EU Security Action for Europe Programme
Lord Teverson Excerpts(1 week, 1 day ago)
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Lord Teverson
To ask His Majesty’s Government what recent steps they have taken to explore the UK’s participation in the EU’s Security Action for Europe programme.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Coaker) (Lab)
My Lords, the Government entered SAFE negotiations in good faith, but will only enter into agreements that are in the national interest. While no SAFE agreement was reached, we remain committed to EU co-operation under “NATO first”, whether through SAFE or other initiatives. It makes sense for Europe to work more closely together. In this context, we welcome the UK’s participation in the EU’s €90 billion Ukraine support loan, announced last week.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, I also very much welcome that announcement and I agree that the price tag from the EU was totally unreasonable on the first round. The fact that the defence sector in Europe is divided is an indication of weakness in the West and a gift to Putin. Will the Minister and the Government renew their efforts to find a sensible solution to joining SAFE? If the Canadians can, surely the United Kingdom can.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
Of course, we remain committed to co-operating where it is in the national interest to do so, as I said. The noble Lord is right to point out that it is in all our interests for Europe to co-operate on industry and defence to generate the interoperability that we need to cope with any threat from Russia. That takes place within the overall umbrella of NATO. As he and all noble Lords know, the defence industry is a vital component of any means by which we deter any adversary; for them to believe that we can arm and supply the troops we put on the front line is crucial.
Defence Investment Plan
Lord Teverson Excerpts(3 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Lord Coaker (Lab)
I cannot give the noble Baroness an assurance about what the Republic will pay for, but let me just say that there has been improved and increasing co-operation between the Republic and ourselves where it is in both our interests to do so. She will know that underwater cables and underwater infrastructure are important to the Republic and to the whole of the UK, so it is in both of our interests to work together. I cannot give her a commitment about paying for that, but I can give her the commitment that there is increasing co-operation and working together to deliver the shared objectives we would all have.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
Indeed, as I said to the noble Baroness, of course we need a conversation to more fully and carefully explain to the public why we need to increase our expenditure on defence and security and, alongside that, to help them to understand why that might mean changed priorities for budgets within the sort of priorities that people would have. Whether that means less spending on this area or that area of government, I think we would all agree that the increase for defence and security is essential, and there will be difficult decisions ahead. As part of resolving that, we need to talk openly to the British people.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, one of the unfortunate realities is that the United States is moving away from the defence of Europe. Whether we like it or not, this is not just for this Administration; it is a danger that is likely to happen in future as well as the US looks to the Pacific. We understand that, and we understand that Europe should take more effect of its defence, but there are a number of capabilities that are not replaceable if the United States is not there—strategic airlift, a lot of the space intelligence, ISR and missile defence. I see nothing in this strategy or this expenditure report that tries to replace that. Clearly, one sovereign nation cannot do that, so how does Europe, together perhaps with Canada, ensure that we can defend ourselves into the future?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
There is a lot in the strategic defence review and the Defence Investment Plan about building up a greater sovereign capability in some of the areas that the noble Lord has addressed. But I think it is important in every debate to say that the alliance between the United States and our country and the alliance between the United States and Europe, notwithstanding the fact that the President has called for Europe to do more for itself, is absolutely essential to the defence and security of our country. The noble Lord may disagree, but I am telling him what the Government’s view is. The Government’s view—and, I am sure, the view of the vast majority of your Lordships’ House—regards the alliance between ourselves and the United States as absolutely essential for the security of this nation, so we have to be very careful about that. Of course there are challenges and difficulties, but the document refers to how we build up some of the capabilities to which the noble Lord refers. Of course Europe needs to do more, but it also needs to stand with the United States, not only in Europe but across the globe.
Ukraine and Wider Operational Update
Lord Teverson Excerpts(6 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Coaker (Lab)
I have no knowledge at all of any commitment by Russia regarding the points the noble Lord made. On the American commitment to the discussions and the declaration of intent in Paris last week, it was very significant that people such as Steve Witkoff were saying how strong those commitments were and how much they welcomed them. That is extremely important. The Americans’ part in any security guarantee is really important and something we will continue to work on. As the noble Lord says, the fact that there was such high-level American representation is hugely significant.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, let us be quite clear that Mr Putin does not want a ceasefire under any circumstances—it is not going to happen. Without wanting to sound trite, I pay tribute to the armed forces of Ukraine, which are defending our freedom in Europe with their lives, blood and treasure. I am sure we all agree with that, but it is worth saying again.
