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.

Ukraine

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Thursday 21st September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, the beauty of speaking late is that all the heavy lifting has been done; I needed only to listen carefully to the speeches from some very senior noble Lords, and I agree with what they said. Overall, I am very supportive of everything that His Majesty’s Government have done, and I echo the support of Ben Wallace, who did a fabulous job when he was Secretary of State. If we have alternative views in this House, it would be quite fun to have them earlier on the speakers’ list so that we can respond better to them.

I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for initiating this debate, and so soon after a major general defence debate. The first issue that I am obliged to raise, yet again, is the one of “Peter”. That is not his real name but the one I have adhered to throughout these debates, initially for reasons of security and latterly for consistency. Your Lordships will recall that Peter runs a small business that, among other things, was exporting armoured fighting vehicles to Ukraine. Those vehicles are used both offensively and, more often, to provide protected mobility around the battlefield; they are frequently used for casualty evacuation. Peter has around £3 million-worth of equipment ready to be exported to Ukraine under an export licence granted by His Majesty’s Government, but he was de-banked by a major high street bank at the start of the year. The relevant bank was helpful to me by extending the closure date to March and agreed to continue the provision of banking services on receipt of a letter from a Treasury Minister asking it to relax the money laundering regulations in a specific way.

Unfortunately, Ministers have been unable to undertake such an action. At the time, it seemed to me that the bank was being allowed to determine UK defence and security policy. Ministers also indicated several times in debates that they regard the complete integrity of the money laundering regulations as more important than facilitating the export of armoured fighting vehicles to Ukraine. One wonders what the officials in the Russian embassy are sending back to the Kremlin on our determination that Ukraine is not defeated.

I am ashamed that, despite working on this problem since January, I have made little progress with the original problem, although I have found that it was the tip of an iceberg. The shame arises from the fact that I know the avoidable loss of life of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians is being caused by my ineffectiveness. It is unfortunate that the print media have chosen not to run the story of me directly holding Ministers responsible for that avoidable loss of life, despite being briefed in writing. Perhaps I am still in the editors’ sin-bin for successfully having the temerity to suggest that newspapers should be properly regulated in accordance with Leveson and without the involvement of any politicians. I thought that I would be forgiven when I secured an amendment to the then Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill to prevent journalists being accidentally arrested at the border, but maybe not.

It became apparent to me that these problems were much wider than just Peter and were adversely affecting much of the UK defence industry—although it was very reluctant to put its head above the parapet. The same high street bank’s name came up regularly. I ran several amendments to the then Financial Services and Markets Bill dealing with what we now know as de-banking—and I stress that this was before the Farage scandal. Unfortunately, I received very little support from members of the Opposition Front Bench—so ably led by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, who opened the debate for the Opposition—despite my briefing them in writing.

Fortunately, my noble friend Lady Goldie agreed to a meeting with me and the MoD to discuss these matters. She immediately grasped the significance of the problem with regard to the wider defence industry and passed it on to the Minister for Defence Procurement and other Ministers. That is why the media and the City Minister are now openly talking about the matter. Shortly after this, the Farage scandal unfolded. During discussions with the relevant high street bank, it was made clear to me that its problem was an unacceptable regulatory risk due to the money laundering regulations and dealing with Ukrainian businessmen. Reviewing our debates in the Chamber, it is obvious that I believed the bank.

Since those discussions, we have had the Farage scandal, in which the chief executive officer of another high street bank lied to a senior journalist and divulged Mr Farage’s personal banking information without proper authority. In the light of these events, it is reasonable for me to consider the possibility that the bank’s problem was not money laundering. Clearly, it could have negotiated extra bank charges to cover the cost of any extra due diligence. Rather, was it the bank’s ESG agenda, which we have seen adversely affect other SMEs supplying the MoD directly? Perhaps the bank recognised, correctly, that I would not be able to persuade Ministers to relax the money laundering regulations. In the light of what we now know about the banking industry’s ESG agenda, the behaviour of one bank’s CEO and the possibility that I might have been misled, will my noble friend the Minister ask the appropriate Treasury Ministers to review their decisions not to relax the money laundering regulations in the way that I have suggested, in order that Peter can export to Ukraine the armoured fighting vehicles which are so desperately needed?

Some time ago, my heart sank when one of David Cameron’s advisers confidently stated that we no longer needed armoured brigades with their expensive armoured battle groups. Boris Johnson said much the same thing about main battle tanks. In the reserves, I was a military logistician, not a teeth arms man. However, I know that a competently led, properly equipped, dug-in infantry battalion is usually extremely difficult to defeat without using heavy armoured battle groups. The noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, touched on this. Any attempt to attack dismounted, or with only light vehicles, is likely to result in very high casualty rates. This is exactly what we are seeing in Ukraine on both sides, with some other complications—such as both sides having access to very effective ISTAR. No wonder President Zelensky is so keen on acquiring equipment for armoured battle groups, particularly MBTs, which the UK was in the lead on.

It is important to understand that a reality of war is that an attack by a NATO armoured battle group is a terrifying industrial process. Of course, defensive positions will be sited to take advantage of natural features and obstacles—natural and constructed—and the like. However, defenders will also use anti-tank mines, and this is happening in Ukraine on a very large scale. Unfortunately, we are reading that courageous Ukrainian sappers are manually detecting and disposing of mines in order to facilitate attacks. This is far too slow and dangerous—my noble friend Lord Risby touched on this; I feared that he was going to make my speech for me. It is not clear to me how the Ukrainian forces can hope to prevail without being able to deal with the minefields on an industrial scale. The British Army uses a system called Python, a rocket-launched tow rope filled with about 1.5 tonnes of plastic explosive. When detonated, it will neutralise 90% of mines over a length of 200 metres and a width of 7 metres. Also available are Trojan armoured engineer vehicles, which, among other things, have a mine plough to push any remaining mines to one side. Sadly, this is a very low-population equipment, which means that we cannot release it to the Ukrainians.

The good news is that we have world-class defence engineering companies, such as Pearson, which lead on mine plough technology. The Python system, although clever, does not appear to be difficult to produce. What are we doing to help the Ukrainians in this crucial area of industrial mine clearance?

Armed Forces: Troop Levels

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Thursday 21st September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

First, I do pay tribute to the very distinguished contributions that Sikhs have made in our British military history. In relation to the Armed Forces across the piece, we are blessed with—indeed, the Armed Forces are enhanced by—having members from many faith backgrounds. Our objective within MoD is absolutely to deliver proper inclusivity, because what all these representations from different faiths have in common is that they swear allegiance to the monarch and to uphold the safety and security of our country. That is a very strong bond that unites them all. We approach this on a holistic base: we take with pleasure all those who wish to contribute to our Armed Forces’ endeavour and, yes, we are very proud to have contributions from all the faith communities.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, we know that NATO is modernising its structures. How are we responding to this and updating our own structures?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My noble friend is quite correct that NATO has been on a journey of modernisation and transformation, and I think it is a very important journey. The combination of the new NATO force model, the defence investment pledge that was agreed at Vilnius and the NATO political guidance for 2023, in which the UK was a leading influence, represent a modernised, more muscular NATO, to which the UK pledges a full spectrum of capabilities. That includes nuclear, offensive cyber, special forces and space capabilities. For example, the UK was the first ally to offer offensive cyber capabilities to NATO.