Strategic Defence Review

Lord Bew Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Bew (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, for securing this debate at this dangerous and difficult moment in our nation’s defence history. As he rightly said in his introductory remarks, there can be no business as usual. I wish him good luck for the review.

He reminded us that this is not his first rodeo. A quarter of a century ago, he was at the heart of these matters. What I will do is just remind him, although I am sure he does not need reminding, of some of the ways in which he approached his agenda at that time in the late 1990s. In particular, I draw attention to the commitment that was made to the regions of the United Kingdom and the part that they played in our defence industry. Part of that, for example, is the Thales factory in Belfast, founded around 2000, which was a major development. Every NLAW that is now fired in Ukraine has come from that Thales factory. In part, I draw attention to the disproportionate role that, for example, Belfast and Belfast factories are now playing in that major conflict, which goes back to the approach that the Labour Government had in the late 1990s and the beginning of this century, to make sure that defence and defence industries had to be looked at in a properly regional and fair way.

To take this up to the present, earlier this year, in January, the then Government produced their Safeguarding the Union document, which was part of the process, welcomed by the then Labour Opposition, by which the power-sharing institutions of the Good Friday agreement were restored in Belfast. That document was a very important part of the context for that achievement. Paragraph 34, on page 75, touches on the issues we are concerned with today:

“Recognising the untapped resources available to the defence industry in Northern Ireland, the Government”—


the then Sunak Government—

“is committed to incorporating Northern Ireland into the UK defence network, showcasing the skills, industry expertise and infrastructure that are thriving in Northern Ireland”.

The King’s Speech renewed that commitment to the regions of the United Kingdom. The Labour Party, in opposition, welcomed Safeguarding the Union as part of a process by which the institutions were restored in Northern Ireland. I am simply anxious that, during the work of this review, these commitments are not forgotten and, to repeat my point, that the first time around the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, got this right. I just hope that, the second time around, he also gets it right.

I strongly welcome the Government’s commitment to raise defence spending up to 2.5%—although I know that there are many in this Room who think that it is not enough. I also welcome—this point has come up already in the debate—the renewed intensity of the Government’s commitment to international law. I want to add a coda, particularly in the light of recent days, that this correct concern about double standards should not lead to a neglect of our vital interests.

The noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, said that we were in a 1938 moment—and we are in a double sense. The second sense is about the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1938. All civilised opinion in London welcomed that as a wonderful moment in which we healed our relations with the Irish people, with whom we had not been getting on well—legendarily. It was advertised by the then Chamberlain Government that we were telling Mr Hitler, “This is how you deal with problems: you make concessions, you are very civilised, you talk”. Indeed, at times, we had a leader saying that this would even help solve problems in the Middle East—which is a big ask, I have to say—immediately after this event.

In fact, the key moment was the surrendering of our ports that existed under the treaty in the south and west of Ireland. The Admiralty just made a miscalculation. It did not concede that the Germans would be operating out of French ports in 1940 so rapidly. It therefore thought that it did not really need those expensive ports in Ireland. At the end of the war, the Admiralty calculated that we had lost 5,000 to 7,000 sailors because we had given up those ports in the south and west. So while we think of international law and international civilised standards, there is always a need to remember, above all, the hard-headed and perhaps cynical assessment of what our own national interests are in a world in which not every country is equally committed to liberal values. Like other noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord West, I wish everyone good luck in this project.