young people in schools”.
Expanding the cadet force will
“provide skills and qualifications to young people, inform and inspire future Defence personnel—from diverse backgrounds across the country—and support economic growth”.
Ministers should heed the comments of Mr Michael Martins from the British Foreign Policy Group, who stressed the need for our defence strategy to engage the rest of society, arguing:
“Without a compelling narrative—one that builds cross-party and public consensus, while also bringing business along—the SDR risks being viewed as a technocratic exercise, not a national priority”.
I hope that the Government’s whole-of-society approach in response to the review bears fruit and they deliver on the number of cadets needed. I will be willing to work with them in any way to help them achieve this number, and to hold them to account should they fall short.
While the publication of the review is a step in the right direction, I share Mr Martins’s concerns and believe that the Government will need to do more than merely meet the review’s recommendations. Rather, they will need to exceed them and should promote civic engagement and pride in our Armed Forces and indeed our country. Many young people do not feel they can be involved in supporting this country and its defence because of the way in which this country is spoken about by many people, particularly our history. If you talk to people from my community in general, they will tell you many things about institutional racism et cetera that have been forced down their throats and make them feel separate from this nation that has clothed and housed them and keeps them safe every day. I would like the Minister to explain how we turn around that part of our public discourse to make people feel like they should and can be involved in the safety of this nation.
Should this civic engagement and pride in our Armed Forces become something that the public can hold to their chest and appreciate, it will help us keep our nation and communities safer and provide an opportunity for young people to be exposed to the people who man our Armed Forces. They are some of the most dedicated, intelligent and committed people in the world; it would be an awful shame not to let our young people be exposed to that level of patriotic fervour and the pure, technical care that they have for this country. It would be very useful to expose all communities to that.
Lord Empey (UUP)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McCabe, on his maiden speech. If a Glaswegian can become a Brummie, everything is possible. I also put on record my thanks to the Minister for his efforts in ensuring that the armaments business throughout the United Kingdom is regionally recognised. He and his colleagues did a lot in recent months to help ensure that companies such as Harland & Wolff in Belfast and others in the armaments sector were allowed to survive. I am pleased to say that with the involvement of the Spanish company Navantia, Harland is now investing heavily in preparing for the solid support vessels, and I put on record my thanks to the Minister for his work in that department.
In a very un-Scottish introduction, the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, began his introduction with his conclusion—I think many Scottish Presbyterian ministers would find that a bit challenging in the past. He did, however, make the point that we of course do not want to see our country in a constant state of war readiness, and that we can sometimes talk ourselves into that problem—but equally, we cannot ignore what is going on.
The noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, pointed out that the post-war international rules-based order is now largely ignored by all major countries, including the United States. It pays absolutely no attention to it whatever; indeed, it holds it in contempt, in many cases. In these circumstances, we need a holistic defence policy.
The most successful defence policy will ensure peace. The best armaments are those which are never used. This is a conundrum and my concern is that our society is not necessarily grasping that. The noble Lord, Lord Bailey, made a point about how the country deports itself internationally: we are not regarded by the Russian state as a serious threat; it holds us in contempt. We cannot even control our own borders. We are held to ransom by gangsters and thugs.
In those circumstances, I agree with the point about society that the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, made in his introduction. We have to have this conversation and get our younger people to realise the threats. Those of us who grew up in the post-war generation have lived a life of luxury, largely of peace. While my part of the country has at least seen how things can go wrong, the vast majority—thank God—have not. Let us keep it that way, but the Government and Parliament have to concentrate on ensuring that society as a whole is part of this. We have to discuss it. We have to talk about it through cadets or in schools; it has to start at the ground and work up. That would be our best defence.
Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I declare some previous experience: I was a member of the Armed Forces’ Pay Review Body and I went to Iraq and Afghanistan. I have seen how people have to operate on the ground in really difficult conditions. I certainly learned a lot.
I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McCabe, on his maiden speech. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I am sure he is going to make a big contribution to the House in the future.
