Armed Forces: Capability

Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very conscious that I am speaking after a number of people who have much more knowledge of the defence of this country and of defence internationally than I have. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Robertson for what was an excellent start to this debate. The only area to which I wish to address my remarks at the moment is cyberwarfare. However, before I come on to that, in relation to the conventional defence industries, we are awaiting an industrial strategy from the Government. It is critical that we take into account, within that strategy, the very significant effect of the defence industries in the economy of this country. It is something people frequently forget, particularly when they criticise expenditure on defence.

I was very much aware of the reference by my noble friend Lord West of Spithead to the fact that cyber is not the cheap option for defence—indeed, an increased investment in cyberwarfare will probably mean an increase in the defence budget—but I echo my noble friend Lord Robertson in saying that we are in danger of sleepwalking to calamity. That is particularly true of cyberwarfare. Just a few feet along the corridor, in the House of Commons, during the Second World War, democracy was threatened when bombs were dropped on the Houses of Parliament. Indeed—let us be honest about it—the allied bombings in mainland Europe were aimed at critical infrastructure.

The critical infrastructure of this country is so vulnerable that within minutes this Parliament could be brought to an end and this country to a complete halt, because our world is now so interconnected, so networked—from our heating systems to our communications, hospitals and transport. A clever cyberbrain could bring all of them to an end immediately. It is critical to understand that, particularly in the light of the very powerful words of my noble friend Lord Robertson about the situation in Syria. We have seen what has happened to Aleppo: brought to its knees—decimated—by bombing, over a period of months and years. The same consequences could follow the use of cyberwarfare.

My fear is that we are not investing enough in our cyber capabilities. Our enemies undoubtedly are, and there is evidence of their interest in cyber. We need to raise our game. We need to address skill shortages in certain areas. Many commercial cyber businesses can throw huge amounts of money at attracting the most talented, skilled people in cyber. They are expensive. We must make sure that they are part of the defence of our nation.

We have talked today about the decline in the numbers of our Armed Forces. I am not suggesting that we replace the troops on the ground with cyber capability: they must be complementary. How much better could we do, however, in our defence capabilities in the south Atlantic, for example, if we had a more sophisticated cyber capability alongside the garrison? Would we need a garrison in the south Atlantic if we had a more advanced cyber capability?

This country has ethics and morals around the operation of our defensive, and offensive, capabilities. There are ethical issues around the use of cyber as a tool of war or defence. You can cause chaos in a city by cutting off the power supply to hospitals and air traffic control—to any aspects of modern life. We need to ensure that we have that ethical debate as well as the concrete debate about how we fund our cyber capabilities. I hope that in doing so we get ahead of the game. We have heard about the decline in numbers in our defence forces. We see the threat to NATO and from Brexit. This is another threat, but because it does not involve great vessels, aeroplanes or anything that we can touch, and because it is complicated, we tend to forget about it. We cannot afford to do so.