UK–EU Defence and Security Co-operation

Debate between Lord Browne of Ladyton and Lord Coaker

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Ladyton]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the state of UK–EU defence and security co-operation.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Coaker) (Lab)]

My Lords, on 19 May, the UK and the EU agreed a landmark security and defence partnership, delivering on our manifesto pledge to strengthen European security, support growth and reinforce NATO. This partnership marks a renewed era of co-operation on issues such as Ukraine, military mobility and maritime security. Additionally, it allows for potential UK participation in the EU SAFE regulation, indicating the strength of UK-EU defence and security co-operation.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, noble Lords will recollect that, in February 2018 at the Munich Security Conference, the noble Baroness, Lady May of Maidenhead, then Prime Minister, urged European Union leaders to

“forge a new security partnership with the UK after Brexit”.

The EU-UK defence and security partnership—I imagine entirely coincidentally established in May—is testament to a mutual recognition that we must work together to deepen the resilience of our collective security. The FCDO has already been briefed on the European Leadership Network’s proposal for an annual EU-UK strategic forum, which would work to deepen defence and security co-operation, assessing emerging threats and ensuring that we pool capacity as needed. Does my noble friend the Minister agree that such a forum is desirable, and would he further agree to meet me and the ELN senior management team to discuss how the MoD could engage in this process too?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I will always agree to meet noble Lords, and I will of course meet my noble friend to discuss the particular point that he raises and how he might take forward his proposal with respect to the European leadership forum. Let me add the important point that the UK Government establishing a new security and defence arrangement with the EU, in the troubled times that we face in Europe and beyond, is a real step forward for this country, complementing the work that we do with NATO.

Air Defence Capabilities

Debate between Lord Browne of Ladyton and Lord Coaker

Thursday 9th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for raising the incredibly important subject of air defence. She is quite right to point out the impact on Ukraine; 12,000 missiles have been fired at Ukraine by Russia, showing the importance of air defence now. It has been raised in report after report. I will of course write to her and put a copy in the Library, as a current stocktake of where we are, but we are already taking action. We are seeing the development of ORCUS and anti-drone technology to protect airfields; the enhancement of Sea Viper, which is the T45 missile that allows us to defend against ballistic missiles; and developments such as the DIAMOND initiative, which is bringing European countries together to get a ground-based air missile defence system. A number of initiatives are already being taken, but I agree with the noble Baroness. I will write to her so that we have a stocktake of that and so that the information is available to all Members of this House.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, members of the International Relations and Defence Committee—those in the last Parliament and those members of the committee as reformed in this Parliament—will be aware that on 8 May 2024, two months before the general election, as part of its inquiry designed to learn lessons from the conflict in Ukraine, the committee published evidence from Northrop Grumman, arguably the key MoD defence contractor on missile and air defence capability, which was persuasive to the committee and to others who will read it. It suggested that the UK’s air and missile defence capability was

“limited, to the point of being negligible”

because of persistent underinvestment. The inquiry had to report without the benefit of ministerial wisdom about how this legacy black hole was going to be filled because the Secretary of State, Grant Shapps, refused clearance for Ministers and officials to testify. Will the Minister join me in encouraging Members of your Lordships’ House to read the response of this Government to that report, because it deals with this issue in significant detail?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for his question. Of course I will encourage Members to read the Government’s response to that report. I say to him, all Members of this House and others that the report was an important wake-up call to us about the importance of air defence in the future. Let us remember where we were. This country assumed that we needed to defend ourselves against the Soviet Union and bombers. We are now in a totally different situation where we face a 360-degree threat. The launch of missiles could come from a variety of launch systems, and we need to protect ourselves against not only missiles but drones, as we have seen with what may or may not have happened with respect to various bases. It is an important wake-up call not only for us but for Europe that air defence will become one of the critical systems that we will need to make available to ourselves and our country. Our population need to understand that homeland defence is also now of crucial importance to us all.

Afghan Special Forces Relocation Review

Debate between Lord Browne of Ladyton and Lord Coaker

Tuesday 15th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

The short answer is that, if I were my noble friend, I would write to me, and I will pass it on to the appropriate Minister and ensure that it is properly looked at. As I said to the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, if noble Lords write to me on individual cases, I will ensure that, if neither I nor the appropriate Minister in the Ministry of Defence is dealing with it, it goes to the appropriate Minister to ensure that there is a proper response.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, I too welcome this Statement and am pleased that the right thing has been done for a significant number of these brave men who supported us in Afghanistan. However, I cannot help but reflect that, had the previous Government had their way, some of them may not have been in a position to take advantage of this because they would have been in Rwanda.

On this specific issue about evidence of employment, on 12 December 2023, in the context of a repeat of a UQ from the other place, I asked the following question, which I will read in short, in the interest of time:

“My Lords, in responding to a question about specific individuals in the other place, the Armed Forces Minister told the House that His Majesty’s Government ‘do not have the employment records of the Afghan special forces’”—


that was a quotation from the Commons Official Report. I went on to say:

“Today, I was informed by a very reliable source that, until at least August 2021, our embassy in Kabul held nominal records for members of CF333 and ATF444, for the purposes of … pay”. —[Official Report, 12/12/23; col. 1817.]

In response, the then Minister undertook to search for these records that he said he had no knowledge existed. When were these records recovered? If these are not the records that have caused this dramatic development in the ability of these reviews to produce the sort of results that we have, where in this Government were the records that justify the refusal of the relocation of these brave men until they were discovered? When were they discovered, and why were they kept back? There could not have been any part of the Government that did not know that they needed to be brought forward to a review that was announced two months later.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for his interesting question. On the basis of the information I have and the briefings we have had, I can tell him that the information became available after the start of the review on 1 February 2024. In the context of the weeks and months after that review, that was when the evidence of direct employment records became available. There was a failure of different government systems in different government departments to share information —the digital records were not shared, and different government departments were not talking to each other. I do not have the exact date for when that was discovered, but it was after 1 February. If further information should be made available to my noble friend in consequence of his question, I will write to him and place a copy in the Library.