As a trade union official, I am looking at what the Government are doing to improve conditions. I looked at the foreword from the Secretary of State, which I thought was very impressive. He said:
“We have announced the largest sustained increase to defence spending since the end of the Cold War, stepped up support for Ukraine, awarded Service personnel the biggest pay rise in over 20 years, signed the historic Trinity House Agreement with Germany, bought back over 36,000 military homes to improve housing for forces families and save UK taxpayers billions, set new targets to tackle the recruitment crisis, made it easier for veterans to access essential care and support under the new VALOUR system, and passed through Parliament the Armed Forces Commissioner Bill to improve service life”.
That is not a bad track record of commitment to improving conditions.
I also pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Robertson. It is a fascinating strategic defence review. I do not know about others, but I have sat through about 95% of the contributions today and, of course, we are not going to get absolute agreement. I thoroughly enjoyed the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, because it is right to challenge basic premises. It makes people think. I did not agree with the noble Lord, but I nevertheless felt that his contribution was important. I certainly welcomed the tribute to Ernie Bevin given by the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy—standing on the shoulders of the giant—and a bit of poetry. It was valuable advice.
As an ex-governor of the BBC, I thought that the point about the BBC’s role in soft power was important, as the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, reminded us and as others emphasised. I think about the question of language skills while I struggle to keep up the challenge of Duolingo. More seriously, language skills are being automated, in a way; the noble Baroness is shaking her head, so I do not think we are going to reach agreement on this, but she cannot say that the only way to teach language in 2025 is the traditional way. No doubt we can discuss this important point over a cup of tea.
I also want to congratulate my noble friend Baroness Goudie on what I thought was a stunning contribution on the role of women. I declare an interest in that I am the chair of the advisory board for a sustainable and repairable clothing manufacturer. The SDR sets out new ambitions, including creating an
“engine for growth—driving jobs and prosperity through a new partnership with industry, radical procurement reforms, and backing UK businesses”.
Captain of the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard and Deputy Chief Whip (Baroness Wheeler) (Lab)
I am sorry, but speakers in the gap have four minutes. Can the noble Lord please wind up? Thank you.
Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)
I am winding up. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, can give me an assurance that there will be jobs in the British clothing industry.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, I rise to welcome the SDR. Like the vast majority of speakers, we on these Benches feel that the work of the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, and his team, particularly Fiona Hill and Richard Barrons, has been remarkable; it really does give us an integrated defence review, whereas recent iterations of the so-called integrated security and defence review were a little more fragmented and less strategic than might have been desirable.
We echo the sense from around the Chamber that this SDR has understood the context of the challenges that we in the United Kingdom and our NATO partners and allies face. We also agree with the sentiment in the review—and across the Chamber—that we are at daily risk from cyberattacks and other routes from Russia, and other potential hostile actors. Although the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, thinks the dangers have perhaps been overstated, it is vital that this SDR has understood the challenges of the post-Cold War period. As several speakers have pointed out, we in the West have been rather complacent for too long. We took the Cold War peace dividend and we stayed that way until we got to a point at which Russia could say, “Actually, the West isn’t prepared”. We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hogg, about defence expenditure in the 1930s, and we are now in a similar situation.
Like the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, I ask the Minister how His Majesty’s Government envisage increasing defence expenditure. Throughout the election and all the way to the NATO summit, all we heard was that the commitment was going to be 2.7%, and then 3% when the financial circumstances allowed. The current wording of the SDR reflects that, and the review team were told to assume 2.5%; that was in the remit. As I understand it, the review team pointed out that more money was needed. However, the NATO commitment to 3.5% of GDP on hard defence expenditure and 1.5% on critical infrastructure and resilience suddenly changes the dynamics to some extent.
As we have heard from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, there is the question of what we do with the money—how we plan to spend it and when. The numbers are one thing, but the commitment is important. That sends certain signals, not just to our allies and adversaries but potentially to the defence-industrial base, the primes and the subprimes that they may need to ready themselves to build and increase production. Unless there is certainty in terms of letting the contracts and some clarity about what is happening between now and 2035, those companies are not going to start building up their production. For the subprimes and the very small companies in particular, new innovation is going to be very difficult. Can the Minister explain to the House a little bit about the Treasury’s and the MoD’s vision on expenditure?
