G7 and NATO Summits

Lord True Excerpts

Tuesday 1st July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I sincerely apologise for the discourtesy to the House. I had not realised that the Statement was not going to be read, so I thought I had better get to my place in case the Deputy Speaker had to adjourn the House during pleasure.

Apart from seeing the Leader of the Opposition arriving late, it can be illuminating when a Statement repeat is delayed—I had better go on because the Clock has started—because the Prime Minister’s Statement began with grand claims about fixing social security. We all know what has happened since. Can the noble Baroness the Leader tell the House where the savings lost in this fix of social security since the Statement will come from? I think we all know that it will be tax and tax and tax again on the owners and savers of Britain: on home owners, farmers and small businesses and on the dividends that pay our pensions. As we heard this week, there may be potentially more controls on ISAs, the nest eggs people put aside from their hard-earned income. Gordon Brown invented the cash ISA; now Rachel Reeves is after it.

The Statement also boasts that Britain has a foreign policy for working people. Sadly, thanks to the Chagos deal, it is the working people of Mauritius who are quids in, not the working people of Britain, whose real disposable income is down 1% this year and who will have to stump up £30 billion in taxes to use what they already own. Amazingly, Diego Garcia was not even mentioned in a big Statement on defence.

The Statement was full of rhetoric on more than the botched welfare reform, but the central truth laid bare in the last two weeks is that the Government are all at sea abroad and are increasingly sidelined on the world stage. On 17 June, after sitting next to President Trump at the G7 dinner, the Prime Minister declared:

“There is nothing the president said that suggests he’s about to get involved in this conflict”.


The Foreign Secretary dashed to Washington, then to Geneva, and the call to the US was for restraint. Then, five days later, President Trump struck Iran’s nuclear sites.

The British Government’s response was not to congratulate the US on executing this brilliant action. Instead, they rushed out a statement to say that Britain was not involved, and that the £30 billion giveaway base of Diego Garcia was not used. That did not sound like leadership to me; it was not even followership. I wonder if the Government ever gave President Trump a copy of the reported advice from the Attorney-General saying an attack on Iran would be illegal. If they did, I am not sure that the President would pin that up in the Oval Office to replace the bust of Winston Churchill—out with Churchill’s inspiration and in with the Attorney-General’s injunction.

It is surely indicative that, in this lengthy Statement, the Prime Minister did not once mention those US strikes that resounded around the world this last week. The only mention of President Trump was a reference to the US-UK trade deal signed on what looked like a conspicuously windy day in Canada. That is a deal we welcome as a first step—it was only made possible, actually, by Brexit—but it still leaves our car makers, as the Prime Minster admitted, facing a 10% tariff on exports. Can the noble Baroness say anything about how the Government now intend to build on that trade deal with the US, which I hope was discussed at the G7?

The Statement spoke about stepping up, but where were we as recent major geopolitical events were unfolding? When Israel acted in its self-defence, Britain was out of the loop. Perhaps that is unsurprising when the Government had lately sanctioned two members of the Israeli Cabinet.

The Government have seemed equivocal at times, but I do thank the Prime Minister for his action against antisemitism and I associate this side with the Government’s strong condemnation of the BBC for its shameful broadcast of calls for the killing of Israeli soldiers. The Government were absolutely right there.

The Statement says the UK is using “every diplomatic lever” to keep Britain and the Middle East safe. We support the Government on that and we all pray for a just and lasting peace. But where are those levers and what are they? What progress are we making in addressing the humanitarian situation in Gaza and in ousting Hamas? Those issues rightly concern noble Lords across the House. Will we follow President Trump in easing sanctions on Syria? What of Iran? We agree that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon, but have we had recent discussions with the Iranian regime?

We welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment to more defence spending and to the British nuclear deterrent. We welcome the decision to buy 12 F35A aircraft with new capabilities. But can the Minister confirm what was said in the apparent exchanges on this earlier: that this will in fact cut the defence budget rather than increase it, because these are less expensive planes than the F35? The Minister is indicating that that is incorrect, so I withdraw that question. I misunderstood and will look carefully at Hansard.

We continue to back the Prime Minister’s strong commitment on Ukraine, which is rightly underlined in the Statement. But can the Minister explain why NATO’s communiqué was weak on condemnation of Russia?

