80th Anniversary of Victory in Europe and Victory over Japan

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Friday 9th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I have been a Member of this House for 33 years, and I can tell the noble Baroness that I made exactly the same mistake. I was sitting on the Cross Benches and jumped up and made a speech in exactly the same way as the noble Baroness, and the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, who was due to speak, did exactly what I did, which was sit down. Then, when I finished, he said, “The noble Earl made an excellent speech. What a pity he made it six places out on the speakers’ list”.

Rarely have I heard a Minister make such an effective and passionate opening speech for a government-led debate. I have to say, he is an absolutely excellent defence Minister, and I support everything that he said and his sentiments.

The VE 80 and VJ 80 days are a celebration of victory over our opponents in the Second World War. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity, alongside my noble friend Lord Soames of Fletching, to have represented our grandfathers at yesterday’s service in Westminster Abbey, and I am sure my noble friend shares my gratitude. I also very much enjoyed the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Peterborough. Sadly, I no longer live in her diocese.

Remembrance of the sacrifices made by British, Commonwealth and Allied servicepeople and civilians is key. We will remember them. But, in addition to remembering the sacrifices, hardship and cost, we must remember how we got ourselves into the Second World War. Of course, there are two main reasons. One was the effect of the Treaty of Versailles, and the other was the failure to rearm, or to rearm fast enough, in the face of an obvious threat.

We can easily understand why we were so reluctant then to rearm in preparation for war when the First World War was so terrible that no sane person would want to go through a war again. So, when we made our final ultimatum in 1939, our combat power when assessed by our opponent was insufficient to avert and avoid war—a point made so well by the Minister—and we paid a very high price for not rearming soon enough.

In the 1970s, many of the masters at Stowe School, which I attended, had served with distinction during the war. They had plenty of MCs or equivalent. They absolutely drummed into us that war was to be avoided at all possible costs. Nevertheless, in order to deter, they took great care to ensure that we understood how to defend ourselves if necessary. The CCF was very important to the school and was, at least initially, compulsory. I recall the reverend Jos Nicholl MC playing a key part in it.

When I came to your Lordships’ House in 1992, most of the senior Members of the House had tasted defeat and been hungry. Many had served with distinction during the war, and I recall Lord Healey, Lord Carrington, Lord Runcie, Lord Mowbray, Lord Lauderdale and Lord Jellicoe, to name just a few. There was even Lord Houghton of Sowerby, who had served in the First World War. Those noble Lords would never do anything that would allow us to be defeated, or, to use military parlance, to be fixed, again.

Happily, now, none of our leaders at the top have tasted defeat or been hungry, but the post-World War order that the Minister referred to, which led to this comfortable situation, is breaking down. We need to remember what happens if we do not rearm fast enough in the face of a clear threat, and we need to do much more to educate our people about some very hard choices that will need to be made if we cannot very soon stop state-on-state conflict in Europe.

Ukraine: UK Policy

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Monday 17th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, for securing this QSD. I do not agree with much that he said, apart from that I agree that European countries should pay their fair share of defence. At the time when we started expanding NATO eastwards, when I knew practically nothing, even then I felt queasy. We must accept that Russia has a persecution complex; the map that the Kremlin has of the world looks very different from our map of the world. However, I am extremely grateful that the Prime Minister and the ministerial team are doing everything they possibly can to resolve the problem while dealing with extremely unpredictable key players.

I am slightly worried about the size and terms of the combat power of any development, because it seems to have the combat power of an observation force rather than a peacekeeping force. I accept and hope that that may be academic, but what message does it send to the rest of the world about our willingness and capability to deploy at larger scale?

Defence: 2.5% GDP Spending Commitment

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

Let us be clear: there is no question of the deterrent not being renewed. This is the problem we have: we have heard the figure of 3%, and now the noble Lord seems to be suggesting 5%. I know that he is committed to defence, as we all are, but there is a question about how much we spend on it. This Government have made a commitment to setting a pathway to 2.5%. In these debates, we should also recognise the huge contribution our country has made to defending peace and democracy in Ukraine, under both the previous Government—the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, and other former Ministers—and this Government. Sometimes, as well as asking why we do not spend more, we should also recognise what the previous Government did and what this Government are doing for Ukraine. That gives a bit of perspective.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that when we rearmed in the 1950s, we deterred aggression and avoided conflict?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I absolutely agree with the point about deterrence, and I have been making it in various debates. The noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, has been present at those debates, and the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, asked me about this during the previous Urgent Question we had on defence. We need to re-establish deterrence. We need people to know that there are lines which, if crossed, will result in consequences. Perhaps we have not given the priority to deterrence that we should have, but the noble Earl is right that it must play an appropriate part in future. Countries know that, with our allies, we stand up for certain things and that if those lines are crossed, there will be consequences.

