Ukraine (International Relations and Defence Committee Report)
(3 days, 2 hours ago)
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Lord De Mauley
That the Grand Committee takes note of the Report from the International Relations and Defence Committee Ukraine: a wake-up call (1st Report, HL Paper 10).
Lord De Mauley (Con)
My Lords, I speak today as chairman of the International Relations and Defence Committee to introduce our report, Ukraine: A Wake-up Call. The report provides a sobering, and now urgent, assessment of the implications of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine for United Kingdom defence policy and the broader security of Europe. Before delving into the detail of the report, I thank the members of the committee, including my predecessor as chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Ashton of Hyde; the excellent clerk and staff, who put a huge amount of work into the report over the summer; and the witnesses who appeared before the committee.
The findings in our report are stark. The war in Ukraine has shattered the assumptions underpinning western defence thinking since the end of the Cold War. This is indeed a wake-up call not just for us but for the whole of Europe. The war has exposed critical gaps in our capabilities and the fragility of our defence industrial base—all because of our assumption, now revealed as wrong, that future conflicts would be short and limited.
The first conclusion of the report is that NATO deterrence failed. President Putin calculated that the West lacked the political will and the military capability to stop him. This calculation, tragically, was in part correct: our deterrence posture has been found wanting. We must rebuild deterrence through improved military capability, clear messaging and a united front with our allies. This has taken on a new significance following the rift created by the heated exchanges between President Trump and President Zelensky last week and the continuing developments this week.
Another significant development since the publication of our report has been the Prime Minister’s recent announcement of an increase in defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027 and the ambition to increase it to 3% in the next Parliament. While welcome, our report concluded that 2.5% of GDP may not be enough to meet the UK’s growing defence needs or plug existing gaps. Subsequent events have underlined that point.
This leads me to the current state of our Armed Forces. The Army in particular has already shrunk to its smallest size since the Napoleonic era, and it is questionable whether it will be able to field sufficient fighting forces beyond an initial deployment. The Prime Minister has said that he is willing to put troops on the ground in Ukraine to help guarantee the country’s security. While I fully understand his objective, it is difficult to imagine how the Army would be able to maintain a credible deterrent force in Ukraine, for any extended length of time—let alone fulfil its other obligations, which seem likely to grow—without increasing in size significantly.
Crucially, we must rebuild the appeal of military service to the next generation. We also need to revitalise our reserves. Ukraine has shown that well-trained and properly equipped reserve forces can, literally, make all the difference. Ours are woefully underfunded. We must ensure that they are ready to mobilise at scale, when needed, and that numbers are boosted so that they can also be deployed to protect critical national infrastructure at home.
Critical national infrastructure deserves a specific mention, because the experience of Ukraine provides a clear warning to the United Kingdom: Russia has relentlessly attacked Ukrainian energy systems and communication networks. We are already witnessing a troubling shift towards more aggressive hybrid tactics being deployed, in the UK and nearby, by Russia and others. We must up our game in countering hybrid attacks. If not, our enemies will realise that they can get away with it, placing us in an ever more vulnerable position.
Defence is not just about soldiers and capabilities; it is also about cybersecurity, the security of our supply chains and resilience within our communities. The concept of total defence, long practised by nations such as Sweden and Finland, must be adopted here. We must move beyond the notion that defence is the sole responsibility of the military. Total defence entails a high state of readiness by both the state and society to defend themselves in case of threat of war, crisis or natural disaster.
I will now speak in my personal capacity rather than as a member of the committee. There is a little-known but influential organisation, which is critically poised to play a leading role in helping the United Kingdom achieve a total defence stance, called the Council of the Reserve Forces and Cadets Association. I declare an interest in that I am currently its chairman. The CRFCA has strong and embedded relations throughout the United Kingdom, with local and devolved Administration politicians, business leaders and opinion influencers through the extensive nationwide membership of the Reserve Forces and cadets’ associations. The RFCAs are the only defence-related organisations that reach all the regions and devolved nations, and the membership connects with all sectors and communities in society.
The Minister recently commented in answer to a Written Question:
“The RFCA has an extensive volunteer membership … bringing a wide breadth of expertise and community links. The RFCAs’ extensive network of volunteer members, based within communities across the UK, enable the RFCAs to … connect to society … While the number of hours volunteered is not formally recorded either for the volunteer membership or non-executive board members, it is estimated that this figure is around 69,000 hours per year”.
In answer to another, he said:
“The vast majority of active members make no claims, reflecting their sense of service and deep connection with the UK’s Reserve Forces and Cadets”.
There is a move afoot in the Ministry of Defence to dispense with this organisation, first created by Haldane in 1908 when it was realised that, to be efficient, while command and training of the Reserve Forces should be centralised, conversely, the raising and administration of those forces could be efficient only if decentralised, this being deemed essential to the encouragement of local effort and the development of local resources in time of peace. This is what the RFCAs, the successor to what were the county associations, provide today with their wide membership; they are local in origin and situation, cognisant of local capabilities and requirements and thoroughly integrated into their communities.
In its stead, the MoD wishes to create a non-departmental public body with one centralised board of paid non-executive directors with little or no experience of, or commitment to, reserves or cadets. There is a significant risk that this, as well as the proposal that the current membership should be retained merely in an advisory or associate capacity, will disenfranchise the members when they recognise that they will have little ability to have a say on how central government directives are implemented in the regions from which they come and on the support they give to sustain the reserve.
At a stroke, the MoD will have lost a body of natural supporters with deep links into the society of their communities and regions, just as the strategic defence review may well place a greater reliance on the reserve for the total defence of the United Kingdom. To quote a former commanding officer tasked with raising a new reserve battalion: “My experience of raising a new battalion has convinced me that the associations are essential to look after the interests of the Reserve Forces as a whole, not just a harmless institution that has to be humoured. It therefore concerns me that there is a view among some civil servants and regular officers of the MoD that the RFCAs are anachronistic and expensive bodies which work against the established chain of command and are positively detrimental to the ‘one Army’ concept”. The RFCAs are here to help and can make a significant contribution to the defence of the nation.
To return to the committee’s report, yet another urgent lesson from Ukraine concerns our defence industrial base. Decades of budget cuts and reduced industrial capacity since the end of the Cold War have left the UK’s defence industry unprepared for high-intensity prolonged conflict. Our procurement processes are too slow and risk averse. Ukraine has, by necessity, embraced a model of rapid innovation, working hand in glove with commercial technology companies and adapting in real time on the battlefield. This is the agility we need. To achieve this, the Government must rebuild trust with the defence industry, whose leaders repeatedly told us that it needs clear, long-term commitments—not shifting goalposts—to enable it to scale up production.
We must also broaden our partner base, including those we may not traditionally think of as military suppliers, in order to provide the cutting-edge capabilities our Armed Forces require. Recent events have underscored the critical need to strengthen our industrial engagement with our European partners. We found that increasing collaboration in integrated air and missile defence should be high on the list of priorities for the Government. The report also highlights the importance of nurturing partnerships. Of course, it did not predict the schism in the western alliance we are witnessing right now, but that only serves to make it even clearer that the UK Government must now use all their diplomatic skills—as I think the Prime Minister seems to be doing, and I commend his efforts—to ensure the unity of the western alliance in support of UK and European security efforts.
Finally, we must acknowledge an uncomfortable truth: the UK is a medium-sized regional power. This may not be a bad thing, but it requires hard choices to be made and a realistic narrative from the Government about what our Armed Forces can deliver. Our report calls for a coherent model that leverages technology, industry, the reserves, diplomacy and society itself to rebuild our deterrence posture and make sure that it is credible. This should be at the heart of the strategic defence review, and the Government must ensure that their response to the review is swift and provides a clear road map for how this can all be achieved. The hard-earned lessons from the war in Ukraine are our wake-up call, and the time to act is now. I beg to move.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, first, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley. I think it is an appropriate thing to do in a week when the House has been debating the hereditary Peers Bill. He is the inheritor of one of the longest-standing peerages that there that there are, I think, but in his time here—and I have now been here for 15 years—he has made a major contribution to the House. I would just like to put that on record.
The report is right that we need a wake-up call, and I think that there are already signs in the way that Keir Starmer is responding to the crisis that that wake-up call is being heeded. I know a little bit about Ukraine. From the late 1990s to 2004, Tony Blair appointed me to head a No. 10 delegation to meet regularly, which we did every three or four months, with the Ukraine presidential Administration. I was lucky, of course, to be given lots of nice trips around that wonderful country to the Crimea, where I sat in Joe Stalin’s chair at Yalta, and to wonderful cities such as Odessa, Lviv and Kyiv itself.
It was always clear to me in those conversations that there was a great division in Ukraine between those who saw themselves as totally dependent on Russia for their security and their energy and those who wanted to become what I would call a normal European country. Of course, Blair was a very strong advocate of European enlargement, so I could readily say to them that the Labour Government of the time respected their European vocation. Indeed, when I went to Brussels with my noble friend Lord Mandelson and the trade talks started with Ukraine, one of the great things that caused the revolution on the streets in Ukraine, both in 2007 and in 2013, was the feeling that they wanted to be part of Europe, not a Soviet satellite.
I think our Prime Minister has done really well, and I am glad to see that so many people on the Opposition agree on that. There is nothing wrong in principle with President Trump’s wish for peace, and he is right, of course, that there is the most awful killing going on. Not least is the brutality of what Russia has done in Ukraine—and we should not forget this in all these discussions—particularly in taking children from Ukraine to be Russianised. That is absolutely shocking, and it should not be forgotten in any peace discussions.
The basic condition of a peace has to be that Ukraine remains a free and independent country able to pursue its European vocation and membership of the EU. Clearly, security guarantees such as NATO membership have not been ruled out, but the European arm of NATO really has to step up to the plate. That is absolutely crucial. There is, of course, no certainty that the guarantees from the US that we are seeking will actually come. Keir Starmer is doing his best. The Ukrainian President seems to think that the minerals deal, with Americans on the ground in Ukraine, will itself provide a security guarantee; I have to say that I do not agree.
We are on course for a very big need for European rearmament. I welcome the step towards 2.5%, but in my personal view that is nowhere near enough. I think that, with the Robertson review, we need to be thinking much more in terms of something like 3.5%. There is encouraging news on this today from Germany, where the likely new German coalition under Friedrich Merz has decided that all defence spending over 1% should come outside the fiscal brake that they have. I think we need to do something similar in Britain.
Britain has to be full part of this European rearmament. This is not anti-NATO; in fact, it is the only way of saving NATO, by convincing the Americans and President Trump that we are ready to stand up to the plate. But this must be done in a co-ordinated way if it is to secure efficiency and rationalisation of the way that Europe works. I am a little sceptical of talk of buying British in this context, because we have to be co-ordinated. One of the reasons that Europe is so weak is because of that lack of planning and co-ordination.
Fundamentally, what the Russians want is a defeated and demoralised Ukraine, where they can convince the people that they should elect leaders who accept Russian satellite status. That is not what we want. There has to be no Munich in Europe as a result of the present crisis.
Lord Alderdice (LD)
My Lords, I start by thanking our previous chair of the committee, the noble Lord, Lord Ashton of Hyde, and our current chair, the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, and indeed our clerk and her colleagues for the tremendous work that they have done in drawing together the information that emerged in our inquiry and the many thoughts and reactions that we had as members of the Select Committee.
Much has happened since its publication in September 2024, but the thrust of our report remains absolutely relevant and on target. It was, as its title says, A Wake-up Call then; surely the events of the past few weeks have shaken out of their slumber those who did not recognise the urgency of the call at that time and continued to sleepwalk towards disaster. The report sets out with great clarity how Europe as a whole—and our own country, I am afraid—has failed to pay attention to the drift into what I have described as a third global conflict. I have spoken about this in your Lordships’ House before, especially after the Russian invasion of Crimea because, even at that time, the direction in which we were going was clear.
However, as in so many other fields, people tend to live in the world that they wish existed, rather than in the one that they actually inhabit. Europe in general preferred to believe that major international wars in Europe were a thing of the past. After 9/11, many academics and analysts wrote about the new wars, which would consist only of terrorism and intra-state disruption, but insisted that major wars between developed states would not arise. This was an extension of the thought that was around in the later 20th century that technological developments, especially after 1945 and the existence of nuclear weapons, were so damaging and destructive that the truth was that no one would actually contemplate them.
In fact, new technologies rarely replace the old technologies of warfare completely. They simply add more weapons, more tactics and more strategies to the armamentarium. A hundred years ago, most warfare took place on land and sea; then, air became important and, subsequently, space did so as well. But, as if four spaces were not enough in which to have conflict, we developed the cyber world, and we are now in effect engaged in a global conflict in cyberspace.
An old intelligence officer with whom I worked for many years used to talk about the need to be an educated customer of intelligence. What he meant was that we need not only to accumulate ever more data but to analyse it satisfactorily. That means looking at it realistically. When Vladimir Putin wrote and talked a lot about his intention to take territory and restructure the global security architecture, many western analysts said, “Oh, his speeches are just bad history and foolish nonsense”. Even when he amassed troops on the borders of Ukraine, many regarded this as just showmanship and did not prepare themselves for the coming conflict.
It is much the same with President Trump. People often complain that, when politicians get elected, they do not do the things they promised during their election campaigns. The problem with President Trump is the opposite: he does try to implement the things that he has promised. It is necessary to listen carefully to what he says. When he talks of wanting peace, what he is talking about is peace between Russia and the United States; it is not a peace that will satisfy Ukraine or Europe. As far as he is concerned, they are small fry that he can happily disregard because the big players are just the United States, Russia and China; the rest are just what the French call garniture—kinds of vegetables.
This report sets out clearly the urgent need to review our failed deterrence policy, not least because we cannot have the same confidence that our nuclear capacity will always be able to operate with the necessary current US collaboration. We can hope that it will, but we cannot be certain. There are colossal financial and technical implications—and, indeed, implications for our alliances. The NATO we knew is simply not able to be depended upon, but we do need alliances and we need to work closely with others.
It is also true that one downside of having a full-time professional military is that the country as a whole gets to believe that the defence of the country is somebody else’s responsibility: “It’s the Government. It’s the military”. They are absolutely crucial, of course, but, particularly as the amount of resource available has been cut back, it is not possible for the Government and the military on their own to give citizens a guarantee to fulfil the absolute fundamental responsibility of defence and protection. We need a whole-of-society approach and sense of responsibility; as has already been mentioned, our colleagues in Finland and some of the other Scandinavian countries have recognised this for some time. That will need a change in the psychological posture of our people as a whole, as well as in the provision of materiel.
