Queen’s Speech

Baroness Goldie Excerpts

Wednesday 19th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Baroness Goldie) (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great honour to open this debate on Her Majesty’s gracious Speech on the important issues of foreign affairs and defence. I am delighted to be joined by my noble friend Lord Ahmad, who I know will employ his trademark expertise and erudition to good effect in what I have no doubt will be a well-informed, wide-ranging and robust debate. As indeed it should be, because, looking around the Chamber and on the screens, I see a number of distinguished former Foreign and Defence Ministers, not to mention an illustrious miscellany of noble Lords with acknowledged expertise in these areas. Together we will consider in detail the Government’s proposed approach to foreign affairs and defence, in which several themes will continually bubble to the surface: the need for resilience, the restlessness of our ambition, the conviction of our democratic values and the immense opportunities for the United Kingdom as we look to the future.

I want to begin by reminding noble Lords of the changing geopolitical context which forms the backdrop to this debate. We are living in a new era of systemic competition. The dangers are growing. We have seen Russia increasingly assertive, as its recent actions in Ukraine and the Black Sea remind us. We are witnessing a rising China, modernising its forces and assembling the largest naval fleet in the world. States such as North Korea and Iran are posing a growing threat and continuing to destabilise their regions, while the precarious situation in the Middle East, so distressingly visible right now, is giving many of us cause for concern. Meanwhile, the exponential advance of new technology is reshaping the nature of conflict and challenging us to establish new norms that accord with our values. All the while, the threat of global terror has not receded, and the danger of climate change grows.

Our response to this multiplicity, diversity and complexity of growing dangers was the integrated review of security, defence, foreign policy and development—the most comprehensive survey of our defence since the end of the Cold War. It sets out a clear plan for a stronger, more secure, prosperous and resilient United Kingdom, as we build back better from the Covid pandemic. It is a plan to sustain and deepen our strategic advantage through science and technology and to shape the open international order to create a world that leans more to democracies and the defence of our values, all the while building our security and resilience at home and abroad.

The Prime Minister has been clear that defence is at the heart of this programme. To be open and prosperous, we must be secure at home and active in the world. Defence is always the first duty of government. It is our nation’s insurance policy and our ultimate resilience. The Covid crisis renewed our appreciation of and admiration for what the brave and talented men and women of our Armed Forces do daily on our behalf. But our adversaries did not go to sleep through the pandemic—if anything, they redoubled their nefarious efforts. The challenge for us in the years ahead is to make sure we are fit to detect, deter and defeat threats to our people, our allies and our values at home and abroad.

That is why defence has received the most generous settlement in decades: a commitment to spend £188 billion on defence over the coming four years, an increase of £24 billion. Our Command Paper has taken that investment and used it to deliver what amounts to the biggest shift in defence for a generation. It will give us the technologically advanced, integrated and agile force that will underpin our nation’s hard and soft power in this new age of systemic competition. That new-age force is the necessary response to this new-age threat. To those familiar with the old ways, it may be disquieting, but our diplomacy is underwritten by the credibility of our forces—keen to avoid conflict through our global engagement, but always ready to fight to defend our people and our allies. The gracious Speech commits to pushing ahead with this modernisation. Inevitably, this has meant making some hard choices, but those decisions will give us formidable capabilities across sea, land, air, space and cyber.

At sea, our Royal Navy’s fleet is growing for the first time since the Cold War. We will have world-class general purpose frigates, air defence destroyers, hunter-killer submarines and a new multi-role ocean surveillance capability to safeguard our underwater cables in the North Atlantic. In the air, we will have updated Typhoons, brand new F35 Lightning stealth fighters, new unmanned systems capable of striking remotely, and massive investment in the next generation of fighter jets and swarming drones. On the ground, while our Army will be leaner, it will also be more integrated, more active, more lethal and more effective. It will be able to make the most of new Ajax vehicles, revamped attack helicopters, brand new Boxer armoured fighting vehicles, state-of-the-art air defence, long-range precision artillery and new electronic warfare capabilities.

However, none of these conventional capabilities can succeed in the modern battle without new investment in cyber, space and information manoeuvre. We are spending heavily in the National Cyber Force and establishing a new space command that will enhance our military surveillance and communication capabilities from space. We are not alone in seeking to modernise. Our adversaries, as well as our allies, are making rapid headway, so we are putting aside at least £6.6 billion for research and development to supercharge the development of next-generation disruptive capabilities, from directed energy weapons to swarming drones.

