Strategic Defence Review 2025

Baroness Goldie Excerpts

Friday 18th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[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.