In regard to our weapons systems, bigger is not always better. Some of the things we have seen Ukraine being able to do with small amounts but with creativity need our attention. We need steady nerves but a commitment to face the fearful reality before us and to face the current underpreparedness with necessary funding, personnel and a change in attitude of our community as a whole.
Baroness Coussins (CB)
My Lords, I also have the privilege of being a member of the International Relations and Defence Committee. I will confine my remarks in this debate to one of the points in chapter 3 of our report, “Nurturing partnerships”. This looks at the concept of defence in a more holistic and big-picture way than just the size of the Armed Forces or the supply chains and capability of weapons, crucial though these things self-evidently are.
Alliances, partnerships and reputation also underpin our defence posture and, in the case of Ukraine, have exposed an important weakness when we consider the situation globally and long-term. We need to think very carefully about the response of the countries which we generally call the global South to the support from the UK for Ukraine, partly so that a rounded view of the current situation can take place, but also so that the UK in formulating its future defence strategies and capabilities can be realistic about those alliances, partnerships and reputational risks on which our engagement in any future combat situation might depend.
As the report states:
“International engagement is integral to deterrence and escalation management”.
At the time of the report’s publication—I am certainly not going to go into the astonishing change in voting behaviour by the US at the UN recently—the UN’s 193 member states had voted on six emergency special session resolutions on Ukraine. Most countries supported the first of these, which condemned Russia’s invasion, with only one-quarter of states not in favour. All those that abstained or voted against were countries in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and south-east Asia: the global South. This pattern held in subsequent votes and few countries in any of those regions have imposed any sanctions on Russia or given any material support to Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Russia has been able to divide and rule between the positions of the West on one hand and of the global South on the other, by talking up the Soviet Union’s historical support for decolonisation, attracting support particularly in Africa and Asia. Our report quotes a former Portuguese Minister, who said:
“Ukraine’s plight would receive a lot more sympathy in the Global South if it were presented as a war of national liberation … if you described Russia as the last European empire”.
While the UK has been reluctant to embrace this narrative, Russia has gone full speed ahead with diplomatic initiatives to court and secure support from the global South.
For example, it held a Russia-Africa summit and parliamentary conference in 2023 and described a new foreign policy approach in opposition to the so-called western neocolonialism. It also held the first ever Russia-Latin America conference in the same year. This has resulted in countries of the global South feeling aggrieved at what is perceived to be a distracting concern of the West with Russian aggression. They would prefer to see attention towards issues such as debt and climate change, rather than what is being viewed as western hypocrisy and double standards, particularly towards the suffering of people in regions of the world other than Ukraine.
Evidence we received from the Henry Jackson Society suggested that these undesirable trends could be shifted by a more assertive role by the UK in the Security Council and the G7, away from a subordinate position of reliance on the US, and stressed the importance of maintaining a physical presence in regions of potential conflict.
I suggest that this all adds up to a clear pointer that the Government’s recent decision to fund greater defence spending—vital though that must surely be—by raiding the international aid budget might be short-sighted and ultimately self-defeating. If the UK’s future defence capability, strategy, deterrence and engagement are to command the respect of global leadership rather than risk a global cold shoulder, we will need a more holistic definition of defence and the support, not the cynicism, of the global South. We should pay more attention to Latin America and avoid short-changing Africa. On the surface, I can see that that sounds literally miles away from our defence agenda, but the interconnectedness is now more important to understand than ever before. I look forward to the Minister’s comments on these points.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
My Lords, our Select Committee was half way through its taking of evidence when we were rudely interrupted by a general election. It is a tribute to the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, and his predecessor in the chair, the noble Lord, Lord Ashton, that we picked up the pieces after the election and completed this report. It is a tribute as well to our secretariat, who were terrific.
If I were to summarise the lessons we learned in our report from the war in Ukraine, I would say that they are a surprising mixture of the old and the new. On the old side, we have the front line and the trenches, which are eerily reminiscent of conflicts over 100 years ago and which showed the importance of mass in military operations. On the new side, we have the evidence of the huge importance of drones, which, as we say in paragraph 183, are ubiquitous in Ukraine for intelligence, target acquisition and reconnaissance, as well as for direct attacks. Then, aside from the mechanics of warfare is the international context in which the war is being fought, on which I very much agree with everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, said. What has the war told us about the standing of the West in the international community, in particular those countries of the global South?
First, on the importance of mass, as we say in paragraph 34,
“the evidence we heard points to the current size of the British Army being inadequate”.
Before we even begin to talk about increasing the size of the Army, we need to focus a little on the immediate problem of the apparent inability to recruit enough people to maintain present strengths. The figures we had were that, up to July 2024, 11,940 people joined the regular Armed Forces, while, in the same period, 15,700 left. We need a 25% increase just to stand still. I would like to hear from the Minister the strategy we now have for delivering the numbers required, particularly in the light of the increased funding announced last week. How much will be accomplished by retaining existing personnel and how much by new recruits? I am sure he agrees with me that retention has great advantages because, in a sense, you already have the finished product.
I would also like confirmation—I think this is such an important point in recruiting—of the fact that skills acquired in a career in the Armed Forces are extremely valuable for life outside the military, and special emphasis should be given to this powerful selling point. In our evidence, we heard that the armed services are consistently in the top 10 of UK apprenticeship providers, with no fewer than 24,800 people undertaking their apprenticeships in 2022.
Finally on recruitment, the Government said in their response to us that:
“The Armed Forces need to continue to attract a range of diversity, talent, skills and experience which is fully reflective of the society it serves”.
Which groups are particularly underrepresented, and are there good grounds for believing that targeting them will bear fruit in the recruitment challenges facing the forces?
Now to the significance of new technology, especially drones, in the lessons learned in Ukraine. The sheer scale of the use of drones in Ukraine is staggering. Dr Ulrike Franke from the European Council on Foreign Relations told us that drones
“are omnipresent on the battlefield”.
She said,
“we are talking about hundreds of thousands of small drone systems being used, and lost, every month”.
Two issues concerning drones stand out from our evidence. The first is the rapidity of development of drones and of defence systems to counter them. This means that there is, in effect, a drones arms race, with any advantage to either side always in danger of being short-lived. The second issue is simply one of drone production capacity. As we say in our report, it is estimated that
“Russia is producing around 300,000 drone units per month”,
compared with Ukraine’s production of 150,000. I ask the Minister: where are we in the drones arms race? Are sufficient resources being provided to keep us ahead in drone technology and defence systems? Is the industrial capacity available to produce drones on the scale that modern warfare requires?
Finally, I turn to the lessons we should learn from the Ukraine conflict about the international context and the standing of the West. In paragraph 34 of our report’s recommendations, we say:
“As the UK Government is facing a world where the Global South is becoming more assertive, with some countries leaning towards China or Russia, it is vital for the UK to be more proactive and have a strategy on how to engage with the Global South”.
The fact that 40 countries are sanctioning Russia because of its aggression can give only limited comfort to the West, bearing in mind that the overwhelming majority of countries are not imposing sanctions, and many of those are helping Russia, in one way or another, to evade the effects of sanctions. I would like to hear the Minister’s judgment about what the war in Ukraine has told us about the standing of the West in general in the international community and of the UK in particular. The war in Ukraine has been long and bloody. Lessons have to be learned. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, I was not a member of this excellent committee, but I think that this is an absolutely admirable report that is amazingly timely, very important and, indeed, a wake-up call to us all. Although I was not a member, I take a little slice of pride as a godparent of the committee because the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and I had to push the authorities very hard to get the committee set up, which we eventually did, and it has been an outstanding success. This is one of the best reports it has ever produced. I have three points to add, quickly, to the excellent introduction from the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, in which he covered most of the things I want to say.
First, we should note what he said about reserves. At the moment, our reserves, which used to be called territorials, number 34,280—although I am not quite sure about that; there is a lot of dispute about the number. That is on top of the 74,000 regular Army troops, making the total strength of the Army, Navy and Air Force 134,000, or whatever it is. That can be enlarged very quickly. People forget how rapidly, in the 1930s, the reserves went from being held at about 200,000 into the millions, and then merged totally into the Army. All that happened in a matter of weeks. I cannot claim to remember in the case of my father, because I was two years old at the time, but I am told that he had about a fortnight to transform from being a retired regular back into a territorial, and then went into full combat organisation and was in the desert within a month of the war being announced on 3 September. The whole speed of this thing can be greatly improved, as the report rightly says, and to have bureaucracy slowing it all down is a lot of nonsense. We need to look at that very clearly; the call-up can be much quicker. That is my first point.
Secondly, this report is so good because it brings home that the whole issue is much wider than the picture books and child versions of what warfare is about. We think about the trenches and the front line, and it is absolutely true about the drones that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, just eloquently mentioned. The sheer numbers—the report mentioned 2 million—that Ukraine alone is mobilising can really change the whole nature and drive people back into the trenches like in 1914. I am told that, within 200 miles on either side of the front line, and certainly on the Russian side, anyone who comes out of a trench for a smoke—or, dare I say, a pee—is instantly spotted and probably dead within three or four minutes. This is the changed nature of the whole pattern of the front line.
An even bigger nature change is that it is not just about the front line. Obviously, civilians are targeted, rather as Hermann Göring did with trying to smash all our cities—he failed. Now, of course, Putin has far longer-range rockets of far greater accuracy. All the utilities are targeted, and we want to watch, know and learn from the Minister to what extent we are developing new air defences and missile repellents for, for instance, our power stations. If they can be taken out, and if electricity can be taken out of the system, I am told that, within three days, civil chaos and collapse of morale happens behind the lines. Of course, it is the same lesson that Germany in particular learned in 1918: if morale collapses behind the lines, it spreads to a collapse in morale in the Armed Forces as well. The Russians are well aware of that and are using that strategy in Ukraine at this moment. The concept of having total defence against this kind of warfare, total defence in terms of mobilising people on a far larger scale—regulars and territorials—and having more combat-trained troops ready to add to the regular troops is vital.
On my third point, I differ a little, I think, from the report. The report says that it is all about Europe and how we get together with our European partners. It is not; it is a global issue. There are principles—and fears—that go right through Asia, where all the growth of military, civil and domestic economy will take place over the next 30 years. Japan is extremely nervous about any kind of peace that we negotiate in Europe that gives in to Russian force. They say that that would immediately trigger Xi to have a go at suffocating Taiwan, which would lead to Pacific war and then to world war. We have, but sometimes neglect, our great range of Commonwealth network friends, right through Asia and Africa. They are just as concerned and need to be mobilised just as much. In fact, if you add it up, we probably have more friends—you might say they are soft-power friends and their Governments do not always agree—around the world, outside Europe, than the United States has. The United States might be losing friends at the moment, becoming not America the beautiful, but America the feared, in terms of what it will do next. We need America, but it also needs us.
My fear is that Putin will outwit Trump and offer a peace that looks good to start with but in fact can last only 10 minutes. If he does not do that, he may even offer the kind of peace that leads to the conquest of Ukraine by the Russians. That would of course be the worst of all worlds.
Lord Stirrup (CB)
My Lords, I congratulate the members of the International Relations and Defence Committee on this excellent report. It is usually a matter of great regret that we are not able to debate such Select Committee reports until long after they are published, but in this case the delay is a positive advantage. Why? To echo the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, it is because, if the war in Ukraine was a wake-up call for us and our European partners in NATO, surely the events of the past few weeks in Munich and Washington have served to tip us entirely out of our cosy collective bed on to the cold, hard floor. The recommendations made in the report are based on a forensic analysis of the evidence and are well judged. I support them all. However, the context has clearly changed—and not for the better.
We all want NATO to survive and to continue the invaluable work it has done over so many decades to guard our collective security. The United States has been at the core of that endeavour, and we wish American involvement to continue. I believe that it will, but we can no longer expect it to be on the scale that it has been in the past. This goes beyond the vagaries of one President or any sense of growing American isolationism. Senior officials in Washington, both civilian and military, have made it clear that, despite their enduring commitment to NATO, they are substantially shifting their weight of effort from Europe to the Pacific. This should not surprise us. This development has been under way and slowly building in momentum over many years. That the American shift now coincides with a dramatically increased risk to our security has just served to open European eyes that, for too long, have remained resolutely shut.
It is now starkly apparent that if we in Europe do not provide adequately for our own security, no one else will. It is also clear that shouldering this responsibility is the surest way of retaining American involvement in NATO. For too long, we and our European partners have scrabbled around in the smallest margins of public expenditure to fund our defence. It was inappropriate in the past; it would be utter folly now. There is a growing acknowledgement by many political leaders in Europe that we are in an era of rearmament. This is right, but we need to define and follow through on what that means. Europe’s militaries, including our own, are too small as fighting units, inadequately armed and lacking in key strategic capabilities. Rearmament means making good these deficiencies. That will take two things: time and money. We have the first, but none to waste.
Russia’s military capability, particularly in its ground forces, is depleted after three years of gruelling combat in Ukraine. This will take time to rebuild, but it can and will be rebuilt. Meanwhile, Russia has learned some important operational and tactical lessons from its early failures in the war, and its nuclear, aviation and maritime capabilities remain largely untouched. So, in one sense, we are in an arms race with Russia, and we cannot afford to fall behind.
This brings me to the cost of rearmament: it will be considerably greater than the Government have yet acknowledged. It is worth reflecting that, at the time of the first Gulf War—the last time we fielded a full armoured division for high-intensity conflict alongside an extended air campaign—we were spending 4% of GDP on defence. Even then, we had to cannibalise the whole of the British Army of the Rhine in order to field that armoured division. So the Prime Minister’s commitment to raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP in the financial year 2027-28 is clearly inadequate; 2.5% of GDP would merely close the gap between the current level of resource and the cost of the existing programme, and there are two years before even that happens. As things stand, it seems that defence will actually receive less cash next year than it will in this. I cannot imagine quite how the Minister will defend this in the House.
So what is the cost? SACEUR has set out a defensive posture that, in his view, would deter Russian aggression —something the inquiry report rightly identifies as the overriding requirement. SACEUR has also identified the contribution that he needs from the UK. This should be costed and a plan drawn up to achieve the necessary force levels and sustainability as soon as possible. I cannot put an accurate price on this, but it will be well north of 3% of GDP so, to put us on the right path, we need 2.5% immediately and we need to pass 3% before the end of the decade.
Of course, the money should be spent wisely. Other noble Lords have commented and will comment on this, but I identify two important issues that need to figure prominently in our plans. The first is the requirement for continuing technological innovation and rapid capability development. This will involve a much closer and more flexible use of SMEs than has been normal in our procurement system to date. The second is the importance of well-trained and equipped reservists. With this in mind, I echo the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, in opposing any suggestion that this crucial part of our capability be put under a non-departmental body. That would be a bad idea at any time but folly today.
