Tempest Global Combat Air Programme

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I very much hope that the noble Baroness and I can carry on working together. Without being pompous about it, all of us across this Chamber share an interest in the defence of our country and in freedom and democracy across Europe and the world. Working together is extremely important. On her question about the defence industry, she may have seen that yesterday the Prime Minister announced Skills England, which will work with the defence industry and defence companies to overcome one of the biggest hurdles this country faces: the skills shortage, which we have been trying to overcome for a number of years. Redoubling our efforts on that will make a huge difference—but that is just one example of how we intend to work with the industry.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, is there not a great risk that the sixth-generation jet fighter will be yet another white elephant, with escalating costs that will completely distort the defence budget—very similar to the aircraft carriers ordered by the noble Lord, Lord West?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

Of course, the defence review will look at defence in the round, but it is really important that this country looks at what the next generation fighter should be. That is an important step. Looking back in history, the Typhoon was at one time a project on a research board and, before that, it was the Tornado. If memory serves me correctly, the Phantom was the fighter programme before that. Our industry and research programmes are the envy of the world. Of course these programmes need to come in on budget, make sense and meet the threats of the future, but looking at what the global combat aircraft of the future should be is an important part of any defence review.

Artificial Intelligence in Weapon Systems Committee Report

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Friday 19th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, the chairman of the committee, who was absolutely excellent in the way he carried out the job. I have no doubt that he had somewhat of an advantage over many of the rest of us on the committee, as he had spent quite a lot of time in the House of Commons on the Defence Select Committee, which must have given him great inside knowledge of what was going on in the defence field. That was very useful to all of us.

I am very glad to have been on the committee. I have always believed that, if we are to win wars, we need two major components. First, we have to train and motivate our troops properly. I do not think anybody doubts that the British are world leaders in training the military; indeed, we do it for many other countries as well. The professionalism that our Armed Forces show is the envy of the world. I wish I could say the same of the ability of the Ministry of Defence to procure equipment, which has been lacking for years, even in the days when I was responsible for some of it.

The interesting thing that has changed is that, in the old days, industry used to look to defence to spend taxpayers’ money on research and development, hoping that some of that technology would move over into the private sector and it would benefit. That has all completely changed now. The sums of money that have been spent on research and development by the private tech companies in the United States, for instance, are so enormous that technological change is moving at a very fast rate. Let us face it: defence is benefiting from the private sector rather than the other way around. As a result, technology is moving on so fast that it is very difficult for any of us to keep up with it.

So I am very keen that we should embrace AI. We will be left at a serious disadvantage if our enemies adopt AI with enthusiasm and we do not. It is extremely important that we take this on board and use it to save the lives of our troops and improve our chances of winning wars.

There have been a number of very alarmist stories going around. It caused me a certain amount of concern that the committee might think that this is a business that should be regulated out of business altogether due to the possibility of things going wrong. Indeed, while we were on the committee, there was a report in the newspapers of a piece of AI equipment being trialled by the United States that went completely wrong on the simulator and ended up killing the operator and then blowing itself up. We asked the United States what its reaction had been to this. The answer we got was that it had never happened. That might be true—who knows?—but it is slightly sad as we want to learn lessons from all these things, rather like the airlines do when things go wrong. They share the information with everybody in the business and that makes the whole airline business much safer than it would otherwise be. I imagine that, if this did happen, the United States withdrew the whole system from its inventory and went back to the manufacturers and told them to get their act together and not make these sort of mistakes in the future.

My concerns about the committee being somewhat Luddite were misplaced. The report we have produced recognises that we have to take on AI in our defence equipment and that, if we do not, we will be put at a singular disadvantage.

The noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, mentioned the question of international humanitarian law. I am not as much in support of this as perhaps I should be, having signed up to the committee report. I am absolutely certain that nothing whatever is going to happen on this front. The committee was given clear evidence that there is no international agreement to tighten up international humanitarian law. I do not think that we should look to international humanitarian law as an answer to our problems.

The noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, also mentioned the question of nuclear. Unilaterally, we have to ensure that human control remains an element in the whole use of nuclear weapons. I share his concerns about leaving all this to machines: machines can very easily go wrong.

We took a lot of evidence from people who called themselves Stop Killer Robots. I did not understand why so many of them seemed to be put in front of us, but we ended up with these people. When we asked them about Phalanx, they said that this did not apply to that. Your Lordships will know that Phalanx is a point defence system on most of our major Royal Navy ships. It can be used manually or as a completely automated weapons system, identifying targets and opening fire on them if they are coming towards the ship. I would be surprised if it was not being used as an AWS in the Red Sea, where there is the constant threat of Houthi missiles coming in. That system saves the lives of sailors in our Royal Navy.

We should always recognise that AI has a very important role to play. We should be careful about saying that we want to stop all lethal robots, given that they could make all the difference between us winning and losing wars.

Situation in the Red Sea

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Thursday 29th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Minto (Con)]

My Lords, the point is extremely well made. All parties are conversing at a certain level. Degrading these small drones and unmanned boats is not just a question of physically destroying them but also of disrupting their ability to land where they are supposed to.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, further to the question of my noble friend Lord Hailsham about the help we are getting from allies, can my noble friend confirm that the two biggest economies in Europe are Germany and France, in that order, which are importing significant quantities of goods from the Far East and China through the Suez Canal and therefore have a big interest in protecting shipping in the Red Sea? What is either country doing to suppress the Houthis’ missile systems?

