UK Defence Forces

Lord Bew Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bew (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Soley, for securing this debate and for his excellent speech in introducing it. The noble Lord speaks in the Labour tradition of the progressive and patriotic internationalism of Attlee and Bevan. So much that has been said from the Labour Benches this morning has been precisely in that tradition. That is a great comfort, because we need in this matter above all matters a bipartisan approach.

That tradition is not dead. It is worth referring to a speech given at Chatham House on 26 October by Chuka Umunna, “A Bolder Britain: Remaking a Major European Power”, which expresses it with great force. Towards the end of it, he said clearly:

“One of the priorities for a Labour Government must be a Strategic Defence and Security Review to give the electorate, our allies and our potential enemies a clear message of our intent and purpose. Our spending commitment should rise above NATO’s two per cent of GDP, lifting it incrementally to 2.5 per cent over a five year period. This will allow us to maintain our conventional forces at an adequate level”.


It is clear from so much that has been said today that we have a problem of morale in our Armed Forces. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, said that the best and brightest do not join institutions which are subject to constant cuts. We have probably all noticed with some pleasure the presence in the House of Commons of relatively young former Army officers on the Benches of both parties who are making major contributions to debates such as these. I am as impressed by them as many others. I am also slightly worried. Do we have quite so many of them because they are no longer so conscious of the desirability of a long-term career in the armed services?

I have made it clear that I am in favour of raising the level of our current defence expenditure, for reasons that have been so eloquently stated today. I want now to refer to some of the difficulties, because I know they exist.

First, there is inevitably wastage in defence expenditure. There is no silver bullet about this; there will always be some wastage, because nobody can precisely guess what our future priorities might be—I acknowledge that. However, there is public concern, and the battle has to be won here, about revolving-door issues through the Ministry of Defence and the defence companies and about expenditure which sometimes seems very large and which our Armed Forces do not seem to have benefited very much from. Attlee first raised such concerns in 1925, and they will not be sorted out in any short order—and I am not expecting the Minister now to do so. On the other hand, the Prime Minister, when she took office, made a number of speeches acknowledging her awareness of public concern about these issues. If we are going to win the battle, we will have to deal with it.

The matter is made extremely difficult now because of Brexit, because it places the Government in a situation where they have to bring people into government very quickly to solve technical problems. It is very difficult for government to deal with such issues. In the short term, there is no silver bullet, but in the medium term the Government should send out a signal that they acknowledge public concern about this issue—so much is written in the press about it. I am certain that practice can be improved. There is a battle to be won here. Part of the battle to ensure that we have a proper level of defence expenditure will be to reassure public opinion.