Defence Spending

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2024 Grand Committee

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Trenchard for introducing this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, said that our Armed Forces were the finest in the world. I have to say that I am not absolutely convinced about that, and my noble friend Lady Buscombe outlined some of the problems. My noble friend Lord Trenchard talked about the problems that the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, may have in producing a defence review when he does not know how much money he has to spend, but he does know how much he can spend—it is about 2.5% of GDP.

If a defence analyst was to analyse both me and the Minister, he would find it very difficult to get a fag paper between us. I think we both think that we want to spend at least 3% of GDP on defence, but no more than 5%. The problem is that we live in a democracy, and political parties tend to use focus groups—and they ask the focus groups what their priorities are. We know what the priorities are for focus groups: it will always be the health service at the top, and the welfare state—all the lovely things that we want to be able to do. It is understandable why the electorate want that. If you ask them about defence, the focus group will attach a very low priority. But we do not explain to the focus groups or the general public the consequences of insufficient defence expenditure; we talked about that in the last debate on the failure of deterrence and its consequences. If you asked a focus group, “Are you happy for your daughter, son, sister or brother to be compulsorily conscripted for an overseas military operation that is not doing very well?”, just as we experienced in the 1940s, I suspect you might get a rather different answer.

Defence Policy: Deterrence

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2024 Grand Committee

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Trefgarne for introducing this Question for Short Debate. I used to read my father’s Hansard when my noble friend was a Minister in the Foreign Office and in the Ministry of Defence.

The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, is absolutely correct: this is not just about conventional military deterrence. He is right to be worried about the home base and society’s sentiments. If those things were damaged in a conflict, in the grey area, it could have devastating effects on our conventional operations.

I am sure that the answer to my noble friend’s Question is “yes, but”. Many noble Lords have touched on nuclear deterrence, where our defence posture and signalling are absolutely clear and effective. As we have seen, we have not been cowed by President Putin’s nuclear sabre-rattling in the conflict in Ukraine. I am pleased to observe that this Government are as sound as their predecessor on nuclear deterrence but, several years ago, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, observed that an inadequate conventional deterrent will result in the nuclear trip-wire being set too low. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, just asked the Minister about tactical nuclear weapons and deterrence; I look forward to his answer.

In conventional deterrence, our signalling is not positive or clear to any potential adversary. For instance, it is easy for a potential adversary to measure our land logistics capability and intent. They will note that we are still selling off perfectly serviceable, brand-new logistic vehicles to meet resource accounting and budgeting requirements. In the current situation, at the large scale of effort we ought to be able to deploy on land in 12 weeks, but I do not think we can do it at all at the moment.

I keep banging on about the essential need to undertake large-scale exercises out of area and overseas to demonstrate and test our conventional capability—or the capability that we should have. My noble friend Lord Harlech touched on the fact that the Russians regularly exercise with large numbers of troops. Yes, it is expensive to do and you can save money by not undertaking such exercises, but it is cheaper than increasing your capability and provides much more conventional deterrence. It also exposes any unrecognised weaknesses in your current capability. Currently, we have too few big exercises and the exercises we undertake are too short in duration, in order to save money.

Noble Lords must not be deluded by the wide range of military operations that we undertake all over the globe at small scale. We are now in the era of state-on-state conflict; that is what we need to deter. We will not achieve that through small operations and exercises, or the completely underresourced Armed Forces that the Minister inherited from the previous Administration.

Decommissioned Nuclear-Powered Submarines

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, are the older submarines more difficult to recycle than the Swiftsure class?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

We will understand that more fully once we have finished the demonstrator project with HMS “Swiftsure”.

Strategic Defence Review

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2024 Grand Committee

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, for introducing this debate. I agree with almost everything that every noble Lord has said and I see no reason to repeat or amplify what they said. The noble Lord, Lord Robertson, was the architect of SDR 98, which we have talked about. I took part at a very junior level in Exercise Saif Sareea 2 in Oman, in which exercise we used the laydown from SDR 98. We went on to Operation Telic, but it was so important for us to learn the lessons from the mistakes we made on Exercise Saif Sareea and avoid them on Telic.

