Strategic Defence Review 2025

Baroness Hogg Excerpts

Friday 18th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[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.