Strait of Hormuz: Merchant Shipping

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as an honorary captain in the Royal Navy Reserve. I draw the Minister’s attention to the welfare of the seafarers in the Merchant Navy. While those ships are blocked in the straits, a lot of their seafarers have been onboard for a long time. I wonder what more His Majesty’s Government can do to support them.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

The RFA provides a crucial service for the Royal Navy and our operations across the region and the world. My noble friend is right to point out the importance of that crew. We continue to discuss with them, their unions and their crews how we can support them in respect of their welfare, because we recognise the significance and importance of those crews.

Future Capability of the Armed Forces

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, on initiating this debate. I apologise for starting with something that he might feel he left out, because I am inviting this House to remember 1968. Quite a number of us will remember it, but I am not sure how many noble Lords will remember where they were on 21 August 1968 and how they felt that day. I do remember. I lived in a small Bavarian village, about 80 miles from the Czech border. The Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries started to invade Czechoslovakia, and the tanks started rolling. We did not know if the tanks would stop at the border, but we listened to the World Service as the one reliable source of information. We did not need to be persuaded that defence was important or that there were bad actors out there, or that at some stage people would have to give their lives to defend our values and what we stood for.

Today we are discussing the future capability of the Armed Forces against a slightly different backdrop. We should remember that the Armed Forces do not exist in a vacuum. They are part of a whole society and need its support, because true resilience requires a complete approach from every sector. It also means that if you spend more money on defence, then you forgo spending on other things. Military capability requires an underpinning of soldiers and the right equipment, and I am sorry to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord West, because I am not asking for more ships, even though I am an Honorary Captain in the Royal Navy. However, maritime resilience is also important.

I am glad that, if the papers are to be believed, we are starting a national resilience campaign and that later this year the Government will hold the largest national home defence exercise since the Cold War. There will be new guidance for schools and colleges to teach children how to stay safe in emergencies. As an aside, after we knew that the tanks had stopped rolling at the Czech border, in those days, between finishing O-levels and getting the results, you did training on what to do in the case of nuclear attack or how to administer first aid, and general resilience training. That taught me that this does not require a single conversation. We have been promised a national conversation. It cannot be a one-off exercise because the public conversation has to be ongoing.

I also urge that we stop assessing risk, based what we think we can afford. It has to start with what the real risk is. Unless we have defined our national values and can protect them, we cannot defend or protect our national interests. We need to ask where our food, energy and medicine come from. I am very taken by the suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, of pulling all this together.

The threats are real, not imaginary, and they are here now. We said we were going to be war-ready by 2029, but we have not explained to the public in a way they can fully engage with why we need to be war-ready by 2029. I am therefore asking the Minister for a long-term strategic plan on how we will engage with the public on an ongoing basis. Because we are an island, that kind of threat sometimes seems remote. We seem to think that bad things happen only to other people and somehow it will pass us by. We do not have that guarantee. We need public support for the Armed Forces and to be prepared to forgo spending on some things which we value, but we need to value defence even more.

Defence Investment Plan

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)]

My Lords, all European countries are struggling with coming to terms with new realities and what that requires for their defence and equipment to be appropriate to modern warfare. However, irrespective of the money and the percentages spent, if we do not start the national conversation—which we have been talking about for several months, if not years, now—the British public will not accept that they will have to accept cutbacks in other areas to defend our borders and our airspace, and, above all, the sea around us. Let us not forget that we are a nation, and our resilience and our capability to defend ourselves is not just about money; it is all about the support of the people. Can we start with that now?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

Indeed, we will come forward with proposals and plans with respect to a national conversation. The noble Baroness is right in her suggestion. We can see—many Members of this House will know this—that some of the ways in which the Government have asked different departments to contribute to this uplift in defence spending are already starting to cause some angst among certain communities. For example, in the east Midlands, where I live, the building of some roads is now being delayed, which is causing people to say, “Where’s the money going? What’s it being spent on?” Of course, having a national conversation is right, and the Government and all of us in here will have to make the case that defence is a priority, and that may require us to reallocate resources from one budget to another. We started that process, but as part of that process we must have the national conversation the noble Baroness refers to.

Royal Navy: Nuclear Submarines

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I am confident about that. I will not go into the number of submarines that are operational for obvious reasons, but the noble Lord will have heard the First Sea Lord outlining the submarine recovery plan a couple of months ago, which was about doing more to ensure that our docking and maintenance facilities are of the standard that we want. That will also help us ensure that we get the availability that we want.