Like many noble Lords, I have confidence in the process, apart from the financial constraints that many noble Lords have talked about. My worry is that events may overtake the review. My fear is that a drastic change in the international situation may make full rearmament unavoidable, and if we were to do that I think the howls of pain from the population will be very great indeed. I entirely agree with some of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Walney, on that.

Another challenge, if we have to rearm, will be to do it quickly. Perhaps the review might look, if we do need to rearm, at how we would do it. I also think it is important to consider what the United States wants from us. Whenever I talk to anyone from the United States, they always say they want a full-spectrum capability. I am not clear that we can actually do that, but we should make sure that we can support the United States because it is an absolutely key ally.

All noble Lords know that the land component is seriously neglected. Many noble Lords referred to the situation in 1938. It is interesting that, in 1935, the cavalry was still seen as an important land component. The future of land warfare is uncertain. For instance, at the moment there is no dead ground, so you cannot form up an armoured battle group to attack without the enemy knowing where you are and what you are likely to do. That situation might change with changes in technology—there may be some way of defeating mass drone surveillance or satellite surveillance—but we simply do not know what the outcome in the conflict in Ukraine will be. Therefore, it will be extremely difficult for the review to work out what to do about the land component.

What is clear, and I have banged on about this many times, is that we need large-scale overseas exercises at divisional level, so that commanders can exercise moving whole brigades round the area of operations. We need to do that to test our capabilities so that we can find out what our weaknesses are when they have been covered up, with some junior officers from SO2 jumping up and down saying, “We’ve got this weakness but no one will listen”. When you do an exercise, you find out what your weaknesses are, but you also demonstrate to an opponent that you have a capability. My comments about weaknesses apply particularly to combat service support—the logistics. I would say that because I am a logistician.

We know that our armoured fleet is inadequate—that is no secret—but, recently, the Daily Mail published an article about the Bulldog armoured vehicle, descended from the FV430 range. The previous Labour Government took the precaution of re-engineering the vehicle with a completely new power train, so I do not recognise the article at all.

We must make sure that the capabilities we do have work and are deployable. For instance, at the moment—this is down to the previous Government, not the current one—our LPDs, or landing platform docks, are not available for operations, simply because we do not have the ratings to man them. We must make sure that we have the terms and conditions of service so that we do not have important platforms unavailable to go to sea, because, if they cannot go to sea and our opponents know that, there is no deterrent. The deterrent relies on the fact that we have significant conventional forces. Some time ago, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, made the point that, if your conventional deterrent is too weak, your nuclear trip-wire is too low.

I also make the point that, in several military headquarters, there are too many gapped posts, especially at SO2 level. This puts unfair pressure on the other staff officers.

The aircraft carrier was a controversial part of the strategic defence review in 1998. I will not comment on whether it was a good decision or a bad one; the facts of the matter are that we built them and that they have strategic utility. The United States has only 10 or 11 aircraft carriers, while we have two, so that is a significant contribution to the Americans’ effort and enables the UK to mount a significant operation while the US is either doing something slightly different in the area of operations or is otherwise engaged. I think that the review will have to think very carefully about aircraft carriers but, in my view, they have significant strategic effect and leverage.

My final point concerns nuclear, recently touched on in the debate. I say, “Thank God for the deterrent”, because, although we do not ignore Putin’s sabre-rattling, we are not terrified into submission, because we know that we have the nuclear deterrent.

Artificial Intelligence in Weapon Systems Committee Report

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Friday 19th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, for introducing this debate.

I read the report as soon it was published. I agree with it and with the position of HMG and the MoD. However, looking around the corner, I see that reality may conflict with what the report says. Its title is of course very appropriate—although we might wonder how we got it. I am relaxed about the MoD’s reluctance to define AWS. A definition has the danger of excluding certain unanticipated developments.

It may be helpful to the House if I illustrate a potential difficulty with a fully autonomous system, to show why we should not willingly go in this direction. Suppose His Majesty’s Armed Forces are engaged in a high-intensity conflict and an officer is in control of a drone system. He reads his intelligence summary—INTSUM—which indicates fragility in the cohesiveness of enemy forces. The officer controls the final decision for the drone to engage any target, in accordance with our current policy. The drone detects an enemy armoured battalion group but the AFVs are tightly parked in a square in the open, not camouflaged, and the personnel are a few hundred metres away, sitting around campfires. In view of the INTSUM, it would be obvious to a competent officer that this unit has capitulated and should not be engaged for a variety of reasons, not least international humanitarian law. It is equally obvious that a drone with AI might not recognise that the enemy unit is not actively engaged in hostilities. In its own way, the report recognises these potential difficulties.