Several noble and noble and gallant Lords have talked about resilience. The “whole-of-society approach” would indeed be vital. The review talks particularly about the importance of having a national conversation. Do His Majesty’s Government have any idea about how that national conversation should be initiated? We have heard today that it needs to be led from the top—from the Prime Minister. Maybe I have not been listening. Maybe, a bit like waiting for the third speaker in the gap, who did not exist, I have just been missing the Prime Minister when he has been trying to initiate the conversation. Have people in Paddington, the patch of the noble Lord, Lord Bailey, been hearing the Prime Minister saying it is vital that we begin to look at our own critical infrastructure, rebuild defence and spend money on defence? In his very welcome return, the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, pointed out that Denis Healey had made the point that if you cut defence expenditure too far, there are no houses, hospitals or schools. I have not heard either the Prime Minister or the Secretary of State saying that—are we going to?
In terms of examples, the noble Baroness, Lady Hogg, was beginning to give some ideas of encouraging children and young people to find out about defence. We have heard from various noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, about cadets. Cadets are part of the way in to recruiting young people, although, obviously, it is not supposed to be a direct move from being in the cadets to full-time military service or being a reservist. Yet has not funding for the cadet forces been cut? Are His Majesty’s Government delivering what they are promising and what is needed in terms of thinking through the position of the cadets and, in particular, the commitment to the reserves? As my noble friend Lord Wallace pointed out, the phrasing in the SDR says that we need to increase the size of the reserves by 20% but immediately says “when funding allows”. So far, the commitments, apart from the commitment at the NATO summit, are still incremental. Increasing the size of the reserves in the 2030s does not suggest any real sense of urgency. Are the Government really committed to increasing the size of the reserves but also to doing what the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, pointed out—making sure that there is equality of treatment for the reserves and that they have the same kit and training as the regulars?
In terms of parity of esteem and equality, the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, mentioned that next year we will have a new Armed Forces Bill in the five-year cycle. Given that the SDR is talking about the need to have much more interoperability between the three services, will we see that reflected in policy, but also through the Armed Forces Bill, or is there some other way in which His Majesty’s Government are envisaging making sure that that interoperability will come about?
Linking to wider aspects of interoperability, “NATO first” is a very clear message, and it is always followed up by Ministers of Defence saying, “NATO first, but not only”. The moves to co-operation and bilateral defence agreements with Germany and France have been extremely welcome. My noble friend Lord Wallace did not like the term “minilateralism”, but for many of us it explains precisely what this Government seem to want to do. Will it be done in a joined-up way as part of a strategy, reflecting the language used by the noble Lord, Lord McCabe, in his very welcome maiden speech, when he talked about the importance of joined-up policy? Are bilateralism and minilateralism intended to be part of a joined-up strategy to enable the UK to play a role as part of the E3, but also to ensure that we have a really effective arm of NATO? While I do not expect the Minister to say anything other than that the relationship with the United States as close as it has ever been and as close as it needs to be, are we making sure that we are strengthening the European arm of NATO—whether the United States is with us or whether we are having to act alone?
I will make two very short final points. My noble friend Lord Clement-Jones could not be with us today, so he sent me many questions and said, “Maybe you would like to ask one of these”. I do not propose to ask too many of them. The questions were about autonomous weapons. One specific question is: what thinking have His Majesty’s Government done about ensuring that, if we have autonomous weapons systems, there is always a human in the chain?
Finally, several noble Lords, including my noble friends Lord Alderdice and Lady Miller, and the noble Lord, Lord Bates, talked about the non-proliferation treaty. We on these Benches are committed to having a nuclear deterrent, but it is also right that this country does everything it can to look to de-escalation and moving down the ladder of nuclear capabilities. What are His Majesty’s Government doing to ensure that in 2026 this country plays a key role in the non-proliferation treaty review?