The Prime Minister has said that Europe must do the heavy lifting in Ukraine, but heavy lifting requires muscle. We have allowed our military muscle to atrophy for far too many years; we now need substantially to rebuild it and to rebuild it quickly, before it is too late.
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
My Lords, those were wise words from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup. I join him in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, and his committee.
All seem to agree that the context within which the report was drafted has changed dramatically. Obviously, one would be the announcement by our Prime Minister of an increase in defence expenditure and more to come, but also the flurry of announcements made since Munich by the President and the Vice-President, which makes some argue whether we can still rely on the US and whether all the assumptions we have made since the Second World War about transatlantic relations are put in question. Are we still confident that the US will come to our aid? I note that the former US ambassador to Moscow said over the past few days that we need to rethink the side on which the US is now, because there have been so many things said by the President which favour Moscow, and there has been no criticism of Moscow but much criticism of President Zelensky, who was lectured, indeed humiliated, when he visited the White House and may yet again, Canossa like, have to go on his knees when next week he visits, or is likely to visit, the President, possibly with President Macron and our Prime Minister. The question of trust must arise and must affect all our relations, including our reliance on the US for the nuclear deterrent.
There is an old adage, “Think it, don’t say it", and we have to understand our Prime Minister when he bites his tongue, I guess, about things he would like to say about the utterances of President Trump, but he cannot say them, and we are more able to do so.
You can talk about the responsibility for the war. President Trump mentioned Ukraine as starting the war. He wants to increase the G6 to the G7, and it is sad to see the way in which Congress, or at least the Republicans, a few days ago sycophantically rallied around the President, yet a few months ago, they would have given just the same response to President Zelensky. Now they exult in the President’s new clothes.
Paragraph 155 of the report states that we should:
“expect a gradual shifting of US priorities”.
There has not been a gradual shifting. There has been a fundamental reversal by President Trump, by the pause, in terms of Ukraine, on both the military side and intelligence. To remove intelligence, in terms of both the offensive and defensive capability of Ukraine, can harm the war effort immensely so that Putin can take yet more land in advance of any peace treaty.
Since the publication of the report, we have seen this flurry of declarations, and we need to re-evaluate our relationship. It is argued that the specialist cadre in the Foreign Office regarding Russia has hollowed out. I recall that many years ago when I was in the Foreign Office in response to that challenge, we responded to the Hayter report to increase concentration on Russia. Do we now need a similar Hayter report?
I turn to particular aspects of the report: the wider challenge of defence in a more diverse society and the role of the reserves, which the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, spoke wisely about. The older generation in our country is more ready to relate to the military than the younger generation. When I sell for the Royal British Legion for 11 November, I often find that young people are reluctant to give to the military whereas older people are very ready to do so. We need to educate our communities.
Many have made points about the global South, as it is now called. The committee says that we should deal with that with ODA—that does not sit easily with the recent cuts to ODA.
Finally, there is the question of realism, mentioned in the summary and discussed well by the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley. Can we still afford the full spectrum on defence and to what extent should there be a substantial move to our European allies and a rejection of some of the ideological antagonism towards Europe? It is very important that the Government respond to the new Germany, as Chancellor-to-be Merz asks to be brought within the circle of our nuclear powers. On this point of realism, we should invite everyone to go to Delphi, consult the oracle and perhaps be ready to examine ourselves and know ourselves better than we do at present.
Lord Soames of Fletching (Con)
My Lords, I join in the congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, and, before him, the noble Lord, Lord Ashton, to our wonderful committee staff and to all those who took the trouble and time to give us evidence for this important and substantial report.
I start by saying, across the political divide, that our Prime Minister has handled events thus far with exceptional calm and confidence. It gives great strength to our case that the nation is united in its support for Ukraine and its determination to ensure that we are prepared to make a greater contribution to NATO, which is long overdue, and thus to European security. It is a great pity that we no longer have a seat in the Councils taking place today in Brussels.
I strongly support President Trump’s determination that this should be the case, but respectfully remind him that the Atlantic alliance, which is the most successful defensive organisation of all time, is not something just to be dismissed at the flick of a switch. We will get further quicker if we undertake the vast amount of work that has to be done in an orderly way without the baleful histrionics. He should also realise that, whatever agreement he thinks we may be able to reach with President Putin, the Kremlin will continue to view the West as an enemy. We must therefore take all necessary steps to continue to be aware of the danger it represents and its activities, which are harmful to ourselves, our people, our country and our allies. To this end, we need, as everyone agrees, to build up our defences and our resilience. Investing in our security is in our interest and we need to recognise our urgent obligation to the country to do it.
The wake-up call—now an alarm call—that this committee deals with is extremely timely. It will affect this country’s military activities across all domains and mean profound changes in the military and civilian establishments, in particular in the reordering and encouragement of our defence industrial base, which has so much to offer. I agree strongly with the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, on this. To this end, I urge Ministers to study the case histories of the Americans, who do this sort of thing extremely well, particularly businesses such as Anduril, which I saw the other day and is doing so much in the private sector in R&D and production and at far lower prices than the conventional manner.
I also support strongly an urgent look at how the reserves in all three services can play a bigger role and bring into the defence field many more people who would otherwise not be involved. I strongly—very strongly—support the comments from the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, in this regard. Of course, we await the outcome of the strategic defence review from the noble Lord, Lord Robertson. Although we can, I think, all be pleased with the intention to raise spending on defence, to be frank, what is planned at present is nowhere near enough, as several noble Lords have said.
In the months ahead, it will be increasingly important that the public understand that this country is going to have to change its dispositions. I think that it would be a wise step to establish a ministry of civil defence, which would accelerate the planning of the kind of unforeseen circumstances and eventualities that are clearly going to arise; it would be a focus for urgency in building our required, but much overdue, national resilience. Incidentally, I wonder whether the Minister will consider whether it is entirely sensible to send the carrier strike group to the Far East when it may well be required for urgent duties nearer home. It seems to me foolish to dispatch so much of our limited naval power such a long way from its home base at a time of considerable tension.
In my view, the reason why the events of the past few weeks have come as such a tremendous shock in this country is because the Article 5 commitment—and NATO’s solidarity behind it—allowed a billion people in 32 countries to sleep easily in their beds at night. To be frank, that is no longer the case. They will continue to be able to do so only if deterrence is real, robust and understood by friend and foe alike. Deterrence means having the right capabilities and the right forces, with the right equipment, at the right place and at the right time, to defend our people and to frighten off those who wish us ill. In Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine, we have been reminded vividly of what is at risk. We must take all necessary steps. The stakes before us are sky-high and, as this report makes plain, we need to wake up to them.
Baroness Harris of Richmond (LD) [V]
My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, on introducing this excellent report. It makes grim reading. By its reckoning, we are not defending ourselves as a country well enough. It pre-dated, but was prescient in, its conclusions, which played out in the terrible scenes at the White House last week when, finally, American foreign policy was laid bare.
There will be no security backstop guaranteed by our long-term allies. We have in effect been cut off from what we have long believed to be our security lifeline. America, under this President and his wealthy backers, has reneged on that long-held view that the western alliance worked together against the dictator and aggressor, Putin. That view was shattered to pieces when, at the recent United Nations General Assembly, the resolution blaming Russia for starting the war was voted against by peace-loving, democratic nations such as Belarus and Hungary—and the United States of America. Now, President Trump is threatening to revoke the legal right of 240,000 Ukrainian refugees to stay in the US. Who could possibly have thought it?
That was only the beginning. Things have deteriorated inexorably since then. This report articulates the urgent need for us to examine and address the areas that we need to support in our military strategy in order to assure this nation that we can protect and defend ourselves—the very first priority of any Government. In doing so, we need to ensure that we play our important part in a pan-Europe security role, helping Ukraine to survive this terrible war, particularly since the United States has just decided to suspend its military aid to Ukraine—a shocking, brutal and traitorous act toward a country trying to save itself from Russian aggression.
There is so much in the committee’s report, ranging from the underlying importance of deterrence, through the defence recruitment system and how we build mass, to how we need to recruit and retain more reserves and the urgent need to better understand and work with our defence industry. I applaud all the speeches that have talked about this; it is a blueprint that I hope will be studied and accepted by those about to produce our strategic defence review.
The report identifies what must now be done to rectify this, at speed—all the while acknowledging how difficult this will be when our resources are so low and money is scarce. However, raiding our international aid budget to help pay for this urgent uplift to our national security is, I believe, the wrong way to go about it. There are around $300 billion of frozen Russian assets across the G7 and the EU. We hold around £25 billion of those. Will the Government urgently bring forward legislation to unblock those assets? The money that we have taken from the international aid budget could then be put back and made to work in those countries whose very existence relies on our support. In the long run, that soft power that we have exercised so well in the past will be remembered.
The report also makes much of engaging the whole of society in understanding the importance of defending ourselves against future aggression. A déjà vu moment for me came as I recalled my visit to the civil defence college in Easingwold some 35 years ago. We had three days of intensive training in all aspects of what we should do in the event of nuclear war being declared. As local councillors at the time, we were given insight into how we should help our communities prepare and ultimately survive any attack. We had tabletop exercises, discussions and military personnel guiding us through debates and lectures.
Shamefully, some of us treated this important seminar as a bit of fun—light-hearted relief from our day job as councillors. One evening, I organised an escape committee to the local pub, when we were not supposed to leave the estate. It was only when we were subjected to the awful sound of air raid sirens on some exercises that the reality of what we were doing there had the desired impact on us. Ukrainians have had that every day for the past three years and the reality of Russian terror in so many unspeakable ways.
There was a bunker at County Hall in those days and only one person was in charge of running our county’s emergency defence service—how very British. At least we had an appreciation of just what was involved in civil defence. My fear now is that this knowledge is completely lost and that it will require a considerable effort to bring it back into existence. The report is a wake-up call indeed for this and I ask the Minister what plans the Government have to bring back civil defence awareness in our society.
Now we know that we cannot count on America any more to help in the defence of our way of life and our values as democracies, we have to stand as one against those malign forces that seek to destroy those values. Ukraine has shown us how to do this and we must continue to help that brave country fight for its right to exist. This report charts the work needed to bring this forward at speed. Now is the time for us to make ourselves ready.
Lord Sahota (Lab)
My Lords, it is conventional wisdom across all cultures and societies that when someone visits your home as a guest, you treat the guest with utmost respect and courtesy; it is only good etiquette. You do not berate, bully, belittle or humiliate your guest in public.
President Zelensky’s country has been invaded by a tyrant, and he is travelling across the world pleading for help to save his nation. He is not the invader or the aggressor. He is simply asking for the invaders to leave so that his people can live in peace with their neighbours. Therefore, I appeal to the President of the United States to reinvite his guest, listen to his plea and then stand firmly in support of Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine is indeed a wake-up call for all of us in Europe. After the Second World War and during the Cold War we all knew where we stood. On one side we had Warsaw Pact nations and on the other NATO. No country dared cross another’s border for fear of nuclear conflict. Each side watched the other. Our spies followed theirs, and their spies followed ours. We disapproved of their political system, and they disapproved of ours. Yet, in this strange reality, we coexisted.
Then, at the end of the 1980s and in the early 1990s, the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. We thought we had won the Cold War—indeed, we had. Out of the ashes of the Soviet Union, 15 new nations emerged, finding their own voices, including Ukraine. In the Balkans, after a brutal and bloody civil war, seven more nations found their independence. We celebrated, we breathed a sigh of relief believing that a new world order had arrived, that liberty and liberal democracy had triumphed and that we could let our guard down. How wrong we were.
As some of the new European nations applied to join NATO, our numbers grew, but in the shadows, a Russian bear, an ex-KGB officer with a secret agenda and historical grudge was plotting his rise to power. When he finally took control of Russia, we welcomed him with open arms believing we could do business with him. How wrong we were. In 2014, when he felt secure at home, he invaded Crimea. Our failure to act emboldened him and led him to plan his next move. Three years ago, he launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Only then did we wake up to the grim reality of a new era in Europe.
Yet even now some right-wing populist politicians in NATO countries are allying with Putin. They are questioning the very existence of our alliance. If they succeed in gaining power in their respective countries, Europe will face yet another terrifying threat. Credit must be given to Sweden and Finland, nations which share hundreds of miles of border with Russia, for recognising the danger and immediately applying to join NATO. The time has come for us to make tough decisions. If Russia can deploy North Korean troops to protect its border, why should Ukraine not have the right to invite NATO forces to protect its borders? At their request, we must stand by them not just in words, but in actions. Welcome to a new world order.
Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)
My Lords, it is a huge privilege to serve on the International Relations and Defence Committee and particularly so to be part of this inquiry. I add my thanks to our chair my noble friend Lord De Mauley, our previous chair the noble Lord, Lord Ashton, and congratulate and thank enormously our wonderful committee staff.
As other noble Lords have said, much has happened since the publication of this report in September. I completely agree with my noble friend Lord Soames that a wake-up call has indeed become an alarm call. We looked at this subject because we wanted to look at the lessons for the UK. We were not trying to second guess what might happen in Ukraine, so that is where I am going to focus my remarks today.
There is a huge amount of support from around the Room today for the reserves. This report noted that Ukraine was able to draw on a large pool of reservists at the start of the Russian invasion. The establishment of the TDF—the Territorial Defence Forces—empowered local communities to take an active role in national security. In evolving from volunteer militias into formal branches of the armed forces, they have boosted the essential mass of the resistance at multiple levels. As other noble Lords, and our chairman in his opening remarks, pointed out, our report pointed to the reserves in the UK as providing a cost-effective model to do just that—build mass—yet a reduction in reserve workforce numbers confirms that the capability of the reserves, as my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford pointed out, has declined.
Others have already highlighted the RFCAs. To follow up, in an Answer to my Written Question asked on 3 February, the Minister acknowledged the multiple ways that the RFCAs offer support to recruitment, in some cases seeing a 200% improvement in expressions of interest, so I trust he will heed the warnings he has heard today regarding turning them into a non-departmental public body at this time. Surely we have to encourage all links between defence and the wider public, particularly in community and employer engagement, and in areas across the country where local knowledge and understanding may perhaps be limited within the MoD.
I understand that the Minister for Veterans and People is a current serving reservist, as—I declare an interest—is my daughter. We have been told that the Minister is conducting yet another review to determine how defence can utilise our reserves forces. Could he not instead respond to and implement the recommendations already set out in the RF30 review conducted by my noble friend Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton? If the UK is going to send peacekeepers to Ukraine at any point, we are definitely going to need highly trained reserves. In our report, Professor Vince Connelly’s evidence noted how history shows that in past crises reservist units were deployed irrespective of their readiness level, making it essential that we put systems in place to enable them to be ready now. This is now personal for me, so I urge the Government not to consider deploying reservists such as my daughter for any task for which they have not been fully prepared. Recommendation 15 of our report states that the Government should prioritise reinvigorating the reserves, and I hope the Minister will today confirm that they will act rather than just wait for another review.
