King’s Speech

Baroness Suttie Excerpts

Thursday 21st May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Suttie (LD)]

My Lords, one week ago, the day after the King’s Speech, a Russian drone destroyed a nine-storey apartment block in south-east Kyiv. Some 24 people were killed, including three teenage girls aged between 12 and 15. Some 18 apartments were destroyed, and yet more lives were shattered. Last Friday, the Ukrainian flag was removed from outside Essex County Council’s offices by the newly elected Reform UK administration in Chelmsford. I was pleased to see this roundly condemned by all other parties locally, including the Conservatives. I believe it is vital to maintain the cross-party support, including in your Lordships’ House, against the war in Ukraine. We need to maintain maximum pressure on the Putin war regime through all means possible, including an effective and punitive sanctions regime. In that regard, as my noble friend Lord Purvis made so very clear, yesterday’s announcement on sanctions is to be greatly regretted.

Last week, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that, in the first four months of this year, 80% of civilian deaths in Sudan were caused by drone attacks, which killed at least 880 people. Some 26 civilians were reportedly killed in the Kordofan region on 8 May alone. On Monday this week, Lebanon’s health ministry reported that the number of people killed in Lebanon has passed 3,020—400 of whom have been killed since the ceasefire came into effect last month. I had the privilege of working in both Kyiv in Ukraine and Khartoum in Sudan, and I have many friends and former colleagues in both countries. It is always important to remember that, behind every statistic, there is a human face.

As the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, said, we are having this debate against a backdrop of tremendous uncertainty and instability, with ongoing wars in Iran, Ukraine, Sudan and the Middle East. All of these are amplified by the profound challenges caused by climate change and rapid technological change. This week, we saw a greatly emboldened President Xi of China meeting President Putin in Beijing, declaring a strengthened alliance between the two countries. In Russia, President Putin continues to clamp down on any credible opposition and free media. He is perhaps at his most dangerous when feeling under threat, as he faces Ukrainian long-distance drone attacks and a very gradual reversal of his advances in Ukraine, at a horrendous and growing human cost. It is hard to know the exact figures for the number of young Russian men killed, but the Economist this week has estimated that it might be as many as half a million lives lost.

Meanwhile, we are nearly 18 months into the second presidency of President Trump, which means that there are another two and a half years of his volatility and unpredictability to go. I add at this point congratulations from these Benches on the very successful visit of His Majesty the King. In the light of continued uncertainty about America’s commitment to NATO’s collective defence, our military needs urgent investment and renewal. The current Government inherited an Army at its smallest since the Napoleonic Wars and a Navy at its smallest since the English Civil War, yet the Government have moved far too slowly and timidly to rectify this.

I was struck by the speech last Thursday by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen. He made an incredibly powerful case for an all-society approach to rapidly rearming and reminded us that the UK is already “under attack”. As the current Prime Minister said at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year:

“Time and again, leaders have looked the other way, only re-arming when disaster is upon them”.


The Government must act now to commit to reaching 3% of GDP spending on defence by 2030. Liberal Democrats have called for cross-party talks to agree a consensus on how to reach that level of spending within that timeframe. I would be grateful if the Minister could respond to this suggestion in his closing remarks. Those of us who were privileged to hear the remarkable speech by President Zelensky to both Houses a couple of months ago could not help but be humbled by just how much we now have to learn from Ukraine about drone and robotics technology. In that regard, does the Minister agree that borrowing to invest in defence could support innovation and economic growth?

In my remaining time, I will touch on two other key areas: international development and our relations with the European Union. A couple of weeks ago, I was on a train from Calais to Boulogne-sur-Mer in France. As I was getting on the train, I realised that everyone around me was carrying a polythene bag with a large orange object in it. I eventually realised that these were in fact life jackets, and that my 50 or so fellow passengers were people who had failed to get on a small boat that day and so were returning to their camp near Boulogne-sur-Mer to try the dangerous crossing on another day.

I understand that this is an incredibly emotive and complicated issue. I live in Broadstairs on the Kent coast, and the reception camp for the migrants is incredibly near to where I live. I believe the Government are right to concentrate much of their efforts on stopping the appalling people smugglers and attempting to destroy their economic model. However, two things struck me looking at these dejected passengers on that train to Boulogne-sur-Mer.

The first was that they were desperate fellow human beings prepared to risk their lives. Sitting opposite me was a young man from Syria, with his baby strapped to his front. A boat ran aground and sank off the coast of Boulogne-sur-Mer that very morning, killing two women, I later learned on the BBC website. The second thing that struck me is that we rightly talk a lot about the pull factors to the UK and the people smugglers who benefit at the cost of human lives, but we talk rather less about the push factors that cause many to want to leave their countries in the first place: the drought, the famine, the desperation and the wars—wars that are sometimes proxy wars started by far-off countries.

Not long ago, we were proud global leaders in the world on development assistance, with all mainstream parties jostling to claim the credit for reaching the 0.7% target of GNI, including the Conservative Government at that time. Our global assistance is currently 0.3%, as the Minister said in her opening remarks, but there are rumours that it could fall much further. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm in his closing remarks the projected percentage by the end of this year and into next year.

The removal of USAID is having a dramatic and awful impact on the prevention of diseases such as HIV, TB and, as has been said, currently Ebola, in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere. The policies of President Trump have acted as a green light to other countries to follow in his slipstream. It is, I fear, short-term populism that will have long-term and disastrous consequences—consequences that will be felt by this country too. We can hope that a future US Government will change and that we will see a return to a revised world order based on a rules-based approach and a generous approach to international development. However, to refer to the much-quoted speech by Mark Carney at Davos this year,

“hope is not a plan and nostalgia is not a strategy”.

The UK needs to think again about our place in the world and our alliances. We need to prepare now for tomorrow’s uncertainties. Our economy, security and defence are inextricably linked to our European partners. As Mark Carney and others have said, we should also reach out to those middle powers that share our values, such as Canada and Ukraine.

That brings me to my final point, about the EU. It is my hope that, one day, we can reunite properly with our EU partners. Where I live, in Thanet in Kent, 68% voted to leave the EU in 2016. But that was then and this is now, and it is increasingly hard to find anybody who can find anything positive to say about the decision of 10 years ago. Some 10 years on since the Brexit referendum, I believe it should be less a question of whether we were wrong in 2016 and more a question of what is in the national self-interest 10 years from now, in 2036.

Today, I hope to become a great aunt for the first time—my niece is about to give birth as I speak. What will make this a better country for that little boy being born today? The European Union 10 years from now will be a very different place. Nobody wants to repeat the stale, old and tired arguments of the referendum 10 years ago, but I sincerely hope that a future EU, with Ukraine at its eastern edge, will include our country to its west.