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, as other noble Lords have said, this has been a highly informative and fascinating debate, wide-ranging in many ways, from the forensic speech of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, to the comments made by my noble friend Lord Harlech on the reservist infrastructure. I echo the spirit of the House and praise the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, for facilitating this debate. I also thank the other reviewers, General Sir Richard Barrons and Dr Fiona Hill. The review they have produced is clearly very thorough and thought-provoking. It also makes 62 recommendations to the Government, ranging from the “NATO first” policy to establishing an integrated force to expanding our space capabilities, as my noble friend Lady Goldie mentioned.
It is welcome that the Government have accepted all the recommendations, but this review is just the start. The reviewers have delivered their report and recommendations. The ball now lies firmly in the Government’s court. It is their actions on implementation, as mentioned by many noble Lords, that will be key to how the defence of our nation develops and meets the challenges of the future. It is to the practicalities and resource implications that I will therefore direct my focus.
In the Statement repeat in this House on the publication of the strategic defence review, my noble friend Lord Minto raised the issue of naval assets. The review mentions the term “amphibious” only three times. The Government scrapped HMS “Albion” and HMS “Bulwark” last year, meaning that currently we have only three Bay-class ships of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary that can, when called up, conduct such operations. This is an unprecedented capability gap and leaves us behind other NATO countries. France has three Mistral-class landing helicopter docks in addition to its “Charles de Gaulle” aircraft carrier, and Italy has three San Giorgio-class landing platform docks that are due to be replaced at the end of the decade, therefore Britain is currently falling behind both France and Italy. I understand why the Government took the decision to scrap “Bulwark” and “Albion”, but we are now faced with the fact that we do not possess these capabilities, and it seems we do not have a plan to replace them. The nature of naval warfare is changing, as the review acknowledges, but it is not outside the realms of possibility that we might need to possess the ability to launch complex amphibious operations in the future. Furthermore, the SDR states that the Royal Navy will need to move forward a so-called hybrid carrier airwing incorporating crewed fighters, unmanned systems and rotary.
Throughout, the review speaks of greater integration of UAVs. However, at the moment, the UK falls behind our peers in our adoption of drones. Last year, the Government scrapped the Watchkeeper drones used by the Army. In his Statement to the other place announcing that last year, the Secretary of State for Defence wrote:
“Following the retirement of Watchkeeper Mk 1, the Army will rapidly switch to a new advanced capability, drawing on the most recent operational lessons and technological developments”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/11/24; col. 239WS.]
How will the Government rapidly switch to a new drone capability? Have they begun the procurement process for expanding our drone capabilities? They must purchase one-way attack drones and unmanned combat aircraft as a matter of urgency. Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine has demonstrated the rapidly changing war-fighting dynamic. As things stand, the UK is being left behind.
Furthermore, there is a significant issue with Typhoon. It was reported last year that production of Typhoon aircraft at the Warton factory was grinding to a halt due to a lack of orders. BAE reports that there are some orders in the works, but crucially, none of them from the MoD. This is concerning given that the RAF does not currently possess any Tranche 4 Typhoons. Germany, Italy, Qatar and Spain all have Tranche 4 fighters, but the UK does not. Again, this is an area where we are falling behind. A recent MoD press release stated that Typhoons are going to be the “backbone” of the RAF well into the next decade. If this is so, our current fleet of Typhoons will soon become outdated. The Eurofighter consortium has even released the Tranche 4 plus and Tranche 5 aircraft. Purchasing the latest Typhoons is crucial. If the factory in Warton does not receive new orders imminently, we risk the possibility of job losses at the site. Those incredibly skilled individuals will be central to our ability to build global combat air programme fighters in the future. We must maintain a sovereign manufacturing capability. New Typhoon orders would not only shore up the factory in Warton, thereby securing jobs and skills, but would ensure that the RAF can face the threats of the future.