Like many others, my daughter performs her military duties outside core working hours, and I suspect her employer has absolutely no idea of what she does or what she is being trained to do when it gives her time off. We have to straddle the military and civilian landscapes and vocabulary. The population is losing its connection to our Armed Forces. The Minister will know that I had very limited knowledge of military vocabulary until we took part in the AFPS scheme together. This detachment and lack of understanding of what defence means is coming through in the political challenges that the Government have in the population understanding the need to increase the defence budget, and there is alarmingly low public awareness of the threats that face the country. Our report urges the Government to pay greater attention to homeland defence. Others have referred to the Scandinavian all-of-society approach and the need for collective preparedness. Should we be expecting a duty to contribute from individuals, private companies and public organisations? We know that from the start Russian forces targeted critical national infrastructure in Ukraine, and here in the UK we are daily experiencing potentially devastating cyberattacks from malicious actors, which at the very least cause us severe economic loss. I suggest that protecting the UK’s critical national infrastructure should be not only a key defence priority but the responsibility of us all.
I understand that the Cabinet Office is leading on whole-system crisis and resilience planning, which will incorporate a whole-of-society approach, and this could include work on the contribution of the general public to national security and resilience. Can the Minister say any more about this work? How are wider civilian non-governmental organisations being included? When might we expect to hear any details on timings and outcomes?
Our report outlines how the war in Ukraine illustrates that engaging the whole of society in defence is crucial for building a resilient and prepared nation, and I urge the Government to prioritise reinvigorating the reserves, fostering wider public-private collaboration and enabling a more candid narrative about the meaning of defence and its value to us all.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, this excellent Select Committee report offers an urgent and timely analysis, rightly stating:
“The UK must commit to spending more on defence, spending it better, and leveraging its alliances by design”.
It also cites a different alliance: the deadly quartet of Russia, North Korea, Iran and China—a country on which we foolishly make ourselves ever more dependent, and a quartermaster that, if it wished, could end this war tomorrow. The report also points to Putin’s deepening connections to key global South countries, referred to by other noble Lords. I too question the wisdom of savaging our programmes in the global South, thus creating a dangerous void into which China and Russia will continue to march.
Defence and development are not binary options and there is an alternative, wiser, moral way of funding both. A hypothetical penny-in-the pound increase in income tax, to be used for defence only, would raise £6.6 billion in the next financial year—more than the £5.8 billion that will be raised by a 0.2 point cut to the ODA budget. How many of the $300 billion of Russian state assets frozen by the UK and our G7 partners have been repurposed to pay for the defence of Ukraine? There is even a risk of the £25 billion in the central bank of Russia, frozen by the UK and managed by Euroclear—referred to earlier—being returned to Russia. What are we doing about that? Why are we still waiting for the release of £2.5 billion from the sale of Chelsea Football Club to help victims in Ukraine? The Government have given no clear reason why these desperately needed funds have not been made available.
Earlier this week I attended a meeting here in Parliament addressed by a Ukrainian MP and Ukrainian prisoners of war, some of whom had been captured after the appalling destruction of Mariupol. They detailed horrific examples of torture and degradation of prisoners, which included rape, electric shocks, beatings and conflict-related sexual violence. We heard about tank cells with as many as 30 prisoners kept in confined captivity. Breaches of the Geneva Convention have been routine. We heard of more than 2,000 attacks on clinics and hospitals in Ukraine: horrendous war crimes. Over 100,000 files for prosecution have been opened, all pointing to the “mother crime”—the crime of aggression. Perhaps the Minister can tell us when the special tribunal needed to bring the perpetrators to justice will be established. What are the remaining roadblocks?
Noble Lords should note, too, that the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Putin and Lvova-Belova for the deportation of Ukrainian children. What do we know of the fate of the 19,000 missing children? The forcible transfer of children to another group is defined in Article II(e) of the 1948 convention on the crime of genocide as one of the grounds for defining genocide. What work are government lawyers doing to prosecute this violation of the genocide convention?
In a world increasingly contemptuous of the work of the International Criminal Court, the rule of law and human rights, this is more important than ever. The UK led the way in 1945 and must do so again in 2025. With likeminded nations we must create a great web—a network of accountability from which, however long it takes, there will be no escape route. To that end, the Government should use the new Crime and Policing Bill to introduce the principle of universal jurisdiction. They should expand the scope of Sections 51 and 58 of the International Criminal Court Act 2001 and consider other measures. I hope the Government will work with the Joint Committee on Human Rights in carefully examining the opportunities presented by this Bill to strengthen justice and accountability.
Ultimately, the cost of deterring war is a fraction of the cost of fighting one. Page 58 of the Select Committee’s report states that deterrence is key to preventing atrocities such as those committed by Russia in Ukraine. Along with hardheaded military deterrence including, for instance, ramping up production of British-Danish Gravehawk air-to-air missiles, we should not underestimate the deterrent effect that the strengthening of international law and our judicial institutions can play in challenging and deterring dictators. To that end, is it not about time that we joined those countries and international institutions that have designated Russia as a terrorist state or a state sponsor of terrorism? Why have we failed to do the same?
Last week’s appalling defenestration of a courageous war leader may have made what Mr Trump called “good television” but that shocking, discreditable charade would have been unimaginable in the White House of a Roosevelt or a Reagan. It would have been unthinkable to break alliances, insult allies and line up with a Russian regime led by a war criminal. To justify this by suggesting that aligning with Russia will somehow counter China—described as a reverse Kissinger—is delusional. Beijing’s cheers will have been even louder than Moscow’s as it gleefully watched the abandonment of a sovereign state, the dismantlement of the world order, division in Europe and the rupturing of transatlantic alliances. An emboldened Xi Jinping, Putin’s puppet master, will take it as a signal that he can do to Taiwan what Putin has done to Ukraine, and do so with impunity and without consequences.
Lord Risby (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord De Mauley and the members of the International Relations and Defence Committee on their excellent report. For 18 years in the other place, I represented a constituency with three air force bases, two American, including the nuclear strike force. I often felt concern that one day the hugely disproportionate American contribution to Europe’s defence would be challenged, given the low priority given by NATO countries to defence expenditure, but who would have thought that the reasons for any reduction of American support would have arisen after a country totally hostile to NATO had without reason attacked a democratic European country? Indeed, this is a grotesque wake-up call that we need to address.
President Trump has stated that the invasion of Ukraine would not have happened if he had been President. Well, maybe. Let us remind ourselves of the Budapest memorandum signed by Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom, which agreed that in return for Ukraine giving up its arsenal of nuclear weapons, they would respect the sovereignty, independence and existing borders of Ukraine. Had Ukraine kept its nuclear weapons, one may doubt that Russia would have dared to invade, but how many times have we seen examples of Russia signing an agreement and simply not abiding by it? There can be no illusions.
The report rightly highlights the importance of nurturing relationships and partnerships. The United Kingdom has played a vital role in leading from the front in support of Ukraine and in pushing others to do more themselves. This was particularly evident in the decision to send modern NATO heavy equipment, such as the Challenger 2 main battle tank in January 2023. Britain was the first country to take this bold step, and once the precedent had been set, many others followed our lead. This must continue. That these efforts have continued across two Governments and enjoy real cross-party support should be a source of satisfaction for us all and, indeed, for the Ukrainians most of all.
An area that the report touches on, and one where partnerships are vital to success, is sanctions. To be frank with ourselves, the collective effort on designing and enforcing sanctions has been underwhelming. The level of exports to and imports from Europe and Russia via third-party countries has increased enormously. Although sanctions have made it more difficult for Putin to bring in the cash and parts that his Russian war machine needs, we must face the fact that we have been inadequate in cutting it off. We need to draw conclusions about this for ourselves for any future possible conflict.
It looks, however, as if the endgame is in sight. What is critical is that the Ukrainian economy recovers and that foreign investors feel confident investing in the country. That requires clear assurances about security. The Russian navy became very aggressive and dominant in the Black Sea, with the intention of making it impossible to export Ukrainian products, notably grain. There was real anxiety that this would lead to a rapid collapse of the Ukrainian economy, and indeed a threat of horrifying starvation in parts of Africa and the Middle East. Our role in the Black Sea in seeing off Russian aggression is praiseworthy. Between 2014 and 2021, the Royal Navy deployed 11 warships in the Black Sea.
Turkey, however, introduced rules under the provision of the 1936 Montreux convention. Strategically and from an economic point of view, the Black Sea must remain open for Ukraine’s future security and prosperity. The RAF in Romania supports NATO’s Black Sea policing mission. However, our efforts are limited compared with Baltic countries. We have a defence treaty with Poland, we provide unilateral security assurances to Finland and Sweden, and we have a defence agreement with Estonia. I say this because, in the event of a settlement, it is certain that Crimea will remain Russian, thus offering the opportunity to damage Ukraine and contest the Black Sea again.
We should react to this decisively, including through a closer relationship with Romania, Europe’s biggest gas producer from offshore fields. It is good that Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria are removing floating mines with the help of two former Royal Navy Sandown class minesweepers. Just as our activities in the Baltic have given real, measurable confidence and security, we need to consider how our early success in the Black Sea should be used for Ukraine’s economic recovery, benefit and security. I hope that the Government will give this real consideration.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, the International Relations and Defence Committee’s report, which was so eloquently introduced by the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, and is the subject of today’s debate, was published last September. Given the volatility of the situation with respect to Ukraine since then, particularly since the re-elected President of the United States and his new Administration took office in January, one could be forgiven for querying whether it was still relevant. However, quite apart from the prescient title, this report contains nuggets of advice and warning that are as relevant today as the day that they were written. I will mention two in particular.
The first section of the report is entitled:
“The underlying importance of deterrence”.
That deterrence has ensured that we have not had what President Trump referred to last week as World War III throughout the past 80 years. Deterrence is a fragile concept, depending as much on the perception of your potential adversary as on your own allies’ political will. In recent weeks, the Trump Administration have hacked some considerable chunks off our deterrence, to the extent that the probable future Chancellor of Germany—a lifelong Atlanticist—on the night of his election victory questioned whether they could still be relied upon. That really was a wake-up call, and will need to be effectively addressed in the run-up to the next NATO summit.
It needs also to be remembered, as was mentioned by several noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Alton in particular, that if NATO’s deterrence is weakened, it will have negative consequences too for the allies of the United States in the Far East and the South China Sea. It is little short of astonishing that President Trump, who appears to give greater importance to that region of that world, has not worked out that linkage.
The second key point that I mention from the report is the conclusion reached, which reads:
“We welcome the new Government’s commitment to negotiate an ambitious security pact with the EU. This could represent an important step towards rebuilding credible conventional deterrence”.
Clearly, that requires all European members of NATO to strengthen their defence spending substantially; in that context, the Government’s announcement last week of such an increase is very welcome. How far has the security pact project now progressed? What prospect is there for a breakthrough on that by the time of the UK-EU summit on 19 May?
Turning back to Ukraine, the newly appointed US Secretary of Defense told us that we can have confidence in President Trump because he is
“the best negotiator in the world”.
If your Lordships are tempted to believe that, I suggest you read a report written by your Lordships’ same committee, published early in 2020, about the deal with the Taliban struck by President Trump, which provided for a time-limited and uncontrolled withdrawal of all NATO troops from Afghanistan. That deal paved the way for the miserable fiasco later that year.
The shenanigans that occurred at the UN on the day marking the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine defy description or analysis. To end up, as the United States did, abstaining on a Security Council resolution that it was itself sponsoring stretches credibility to breaking point, as does vetoing a resolution put forward by its allies in the company of the aggressor, Russia. That will not strengthen the chances for a just and lasting settlement in Ukraine. Things have gone a long way downhill since the first Cold War ended.
I make one final point. During last week’s meeting at the White House between Presidents Trump and Zelensky, several references were made to the need for diplomacy; the Vice-President was particularly eloquent on the subject. Well, now we know one of the essential components of successful diplomacy: avoid discussing in public contentious issues that are components of future policy. We could do with a bit more of that sort of diplomacy. I hope that the Minister will say what the Government are doing to encourage that sort of diplomacy—not just using the word as a genuflection in its direction.
Baroness Helic (Con)
My Lords, I welcome this debate and commend the committee’s excellent, timely and necessary report. If the war in Ukraine has taught us anything, it is that we can no longer afford to rely on others for our security. The United States, once a steadfast ally, is proving unpredictable, to say the least. As the Prime Minister said:
“Europe must do the heavy lifting”.
The burden of deterrence, security and stability falls on us.
I welcome the Prime Minister’s leadership in positioning the United Kingdom as a bridge between America and Europe, as well as the increase in defence spending. However, as the report rightly points out, this is not enough. The lesson from Ukraine is clear: prevention is far cheaper than war. Time and again, from Georgia to Crimea to the Donbass, weak responses from democracies have emboldened rather than deterred aggression. The report rightly emphasises that deterrence is not just a moral imperative but the most cost-effective strategy.
We must act with urgency. Russia, even under sanctions, spends nearly as much on its military as the whole of Europe combined. With a weakening US commitment to security in Europe, we risk being outspent, outgunned and outmanned by a malign power on our doorstep. Strengthening our collective security through the UK-EU defence pact is an imperative. If deeper co-operation can secure the immense benefits of interoperability, intelligence sharing and joint procurement, we must be pragmatic enough to pursue it. In the past, we had the luxury of choice; that choice disappeared in a matter of weeks in February 2025.
However, security is not only about military strength. As the report highlights, winning over the global South, where Russia and China have spread disinformation—very successfully—is crucial. Development aid is not an act of good will, and diplomacy is not a hobby. I strongly hope that the rebalancing under way will not further shrink the FCDO’s budget.
While our focus is rightly on Ukraine, we must not lose sight of another emerging crisis that holds profound strategic importance to us: the western Balkans. If we were to do so, we would shamefully neglect the most important lessons of Ukraine. Before I say more, I take this opportunity to thank the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Peach, for his personal dedication and service in advancing UK interests in the western Balkans over the past three years. The instability of the western Balkans is directly tied to Russian interference and our national security. As the Foreign Secretary put it,
“our partnerships in the region are central to our efforts to tackle irregular migration”.
I have raised concerns about this region on multiple occasions. I regret to say that my warnings have not been heeded and neither the previous nor the current Government have acted decisively so far.