The question I want to ask is slightly different. It strikes me that, over the past 12 or 18 months, when it comes to propaganda, Ukraine and its right cause has been on the defensive. During 2025, the Russian forces occupied a further 1%, to the nearest percentage point, I believe, of Ukrainian territory, with huge and obscene losses of their own troops and population, yet we still have the feeling that the White House understands that Ukraine has no cards, the cause is lost, and there is no future in successfully stopping Putin from winning. It is all very difficult, but those are the facts of military change over the past year. What are the Minister’s thoughts on how we can reverse some of that feeling, so that we can be more positive about what Ukraine is achieving in its work and its firepower and that side of the conflict? How can we change the narrative?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
That is an important question. I join the noble Lord in congratulating the Ukrainian armed forces, and acknowledge the stoicism and bravery of the Ukrainian people for resisting in the way that they have.
Whatever the debate about defence investment and how much we should be spending, we should remember what we actually are doing. Notwithstanding the difficulties and challenges that Ukraine faces in re-equipping and so on, we should remind ourselves that Russia was not expecting to be in the position that it is now. When it attacked, it was expecting to take Kyiv within a few days, put a puppet Government in place and have a vassal state. That was the intention. Has Russia been successful in doing that? Not at all. Instead of saying that this is where we are now, sometimes you need to go back and look at what the original objective was. I say to this House, this Parliament and this country that Russia has totally failed in its original objective. Ultimately, it has failed because of the bravery of the Ukrainian people and the support that most countries have given to them.
What else did Russia expect? It expected NATO to be weakened and implode. What has happened? Notwithstanding the discussions we have had about the United States, NATO has been strengthened. Who would have said at the beginning of the conflict that Finland and Sweden would join NATO? They have, and that has strengthened NATO. As well as looking at the challenges and difficulties that we face, we ought to remind ourselves sometimes about what has been done and is working well. Russia has failed in its original objectives, and we should remind people of that.
Undersea Internet Cables
Lord Teverson Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Rawlings
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the cutting of undersea internet cables in the Baltic Sea in November 2024.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Rawlings, and with her permission, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in her name on the Order Paper.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Coaker) (Lab)
My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Vallance stated on 3 December 2024, we continue to work closely with international partners following the breakage of subsea telecommunications cables in the Baltic Sea on 17 and 18 November 2024. We must let those investigations run their course.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. He will be aware that on Christmas Day, the “Eagle S”, a Cook Islands-registered vessel and part of the Russian shadow oil tanker fleet, cut more cables in the Baltic Sea. I am delighted that the Finnish coastguard authorities arrested that vessel while it was still in international waters and brought it to port. Do the UK Government applaud the Finnish authorities’ reaction to that, as I do, and would they act similarly in UK coastal waters?
Decommissioned Nuclear-Powered Submarines
Lord Teverson Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Lord Coaker (Lab)
We will understand that more fully once we have finished the demonstrator project with HMS “Swiftsure”.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, the Minister says—it is not his fault—that the new nuclear submarines will not be delivered for another six years, yet the current length of patrols for the Astute class is getting longer. The crews have to cope with long periods of being away from their families and their homes. There is also stress around the recruitment of those crews. How do we square the circle over the next five or six years when, because of the maintenance of the current fleet, the length of patrols is likely to get even longer?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
Let me just say to the noble Lord that everything that happens is now my responsibility. If I gave the impression that it was not my responsibility, that certainly was not my intention. I will not evade responsibility for anything.
On the noble Lord’s question, I am not going to go into the operations of our submarine fleet in great detail on the Floor of this House, for obvious reasons. However, the noble Lord makes a point, as he has done here previously, about the welfare of submariners—indeed, the welfare of all our Armed Forces. That is something we take very seriously. We are looking to do all we can to support them and ensure that they are supported in the way they should be. In a few months’ time, or a year’s time, perhaps the noble Lord can ask the same question, and we will see whether we have made the progress we should have done; that will be my responsibility.