On defence, can she tell us what the commitment at NATO to spend 5% of GDP on national security actually means? The only solid commitment is to spend 2.6% on defence by 2027. The 4.1% target is based on adding a new 1.5% spending goal for resilience and security to the already stated 2.6% target. What does that mean? The Italian Government have said that might include a bridge. The Prime Minister spoke of “energy networks”, so could it include spending on pylons to enable green energy? Will the spending on the Chagos deal count towards the percentage?

Finally, will the Minister tell us when the Statement promised to the House last night that stirred the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, to pull the plug on his pledges to the Chagos Islanders will be made?

The Prime Minister has done very much that we support in foreign affairs and defence and we will continue to support that. But, over the last two weeks, we have looked unsure and a little behind the game.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, the Statement improbably begins by discussing the Government’s woes on social security, which of course have absolutely nothing to do with its real subject matter. We welcome the Government’s U-turn there, but I do not think that this Statement is the context in which to discuss them, not least because they have been coming so thick and fast that I am afraid I cannot keep up.

There is a wide measure of agreement that the UK faces greater and more diverse security threats than it has for decades and that we are all greatly indebted to our Armed Forces and other government agencies that are working so hard and effectively to combat them. The headline outcome of the NATO summit was the commitment to spend 5% on national security. In the Statement, this is referred to as a “defence investment pledge”, but it clearly includes expenditure on many non-defence items.

In the national security strategy, the definition of “national security” includes

“the health of our economy … food prices … supply chains … safety on the streets”

and the online world. This definition seems so wide as to be virtually meaningless. Can the Minister explain what is within the definition? The Prime Minister says that we will reach 4.1% spending on it in 2027, so he must know how he reached that figure. Will the Government therefore give a breakdown of the 4.1% and then explain how they intend to get to the 5% by 2035?

One obvious item to include in the definition of expenditure that promotes national security is overseas development assistance, particularly in areas such as conflict prevention. To what extent is ODA included in the new definition of “national security” and do the Government have any plans to increase it as they increase all other aspects of security expenditure?

The Statement goes on to say that UK foreign policy

“answers directly to the concerns of working people”.

What specific concerns of working people are meant by that phrase? To what extent are working people affected by foreign policy in different ways from the rest of the population?

One of the biggest challenges ahead is not just to increase expenditure on national security but to ensure that the money is spent as effectively as possible. In that context, can the Minister explain why we are prioritising the purchase of 12 F35A jets capable of carrying nuclear weapons? These planes are extraordinarily expensive, even if they are not quite as expensive as the F35Bs, and for decades we have not judged it necessary to have this capability. As the noble Lord, Lord West, said at Questions earlier today, this change presumably means that we need at the very least to update our nuclear doctrine. Do the Government plan to do so? Will they publish any new doctrine when it has been adopted?

On Ukraine, we welcome the commitment to repeat last year’s commitment on expenditure and also the funding of additional air defence missiles from frozen Russian assets. Can the Minister confirm that this funding has come from the interest on those assets and that no progress has been made on freeing up the capital, which could be transformative to Ukraine’s success?

In the Commons, the Prime Minister said it was very difficult to access the capital because not all countries were in agreement on how to proceed. Estonia has proposed a way forward on this. Will the Minister commit to looking at Estonia’s proposals as a matter of urgency?

The Statement rightly stresses the need to build up the Armed Forces. So does the Minister accept that there is still a crisis of recruitment, particularly to the Army? Will the Government therefore look sympathetically at the Lib Dem proposal to pay a £10,000 signing-on bonus for new recruits as a way of rapidly boosting recruitment?

On Iran, we welcome the current ceasefire, but it needs to be made permanent. The Foreign Secretary recently met the Iranian Foreign Minister, along with EU counterparts, to promote a ceasefire. Do HMG foresee any future role for the UK in securing a longer- term solution?

Finally, on Gaza, we agree on the need for a quick ceasefire, but there is absolutely no sign of this. In the meantime, deaths and starvation continue. Our ability to affect events in Gaza is limited, but we could at the very least recognise the state of Palestine, which is a necessary precursor to a two-state solution. The Prime Minister says that the Government are waiting for the “right time” to do this. The fear is that in the Government’s view there will never be a right time. We should act now.