I visited Bosnia this past weekend, and I must say clearly: Bosnia today mirrors Ukraine prior to 2022. Secessionist actions in the country closely follow the path taken by the separatists in Donbass. Their external enablers in Serbia are playing the same role that Russia did in Ukraine and the Kremlin is active throughout the Balkans too. In the last two days alone, the secessionist pro-Russian leaders have aggressively destabilised Bosnia. The region’s assembly has pushed through laws that undermine state police and judicial powers, set up a parallel legal system and adopted a Russian-style crackdown on civil society. In a blatant challenge to the Dayton Agreement, authorities have also hinted at a full withdrawal unless post-1995 state institutions are dismantled.
Secessionists in Bosnia openly speculate about the possibility that the United States will no longer stand foursquare behind European efforts to uphold the sovereignty and territorial integrity of that country. They further speculate—in a move that would have been unthinkable only a month ago—that the United States will side with Russia in the closed UN Security Council meeting on Bosnia taking place around now. The risk of escalation is real, whether by reckless miscalculation or deliberate provocation.
Does the Minister agree that the lessons from Ukraine must be applied now to avert the possibility of further conflict in the region, which Europe can so ill afford? As he will know, international security structures to deter conflict exist in the country, but they are dangerously undermanned. Can he give his assessment of NATO and EUFOR’s ability to respond to further escalation? Can he give an update on the UK’s renewal of the status of forces agreement with EUFOR? Will the Government now actively consider rejoining Operation Althea and strengthening NATO HQ in Sarajevo? The committee’s report rightly commends the Joint Expeditionary Force as an international success story. Replicating such models across Europe, including in the western Balkans, could provide the unity and deterrence that the region so urgently needs.
Ukraine faces its darkest hour—besieged by Russia in the East and betrayed by some of her allies in the West. We cannot afford to stand idle. This report presents a stark, if inconvenient, truth: our military is underfunded, our technology is outdated and we are woefully unprepared for war. As we stand firm with Ukraine, we cannot ignore Europe’s forgotten flank, the western Balkans. Pre-emptive, decisive action based on deterrence not only is cheaper but gives us the chance to regain the initiative, push back against Russia and its allies and move beyond the cycle of a perpetual reactive response. We have not prevailed over Russia since the Cold War. The western Balkans is one region where we can, and must, do just that.
Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)
My Lords, I speak not as an expert in any of the military or diplomatic matters that noble Lords have spoken about but as someone with some experience in security and a growing frustration with the lack of commitment from Governments on both sides to prioritise defence, which I think many in the country share. I agree that this is an excellent report; it was produced in September 2024, but in the past few weeks the skies have got darker rather than lighter, which only amplifies the conclusions the report draws rather than detracts from them.
I praise this Government for the major change of direction announced by the Prime Minister on 25 February, when he gave a date for the increase to 2.5% of GDP to UK defence, but that was for 2027 and then it will increase during the next Parliament to 3%. I do not believe it is inconsistent to both support that announcement and to say that I think it is too little and will not deliver fighting forces quickly enough for reasons that I hope to set out. I challenge whether 2.5% is growth. I think there is some evidence that it is in fact filling the gaps we have, rather than being the growth it is being portrayed as. I think that is inconsistent and does no one any favours.
My first concern is that we are not yet using clear language to explain to the public the danger that we and Europe are facing. It seems that we have tempered our approach until now in an attempt not to antagonise the bear at our door. The problem is that Russia has taken this as a sign of our weakness, not our strength. Churchill knew a little about how to motivate people and a country. He appealed to the emotions with a clear analysis, a plan of action and speeches that the public heard and understood. In that respect, I commend President Macron yesterday evening, who was starting to speak in a language that people may start to think is making a difference. This is genuinely not a political point. I think the public need to know that this will cost money, and it may yet cost lives.
I do not believe that people join our Armed Forced and entirely consider the decision. They may lose their life; they may lose their life chances or be left physically and psychologically diminished should they have to fight. They will fight for their countries, families and way of life if they feel that they must. Improved efficiency in our recruiting only makes the process quicker and cheaper. Politics can help it deliver people and fighters.
Ironically, since 2022, as Russia walked into Ukraine, our Armed Forces have got smaller, at a time when all our Governments had been saying they were getting bigger. People can see this inconsistency. This report makes clear that our industrial and economic base is unprepared to produce the armaments we need at the speed we require. The Government must help manufacturers fire the furnaces and they must know how much money will be spent on our defence, exactly what is needed and when. Then they can tool up, skill up and invest in research to defend our country, support our friends and defeat an enemy.
Many of the weapons systems have very long lead times of production. Just one example is the production of warships. The noble Lord, Lord West, is not here today; I guess that he would have talked about frigates—
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Coaker) (Lab)
I can feel his presence.
Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)
We probably ought to name one of them after him. But they do not grow on trees; they do not arrive in do-it-yourself kits and Amazon has no Prime delivery options. It takes a while. We will also need strategic reserves of raw materials if we are going to build these things and make sure that we can deliver what we have promised.
I mention in passing one domestic issue, which should not be forgotten. It was alluded to a little earlier. Some of the home security will also need to be enhanced. Our police counterterrorist units presently focus on extreme Islamism and right-wing terrorism. They will, in the future, also have to concentrate on counterespionage. That is of course something that the security services do but, when it comes to action—somebody has to lock them up, put them before a court or do whatever we have to do—there will need to be significant resources following them around and, at some stage, taking them out.
I also remark on our special constabulary, which are another form of reserves. They are there for the police and there are fewer than 20,000 at the moment. If the police go to war, somebody has to backfill and that was their intention. They are volunteers; they are not paid. They are not an expensive option, but they can help. It means that those police officers who could be released, could be released quicker.
As of today, we have not started any order processes, as far as I am aware. It will not be until at least the summer after the defence review by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson. I want to put a challenge in here because the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser, made this point and I thought it was a really good one. We are waiting for the review from the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, which of course is sensible. I just worry, is there not some military leader in this country who knows already what we need? Surely somebody knows that we need to double the tanks, triple the Navy or whatever else. The defence review can pull this together but, if we are waiting for another three or four months, that will then be the start of a very long procurement process others have already alluded to. I worry that, if we take too many things in incremental, logical, stepped phases, others will speed past us. We know who we are talking about in that respect.
Russia has already invaded Ukraine, and it obviously threatens Moldova and Lithuania, so I ask the Government this: when will they press the procurement button for all the reasons everybody has talked about today because there will be a time lag when we decide to do it? It is time to send a symbolic message to Russia. Poland did: it is building an army, a military, of 300,000. Announcing 3% in three years is not a very strong message to me. What is ours? I have not heard it yet. Even when we have spent this money, what is it going to do? The time for gentle prose has passed. The time for action has started. This report is about the events in Ukraine, but it is really about the defence of the UK. I think we have heard enough to know that we need to do something now.
Lord Shinkwin (Con)
My Lords, I start by echoing the praise of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, for our hereditary colleague and my noble friend Lord De Mauley. I thank him and his committee for producing such an excellent report, and I wonder if anyone has ever thought of such a painfully prescient title.
The report’s recommendations are surely all the more pertinent precisely because they have been overtaken by events. Their validity, even poignancy, is being borne out as we speak. Indeed, I am not sure that I have ever spoken in a debate in which I have been so keen to be proved wrong and for my fears to turn out to be groundless. The ground, as others have said, is shifting beneath our feet. Even though I agree with it, I fear that recommendation 2, particularly that the Government should articulate how much money will be available to UK defence, has to be seen in the highly fluid context where there is a risk that it means it sets a limit and creates two risks: first, that it signals to the mass murderer Putin that there is a point beyond which we shall not go and thus risks emboldening him, and, secondly, that it fails to take into account the rapidly shifting dynamic of what was, until a few weeks ago, a secure transatlantic relationship for, as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, suggested, spending will be crucial to retaining US support.
Recommendation 8 highlights the importance of
“understanding the human aspects of war”,
the
“failed assessment of Putin’s will to fight”
and the need for the UK and NATO to
“focus on developing a better understanding of Putin’s strategy and intentions”.
Central to that, I suggest, is recognition that Putin is a professional liar. As a former KGB operative, as we have already heard, it was in his job description. It would also appear to be, regrettably, in his DNA. I am not suggesting that we do not appreciate that, but I am not sure that the bromance between Putin and Trump indicates that the US President does. Trump is no fool, but I share the fear of other noble Lords that he is being played for a fool by a master of the art.
The committee is right to mention in conclusion 9 the
“human aspects that determine the outcome of wars”
and the relationship to “deterrence, defence and de-escalation” because they have huge ramifications for the future of NATO and global security. This is especially important because as the renowned journalist Bob Woodward implies in his excellent book War such vital considerations seem to be playing second, if not third, fiddle to Trump’s very human desire, even determination, to exact revenge on Volodymyr Zelensky for failing to do his bidding nine years ago. The consequence seems to be a personal vendetta that rivals that of only one other man: Putin. In only such a scenario do I begin to find it possible to understand how the supposed leader of the free world can betray an ally fighting for its life, literally on the front line of freedom. Conclusion 31 surely contains perhaps the most poignant understatement of the entire report that:
“The war in Ukraine has thrown the role of alliances at a time of war into the spotlight”.
How true that is when one considers the grotesque spectacle of the supposed leader of the free world treating Ukraine almost as a vanquished enemy whose resources are to be seized as reparations for a war that it did not start and which it is determined to end.
I finish by thanking His Majesty’s Government and the Prime Minister for acting on the basis of the report’s conclusion 61:
“Developments in Ukraine are relevant to UK national security and, in particular, the protection of its critical national infrastructure”.
This of course includes the NHS.
My question to the Minister is: can the two words “trust” and “Trump” belong in the same sentence? Can we rely on a previously steadfast ally? I desperately want to be proved wrong, but the jury is out. It is beyond doubt that Ukraine is proving to be a wake-up call to a far greater degree than most of us could possibly have imagined.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)
My Lords, I join others in congratulating the committee on producing a first-class report, which is frankly more prescient than I expect its members could ever have imagined in their wildest dreams, or perhaps I should say nightmares. To say that the world has turned upside-down at a dizzying pace in recent days is an understatement, but the report’s recommendations remain completely relevant. In essence, we need a completely new response and quickly.
I will say a few words about the current situation before turning to several of the specific recommendations. While I join others in saluting the tireless efforts of the Prime Minister, who has played a critical role on the world stage, I do not believe that we can rely on the USA to be a strong and dependable ally. Indeed, Trump has made it clear that he does not accept a continuing responsibility for the security of Europe. As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, made clear, that has a wider resonance in the USA. Article 5 of the NATO agreement—the glue we have relied on for so many years—is no longer anything like as secure as it was. We are in a new and dangerous situation and our response must take account of this.
The response that the Prime Minister has adopted to try to broker re-engagement between the US and Ukraine while seeking to put together a coalition of the willing to defend Ukraine is to be welcomed. It is clear that the UK and our European allies will have to accept a step-change increase in resources for our own defence, as the report we are debating makes crystal clear because, once one strips away the rhetoric, the reality is this: Trump is imposing huge pressure on a so-called ally to agree to a surrender/ceasefire on America’s terms, which are to cede territory to Russia and mineral resources to the USA without guarantees to ensure Ukraine’s future security. It has paused military aid to and suspended intelligence sharing with Ukraine. It is widely reported that Defense Secretary Hegseth has instructed the US Government to pause all offensive cyber operations against Russia. Ukraine is meant to be grateful.
The key recommendations and conclusions of the report, which I reread last night, are stark and commendably clear. I wholeheartedly endorse them, particularly the focus on a whole-of-society approach.
I turn to a couple of specifics. First, on strengthening industrial partnerships, the report talked about the Government facilitating a broad church of industry engagement to bring in non-traditional defence suppliers such as start-ups, small and medium-sized enterprises and tech companies. It also argued that the Government would need to mitigate the risk of collaborating with commercial partners that lack previous experience in defence. It is currently very difficult for new entrants to the UK defence market to establish and prove the required safety, security, quality, et cetera, to the MoD and regulators. New entrants may also have to work for many years at their own expense before they start generating revenues.
An existing model that could be considered is based on UK advanced manufacturing research centres, involving scientists, engineers, researchers and technology specialists working together to develop innovative technologies, systems and products. This approach could be used for innovative defence for the UK Armed Forces, where the role of government would be primarily twofold: to work with the scientific and research community and lead industrial partners to set up and fund these advanced defence manufacturing research centres; and, crucially, to put in place risk-sharing framework contracts with lead industrial partners to co-finance the development and industrialisation of the most promising concepts. Can the Minister say what thinking the Government have been doing in this area?
One area not really covered in detail by the report is undersea cable attacks. A recent BBC in-depth article set out the extent of Russia’s shadow fleet, used to carry embargoed Russian oil products, and the extent of suspected seabed infrastructure sabotage in both the Baltic Sea and closer to home. Twice in recent months, the surveillance ship “Yantar” was spotted gathering intelligence about the UK’s underwater cable network as part of its hybrid warfare on this country’s critical infrastructure. The UK has around 60 undersea cables that come ashore on its coastline, particularly concentrated around East Anglia and the south-west. Only yesterday, the Times reported that Russia had sent a warship into the English Channel to escort a suspected arms shipment in a sanctioned cargo vessel from Syria for possible use on the front line. These are all very worrying developments. The Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, on which I sit, recently launched a new inquiry into how vulnerable the UK is to undersea cable attacks. Will the Minister say what assessment the Government have made of this current threat?
I conclude by repeating that assuming the US will side with Ukraine to provide a backstop and security guarantees is a fundamental misunderstanding of Trump’s position. Trump has a huge agenda with Russia, and many suspect that he is looking to strengthen US bilateral relationships with Russia to deliver what he believes to be huge economic and security benefits to the US and also, potentially, to strengthen Russia’s focus and reliance on China. What update can the Minister give us on the use of Russian frozen assets to augment our immediate defence spending, not simply the interest but the capital sums? Is fast-track legislation being considered? Ideas have been circulating for an international rearmament bank that would facilitate access to private sector capital for Ukraine’s ongoing struggles. Do the Government plan to pursue this? On the longer-term move to 3% of GDP for defence spending, what plans do the Government have to set up cross-party discussions to see whether a consensus can be reached on how this might be funded?
Lord Roberts of Belgravia (Con)
My Lords, I, too, welcome this excellent report, which struck me as a model of its kind. Of course, after the disgraceful scene in the Oval Office on Friday, the situation has changed since the publication of the report and significantly for the worse. We must not underestimate the gravity of what has happened, which is that during a war against totalitarian dictatorship the United States has effectively changed sides. It is very unusual for a country to change sides during a major war. Historically, Italy did it in 1943, but that was hardly decisive. However, the Saxons and Württembergers changed sides on the third day of the four-day Battle of Leipzig in October 1813, which doomed Napoleon in that campaign. Before that, the Stanleys changed sides on the morning of the Battle of Bosworth, which similarly spelled doom for Richard III.
