Defence, Security and Resilience Bank

Lord Stirrup Excerpts

Tuesday 19th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

No, and I do not quite understand why the noble Baroness is confused, because we are doing exactly what she says. We are setting up—or being part of—a proposed multilateral defence mechanism. I thought the noble Baroness would share a similar worldview in terms of wanting to see greater amounts of co-operation and procurement among a core group of EU allies and NATO allies and partners. What she is asking for is exactly what the Government are exploring.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister recognise that, when we refer to the defence industry these days, we are talking not about the traditional defence companies but about industry much more widely? We have seen clear examples of this in the Ukraine war. Will he therefore ensure that whatever multilateral funding arrangements we come up with, they are used to fund an agile, innovative, high-technology industrial base across Europe that can respond rapidly to crises, rather than going into purely the established defence sector?