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)]

My Lords, the 2025 SDSR committed to £15 billion of investment in the sovereign warhead programme by the end of this Parliament. Can the Minister indicate what progress has been made in implementing that investment programme?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I need to be careful about the monetary figures, but I can reassure the noble Baroness that the programme is going ahead according to schedule and will deliver what we need for our deterrent programme.

Ukraine and Wider Operational Update

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Monday 12th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I do not want to disappoint the noble Lord but I will not be a hostage to fortune and say that it will be in a few weeks, or when it will be. All I can say is that we are working as hard as we can to deliver as soon as we can a defence industrial plan that meets the needs of the budget we have and the needs of the country to deliver the military force and capabilities we need. That is what we are seeking to do. The noble Lord will continue to argue the case for more money and resources. We are working with the resources we have and seeking to deliver the military capability we need.

In my answer to the noble Baroness, I was trying to point out that, even within the existing budget, this country does an awful lot of which we can be proud with our existing military and the Armed Forces personnel that we have. But there is no doubt that the debate that the noble Lord quite rightly raises will continue.

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)]

My Lords, when asked about the deployment of a multinational force, the Secretary of State for Defence in the House of Commons said:

“Any deployment of a multinational force into Ukraine will take place only after a peace deal”.


That is fine. He then said:

“Secondly, the role of that force is primarily one of reassurance, the regeneration of the Ukraine forces, and deterrence of any future Russian aggression”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/1/26; col. 395.]


To that last point, if it is supposed to serve as a deterrence to future Russian aggression then the national debate has to start with what would happen if that peace agreement were breached and what our response would be. The Minister will say that these are hypothetical questions, but I think the national debate will have to prepare people for that possibility.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

It is a hypothetical situation. It goes back to the point I was trying to make in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie. There is a need for a national conversation about the threat that we face. There is a national conversation about the state-on-state threat that exists now in a way that people would not have predicted a few years ago. The Cold War and Russia and one country versus another country were supposed to be the wars of the past; we were supposed to be combating terrorist activity, counterinsurgency and those sorts of things. Although those threats have not totally gone away, the state-on-state threat has now re-emerged. Part of the national conversation has to be about what that means for our country and our Armed Forces.

Undersea Cables: National Security Threat

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

There is a co-ordinating committee, whose name escapes me, that brings together all those various parts of government to which the noble Baroness has just referred to ensure that we have that co-ordinated defence and co-ordinated work that, as she rightly points out, we need. I would say, without going too far, that we see it as a major priority for the Government, which is why we have established that new command to defend ourselves against cyberattack, but we also need to work closely with private industry and private business to achieve that. Suffice it to say that it is a really important point and something we are working on very hard to ensure that we protect our country.

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)]

My Lords, following up on the question in relation to Ireland from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, the Taoiseach set up a Ministerial Council on National Security earlier this year. What government-to-government conversations are going on to ensure either increased information sharing or that extra infrastructure investment for the security of those cables is more co-ordinated?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

That is a really important point. Clearly, we are in conversations with countries such as Ireland to ensure that we work as closely as we can with our friends to try to ensure that we have the protection we need. Suffice it to say that we need 360-degree protection.

Strategic Defence Review

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

On the first point about the need for us to reassert and highlight the link between the Armed Forces and the general population, I think my noble friend is right. I have some optimism about this, although I think the Government could reflect on how we do it. The report talks about greater use of the military in terms of education in our schools in the appropriate way. I think that might be one consideration. I do not know whether my noble friend agrees, but I thought that the VE Day celebrations—the increase in cadets and the numbers of young people out on our streets celebrating and commemorating the sacrifice of those in the Second World War—give us some optimism that that link can be re-established. Perhaps as politicians we should be more proactive in standing up for that, and not being embarrassed to call for that recognition.

On my noble friend’s second point, page 52 of my noble friend Lord Robertson’s report has a map that illustrates some of the ways in which the jobs and industries of defence will be spread across the nations and regions of the UK. My noble friend Lord Dodds, who sometimes thinks—as I do—that Northern Ireland is missed out, will be delighted to see that Northern Ireland is included. All the nations and regions are mentioned; these are just some illustrated examples. There are many more, and we should make sure that is a reality.

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my registered interest as an honorary captain in the Royal Navy. I refer to the Statement:

“We will establish continuous submarine production through investments in Barrow and Derby that will enable us to produce a submarine every 18 months”.


That is a pretty ambitious timetable. Could the Minister say a little more on how we will co-ordinate this, not only in Barrow but across government, so that we can meet that timetable?