Combat Air Capability
Lord Teverson Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Lord Coaker (Lab)
Well, I do not know about that, but the use of drones will of course become increasingly important. With respect to the noble Lord’s suggestion, I am sure that people have heard it and will consider it in due course.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, is the Minister confident that we can keep one Vanguard submarine at sea at all times, given the strain there is on crew and our loss of crew because of the increasingly long time each mission has to take because of maintenance of the rest of the fleet?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
This is a very important question and there should be no confusion here. The noble Lord is talking about the UK’s nuclear deterrent. That forms an important part of our deterrent. We are absolutely 100% certain that we will retain a constant at-sea nuclear deterrent presence. That needs to be heard from this Chamber and across the globe. There is no way that we will in any way allow our nuclear deterrent to be compromised. That needs to be heard loud and clear.
King’s Speech
Lord Teverson Excerpts(2 years ago)
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Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, first, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for giving the list of European issues. To me, it was actually a list of why we should still be there and why we should not have opted out of our continental responsibilities, so I thank the Baroness for that commentary and for that list.
To a degree, this debate has been quite downbeat in many ways, quite understandably, given the current situation we are in internationally. Who can blame us? We have democracy on the retreat globally; a European war here, not so far away from us; the United States is moving towards an isolationist position, probably whatever the outcome of the election; and we have a China under President Xi that has become assertive—unnecessarily, because we all realise that China is going to be, and is a great power, and that assertiveness is the wrong way to do it. His predecessors did it in a far more subtle way. However, I want to be upbeat, because if there is one thing I learned from my climate change brief, it is that it is no good being totally pessimistic all the time. The only way that we can move forward is to be optimistic and look at the upsides of issues.
On that basis, I first welcome very much, as other noble Members have, the fact that the Government’s attitude towards Ukraine and their policy there will remain equally robust. To me, one of the obscenities of that war, apart from the clear breach of international rule of law by that illegal invasion, is the fact that Putin has put some half a million of his citizens through the meat grinder, in terms of casualties, and it is estimated that something like 150,000 of his own citizens are fatalities as a result of that war. To me, that is the ultimate obscenity. I welcome not only the continuity of policy there; I was going to congratulate the Government on the fact that the rules around use of weapons can extend over the border, but I understand that that is not necessarily the case now and I would very much welcome the Government’s clarification on where we are on that.
In her very good speech, the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, talked about how Russia should “prevail”. That is a strange word to use. I am sorry, I was doing my Biden thing there for a moment: she said that Ukraine should “prevail”. Does that mean that Ukraine should actually win? I would be interested to know that. The King’s Speech talked about
“a clear path to NATO membership”.
Clearly, I cannot see how Ukraine can become a member of NATO while the war continues in the way that it is at the minute, obviously because of Article 5, but what is the criteria by which Ukraine will become a member of NATO? I would be interested to hear that.
I also congratulate the Government, although it was rather pre-cooked, on their chairmanship of the European Political Community. Strangely enough, that was thanks to Liz Truss: perhaps the only good thing that she did was to agree to be a part of that community and that system. That is part of increasing our relationships with the European Union. I have a question on that. We want a stronger security relationship with Europe, and I think Europe will want to do that but will worry about the cherry-picking side. Will the Government be willing to re-enter some of the common security and defence missions? Chile has in fact contributed to some, as have Turkey, Canada and other non-EU nations, and I think ours would be an excellent entry into that.
The last thing I want to talk about has been mentioned occasionally: Sudan. It was not exactly a UK colony previously. Up to 1956, we shared it as a condominium with Egypt, but we have responsibilities there. I understand that we have been working with the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the Americans to find a way through on this. There are 8 million displaced people, and hundreds of thousands have lost their lives. We need to solve this conflict. Can the Government let us know how they see that they can move that collaboration forward to heal one of the biggest blemishes on our global stage at the moment?
Red Sea Telecommunication Cables
Lord Teverson Excerpts(2 years, 4 months ago)
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The Earl of Minto (Con)
The noble Lord makes a good point. On the whole, the cables themselves are not fixed but replaced. It is too dangerous and time-consuming to replace them because of the depth they are at and the danger from shipping. These are commercial decisions, and there are commercial sensitivities that we really cannot go into. Suffice it to say that we are acutely aware of what the risk might be in this area.
