Lord Balfe debates involving the Ministry of Defence during the 2024 Parliament

Strategic Defence Review

Lord Balfe Excerpts
Wednesday 9th October 2024

(5 days, 2 hours ago)

Grand Committee
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Lord Balfe Portrait Lord Balfe (Con)
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My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, for initiating this debate. I had a conversation with him before Christmas and suggested that this might be a good idea.

I would first like to look at the threat picture. We know roughly what it is, but the biggest threat picture is of the division of the world into two very heavily armed camps, with one, the Russians, getting increasingly close to the Chinese. We are in danger of ending up with Chinese bases in the Arctic if we cannot manage to get some sort of peace talks going—read the recent report of this House. Then we will be in even more difficulty.

The defence review says that we take as granted our membership of NATO, so why do we not start off with that? The war in Ukraine is in a non-NATO country. It is undoubtedly illegal, but it was not unprovoked. Noble Lords can shake their heads, but while this war carries on and until we can manage to get it under control, we are not going to get anything that resembles a peaceful solution in Europe. Our first aim should be to secure the defence of our NATO allies. In particular, that means to look at how we can work with the new NATO partners to guarantee the security of the Baltic states. They have a right to expect us to help with their security, and that should be our number one priority.

Beyond that, we can debate and discuss, but we have to realise that we are dealing with a number of countries that are fundamentally unstable and have internal conflicts which, by definition, rule them out of being members of NATO. I would hope that we can concentrate on the Baltics and make it possible for the Baltic states to feel more comfortable than they clearly do; that we will look at how we police effectively the Suwałki Gap; and look at how we relate to the countries that are already in NATO.

Looking at another of these headings, I note the point about our support and the need for proper and efficient defence forces. I really hope that this review will look at the outsourcing of recruitment. I have what is supposedly an Army recruiting office at the top of the road in which I live. Most of the time it is closed; I have never actually seen anyone in it. I wonder whether this scheme is delivering any value for money. Overall, philosophically, I am opposed to outsourcing. It is generally done for the wrong reasons—to try to save money—and not for the reasons of promoting better efficiency and the like. I hope that we will look at that and at the way in which we can get people into the Armed Forces.

I live in the city of Cambridge: we have a very large Russian and Ukrainian population there. They get on very well together. They are basically the sons of the rich of those two countries who have all managed to get out, thanks to daddy’s money. They have got themselves to Cambridge where they have set up both a Russian society—the secretary lives a few doors up from me—and a Ukrainian society. The interesting thing is that the two societies get on very well together. We are becoming a sort of base. It is rather like when I was at university: we were flooded with Americans who were dodging the Vietnam War. Now Cambridge has plenty of Russians and Ukrainians who are, let us say, making themselves scarce, so we have a challenge in that direction.

I know that I have made my final point before and that it is not popular, but Russia is a European country and we somehow have to work out how to bring it back. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, that the Russians and the Indians are getting closer and closer together. Far from India coming our way, Russia is building up a dependence on its energy within India. The energy is starting to go south instead of west. Mr Modi is playing a very clever game in many ways, but he is not playing a game of being particularly friendly to us, because he sees the advantage to India in being friendly to Russia and getting closer to the stans and the former southern Soviet republics. We need to remember that.

Politics, after all, is about self-interest. People often tell me that the United States is our great ally and that we are its favourite child. They never say that in Washington; this is a myth that we pursue. Countries have foreign policies to better their own self-interests. I hope that this review will look at how we can better the self-interests of this country, rather than pretending that we are doing it for other people.

King’s Speech

Lord Balfe Excerpts
Thursday 25th July 2024

(2 months, 3 weeks ago)

Lords Chamber
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Lord Balfe Portrait Lord Balfe (Con)
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My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, and the noble Lord, Lord Coaker. I do not think there will be any different response to my ideas from the new Front Bench than there was from the last Front Bench, but I keep trying because I believe they are right.

I shall talk mainly about NATO. I am pleased that my friend—I am not sure whether I am allowed to call him that—the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, is here. We have to remember that Article 5 of the NATO treaty, of which we often quote the first part, says that an attack on one is an attack on all. It then goes on to say nothing about what should be done. As a senior member of a southern European navy pointed out to me, as far as his country was concerned, nothing should be done, under Article 5, if there were an attack in eastern Europe. But, of course, Ukraine is not in NATO, and the first thing I would advise is that

“Ukraine’s irreversible path to full NATO membership”.—[Official Report, Commons, 22/7/24; col. 369.]

to quote the Prime Minister, is exactly the wrong direction in which to proceed. The one thing we do not need is a lot of squabbling states carrying out their hatreds on NATO’s base. There is already far too much going on in eastern Europe with NATO members, but that can be contained. If we extend NATO membership to Ukraine, we will essentially extend it into a frozen conflict zone, because the next reality is that Russia is not going to leave Ukraine, either militarily or otherwise. The best you can hope for is a stalemate, and the only way out of a stalemate is a negotiation. You cannot bomb your way out of it.

I counsel the Government to look to a European initiative. Trump might be right: it may be about time that we looked after our own defence. In so doing, we would cease to be doing Washington’s demands all the time, because that is at the basis of this.

I note that we have said we will give £3 billion a year—pounds, not euros; I am too used to another Parliament—to Ukraine. I know politics is the language of priorities, and £3 billion is exactly the sum of money which is needed to end the two-child benefit lock, but the priorities of this Government are not children’s poverty; they are arming Ukraine and sending it lots of weapons that it can use to smash up other countries. This is not sensible, particularly if you are not going to win. The Russian Federation and its riparian states have got to learn to solve their problems and live together. You can rewrite your history and—my goodness—I have been there many times and seen how they have rewritten it to a ridiculous extent, but you cannot rewrite your geography. At the end of the day, these countries are next to each other and somehow they have to live together. If we cannot come to an agreement with the Russian Federation, we are in for a lot of trouble.

Talk of preparing for war in three years brings me on to my final point, which echoes the point made at the beginning of this debate by the noble Lord, Lord Howell. Capitalism has failed the young: many of them are unemployed, they cannot buy houses and now we are promising body bags. That is the reality of it. We will not be fighting this war; young people—our grandchildren—will be fighting this war, and they will be dying for an unwinnable cause. So I ask the new Government to think a bit more carefully than the last Government and somehow extricate us from this mess.