Having great capability is not enough. We are also changing our posture, combining permanent presence with high readiness to deliver a decisive impact. Two littoral response groups in the North Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific will, alongside our future commando force, allow us to respond to emerging crises in a matter of hours, not weeks. We will also have a very high readiness global response force, ready to dispatch our newly formed Army Ranger regiments into complex, high-threat environments.

Our people—our defence family—are going to be busier than ever, but we will make sure that they are properly looked after. No one in this place will disagree that they are our finest asset. That is why measures within the gracious Speech enshrine our Armed Forces covenant in law. The covenant has already made a huge difference to the lives of Armed Forces families: 79,000 service children in the United Kingdom now benefit from £24.5 million of additional pupil funding, and 22,200 service personnel have been helped on to the housing ladder by the Forces Help to Buy scheme.

However, we cannot rest on our laurels. Some members of our Armed Forces community are still suffering disadvantage in accessing public services. The gracious Speech will give our covenant legal force, placing a duty on public bodies responsible for the delivery of key functions in the areas of housing, education and healthcare to have due regard to the covenant principles. Separately, we want to make sure our fantastic veterans are given greater opportunities. We will introduce new measures to support veterans and reward employers of former service personnel by providing national insurance contribution relief for the employment of veterans.

Switch from home to away, we will continue to strengthen the international system as it feels the strain of deepening competition and revisionist pressures. We remain committed to European security and NATO remains a cornerstone of our defence. That is why we have ensured that we are the second biggest spender in NATO and a major contributor across all five domains, including the nuclear deterrent. As a leading light in the alliance, we also have a responsibility to support its reform. Measures in this gracious Speech will see us reinforcing our commitment to NATO transformation.

Meanwhile, we will continue pursuing constructive relationships and trade agreements with our neighbours in Europe based on mutual respect for sovereignty. We are realistic about the challenges we face, but optimistic about our future as an active European country with a global perspective—bringing countries together to solve the issues that matter most to our citizens to improve their lives.

As ever, no partnership is more valuable to us than our special relationship with the United States, as highlighted by the high-level calls made by our Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary to their American counterparts in recent weeks and the Defence Secretary’s meeting with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. We are both committed to standing up for open democratic societies, we see eye to eye on climate change and we share many of the same security threats. It is only by working together overseas that we can keep our citizens safe at home.

Our Armed Forces are a global advertisement for British values, capabilities and leadership. They work alongside our gold standard, world-leading diplomatic and development network to shape the international order, build global resilience, sustain open societies and economies, and overcome global challenges. Whether in the many UN peacekeeping missions we are currently supporting or our application to become a formal dialogue partner with ASEAN, the best of UK defence is in tandem with the best of UK diplomacy—working hand in hand to protect global Britain on the world stage.

Last year the UK played a leading global role in the fightback against the pandemic. This year we will provide global leadership to international efforts to overcome the greatest challenges of our time. Next month we will host the G7 summit in Cornwall, in July we will co-host the global education summit with Kenya, and in November we will chair the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, COP 26, in partnership with Italy. All the while, we will maintain and strengthen our networks and instruments of influence overseas.

Using our global diplomatic network and the British Council to forge alliances and uphold human rights and democracy across the world, we will take forward global efforts to get an additional 40 million girls into school, provide aid where it has greatest impact on reducing poverty and alleviating human suffering, and—importantly—return to our commitment to spend 0.7% of gross national income on development when the fiscal situation allows. All of this, combined with our ongoing training and development programmes around the world, maintains our position as a global soft power superpower.

Next week our magnificent HMS “Queen Elizabeth” carrier embarks on her maiden mission. As one of the two largest warships ever built for the Royal Navy, she will lead a British and allied task group on the UK’s most ambitious global deployment for two decades, visiting the Mediterranean, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific. This deployment has attracted significant interest from other states and has a tangible convening power. I can think of no greater illustration of our global ambition; an ambition that runs like a golden thread through the gracious Speech; an ambition to strengthen our resilience, seize our opportunities and cement our role as a force for good in the world.