My concern centres on the current war in Ukraine. Both sides will be using electronic warfare to prevent their opponent being able to receive data from their own drones or give those drones direction. That is an obvious thing to do. But if you are in a war of survival—and the Ukrainians certainly are—and you have access to a drone system with AI that could autonomously identify, select and attack a target, absent any relevant treaty you would have to use that fully autonomous capability. If you do not, you will lose the war or suffer heavy casualties because your enemy has made your own drones ineffective by means of electronic warfare. So long as drones are being used in the current high-intensity conflict, we need to recognise that it will be almost impossible to prevent AI being used fully autonomously. Equally, it will be hard to negotiate a suitable treaty, even if we attach a very high priority to doing so.

The whole nature of land warfare is changing very rapidly—the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, used the phrase “fast-moving”—and we do not know what the end state will be. However, we can try to influence it and anticipate where it will end up.

809 Naval Air Squadron

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Minto (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness asked a very detailed question. The key is that, as the threat changes, we need to change the capability to meet it. We work on very long lead times. All these aircraft are extremely complicated and need to be adjusted to meet the particular threat as it comes through. Through the relationship with Lockheed Martin and the Joint Program Office, we are trying to understand what the delay on some of the deliveries is. However, we do not currently anticipate a shortfall in the ability to build the UK Lightning Force to full operational capability by the end of 2025.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, what is the point of having all the platforms that my noble friend the Minister referred to if we cannot improve the terms and conditions of service for the ratings, to retain them so that they can man the platforms?

[The Earl of Minto (Con)]

My noble friend makes a very good point. I think we addressed this last week or the week before. An enormous amount of work is being undertaken on the question of recruitment and, particularly, retention, to ensure that the terms and conditions of employment within His Majesty’s Armed Forces are fit for purpose.

Ukraine

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Minto (Con)]

My Lords, this is all part of the same story. There are links between these different malign organisations that need addressing. I cannot give an absolutely clear answer about the western Balkans, but I am very happy to write to my noble friend with the detail.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, on the issue of sanctions, we are doing the right thing. We are trying to impose as many sanctions as we can on many entities and people. Obviously, we should not stop those. However, reports in the Economist suggest that they are not actually very effective.

The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, touched on European co-operation. In my opinion, as I said on 26 January, it is essential that we co-operate on a European level and decide who is going to do what. I said then that if necessary—if it is what we should do—we should create a Royal Ordnance factory. We should be looking at making 100,000 rounds of 155 millimetres a month, but so far as I can see we are just pussyfooting around. That is what President Putin will see. He will see that we are pussyfooting around. For instance, we are not overturning planning regulations or telling BAE Systems that it can do whatever it likes, and needs to do, to create the amount of ammunition we need. We are not telling BAE Systems that if it needs to requisition a machine tool from another factory and that would totally interfere with the rest of our domestic production, it does not matter. The priority must be to make the ammunition.

If we do not give Ukraine the munitions and other equipment that it needs, Ukraine will fail and be defeated by the Russians. The situation is dire. We will then have to double defence expenditure and keep it doubled for the foreseeable future. The cost to us will be very high, and we will not be able to do the things that we want to do for our people because we are going to have to waste the money on defence expenditure.

[The Earl of Minto (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for the impassioned view he takes. He is right, and I agree that we need to up the pace of production. Through the International Fund for Ukraine and other enterprises, the amount of money being spent to arm and replenish the situation in Ukraine continues to grow. Out of the £900 million pledged as part of the International Fund for Ukraine, 27 contracts are out with a total value of £340 million, and another £22 million-worth are just about to be placed. There is a competition out for a further £300 million for ammunition. There is £40 million for drones and another £194 million across air defence and maritime packages. That is just this country, but this is a combined effort across Europe. I am sure noble Lords will have seen that the Germans have started building a new ammunition factory, and the pace of growth continues to increase.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

Why on earth are we bothering with a competition?

[The Earl of Minto (Con)]

To ensure that we get exactly what we want, and to ensure capacity and deliverability.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

Surely, we should tell industry what we want and tell it to get on with it. If it says that it needs some sort of capacity, power or machine tool, we should provide it.

[The Earl of Minto (Con)]

There is certainly an element of that, but we work within a global market where resources are not freely available. It is very important to ensure that the vast amount of money spent on the production of munitions is properly spent.