We might be shocked by the Trump Administration’s volte-face but we should not be surprised by it. He never hid his antipathy to Ukraine and her existential struggle. Frankly, he is right about the pathetic and woeful levels of GDP that we and the Europeans presently spend on defence. However, the sheer brutality of his dealings over the past week, and especially the United Nations vote alongside Russia, Syria, the Central African Republic, North Korea and Belarus—countries in which I am sure your Lordships would like to live—from which even the Chinese had the decency to abstain, thrusts us into utterly uncharted territory.
What needs to be done now seems clear. The rest of NATO must get its spending up to the 3.4% of GDP that the Americans spend. The $300 billion of frozen Russian assets sitting in Euroclear in Brussels need to be given to Ukraine. EU cohesion funds need to be repurposed for defence, and defence spending needs to be exempted from the EU’s fiscal deficit rules. Meanwhile, missile defence systems must be rushed to Kyiv and Kharkiv.
The brave President Zelensky needs to do his country yet another great service by biting his lip, stop speaking truth to America’s overwhelming power and sign the minerals deal that will financially incentivise the United States to be invested in a durable peace. Winston Churchill called President Roosevelt’s lend-lease agreement “the most unsordid act”, when the Americans allowed us 65 years to pay off the debt. By total contrast, the Trump Administration are gouging Ukraine while the war is still going on—the very definition of kicking a man when he is down. There is no point in expecting security guarantees worth their salt from the United States for the heavily armed 700-mile border that will now scar south-eastern Europe, probably for decades. Security guarantees are only worth while if they are given willingly. The Europeans and some countries outside Europe, such as Canada and Australia, will instead have to patrol that long frontier between civilisation and barbarism. The willingness of the Canadians and Australians, once again in their histories, to step up to a great task should make us proud of the Commonwealth.
Mr Vance has spoken of trying to stop pushing Russia
“into the hands of the Chinese”,
but a policy of trying to draw Russia away from the Chinese orbit will not work. Democracies’ attempts to draw dictatorships away from other dictatorships have consistently failed ever since the Stresa Front of 1935. It might take time to fail, but fail it will. Meanwhile, the tragic by-products of the Administration’s Ukraine policy are already evident, not least in a 15% drop in pro-Americanism in this country almost overnight. I fear that, if the United States was to suffer another 9/11—God forbid—we would not see the wholehearted and full-throated support for her that we saw in 2001. A wholly transactional foreign policy has unseen costs that do not show up on balance sheets and profit and loss accounts.
When Winston Churchill spoke in the Munich debate, he used words that Europe should heed today, as we fundamentally rebalance our world in the light of this startling American defection to the side of a dictator who, throughout his career, has only ever wished America ill. Churchill said that we needed
“a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour”,
so that we could
“arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time”.—[Official Report, Commons, 5/10/1938; col. 373.]
We must adopt that stance, adopt it now and take this first-class report as our template.
Lord Tyrie (Non-Afl)
My Lords, we have before us a very important report at an important time, indeed a turning point. Rather than pick out particular aspects of the report, perhaps I could summarise what I have been hearing so far this afternoon in three conclusions: Europe can no longer rely on the United States for its defence; Europe alone is not currently capable of defending itself or Ukraine; and President Trump’s most recent statements and conduct are compromising the credibility of NATO’s nuclear deterrent. Those are pretty serious conclusions for us to be drawing. I will say a few words on each.
On whether Europe can still rely on the US to defend itself, I strongly agree with what the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, said. The US has been focusing away from Europe and towards Asia for a long time, and has been doing so based on a ruthless and dispassionate assessment of its own self-interest. Flagging that up is not anti-Americanism; saying it is a necessary antibiotic to clear some foggy, sentimental minds, particularly those clouded by too much attachment to the special relationship. We all hope that Article 5 is still alive in Washington but, like many noble Lords in this Room, I feel much less confident about that than I was only a few weeks ago. Just as concerning is that a similar assessment will be being made by potential adversaries, and therefore the risk of an extension of this war, or some further war, even if caused only by a miscalculation on this, is made much greater.
I will provide a few figures on the second conclusion that I drew—that Europe is not currently capable of defending itself. European-NATO GDP stands at $27 trillion. By comparison, Russia’s GDP stands at about $2 trillion and the UK’s is $3.6 trillion. Russia is supported by China; in fact, I do not think we have discussed China enough today. Part of the key to the solution, or at least to providing a long-term peace, probably lies in Beijing. On the question of European weakness, President Trump is right: Europe is well capable of defending itself. Our weakness is derived from a weakness of collective will and failure to organise logistics and co-ordinate our manufacturing capacity; it is not one of underlying economic capacity.
While I am throwing out a few numbers, I also point out that, based on figures from the Kiel Institute, 0.5% of European-NATO GDP in one year provides a sum greater than the total value of US support to Ukraine in the three years of this war. Another figure worth bearing in mind is that China’s GDP is six times that of Russia, which has, at least to some degree, become a satellite of China as a consequence of this war.
On the third point, the question of nuclear deterrence, I strongly agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said, and will add a couple of observations. Even if US nuclear policy has not changed in substance, President Trump’s disruptive style of diplomacy, and the uncertainty that comes with it, increases the risk of miscalculation. Certainty and consistency of policy bolster deterrence, but we are currently experiencing the opposite. Secondly, any diminution of the credibility of deterrence increases the risk of coercion of parts of Europe into concessions. That is the road to Finlandisation, and it is extremely concerning.
I end by referring to the fact that not only do we need to spend more money on defence and work much more closely with Europe to reconstruct our military manufacturing capacity and secure interoperability; we must also work with Europe to re-establish credible deterrence. On that, I quote what Friedrich Merz said two days before his election, to which the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, referred:
“We need to have discussions with both the British and the French—the two European nuclear powers—about whether nuclear sharing … could also apply to us.”
Two days later, on the night of his election, he said,
“My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe … so that … we can … achieve independence from the USA”.
He said the US
“does not care much about the fate of Europe”.
I do not know whether he is right, but I do know that we cannot rely on him being wrong.
Baroness Fall (Con)
My Lords, like other noble Lords, I congratulate the chair and members of the committee on this thoughtful and timely report. Although it is ostensibly about Ukraine, it focuses, of course, on the fragility of western security as we know it—or have known it since the Second World War. That is underpinned by NATO, the future of which now lies in the balance.
As the committee articulates so clearly in the report, things were already shifting before Trump started to take down the western security umbrella. They changed on the day that Russian troops marched into Ukraine, in February 2022—a clear failure of NATO to deter Russia in the first place. All this begs the uncomfortable question of whether we can claim to have a credible deterrent; many noble Lords have mentioned this today.
What do we actually mean by “deterrent”? I argue that it must have three factors: capability, preparedness and intent—that is the believability that an actor or set of actors will use force if they have to. It is possible that we have gradually been losing sight of this since the Cold War. The alarming question on all our minds today is whether we are seeing the end of the US-driven western alliance, as the USA’s statements about its preferred way forward on Ukraine, the role of NATO and the expectations from Europe, alongside the onslaught of geoeconomic weapons such as tariffs, have unnerved us all and led us to question America’s commitment to the transatlantic partnership from a military, political, economic and cultural perspective.
I mention this last point because here was the surprise. Much of the rest was already in the market, as others have said: the rush to peace with Putin, the not-unreasonable call for more European defence spending and the signal that American priorities may lie elsewhere. We knew, too, that Trump liked the word “tariff”—he called it “the most beautiful word”—but it was the Vice-President’s comment that Europe’s greatest threat lay within, and was not China or Russia, that really shocked us to the core. It made us wonder whether America is on our side.
In the past few weeks, we have heard accusations that the invasion was Ukraine’s fault and concessions were handed out to Russia without seeking its representations. Ukraine’s tireless and brave leader, holding the front line against tyranny, was branded a dictator. There was the ugly unravelling of talks in the Oval Office last Friday. All that came at the end of a week when the Americans sided with Iran, North Korea and Russia in the UN, as my noble friend Lord Roberts said.
Here, we have a sense of America treating its friends like its enemies and its enemies like its friends, as many noble Lords have said. This is the uncomfortable reality in which we find ourselves, but what does it actually mean? First, there is clearly a resetting of US-Russia relations. Is it to prise Russia away from China in a sort of reverse Kissinger move—many people have said that that would not be a good policy—or does Trump simply prefer to make deals with the strongmen of the world?
That begs a second question: what does all this mean for the China-US relationship, whose fraught relations have so dominated geopolitics in recent years? On the western alliance, the bottom line for us is that the security dynamic with a Trump-led USA is fundamentally shifting. I think that Trump would support a Europe that supports itself. We now need to decide how to respond and come up with a strategy. Herein lies the challenge but also the opportunity—one that opens up big strategic questions for us as a nation about who our closest allies are. What of NATO? What of Five Eyes? How much money will we need to spend on defence? Should we build a European defence umbrella within NATO or elsewhere? Is this umbrella something that we could offer as a new security home for Ukraine?
We are already seeing some choices—the decision to increase defence spending last week, for example. I support that, as other noble Lords have done today. I understand the decision to find that increase from ODA, which looks like a quick fix—no doubt there are savings that can be made there—but I have grave concerns about putting soft power against hard power, especially at such a critical moment when USA is retreating from the global stage. We must think strategically about how we influence and protect ourselves in the world, without leaving an opportunity wide open to the likes of China. This also means addressing some of the issues around the mass resilience and internal coherence of our own Armed Forces, as many noble Lords and noble and gallant Lords have pointed out today.
To return to what we mean by deterrence, we must also look at our society and its willingness to defend our values—or, as the report puts it, the human aspects of war. According to a Times survey in recent weeks, Gen Z—of which I have a few living with me—say that they would not want to go to war. We cannot know that for sure, but we can know that a divided, unresilient society that has forgotten the price of peace is unlikely to unite under a common purpose.
I end by paying tribute to the sacrifices that the people of Ukraine have made and continue to make for their freedom since the Russian invasion of their country just over three years ago. I find their determination and courage humbling and a reminder of the values that we hold dear but are often complacent about. We must remain firm in our loyalties; they are not, and never will be, to Putin’s Russia.
Lord Skidelsky (CB)
My Lords, I will not speak directly to the proposals of the report to improve our military capabilities but will consider the framework in which they are set.
The report’s underlying assumption is that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made Europe a much more dangerous place, against which we have to rearm ourselves if we are not to suffer the fate of Ukraine somewhere down the line. The report was published before Trump’s victory in the US election and therefore before the possible defection of the United States, which has been the subject of a great deal of comment this afternoon but I do not think touches the main point that the report wants to make. I reject the report’s line of argument. I am the first person to do so in this debate and have done so fairly consistently over the past two or three years. Therefore, I reject the conclusions which follow from it. I will try to explain why.
In 1989, an American political scientist called Francis Fukuyama published an iconic article in the journal The National Interest called “The End of History?”, and the subsequent two decades have sometimes been called “the Fukuyama moment”. Basically, he argued that the fall of the Soviet Union had brought about the end of history, because the causes of war between the great powers had been removed. There was a lot of initial confirmation of that, such as Gorbachev’s dream of joining the common European home. Out of that optimism came the idea of an exciting peace dividend. Of course, there would be mopping-up operations, especially in those parts of the world lagging in their appreciation of western values, but these would be nothing like the mass industrial warfare that we had experienced in the two world wars and which threatened throughout the Cold War.
The Fukuyama view of history was largely myopic. It presupposed that the world would rapidly become democratic and that science and technology would simply promote international economic co-operation. Neither of these expectations was realised. But out of the disappointed hopes of those two decades it was easy to construct a completely opposite future marked by the clash of civilisations, between the autocratic and the democratic powers, and fierce competition between the major nations of the world for control of artificial intelligence technology.
In a way, far from wanting to join Europe, Russia was depicted as wanting to attack it and even to conquer it if given the chance. In this perspective, the rhetoric of the Cold War was simply repurposed to the perceived dangers of the new situation. That has remained the conventional view; John Healey, the Defence Secretary, has said that Russia is very dangerous and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, has said in this debate that we face a dramatically increased security risk.
It is interesting that all the witnesses who gave oral evidence to the committee came from the defence sector. Therefore, it is not surprising that the report strongly advocated a new or beefed-up defence industrial society and economy. What is wrong with all that? There is confusion running through the report between the nature of modern warfare, of which Ukraine is an example, and the nature of Russia’s intentions to Europe, as revealed by its invasion of Ukraine. Dr Peter Roberts of Exeter University rightly warned the committee of our inability to understand intent, which is a major flaw in our thinking, and that is true of the report. Yes, the Ukrainian war reveals the threatening nature of modern warfare, but not the kind of threats we face from Russia in Europe.
The accepted view is that this invasion reveals the expansionist nature of the Putin regime. There are, however, many knowledgeable and respected analysts in Europe, the United States and the global South who deny that premise and argue with Jack Matlock, a former US ambassador to Russia, that Putin was provoked into invading Ukraine because NATO was trying to draw Ukraine into a hostile alliance and, had it not been so engaged, there would not have been an invasion.
Let me sum up. I am not against the rearmament of Europe. We live in a dangerous world, of course, but military spending is not an end in itself; it is a means to security. There is no special virtue in spending X rather than Y per cent of GDP on defence. The threats to security have to be perceived and analysed accurately—far more accurately than this report does to justify the volume and nature of the proposals that it is making.
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, your Lordships can always tell when they are getting to the end of a debate, because the noble Lords, Lord Skidelsky and Lord Balfe, will be speaking. Like the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, I disagree with much of the report, but I thank the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, and his colleagues for giving it to us, because this is exactly the time to discuss how we are going to handle the new situation.
Fifty-five years ago, Ted Heath, our then Prime Minister, outlined quite clearly why we should move away from the United States and start to look at the interests of Europe when we are defending Europe. In that, he was surprisingly supported by Enoch Powell. They both fell back on the doctrine that states do not do favours for other states. They have foreign policies to maximise their impact. That was always confirmed to me when I was in the European Parliament. For some years, I was on an outfit called the Transatlantic Policy Network and, through that, got to know the late Senator John McCain quite well. He was quite clear with me that there is no special relationship. He once said, probably very accurately, “There is only a special relationship in that we rely on you to keep the sergeants’ mess in control while we look after the officers”. He was right.