Afghan Special Forces Relocation Review

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for his interesting question. On the basis of the information I have and the briefings we have had, I can tell him that the information became available after the start of the review on 1 February 2024. In the context of the weeks and months after that review, that was when the evidence of direct employment records became available. There was a failure of different government systems in different government departments to share information —the digital records were not shared, and different government departments were not talking to each other. I do not have the exact date for when that was discovered, but it was after 1 February. If further information should be made available to my noble friend in consequence of his question, I will write to him and place a copy in the Library.

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)]

My Lords, I very much welcome the Minister in this House, and the Minister in the other House, encouraging Members to come forward with any information they may have on individual cases. I return to the units where we discovered that there was an employment relationship and the suggestion that there may be other specialist units where such a relationship has existed. The Minister in the other place made reference to that. Can the Minister explain a bit more about what he expects to find?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

There will be other special units, which I do not wish to discuss on the Floor of the House, for reasons that the noble Baroness would understand, but they are within scope of this review and they will be looked at as soon as possible. That is why I want that reassurance. Others have asked about other special units that have direct employment with the UK Government, and we will be looking at that and dealing with it in due course.

Strategic Defence Review

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)]

My Lords, I refer to my register of interests as chair of Wilton Park and as an honorary captain in the Royal Navy.

Yesterday I attended part of the future defence, deterrence and resilience conference, at which the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, delivered a keynote speech on Monday, which I sadly missed. I note that his speech led to some very interesting conversations around strategy. I confess that the presence of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Richards, and Julian Lindley-French may have also contributed to strategy being a topic of the conversation. The two published a book last month called The Retreat from Strategy: Britain’s Dangerous Confusion of Interests with Values. They argue that we not only continuously confuse interests with values, but fall into the habit of assessing risks against what we can afford to deal with.

No one can be blind or indifferent to financial constraints in any sphere of government, but I would urge that our current defence review is strategic and that we balance ends, ways and means. Similarly, we cannot ignore the vital link between policy and planning, which I sometimes fear we may have lost sight of. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Richards, and Julian Lindley-French made a forceful and well-argued case, and I would recommend The Retreat from Strategy as a book—not as a policy.

If I may, I will return to an area which I feel strongly about and hope that the review will take into account: maritime security in the polar regions. The Arctic and Antarctic are very different, geographically, legally and politically, but both are areas of growing strategic competition, including resource exploitation, access, and strategic control.

The prevailing geopolitics of the Arctic have worsened. One big shift, even in the last 12 months, is the ever-closer relationship between China and Russia across the Euro-Asian-Russian Arctic north. It is worth remembering that our relationships with South Korea and Japan matter as much as those with our European and NATO partners. In the Arctic, the UK is the nearest non-Arctic state with a long-standing interest in working closely with NATO countries, such as Norway, as well as with international business and scientific partners across the region. More generally, the British Armed Forces are active participants in training exercises, secondments and mutual domain awareness.

I turn quickly to the Antarctic. China and Russia are disruptive players, while the BRICS countries and others are marshalling their interests—especially around resources. The EU is considering developing its own Antarctic strategy and will look to countries such as New Zealand as potential partners. The UK should be involved in those negotiations and look to scale up our collective scientific/infrastructural presence in the region. Having an active presence matters.

These things are important for the defence review because they have an impact on the Royal Navy. We have limited platforms that could be described as “ice class”, and we are asking a lot of HMS “Protector”. This is the Royal Navy’s only ice patrol ship; it replaced HMS “Endurance”. I am very clear that it would be a big mistake to think that a melting Arctic and Antarctic is a safer operating environment. It is more unpredictable, more dangerous and still ice-filled. We need trained personnel, including mountain leaders; that requires extensive training and support for the Royal Marines. We need to continue to support and invest in training and military exercises with our Joint Expeditionary Force partners, as well as with NATO.

At the risk of being accused of special pleading on behalf of the Royal Navy, I simply suggest that any strategic defence review ought to start with this sentence: “We are an island and the Navy is existential”. It must emphasise that shifting geopolitical tensions, combined with global warming and the ever-increasing need for natural resources, make our engagement in the Arctic and the Antarctic a vital national interest.

Military Bases: Accommodation

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Minto (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend makes a very good point. One justification for the increase in defence spending we announced recently was to continue to invest in accommodation and bring it up to current acceptable standards. One has only to think back 20 or 30 years to what was an acceptable standard then, to realise that now we are in a very different world.

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)]

My Lords, could the Minister update the House on what basis housing is allocated? Is it continuing to be allocated according to rank or is it allocated according to need?

[The Earl of Minto (Con)]

My Lords, the way accommodation has been allocated is subject to a review. The Secretary of State has called in that review, as I am sure everybody is fully aware, and will report this summer with his findings.