Ukraine: Defence Relationships

Lord Dannatt Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dannatt (CB)]

My Lords, I join in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, on securing this important debate, which gives us the opportunity to look again at the integrated review in the context of unfolding events within Ukraine. It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Harris, who has quite rightly focused on resilience in the context of his chairmanship of the National Preparedness Commission, and I have been very pleased to work with him as chair of the National Emergencies Trust.

It is on the integrated review in the wider security sense that I wish to focus my remarks this afternoon. I would suggest that our history since the end of the Cold War of security and defence reviews has been at best somewhat chequered. The options for change exercise conducted in the early 1990s I think is fairly described as something of a semi-camouflaged peace dividend taken by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and across Europe, by other finance Ministers as well. We then went forward to the end of that decade with the strategic defence review of 1997-98; and that review in many people’s view was an extremely good piece of policy work. Unfortunately, it was holed below the waterline by not being fully funded by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer. Those risks came home to roost when we found ourselves fighting hot wars from 2003 onwards in Iraq and subsequently in Afghanistan.

We then went through a period of 13 years when we had no defence review whatever, until we came to 2010 when the coalition Government found themselves having to take rapid action to fill the black hole of about £35 billion in defence spending that they had inherited from the previous Government. The defence reviews of 2010 and 2015 were both again cost-cutting exercises, and when you have a cost-cutting exercise, you have to decide what costs you are going to cut. Quite rightly in my view, major capital equipment programmes, including—to the pleasure of the noble Lord, Lord West —the aircraft carrier programme, continued to be funded. But where there had to be savings, they had to come from our manpower cover. And where do you find most of the manpower? In our Army.

When the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Walker, was Chief of the General Staff and I was his Assistant Chief of the General Staff, the Army was over 100,000. A few years later when I was Chief of the General Staff it was still over 100,000. It is now plummeting to 72,000, and if No. 10 and the Cabinet Office had had their way in the early days of the integrated review, it could have gone down as low as 65,000 or 60,000. That I would suggest is unacceptable. So of course, against that background, we come to the welcome news in 2020 of a considerable boost to defence spending. But that boost was not a boost that was going to be made available to really increase our capability; it was largely an exercise in filling in many of the potholes that once again had accumulated.

However, the integrated review tried to take a broad-ranging look at our security, defence and foreign affairs requirements. I would suggest—as other noble Lords have said—that many of the conclusions of that integrated review were valid and reasonable, including, dare I say, the tilt toward the Indo-Pacific. As the noble Lord, Lord West, said, the Americans are very much approving of that because it is a little bit of a quid pro quo for them continuing to support us in continental Europe. But what the integrated review failed to take full account of was what we are now facing: the consequences of a resurgent Russia with a dictator who is determined to have his will in many ways.

So, we could then argue with ourselves, “Well, what should our response be?” Should we be rebalancing and changing some of the conclusions of the integrated review? I suggest that that is not the right approach to take. Many of the conclusions of the integrated review are reasonable, but what we failed to fully factor in was the requirement to be able to conduct a land war, or have a land capability that was strong enough to deter a land war, in Europe. Therefore, this is not to be a zero-sum game, with the Army, the Navy and the Air Force once again arguing against each other for a shift in priorities. Actually, it argues for an increase in our defence budget from 2% to 3%—an extra £12 billion to 15 billion a year—so that we can properly give ourselves the land capability that we absolutely require.

Our land capability is woefully lacking in armour; we are going to go down as it stands to 148 Challenger 3 tanks, and we have cancelled the Warrior tracked armoured fighting vehicle that can accompany them on the battlefield. What the war in Ukraine has shown once again is that artillery is a fundamental piece on the modern battlefield. We are woeful in the number of rocket and tube systems we have in this country. We have just given some MLRS to Ukraine: my goodness, we have few enough anyway, and where are the replacements going to come from? We need more armour, more artillery and we need more manpower; to have an Army that is going down to its smallest size in the last 200 years is completely unacceptable.

In conclusion, I would say that, when we look at the impact of Ukraine on the integrated review, there is a cautionary tale that we need to take note of. We need to look at that cautionary tale, learn lessons and, principally, ensure that an increased defence budget is argued for, and that much of that increased money goes into our land capability.