To an extent, I welcome President Trump and his disruption because it is long overdue. The invasion of Ukraine was clearly illegal, but it was not unprovoked. There were years of provocation preceding it, which ended by chasing Viktor Yanukovych out of office. From then on, there was little hope that Ukraine would settle down as a NATO ally in the West because Putin, who is in charge of his country and has to do his best for it, is of the view that the borders need redrawing. I have been in Crimea and all over the Donbass region. It is Russian. Let us face that: it is not Ukrainian; it is Russian and that is why there is little objection to a Russian presence there. Your Lordships are not meant to like these facts, but they are the truth.
What we now have to do, in my view, is adjust our policies in Europe so that we can break Russia away from China. We seem to be settling back and saying, “Oh yeah, Russia and China are going to get together”. China is far more of a threat to western values, because it does not rely on a western philosophy in the way that it looks at the world and, if it is allied to Russia, that means it is on the borders of Europe—it will have bases in the Arctic before long. My view is that we need to come to terms with Trump.
One challenge for the Ministry of Defence is that we need to make sure that our nuclear deterrent will actually work. I was assured by John McCain that the Americans held the key to certain aspects of launching the missiles that made them completely under American control. Could we launch an independent missile? France can, and that is why France will be the leader of the new European security dimension.
The people we need to look to are Merz in Germany—the new chancellor—and Giorgia Meloni, who has a very good vision of how Europe should turn out, and we must hope that Macron can be succeeded by someone who has European interests at heart and is not a nationalist. I see that as being our big challenge: we have to get back into Europe as a country and get as close to the Europeans as we possibly can. We will not be able to lead the European defence initiative, for the bad reason that we decided to leave the European Union. We will not get in there, because France will claim the initiative—and, frankly, if I were France, I would claim the initiative—but we do need to get more closely aligned.
My final point is that we have had some mention of the Scandinavian version of security. That is based on a form of national service and on defending the home space. We need to indulge in that. There is no market in Britain for body bags, and there is no market in Britain for foreign adventure beyond that necessary to defend our own country and our close allies in Europe.
Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)
My Lords, I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak in this debate. I am sorry that I have missed some of it. I declare a relevant interest in the register as an adviser to a defence-related tech company called Thales UK.
I start by agreeing with the view of many that it is a shame it was not felt appropriate to hold this debate in the Chamber. I say this because I think that more recent events give the report a relevance far beyond the relatively narrow focus of its original purpose. In my view, for example, it has a far wider and compelling relevance to the use of information by Governments in the age of artificial intelligence. For my part, I will not focus on any of the specific recommendations of the report, as I have great confidence that others have covered that ground. Rather, I want to spend my allotted time on just one issue: why did we name the report A Wake-up Call?
Many noble Lords will be familiar with the works of the Israeli academic Yuval Noah Harari, the author of the best-selling books, Sapiens and Homo Deus. His most recent book, Nexus, which my son bought me for Christmas at my direction, is a compelling history of information networks from the stone age to present times. In very simple terms, just of one of Harari’s many insights is his belief that there exist two very different views of how information is used. One is a somewhat naive view of information that sees it as the asset by which truth is established and from which wisdom thereafter flows, so the greater the amount of information that can be gathered and assessed, the closer we come to truth and therefore wisdom. Harari does not share this naive or simple view. Rather, he believes that the end use of information, specifically in respect of how nations are governed, is a far more dangerous trade-off between truth and order. More specifically, he argues that Governments, since they are the most powerful institutions in developed societies, have the greatest interest in distorting the truth or at least in hiding the most inconvenient facts. Indeed, he argues that allowing Governments to supervise the truth is like appointing the fox to guard the chicken house.
I would argue that, certainly for at least the past 15 years, successive British Governments have distorted the truth about the state of our Armed Forces. As Chief of the Defence Staff, I bore close witness to this and to some extent always understood why a slightly varnished version of the truth was necessary to avoid public alarm. I could perhaps understand how successive defence reviews rather committed to the delusion that all was well. I could appreciate why inconvenient facts about our performance in NATO, the real costs of the nuclear enterprise, the hollowing out of war-fighting resilience, the state of our Reserve Forces, the lack of a continuum of deterrent capability which permitted the control of escalation and countless other such issues were all being hidden. Indeed, since coming to this place, I have also occasionally marvelled at how at the Dispatch Box dissembling on defence issues has seemed the accepted order of the day.
However, at least two people have seen through these distortions and delusions. One is President Putin, who reached his own conclusions about NATO’s true deterrent capability, a capability that in his eyes lacked credibility and which he was, and seemingly remains, fully prepared to put to the test. The other is President Trump, who recognised that the United States of America was being taken for a wholly unfair ride by the European members of NATO and that it was well past the time when Europe needed to pay for its own security. It is for these reasons that the committee chose the title it did. The UK, Europe and NATO all need to wake up to some remarkably harsh realities.
I am left hoping two things. The first hope is that we have not woken up too late. My fear here is that we already have. In this context, we must be very wary of who benefits from a ceasefire. My view is that it is the side that wins thereafter the race to rearm. My second hope is that, when it comes to our national security, we never, ever, fall so deeply asleep again. The sole issue that I ask the Minister to give assurances on is that, if UK forces are committed to an operational role in Ukraine, it is only in the context of the appropriate command and control, the correct equipment and materiel and the proper security safeguards. Finally, in closing, I wish this Government nothing but good fortune in trying to navigate their way out of this truly awful mess.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, this has been a fascinating debate. Like others, I thank the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, and the committee for producing an excellent report that has contributed to this being such a stimulating debate. Clearly, there are other, slightly more recent factors that have contributed to it being even more timely and interesting than it might have been, and I agree with the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton of Richmond, that it would have been preferable if the debate could have been held in the main Chamber.
We are just over three years after the start of the current operations in eastern Ukraine. I put it like that because today we have really talked only about the situation since February 2022, yet the situation in Crimea since 2014, which was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Alderdice, and the situation in Georgia in 2008 remind us that Russian expansionism is not new.
Although the title of the report, Ukraine: A Wake-up Call, is very telling, it is also important for us to remember that for too long, this country, like our NATO allies, tended to turn something of a blind eye. We do not talk about the fact that 20% of Georgian territory is still occupied by Russia. We do not talk very much about Crimea because we seem vaguely to have assumed that it is now just Russian, so we talk about Ukraine of the borders of February 2022, but until two weeks ago, we had at least assumed that we were on the same page as our transatlantic allies.
We are on the same page as Canada. Indeed, Donald Trump and JD Vance have done the most extraordinary thing: they have united Canada and have persuaded the Québécois that they are Canadian after all. Donald Trump appears to be doing something that his friends in the Reform Party probably would not like, which is reuniting Europe, not in terms of European institutions—I am not going to get into any technicalities about the UK-EU security relationship in terms of a bilateral relationship that is signed and sealed as a treaty—so much as the very clear fact that European states need to work together.
There has been a wake-up call, which we began to see at the time that this report was written, but it has become ever greater. At the same time, President Putin has managed to catalyse NATO by ensuring that Finland and Sweden have finally decided that they should be NATO members rather than outside it, so there are a lot of unintended consequences. As noble Lords have pointed out, this report was completed six months ago. By House of Lords standards, debating it within six months is quite quick. The fact that the Government have already responded is excellent but, obviously, nobody could quite have predicted what has happened in the six weeks since President Trump was inaugurated for the second time.
We are in a very different situation where our American allies perhaps cannot be relied on as in the past. As my noble friend Lady Harris pointed out in her trenchant and powerful speech, the US vice-president’s comments were, quite frankly, unacceptable. To suggest that the United Kingdom is “some random country” that maybe fought some war 30 or 40 years ago is absolutely unacceptable and reprehensible. The transatlantic relationship might not be a special relationship in US eyes in the way that it has sometimes been in British rhetoric. As the former UK ambassador to the US, Dame Karen Pierce, pointed out yesterday to the International Relations and Defence Committee, the Americans do not see it in a sentimental way, and they never have. As several noble Lords have pointed out, it is quite reasonable that the United States, particularly, but not only, under Donald Trump, in many ways sees the transatlantic relationship through a transactional lens.
One wake-up call we need to understand is that whoever is the American President, we cannot simply assume that NATO will go back to the alliance it was during the Cold War. We need to be aware of that but, equally, we need to be able to trust our allies. We cannot have the vice-president of one of our allies rubbishing the United Kingdom or denigrating the President of Ukraine. It is utterly unacceptable.
I absolutely agree with the many noble Lords, starting with the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, who pointed out that the Prime Minister has been very effective over the past few week in working with both the US and our European partners. However, we also need to make sure that we are not only standing up with Ukraine against Putin but standing firm against the United States when it is not acting as a reliable partner.
Various issues arise from that. It will surprise noble Lords that I agreed with a couple of points made by the noble Lords, Lord Balfe and Lord Skidelsky. On the question of our relationship with the United States, at a meeting yesterday, it was pointed out to me that we should not just assume that we go back to old-fashioned business as usual. However, the UK’s relations with the United States are qualitatively different from those of our European partners: we are part of the Five Eyes, we have various defence capabilities that our European partners do not, and we clearly have the nuclear deterrent. As the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, pointed out, the French nuclear deterrent is independent, but ours is closely tied to the United States. Is the Minister able to confirm that we can use our deterrent independently? It is clearly important because our deterrent is the NATO nuclear deterrent and France’s is not. That is my first question.
Various noble Lords have mentioned the incoming German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has talked about the UK and France sharing their nuclear deterrent. To what extent are we able to do that beyond saying that NATO offers a nuclear umbrella? There are questions about the non-proliferation treaty, which is not frequently talked about anymore, but there may be issues there, so it would be interesting if the Minister could comment.
Defence expenditure is one of the issues that has been partially overtaken by events in the past two weeks. We now have a timetable to get to 2.5% and several noble Lords talked about moving to 3%. That is my party’s policy, and we believe we should do it quickly, but not on the back of development. The noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, made a valid point that we might say that we need to increase defence and there might be various niche capabilities that the noble Lord, Lord West, would want if he were in the Room, but we need to be clear about what we would be spending that 3% on.
Defence procurement is clearly one of the issues. The questions raised about our defence industrial base are hugely important. My noble friend Lady Tyler of Enfield was one of the Peers who mentioned that we need to strengthen our defence industrial base and to work with small and medium-sized enterprises, particularly those that have found that the uncertainty pending the SDR has created issues with their balance sheets and cash flow. Will the Minister tell the Committee what work is being done with small and medium-sized enterprises, particularly those that have dual-use capabilities? Equally, we need to be working with our European partners. As several noble Lords mentioned, interoperability is vital. Defence spending of 3% may or may not be enough. We need to make sure that we have the right capabilities, in the right place, at the right time, not just as the United Kingdom but with our NATO partners and allies.
My final question is on the size of the Armed Forces. For years, these Benches have been saying that we need to restore the 10,000 cut to the Army. We also strongly believe that we need to strengthen the reserves, but the other important point that was raised is about total defence or civilian defence.
Taking the lessons of our Finnish and Swedish partners is important. What are His Majesty’s Government doing not only to think about civilian capabilities but to talk to the United Kingdom? At the moment, we are, to an extent, talking to ourselves. We will have people watching online. There will be people from the Armed Forces or veterans listening in. There might be people from the Russian embassy or the American embassy listening in; maybe even the Chinese embassy has an interest. What we really need, however, is to be saying things that reach out to the ordinary citizens—in particular, not people of our generation, because most of us will be over the average age of the UK population. The noble Baroness, Lady Fall, pointed out that she lives with some Gen Z people. We need to be reaching out to them, to schools, to universities and to our young people to explain why defence and security matter.
This is not just about the past; it is about the present. It is about the defence of democracy and standing up not just for Ukraine but for what it stands for. We are doing it for Europe and for a future that is for Gen Z, their children and grandchildren.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
My Lords, it has been a pleasure, albeit a sombre one, to listen to this debate. I first pay tribute to my noble friend Lord De Mauley for his tireless work in chairing the committee and to all the noble Lords involved in the production of this report.
As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, observed, committee chairs sometimes feel aggrieved at the sluggish progress from a report’s publication to the actual debate on it. However, recent events have certainly thrust this report into stark relief, emphasising how timely some of the warnings were and, at the same time, flinging us into new territory, which was probably not at the forefront of the committee’s thinking. Unchanging is that Ukraine is of critical importance. I pay tribute to the Prime Minister’s sure-footed diplomacy and his unwavering support of Ukraine. I suggest that we can support his endeavours by reaffirming our political unity for that support, so that the clearest possible message of unity is heard from this Parliament.
The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, rightly reminded us of the brutal and repugnant reality of Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. Saliently, the report takes head-on the post-Cold War role of NATO and the distinction between a defensive alliance ready to come to the aid of each other and the need to develop that into a deterrent alliance. It is fair to say that the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Putin galvanised a NATO rethink about purpose, resilience and kinetic responsiveness. If we consider recurring NATO exercises, JEF and the enhanced forward presence, a lot of that was actually there and was already happening. As a Defence Minister, I saw that collaboration in practice.
Where I think the committee report compels serious reflection is on the need for coherence between nuclear—the ultimate and ever-present deterrent—and conventional deterrence. I commend the Government’s recognition of that in their response and of the clamant need to deny our adversaries the chance to perceive deterrence gaps in which they may operate. This requires forensic military analysis, intricate strategic planning and a committed response from, if I may say so, principally European NATO members. My noble friend Lord Soames is absolutely right beyond doubt: Russia is, and will continue to be, a threat. I realise that the Minister will be limited in what he can share with us about this new future but, if there is encouragement on that front that he can offer, we should be very pleased to hear it.
The committee was clear about the need for increased defence expenditure; numerous contributors have spoken on that. From my perspective, the Government’s recognition of and response to that is very welcome. Although the strategic defence review has been operating as a pause button on procurement, crystal clear to everyone is how the pace of increased defence expenditure will have to accelerate post 2027. That has been a clear message from this debate, and I hope that the Government are receptive.
The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, is absolutely right to call for clarity about rearmament and to emphasise a potential real cost. The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, is absolutely correct that this threat environment and the rearmament imperative must be shared with the public. There is an urgent need for re-education of what it means to live in an age of live threat and to understand the implications of that.
Let me just clear my throat; this Room, unlike the Chamber yesterday, seems to be very warm. Specifically in relation to Ukraine, events are fast-moving and unpredictable, but there are some certainties. Whatever happens in the near future, I think that these are the following certainties. Ukraine’s long-term security requirements require us to be not reactive but anticipatory. Can the Minister provide clarity on the Government’s long-term thinking for supporting Ukraine’s military capabilities, economic resilience and, of course, reconstruction efforts. How do we maintain that commitment beyond the immediate crisis, ensuring that Ukraine is safe and can defend herself in future?