My noble friend Lady Goldie mentioned the role of the space domain, as did other noble Lords. I will pick up on one point. Footnote 90 of the review notes that the previous Government established the National Space Council, recognising the importance of space to the future of our defence, but that it was not reconstituted after the 2024 election. It recommends that there should be a reinvigorated Cabinet sub-committee to set the strategic approach to space. Will the Government follow through on this and, if so, when? As always, this has been an invigorating debate on an important review, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Coaker) (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great privilege to wind up this debate, which has been, as usual, of a very high standard and very interesting. I start by saying to my noble friend Lord McCabe that we came into the other place at the same time, and we have followed each other. I slightly smiled when he said that he found it quite sedate in here: that has not been my experience. So our paths have finally diverged. It was an excellent, outstanding maiden speech, and we all both enjoyed and learned from it. What was particularly powerful was his ending, when he spoke about British values and the importance of those to our debate today. We all welcome him and wish him good luck with his career here.
I also say to my noble friend Lord Robertson that it would be remiss of us not to thank him formally from the Government Front Bench, along with General Barrons and Fiona Hill, for the work that they did, plus all the other people that he mentioned. It is a hugely important report. It challenges the Government, the country and our alliances as to how we move forward. In our parliamentary scrutiny here, noble Lords have accepted the premise of the report in this debate, but the challenge for the Government is how they take forward the recommendations that they have accepted in full and how they make them a reality, which is the important task for all of us.
The truth is that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, and from the Liberal Front Bench, the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said, and as all of us recognise, this report would be important whenever it was written. But the fact that it is written in 2025, with all the challenges that we see: with the war in Ukraine, other challenges such as the stresses and strains in the Indo-Pacific, the change in the nature of warfare, cyberwarfare and with the need for homeland resilience—which I will come to in a minute—we see that all those issues are of crucial importance.
One thing that I have said, which many noble Lords have said in this Chamber, is that we are debating issues now—let alone the Cold War legacy with respect to money—that we never thought we would be debating again: war in Europe and threats to the homeland and attacks on it. Four, five, six years ago—you can argue about the number of years—many of us would have found that difficult to predict. That is what makes the report so important.
I will start to deal with some of the points that have been made. I apologise in advance if I do not answer every single question; no offence is meant to any particular contribution that has been made. If anybody wishes to take anything up afterwards in particular, I will be very happy to meet them and discuss that.
On money and trajectory, as mentioned by the noble Baronesses, Lady Goldie and Lady Smith, the noble Earl, Lord Courtown, the noble Lords, Lord Purvis, Lord De Mauley, Lord Soames, Lord Dannatt, Lord Hannay, Lord Stevens, and many others, and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup—I will come particularly to the point about urgency—I will say this as a starting point. When the Government came into power, we were spending 2.3%. The demand then was about when the Government were going to spend 2.5%. Up until three or four months ago, I was being criticised in this Chamber for not committing the Government to 2.5%. I do not say this in my defence because at the time, all of us thought we needed to get to 2.5% and that the debate would then be about where it would go to after that. For a Government taking decisions about proper financial and fiscal management, these are difficult decisions—I will come to the national conversation about that in a moment—but clearly that was the debate then.
At that time the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, was demanding more, as were others, but also talking about the urgency of it. So we got to 2.5%, and then it came to, “What about this and what about that?” I say to the noble Baroness, and I do not often do this, because we all know that sometimes press releases reflect a particular point of view, that I thought the press release that came out from No. 10 Downing Street specifically outlined the agreement to meet the NATO commitment in 2035—my noble friend Lord Robertson referred to that commitment. Specifically, that was not the Government making the figure up; it was NATO, demanding of each and every one of its individual countries to come to a 5% commitment by 2035. Is the trajectory clear as to exactly how that will be arrived at? It is not, and it says in the press release that the trajectory will need to be thought through. NATO itself has said it will need to come back to that.
The importance of the 5% figure in the debate we are having—I will come to national resilience in a minute—is, of course, that 3.5% is for core defence. I take the point of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, about urgency, but 3.5% is the NATO figure for core defence. The demand from all of us, and from the report by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, is, what about national resilience, national security and critical national infrastructure? That is why, for the first time, it is included in the NATO target.
The press release was released on the same day as the national security strategy, which is a hugely important document. These are the words of our Prime Minister. In the same way that Prime Minister Sunak would have made commitments, you have to believe that, when your Prime Minister puts something as explicitly as this, he means it. The Prime Minister said:
“That’s why I have made the commitment to spend 5% of GDP on national security. This is an opportunity to deepen our commitment to NATO and drive greater investment in the nation’s wider security and”,
as I said to my noble friend Lord Harris, resilience.
