Future Capability of the Armed Forces

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, for securing this debate. The level of engagement on a Thursday afternoon shows the interest in your Lordships’ House. The debate has been particularly useful in that, unlike nearly all the discussion in the other place and in the media, it has not just focused on, as the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, framed it, “What are we spending?” but rather on “What are we using defence and security money for?” Is it on capabilities that make us more secure, or is it driven by imperatives of private profit or pride?

There is one form of defence spending to which I want to draw attention and to question. It is one that noble Lords who are regular Tube users here at Westminster Station will know. As we descend the escalators, we are confronted by, blared at by, a shiny advert for BAE Systems. Future jet fighters; Navy capabilities: the subject occasionally varies, but, for the seven years that I have been in this House, that prime and no doubt very expensive advertising spot has been permanently occupied by BAE Systems. Ultimately, of course, the cost of that no doubt very expensive, endless advertisement, directed at a small number of Tube users—parliamentarians and officials—is part of our defence budget. But it is not, I suggest, spending that makes us any safer.

I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark for, in his valedictory speech, introducing another point that I want to make: that our security is about much more than defence. Soft power, diplomacy and the international service provided by the BBC World Service are crucial, and all this together needs to be treated as a package. Last week, I put to the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman of Darlington, that the FCDO was in turmoil and the noble Baroness denied it fervently. Well, this morning, I was on the picket line in King Charles Street with PCS members who are FCDO staff, expressing their anger and fear about the turmoil—and that very clearly is an accurate word—in the department. That is a workers’ rights issue, disappointing to all there in the light of having a Labour Government, but it is also a security issue for us all.

I will pick up another point, from noble Lords on the Conservative Benches, who have suggested that the welfare budget must be cut to allow for more defence spending. Yet we have also heard, occasionally from the Conservative Benches and from around the House, about the most basic defence resources of all—human capability and human will. The foundations of our welfare system were laid after the Boer War, with an awareness that child poverty and general deprivation meant that many young men were unfit to serve. If people have not been cared for by society and have been left without the basic resources to live decently, while they see the few—the “have-yachts”—harvesting the resources that might have been sustaining them, that is not going to build the will, let alone the physical capability, to stand up to the threats we face.

On defence procurement, as noted by the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, we have huge problems with the tradition, established over decades, of commissioning works of art, and, I would add, making decisions for economic rather than military reasons. We often heard from the previous Government—there are similar hints from the incoming one—that they used defence spending as a form of economic development funding. But that risks doing two things badly, rather than focusing on the activity that is supposed to be the spending’s purpose.