Lord Teverson (LD)
For UK data security, the rather unglamorous solution is the proliferation of these cables, which to a degree is already naturally happening commercially. Where there is real vulnerability is at landing sites, where there is a concentration of these cables. We need to diversify those landing sites on this side of the Atlantic. Does the Minister agree? If so, what action are the Government taking to make sure that takes place?
The Earl of Minto (Con)
The noble Lord is right that proliferation is an issue. As has been mentioned, the amount of data that travels through these cables is so significant that it requires all the protection it can get. The question of landing sites is very much part of the overall security resilience that we have been talking about. I can only imagine that they are going to become more and more important as we continue to suffer such an unstable global situation.
Armed Forces
Lord Teverson Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, I also welcome this debate, called by the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt. For four years, I was privileged to chair the EU sub-committee dealing with foreign affairs and defence and it was a pleasure to have my noble friend Lord Selkirk as a member of that group. I want to pursue some of the themes that came out of some work that we did on European defence. A handful of things have changed quite substantially over the last couple of years. First of all, there was the American pivot to Asia which sent out all sorts of messages, the consequences of some of which we may have seen over the last month. There was also the move by Russia, and we now have the first threat to territorial integrity in Europe for 24 years. There are also a number of smaller internal and ethnic conflicts, particularly within north Africa. I just want to take one or two points from each of those.
I do not think there is any dispute that the United States was going to pivot towards Asia, and it also has a defence treaty with Australia. Over the last six months, we have seen very dangerous issues within the East China Sea, the South China Sea and the Korean peninsula which show that we need to pay great attention to that area and that there needs to be very strong American presence, rhetoric and ability to act there. It was inevitable that the USA would move to look less at Africa and Europe, and that is not going to change. In 2011, we saw America leading from the back in the Libya operation and Robert Gates, the Defence Secretary, has said that if NATO did not get its act together, its future would be dim and dismal. Perhaps this is what it has been shown to be over the last year—hopefully, that will change.
I am sure that as the noble Lord, Lord Soley, has said, we need to show more than economic reaction to the situation in Ukraine. This should not be military action at present, but NATO and the European states need to show strength and resolution. We must show that we are serious and that what I call the Medvedev doctrine—looking after Russian citizens outside Russia—is not acceptable to nation states west of Russia. About two years ago, when we took evidence on European defence, we were very struck at how the Baltic states and Poland said very strongly that they did not see peace in Europe as inevitable and that they feared the Russian Federation. How right they have been.
NATO expenditure has moved down from some 2.7% of GDP in the 1990s to some 1.6%. I welcome the major change in that direction, but there is always a time when that must start to reverse, and if there is a time when it needs to reverse, it is now. This is not just about expenditure as a proportion of GDP. Europe has 1.6 or 1.7 million people in uniform but very little ability to actually deploy them, certainly not without the help of the United States. We need to start moving forward with our European allies to change this.
The Central African Republic is the other area which is very relevant today. The European Union is now sending a force there, postponed by three months, but the situation there is absolutely critical. This is telling, given that it is 20 years since the Rwandan situation. I was very pleased to see a press release from DfID saying that we were supporting security there, but we were doing it by giving £2 million to UNHCR. Quite frankly, what is needed is for us, either with the European Union force or with France bilaterally, to send real military support to stop the potential genocide between Muslims and Christians there.
President Obama said at the EU-American summit earlier this month that freedom is not free. That may be a cliché and it may sound trite, but I believe at this time that it is absolutely true.
Energy Bill
Lord Teverson Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Lord Jenkin of Roding
When I first went to the Treasury in 1970, one of the things they said was, “You’ve got to realise that 50% of the population does not understand what 50% means”.
Lord Teverson
Do we know which 50%? That is the question.
My noble friend Lady Maddock is being too modest. When we went through the Green Energy Bill we encountered some really strange language. We asked why it was written in that way, and it turned out it was supposed to be written in plain English—in a way that people would understand. Actually, this amendment is perfect for what it should be. The draftsman has written it in a clear and easily understood format. That is exactly what it should say, and I hope that the Secretary of State, the Minister and the Government will see a way to bring it in.