The argument will be that this needs to happen sooner, and people will ask, when will it happen, how are we going to pay for it and what will we do with the money? Those debates and discussions will have to take place, but the commitment is there. A year ago, I would not have said that the British Government would commit to 5% on national security and defence. I am delighted that that commitment is now there, as I am sure nearly everyone in this House is, because it is responding to the changed context and more dangerous world in which we operate. That is a real and important commitment, and I look forward to all the noble Lords whose names I read out, including the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, talking to us about the urgency of the situation and asking when it will happen.
The noble Lords, Lord Purvis, Lord De Mauley, Lord Soames, Lord Hennessy, Lord Howell, Lord Alderdice and Lord Tugendhat, and my noble friends Lord Harris and Lady Goudie, who made a very important point about women, spoke about the whole-society approach and the need for us to defend underwater sea cables. The noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, asked whether it is a 360-degree approach. The answer is yes—there is not much point defending sea cables in one place and being vulnerable somewhere else. Defending them, as the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, pointed out, is crucial. We are looking, within the defence review, at how we do that.
I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, that part of the issue about spending is that we have to be clear about what we will spend the money on. That is what the defence review is for. We will bring forward a defence investment plan in the autumn. Those discussions are taking place now.
The noble Earl brought forward the point about drones. Of course we need more attack and surveillance drones, and we need to develop our small and medium-sized enterprises to do that, but what is the balance between our drones and the number of tanks, fighter aircraft and ships that we have, or indeed the type of ships that we have? What do we do about radar and all the other technology we need? Of course we have to spend that money, but we also have to make sure that we spend it wisely and appropriately on things that will make a real difference. There will be a debate and discussion about that. I suspect that if we had that debate in here now and I said, “There’s £10 billion. What are you going to spend it on?”, there would quite rightly be a discussion about that. The important thing is that there is a rationale to it that delivers the strategic objectives that this country, with its allies, wants not only in Europe but across the world.
On the defence readiness Bill, I will have to resort to the traditional formula when you do not really know, which is “when parliamentary time allows”, but we are developing it. The important point is that a defence readiness Bill is being prepared and there is ongoing consultation on it, and we will come forward with it when we can.
On the national conversation point, I cannot think of anything more crucial. Sometimes I feel a bit more optimistic about it. One reason is that we just need to be a bit more creative. The relationship between the public and the Armed Forces, when we have things like VE Day, as we had, or last night’s military extravaganza on Horse Guards Parade, which I attended with thousands of the public and people from other countries watching the musicians and the other things that were taking place, is very strong. The noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, and others—the noble Lords, Lord Soames, Lord Harlech, Lord Glenarthur, Lord Bailey and Lord Wallace—have mentioned the point about cadets. At many of the Armed Forces events that I go to, there are, if not thousands, numerous young people and cadets there, and that is in every region of the country. I was in Northern Ireland recently and there were lots of young people at the Armed Forces event, and no doubt when I go to the military tattoo in Edinburgh in a couple of weeks’ time there will be lots of young people there.
So that relationship is there, and we need to be more creative and think more about how we talk about the fact that, while that relationship is important, there is also the serious matter of what we have to have our Armed Forces for. Maybe we need to think more creatively about the fact that the Armed Forces are also about the deployment of hard power and the service that we need.
I apologise to the noble Lords, Lord De Mauley and Lord Harlech; I have promised a meeting about the future of the reserves. I very much appreciate their thoughts about how to deliver the target with respect to reserves, which are exceedingly important, when we move forward. I take the point about the estate and about parity, which the noble Lords and others have mentioned. We need to think about how we do that. The defence investment plan will have competing priorities, but maybe that will be one of the ways forward.
The noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, made the point about soft power. In the report by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, there is a specific commitment to a defence diplomacy strategy, which we will deliver in due course. That will be about soft power and will take forward many of the other things that are particularly important.