The report rightly highlights:
“Developments in Ukraine are relevant to UK national security and, in particular, the protection of its critical national infrastructure”.
It also highlights the importance of resilience within our own society. Hybrid warfare, cyberthreats and disinformation campaigns are tools that we have seen be used by hostile states to undermine democracies. We must enhance our national resilience by countering disinformation, securing critical infrastructure and strengthening cybersecurity.
My noble friend Lord Soames’s suggestion of a dedicated civil resilience unit—whether that is a ministry of civil defence or not—is, at this point in our affairs, a very serious suggestion meriting close attention. I hope that the Minister will feel able to respond to that. Can I also ask the Minister to elaborate on what measures are being taken to specify and fortify our national resilience against such threats?
My noble friend Lord De Mauley mentioned the Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations. The RFCAs are a strong British tradition with a deep connection and sense of service to our Reserve Forces and cadets, much of it emanating from voluntary activity. I commend my noble friend on his excellent work in this field. I agree that the Ministry of Defence should be very cautious about doing anything to jeopardise that underpinning voluntary ethos. I have to say, this is a classic case of there being a high risk of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. That would not be good; indeed, at this geopolitical time, it would be very bad. I say to the Minister that, if this NGU concept is being promoted from within the department as a box to be ticked somewhere in the depths of Whitehall, I think that it will face a very rocky road in the House. There are far more pressing defence priorities demanding our attention.
If we have learned anything else from the war in Ukraine, it is a stark reminder of certain things. The international rules-based order cannot be taken for granted. If we wish to deter future aggressors, we have to learn the lessons of a conventional deterrence failure and transform that into an effective deterrence future. We have to invest in our defences at pace. We have to stand unwaveringly with our allies. We must not allow the practice of principled, professional and decent diplomacy—very much manifested by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, both today and, if I may say so, in his day—to be traduced by aberrant transgressions.
The Prime Minister has been an exemplar of the former. He demonstrates how to do it and why we need it. It is very important that, in whatever lies ahead, the Prime Minister’s example is supported by us all, because a world without that decent, professional, principled diplomacy—this goes back to the point about communication made by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton—would be a poorly informed world. It seems to me that, if we can take away these lessons and look at much of what the report suggests, we have the solution for how to create a safer world—and, perhaps most importantly, how to send a message to any potential bullies and say, in the words of the Scots, “Wha daur meddle wi’ us?”
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Coaker) (Lab)
Well, I hope I do not have to answer the last question.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
Anyway, I first declare an interest: my son-in-law is in the Mercian Regiment in the reserves, and it would obviously be inappropriate for me not to mention that, as I will mention reserves in much of what I say.
May I also say what a pleasure and privilege it is to be in a debate? I think the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, mentioned that not many people may watch these debates; I can assure her that they are read far and wide, and the importance of what we say here should not be underestimated by those who are part of our great family, but also by others who perhaps do not have the same intent. It is important for us to remember the significance of the remarks that are made here.
I just say to the noble Lords, Lord Balfe and Lord Skidelsky, that it is of great significance and strength that, in this Parliament, within the legal framework of our country, anybody is free to make the comments that they wish to make without fear or favour. Although I did not agree with some of the points that they made, I am proud to be part of a Parliament where they can express those opinions.
It is also important to remind ourselves, before I come to the report of the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, of the significance of the debate that we are having, as it reminds us all that our country, virtually unanimously, has been proud to support and continues to support Ukraine. That is great, and something that our country can be complimented on. I know that, across Europe and beyond, other countries look to us with that pride as well.
It is also important to restate that the vast majority of our country understands that the fight in Ukraine is our fight as much as theirs, and that their front line is our front line. With that, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, for the significant support that she gave to me when she was a Minister and I was in His Majesty’s Opposition, and in speaking for the Opposition now; and to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, from the Liberal Democrat Benches; and all those from the Cross Benches and across Parliament for their general support for what we are doing in Ukraine. For those who read our debates, it is of huge significance and reminds them that there is no weakening of our resolve to continue with that struggle. Whatever the debate on the level of defence spending, we continue to spend billions of pounds a year to support that endeavour. That is really important context.
I take absolutely the point by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton, in his interesting and challenging speech, that, whatever commitments we make, we should make sure that we see them through. Wherever that leads us in the future, that is a very real and proper challenge to make to Government and Ministers. I take that very much on board and thank him for his comments.
What an outstanding report this is from the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley. We will come back to its title, Ukraine: A Wake-up Call, because it speaks to not only our nation but Europe as a whole. It makes all sorts of points—far too many for me to address—but the fundamental point is that, whoever had won the US election, Europe would have had to do more. Although we can look to the election of President Trump and some of the comments that have been made, if Kamala Harris had won then she would have been demanding—maybe not in the same way or to the same extent—that Europe do more as well. That is why this title is so important, because it reflects a growing reality on the continent of Europe. As the noble Lord, Lord Soames, so aptly put it, the committee could have called it “An Alarm Call”. The events of the past couple of months have demonstrated the need for greater urgency, speed and determination to take the necessary action.
One of the most important things that comes through in the report, which I have discussed with the noble Baronesses, Lady Goldie and Lady Smith, and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, in other debates, is that we have to rebuild deterrence. We need to understand that stopping war often means having to prepare for it. That is an unwelcome and difficult truth but, in today’s world, it is the reality.
The report also recognises, in a way that has not always been apparent, the changing nature of war and that we need to wake up to that. The noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, the committee—many of whom are here—and those who have worked with it should be commended on this, given that the whole country is starting to wake up to that too. It pointed out the need, as many noble Lords have done, for homeland defence, defence of critical national infrastructure and the importance of the reserves. All those things are really significant. Many noble Lords have heard me say in the Chamber that, if anyone had been saying this two, four, six or eight years ago, they would have been looked at with disbelief for talking about the need for us to understand how we develop homeland defence. That is a criticism of all of us, but it is a fact. The report seeks to do that.
The noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, asked me about the strength of the reserves. The official figure I have, from 1 November 2024, is that there are 32,080 trained and untrained reserves. He also mentioned the importance of the defence industry. The wake-up call is not only for the military but for the defence industry. We are seeking, through our new defence industrial strategy, to include SMEs and some of the businesses that the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and other noble Lords mentioned, to set up new structures and to try to ensure that we do not have a situation where our stockpiles are not big enough and, frankly, we cannot restock them quickly enough. We cannot be satisfied with that. Part of our response is to work with industry and to upskill, but we are also making an organisational change in the Ministry of Defence to set up the new National Armaments Director to accelerate the changes we need.
We are also trying to become a closer partner, as the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, mentioned, on the European defence industrial strategy to rebuild relationships there. That is not being met with universal approval from every European country, although many see the advantages of it. It is in Europe’s interest and ours; I know that we are not in the European Union, but co-operating on the defence industry in a way that allows interoperability is in both our interests and, strategically, the right thing to do. We have to find a way of overcoming that.
I say to my noble friend Lord Liddle that, yes, we are working to 2.5%. Another really important figure is the 3% in the next Parliament. There will always be debate about defence spending, as we have heard today. The noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, made points about a whole-of-society response and homeland defence. I agree with him on that.
The noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, talked about the importance of alliances across the world. I agree with that. Notwithstanding the debate about ODA money being used for defence, she will no doubt be pleased that I, as a Minister with some responsibility for defence and diplomacy, have been to Africa and South America. We are seeking to go to those countries to further develop and maintain our relationships with them and to establish and develop relationships in other parts of the world. Notwithstanding overseas development assistance, those countries are asking for our military assistance—not necessarily with divisions or thousands of fighter aircraft but with the doctrine, training and the confidence we can give them in tackling the terrorist threats and destabilising impacts in their own countries.
The most incredible example of that which I have seen recently is the work that we are doing in Nigeria, a close ally of ours. I saw a small number of personnel working with its people to help and support them, with the threat that they face from Islamic State West Africa and Boko Haram, to try to stabilise their country. That was helping with development and security as well; the noble Baroness is right to make that point.
The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, talked about the size of the Army. Obviously, the defence review will have something to say about that. We are really trying to tackle the recruitment and retention crisis that he mentioned; we implemented straight away the recommendations of the Armed Forces’ Pay Review Body and we recognise the skills agenda. There are a significant number of vacancies in the existing defence budget for skilled workers. We must find a way to tackle that, including by improving conditions, changing childcare arrangements and improving housing. We have changed the contract—I had better get this the right way round—from Capita to Serco to try to improve that. This will not have an immediate effect, but we are trying. The noble Lord asked in particular about the cyber route. We are creating a new cyber route for people with those skills because, without being rude, we are not sure that the current route would be open to some of those recruits if they were trying to get into the Marines, but we need those people.
The noble Lord, Lord Howell, mentioned the importance of the reserves. He is absolutely right to make the point about the importance of the interconnectivity between different regions of the world and how conflicts in different parts of the world impact on each other. I saw this when I went to Vietnam; it has been very unsettled by the closer relationship between Russia and China, which has changed its view.
I very much support the points made by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, about NATO and the importance of the US relationship. Whatever our view, that relationship is really important. Taking up the point from the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, this is really difficult as a Government seeking to bring about a meaningful peace as soon as possible in Ukraine—working with Ukraine to deliver that, so that it is at the table, and then trying to get the US to support that. As the noble Lord pointed out, you cannot do that simply by responding to every single headline in the paper, every single tweet that is put out or every single comment that is made.
As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, pointed out, the US relationship is absolutely vital to us. Of course it is changing, and we see what is taking place, but it should not be taken as weakness or as not understanding what is happening. Diplomatic solutions sometimes have to be sought carefully, constructively and quietly. That is real leadership. The easy thing would be just to join in with everything that is being said, and no progress would be made, but I take the point by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, on that.
I understand the point by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, about rearming and spending: the need for rearmament is very important. My noble friend Lord Anderson made the point about the US and the importance of that relationship. The noble Lord, Lord Soames, talked about the importance of NATO; whether or not we have a Minister for Civil Defence, we understand the importance of homeland defence and the need for us to step up. It is really important.
My noble friend Lord Sahota mentioned changing geopolitics, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser, mentioned the importance of resources and reserves. I am going to meet the noble Lord, Lord Lancaster, who I think is a major-general in the reserves—I hope he is not a lieutenant-general—in due course with respect to that. I congratulate the noble Baroness’s daughter on her service.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Alton: we are seeking to accelerate what we do about frozen Russian assets. We are using £2.26 billion as a new loan to Ukraine which, as he knows, is the profits of the assets and he is talking about the actual assets. We will do what we can with respect to that.
The noble Lord, Lord Risby, was right to point out the need to think about the rebuilding of Ukraine. I say this to the noble Baroness, Lady Helic: as she knows, I was in Bosnia recently, trying to show that the UK Government understand the importance of what was happening in Bosnia, the undermining of the Dayton agreement and our need to consider what to do with respect to Operation Althea and all the various other things, as she well knows.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe. He will be pleased to have noticed that the single intelligence account, which is the money for the services, went up by £340 million between 2023-24 and 2025-26 to try to tackle some of the very real points that he made.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, for the points that he made, and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, on the importance of SMEs.
The noble Lord, Lord Roberts, used Churchill’s words to inspire us. We need to continue to remind ourselves that Churchill, Ernie Bevin and all these people from the past must be looking down on us and thinking, “I hope they rediscover some of the spirit that we had,” to deal with the challenges that we face.
On the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, and the need for Europe to stand up and the EU and the UK standing together, I say absolutely. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fall, for the points she made about working across the world and Generation Z. I am sorry that I am going on, but I ask noble Lords to stay with me for a minute or two. On Generation Z, I agree with the points she made, but the only thing I would say is on the contradiction that every single remembrance and military event I go to is packed with young people. Cadets but also other people are attending remembrance services, walking around and being involved. Through that they understand the value of service.
It is great that the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky—and, indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, as well—says what he did. I understand the points he made and the challenge he made to all of us to understand it and what it means for our policy.
I have said what I did about the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton. I again thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Smith and Lady Goldie, very much for the overall support that they have given.
I am going to read out just one thing on nuclear, and I do not want to get this wrong for obvious reasons. It is a very important point. I will read from the actual notes because it is carefully phrased. The conflict in Ukraine is not a nuclear matter for the UK. However, we have assigned our nuclear deterrent to the defence of NATO since 1962, and we remain ready to deter threats to the UK and against our NATO allies.
The UK’s nuclear deterrent is completely operationally independent. Only the Prime Minister can authorise the use of our nuclear weapons, even if they are deployed as part of a NATO response. The UK has a long-standing close relationship with the US on all defence nuclear issues, which has endured through many changes of government in our two nations. That is all I wish to say about that particular matter, but I hope it is helpful to the noble Baroness, the Committee and everybody else.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, again for his report. It has made a great contribution to the defence and security of our nation and beyond. Thank you very much.
Lord De Mauley (Con)
My Lords, I am sure that noble Lords all want to rush away and catch their trains, so I will only be a couple of minutes. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. There was an unusual convergence of views among the vast majority of those who spoke, which I think should be encouraging to His Majesty’s Government and to us all. I do not have time to give credit to all noble Lords who have spoken but, save for the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, and my noble friend Lord Balfe, there was little I heard that I disagreed with. Even with them, I am sure there are things that we can find to agree on.
The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, and others, concurred that increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP will not be enough. As we said in the report, it is not just that we spend more, but that we spend more astutely. I agreed strongly with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, on the need for the MoD to sort out recruitment. The Minister told us a bit about how that will be done.
My noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford spoke specifically about reserve numbers. He is right that it would not be difficult to increase reserve numbers dramatically, and we should. I will not go into detail, but I have the experience of recruiting reservists based on 50 years of close involvement. I joined the Territorial Army in April 1975, and I am the honorary colonel of the reserve unit that I joined then. I know exactly what needs to be done. It does not need to be hugely expensive. I am available on call to the Minister. I beg him not to rely entirely on the counsel of regular soldiers in the MoD; I respect them hugely, but point out that reservists’ motivations are different to those of regular servicepeople who have shown, time after time, that they misunderstand the motivations and needs of reservists.
The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, gently chided us, pointing out that we forecasted a gradual shift of US priorities. I hope the Grand Committee will forgive us our optimism. I think the views expressed by most noble Lords today suggest that the vast majority of the report is, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said, as valid today as it was when we wrote it. I thank the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, and my noble friends Lord Soames, Lady Fraser and Lady Goldie, for echoing my concerns about the future of the RFCAs. I say to the Minister that we want to help; please do not tie one hand behind our back.
I thank the Minister for his response to the debate. I am pleased that we agree on so much. It is often said that we always plan and prepare to fight the last war, rather than the next. We must break that mould.