King’s Speech

Lord Hintze Excerpts

Thursday 21st May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hintze (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow—and more to the point, to listen to—the noble Lord, Lord McDonald of Salford. Here, I must declare an interest: Salford City, his namesake, is this Monday fighting for promotion from League Two to League One against the wonderful Notts County. Let us hope we win—and I declare an interest in that result.

Let me go back to something more to the point. I welcome the renewed commitments to defence spending and NATO, but we absolutely cannot ignore the recent observations of the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, of “corrosive complacency” in government on defence, and his warning that

“we cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget”.

Politics is about choice and government is about priorities.

The first duty of government is defence of the realm. Before every other programme stands the obligation to keep the nation safe. We are living in a very dangerous world; many Peers have already spoken to that point. The peace dividend that we saw in 1989 has been spent—it is gone. We face a belligerent Russia, an expanding China, instability in the Middle East, a contested Indo-Pacific, cyber attacks, economic coercion and hybrid threats that respect no borders—and we have not even talked about international criminality. In a world such as this, defence is not one departmental claim among many but the foundation on which every other claim rests.

Unfortunately, for too long, successive Governments have treated defence as a residual claimant on the public purse. I am sick and tired of hearing politicians from the other place, and potentially from here, blaming the Treasury. This is nonsense. “Blame yourselves. You are in charge, you have been elected. I am sick of this. You cannot blame the Treasury; that is enough.”

Britain is not a poor country. We are the fifth-largest economy in the world. We have science, innovation, the City, universities, the legal system, Lloyd’s of London, our leading AI practitioners, alliances and the history to be the great power that we are. We are a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, a founder of NATO, Five Eyes, AUKUS, the G7, the G20 and the Commonwealth, and we lead the Joint Expeditionary Force. We are a nuclear power. Please, let us just get a grip here.

Britain is in fact a great power, and we have obligations. But greatness is not an inheritance; it must be nurtured. We comfort ourselves with talk of soft power. Enough of this. Soft power without hard power is no power at all. We are not the Vatican, in case anybody has missed the point. We cannot simply will stability, deterrence, freedom of navigation and support for our allies while failing to train people and to provide the ships, aircraft, munitions, and the industrial capacity and resilience to fight and win.

This is a question of priorities. The state has the obligation to protect the vulnerable, undoubtedly, but we cannot become a transfer economy in which welfare drifts from a safety net—an important safety net—into a very unpleasant way of life. It is unfair to working people, it is corrosive to society and it is divisive. Everyone wants to blame every other party around here—“Look at these guys, look at those guys”—but the corrosion starts from within.

Let me give one illustration: the Motability scheme. For many, it is a vital and good scheme, but its scale and scope have ballooned beyond being a true safety net for the vulnerable. The latest figures show there are 875,000 vehicles on the road. At roughly £25,000 per vehicle, this is £21.9 billion of national resource deployed. Using Babcock numbers of £250 million to build a core Type 31 frigate, that sum is equivalent to over 87 frigates. So, when we ask, “Where are our frigates?”, we can see where they are—they are travelling around our roads.

This is a choice that we have made to expand entitlements at the expense of the safety of the nation. We need a new settlement and we need some backbone. The question is not whether Britain can afford to remain a great power—we can and we are; the question is whether we choose to be. With that, I end with my previous question: where are our frigates? They are in the priorities that we and prior Governments have chosen, and, frankly, it is time to choose again.

Armed Forces: Resilience

Lord Hintze Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hintze (Con) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend Lord Strathclyde and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, for generously acting as my supporters. I thank all Members on both sides of the House for their welcome and courtesy towards me. Kafka said:

“Before the Law a doorkeeper stands on guard.”


He was certainly right in that respect. This House would not function without the doorkeepers and ushers, and I am deeply grateful for their guidance and good humour.

The clergyman and essayist Sydney Smith wrote:

“I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so.”


Similar sentiments can be levelled at those who comment on your Lordships’ House without knowing very much about what it actually does. I fear that that may even relate to those who should know better.

Scrutiny is a key function of this House, but it also exemplifies something critical to the freedoms we enjoy today: namely, the difference between being governed and being ruled. Goethe was right to say:

“To rule is easy, to govern difficult.”


To be governed is to have a voice. In the case of your Lordships’ House, it is also to act as a constraint on what the late, learned Lord Hailsham termed the “elective dictatorship” of the other place, but without competing against it.

That your Lordships’ House is ever vigilant over the precious mandate entrusted to it is critical. I am all the more aware of that inheritance for not having been born on these shores. I was born in China, after my family were forced out of Russia following the revolution. A change of regime there sent us on the move once again, making my family and me refugees. We found a new home in Australia, when I was only a few months old. It is a country I continue to hold dear, and it is worth noting that today is Australia Day, 26 January. I came to the United Kingdom in 1984; it is a country that has allowed me to thrive and that has always been seen as the paradigm of parliamentary democracy, good governance and fairness. I feel deeply honoured to have been able to serve on a number of its great institutions, and to continue to do so.

I have always had an interest in politics and, to be clear, given my family’s history—which, if anyone wants, we can discuss over a beer—I have always had an acute interest in geopolitics. The world is becoming more complex and dangerous. That is exacerbated furthermore by climate change, which not only is very real but presents its own security challenges. Though having qualified in science and engineering, my career for the last 40 years has been in global finance, and I am deeply aware that economics is intrinsic to the effectiveness and well-being of the country.

I declare an interest as an honorary captain in the Royal Naval Reserve and as a former captain in the Australian regular army, where I served in the Royal Australian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. For our civil society to function, it is critical for it to be served by professional Armed Forces. Their sense of service and duty is exemplified by my friend—and I do mean friend—the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Peach, with whom I share this maiden speech day.

The ability to legislate freely is something many take for granted. We should feel blessed, rather than burdened, that we have a solid constitution with checks and balances, built up by precedents and the lived experience of generations over centuries. That is not easy; it is protected by our exceptionally professional, ethical and effective Armed Forces, who are there by consent, commanding the respect of the nation, our allies and the world.

My noble friend Lord Robathan is correct to highlight the issue of resilience. Support for the Armed Forces at this time is an absolute priority, and, for our services to be effective, we must also ensure that service families are adequately cared for. I was delighted to note the announcement of a revised families strategy. I declare another interest as a patron of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines Charity.

The ambitions set out in the Command Paper, Defence in a Competitive Age, underline the range of threats we face. It is well known that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, but that vigilance is not free. Given what we see in Europe currently, it is not contentious to say that the world is becoming increasingly challenging, complex and dangerous. The UK’s regular place at or near the top of annual soft power surveys is something to be proud of, but soft power without hard power is, frankly, no power at all. The integrated review aims to

“create armed forces that are both prepared for warfighting and more persistently engaged worldwide”.

It is right; it is time to invest more, not less. One thing is very sure: complacency is not an option.

I thank noble Lords for welcoming me. I sincerely hope that I will add constructively to your Lordships’ House, and I have every intention of doing so with the courtesy and graciousness I have seen in others here.