The noble Lords, Lord Stevens and Lord Hannay, and the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, all mentioned soft power, as did the noble Lord, Lord Bates, along with the importance of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. We have a real commitment to that treaty. We will try to take it forward and try to stop the expansion and proliferation of nuclear weapons—the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, mentioned Iran and North Korea—and we will take action in respect of all that. We do that within the context of believing that our own independent nuclear deterrent is essential to the defence of our own country and the defence of the alliances to which we belong, and we will continue to do that.
I also take the point about the reinvigoration of the P5 in the context—I think the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, or the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, made this point as well—of us being allowed to have nuclear weapons under the international laws and treaties that allow that. There is still a responsibility upon us to continue to ensure that things are as stable as they can be. So I take the point mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, notwithstanding the point that at present our posture remains the same.
I should have also mentioned the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, about health. I take that point, about the necessity of individual health; it is really important.
Various noble Lords mentioned the regions of the world. The noble Lord, Lord Purvis, mentioned the western Balkans. I met the Defence Minister from North Macedonia the day before yesterday. It is a new member of NATO, as noble Lords will know. We talked about the importance of the western Balkans and, as others will know, the importance of Bosnia. The noble Baroness will know that I met two of the three Presidents from Bosnia. We continue to understand the importance of that region.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, that we have said very clearly that we have a NATO-first policy, but not a NATO-only policy. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Soames, that we recognise the importance of Estonia and the Baltic states, which are right on the front line. I was talking to the ambassador from Finland, another country with an extensive border with Russia, only last night. As JEF nations, they know the commitment we have to them. Obviously, choices are sometimes made about the movement of various military units but, at the same time, our commitment to them remains absolute. I thank him for raising the point about NATO.
The noble Lord, Lord Howell, made the point about NATO first, the Commonwealth, and not NATO only. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, spoke about alliances and the importance of Europe as well as NATO, and we count that.
The noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, has always mentioned Japan. He will know the importance of Japan to us with the GCAP treaty. He knows that the carrier strike group is going there in the not-too-distant future.
I say to others that, notwithstanding the unreliability—as some have put it—of the US, we see the US as our strongest partner. It is a crucial relationship, and we will continue to maintain it.
The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, mentioned procurement. We understand the need for change there. We hope the new armaments director will make the difference. The noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, made the point about the need for sovereign capability, and she and I have been in discussions about the space launch possibility. We can continue to discuss that. The noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, also spoke about the importance of space, as did other noble Lords. We will continue to take that forward. I have covered a number of points. I want to leave myself a minute at the end to take up something, but noble Lords made other points. If I have missed anything, I will deal with it.
I want to come to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy. I have never had the privilege to meet him, but he talked about where we should finish in this debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Helic, spoke about law and order and the international rules-based order, as did many others. The noble Baroness, Lady Hogg, referred to it as well. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, said that the Prime Minister and the Defence Secretary have not mentioned it. I have not heard that. I think the Prime Minister has mentioned it a lot, as have most senior politicians in this country, and as has nearly every noble Lord I see in here. Maybe that is what the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, had just reminded us about. Increasingly, this Parliament and our leaders have said clearly that we are at a crossroads. Every now and again history brings crossroads, and we are at one of them now. The international rules-based order is facing a challenge from various countries, and sometimes you have to stand up.
That is why people have, in many cases, talked about the importance of deterrence and the awfulness of sometimes having to prepare for war to stop war. That is one of the places we are in now. I am proud of our Parliament. We are standing on the shoulders of giants in what we are trying to do: the leadership we have provided in Ukraine under both the last Government and this Government, and the various attempts now to rearm to get the defence industry and the war-fighting capability that we need—however we have got to this particular point and whatever the reasons for that. I think that if those people from the past looked at us now, they would say, “At last, they’ve woken up and are now trying to take the actions that they should have been taking”.
Why are we doing this? It is because, at the end of the day, we all believe in our democracy, in the values we stand for, in freedom and in the rights of women across the world. We want those values and rights to be available in our country and our continent, and we want to stand with like-minded peoples across the world. That has been our history. That is part of our culture, and we have always stood, and will continue to stand, for that.