[The Earl of Minto (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that question. To be honest, I do not know precisely what they are doing; I will find out and write. They are definitely supportive of Aspides, and that is certainly a move in the right direction.

Royal Navy: Aircraft Carriers

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Monday 12th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Minto (Con)]

My Lords, I answered this question the other day. These are highly technical pieces of equipment. We carry out regular tests, and it was a regular test which determined that the “Queen Elizabeth” should not sail. The advice was that it should not sail, and the sensible thing to do was to use the other aircraft carrier. That is exactly what we have done.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, further to the request from the noble Lord, Lord West, that compensation should be paid by the manufacturers of these aircraft carriers for a total sum of £6.2 billion, does my noble friend accept that BAE S might not be very good at building ships but it is very good at writing contracts?

[The Earl of Minto (Con)]

My Lords, that is not something I am particularly expert in, but I can see that it is important to make certain that a contract has the correct clauses to ensure that, when things go wrong, the placer of the contract is suitably covered.

Fleet Solid Support Ships

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

As the noble Lord is aware, when it comes to the procurement of complex contracts such as those in which the MoD is frequently engaged, what matters is who has the skills, what the design looks like, and what offers to deliver well for the MoD and as a warship for the British shipbuilding industry.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, surely the noble Lord, Lord Browne, is right: ships assembled in this country are made up of components from all over the world. This has been the case for some time now.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I observe to my noble friend that the vast majority of the build work will take place in the UK. There will be an element of the aft blocks built in Spain, but by far the majority of the shipbuilding work will be here. We should celebrate this. It is a matter of commendation not depression.

Estonia: UK Troop Levels

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

As the noble Lord will understand, looking back to the integrated review, what became very clear was that the review identified that it is not just numbers we have to talk about but capability, technical advancement and what we equip our Armed Forces with. That now includes sophisticated technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotic activity. There is a whole manner of ways in which we are taking forward our troop presence and the capability of the Army that goes beyond thinking simply in terms of numbers.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend has made it clear that the doubling of the battle group in Estonia was a result of the invasion of Ukraine. Now that it has been halved, does this mean that the risk to Estonia has been reduced?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My noble friend will be aware that in the MoD we constantly assess and respond to threat as the character of that threat emerges. What we did at the inception of the illegal invasion of Ukraine was to offer support where there might have been a vulnerability. It is important now, in conjunction with NATO and our other allies in the Baltic area, to work sensibly to collaborate—but nothing in any way diminishes our commitment to support that area.

Ukraine Update

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

Does my noble friend accept that it is rather unhelpful to describe lethal weapons being sent to the Ukraine as either offensive or defensive? Weapons can be used in either role; it just depends on how they are deployed.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

From the outset, we gave Ukraine anti-tank missiles—and we were one of the first countries to do so—but we have been clear that these are bits of equipment that they use to defend themselves against attack; if there is no attack then there is no need to use them. We cannot leave Ukraine in a position where it is unable to defend itself while the rest of us sit back and shed tears. We are trying to put our money where our mouth is and give the Ukrainians what they need. I think we are managing to do that. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell, raised the issue of Starstreak and asked whether it fell within the broad definition of what we understood to be legitimate and reasonable in the circumstances. We construe it to be so.

Migrant Crossings: Role of the Military

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I reassure the noble Lord that, whatever the MoD does in its primacy of operational control, discharge of that duty will absolutely be done in compliance with international laws and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The noble Lord is quite right that there is a much broader picture here that is shared by countries across the world, and he is correct to identify it as a need to be addressed in the hope that we can stop migrants setting off on perilous journeys in the first place.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, is the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, not right that until agreement is reached with the French to take them back, it does not really matter who picks them out of the water?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

What is important is that we have in place a plan to try to mitigate and prevent the misery that has been enduring, which I think has been upsetting to everyone. That is what this initiative is about.

RAF: Operational Conversion Unit

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My noble friend is absolutely right, and we are encouraged by the response we have had to the publication of the National Shipbuilding Strategy, which should ensure the re-energising of our shipbuilding capability in the UK when it comes to Royal Navy warships.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

Was it not inevitable, when the noble Lord, Lord West, ordered two aircraft carriers and there was no money to pay for them, that enormous pressure would be put on the procurement budget, not least in terms of ordering the F35s, which cost £100 million apiece?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, while we recognise the considerable cost of the carriers, we should reflect also upon their utility and considerable benefit in enabling us to project power in a way we have never been able to before, bearing in mind the versatility and capability of the F35B, which takes us into a new realm of strike capability.

Shipbuilding: Appledore Shipyard

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the noble Lord asks a very serious question about government spend on naval shipbuilding. I do not think it is a fair charge if his implication was that the Government have not been supporting our yards at home. Babcock alone has had £1.7 billion-worth of business just in the last year. It recently started work on a £360 million contract to be the technical authority and support partner for the Navy’s new aircraft carriers. In general, we are seeing in Scotland, for example, a £3.7 billion contract for the first three Type 26s, and at Cammel Laird there has been a £619 million support contract. Then there will be the competition for the Type 31e frigate, which is worth £1.25 billion. Those will be built in the UK. As regards the fleet solid support ships, there is no bias on the part of the Ministry of Defence. This is an open competition and we encourage British shipyards to bid.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, is it not true that the noble Lord, Lord West, was told, when he ordered the aircraft carriers and there was no money to pay for them, that they would have to be paid for by reductions in the surface fleet, and that is what is happening now?