It is a privilege to meet the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, even if it is in this strange way. I thank him for reminding us that, sometimes, we have to go back to why we do things and why we bother. We bother because the democracy, freedom and values that we stand for are as important now as they ever have been.
Baroness Coussins (CB)
Will the noble Lord be kind enough to write to me with his response to my points on the Defence Academy and the issue to do with Afghan interpreters?
Lord Hacking (Lab)
On behalf of all of us, I thank my noble friend for his excellent speech. To follow the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, it was very reassuring of my noble friend to make the further NATO commitment to raise our defence expenditure to 5% by 2035. But these are peacetime calculations, and if—
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
Can the noble Lord please sit down? This intervention is not appropriate: the winding speeches are now done and the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, will respond. Thank you.
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen (Lab)
I congratulate my noble friend Lord McCabe on his striking maiden speech. We look forward to hearing more from him in the future. He comes from Port Glasgow, like the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie. Admiral West—the noble Lord, Lord West—comes from Clydebank, and I come from Dunoon, so the Firth of Clyde has become the new deep state in the House of Lords.
Secondly, I understand that the contribution by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol, early in the debate, was her last speech in the House of Lords. Although she did not classify it as a valedictory, it actually was the last speech. On behalf of all Members of the House, I thank her for her service to the House and wish her well in her retirement.
I turn to the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy. The Minister has dealt with him, and we welcome him back in this brief episode today. He was uncharacteristically unkind to the review by saying that it had no poetry in it. One of the characteristics of this review is that it is extremely well written. It reads well, even for the non-expert.
The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, came up to me the other day in Millbank House to say that he had read it completely. He said that it was very impressive, very readable and very effective, and, “There is not a single split infinitive in it”. So there we have the judgment of the former Archbishop of York on it. It really has been beautifully drafted, to make sure that we get the message over. We are passionate about the issues, warnings and threats and the need for what will have to be done, but our concern was that it had to be said in a language that people outside of this bubble could understand, and that has been done. I paid a tribute earlier to our chief drafter, Ashlee Godwin, who works for the House of Commons Library. She was the brain behind the readability.
We have talked about the money. I dealt with that at the beginning, and I believe that the Prime Minister has made it clear exactly what will have to be done. But the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, made an interesting point. He said that it is not about whether there is enough money or whether it will be executed, but that the question is: do we mean it? That is an important question. We are telling the British people that they are not safe. We are telling them that we are underprepared, and that we collectively have left them underprepared. They are underinsured, because defence expenditure is the insurance policy of the nation against the future. We need to get that in place and win that argument as well.
Sir Basil Liddell Hart, a great strategist of the Second World War, once said that the outcome of the battle is more likely to be determined
“in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men”.
Deterrence is therefore a matter of psychology. It is a matter of persuading any adversary, whoever that adversary might be—and there are adversaries out there—that we will defend ourselves, our nation and our values. That is what this report is about. It is a warning that we are not safe but also a prescription for how we can be safer in the future.
If the question, “Is there a threat?”, has to be asked, you have only to watch the television every night to see what is happening in Ukraine. Of course, I dealt with Vladimir Putin in the good days. I am one of the few people still alive who can stand by an open window and talk about Vladimir Putin’s sense of humour—something that seems to have completely disappeared as the megalomania has taken over. That is what it represents.
In many ways, Ukraine is the last war. We keep talking about how people are fascinated and obsessed by the last war, not the next war. Ukraine might be the last war. The next war will be nastier and more brutal, and we need to be ready for it. We must try, through building deterrence and war-readiness, to deter any future adversary from taking on the British nation, because the costs of war will always be much greater than the costs of preventing it and building deterrence.
That is what this review is all about, and we need to get that message over to the British people so that it becomes a much more important issue for them. It will be too late if the lights go out, the hospitals close, the data centres melt because the air conditioning has been turned off, and the people turn on us collectively and say, “Why the hell didn’t you do something about it before now?” This is a warning, but that warning has to be heeded. I beg to move.