Defence: 2.5% GDP Spending Commitment
Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts(5 days, 7 hours ago)
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Lord Coaker (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for her question. We have been very clear about NATO. Irrespective of the outcome of the American presidential election, European countries would have had to spend more on defence. As a first step towards that, all NATO countries need to meet the 2% target, which 23 out of 32 currently do. Our next step is to reach 2.5% and to set a pathway towards that. That will result in billions of pounds of this country’s money, as well as multi-billions of pounds across Europe, being spent on defence. That is the first step we need to take.
Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)
My Lords, arguably, one of the most difficult tasks of government is to determine the level of expenditure and therefore capability needed to reduce external threats to the country to an acceptable level of risk or tolerance. Therefore, how can it be right or logical to predetermine that 2.5% of GDP is the appropriate level of expenditure needed to achieve tolerable security? Does the Minister not agree that it is more sensible to remain open-minded as to what the level of resources required will be until after the SDSR has reported and the true risks to the nation are better understood?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I thank the noble and gallant Lord his question. He will know that one of the parameters of my noble friend Lord Robertson’s defence review is to look at the threats and at the capabilities needed within the envelope of 2.5%. Any country would have to determine what it believes it can afford and is necessary. The defence review will come forward with the threat assessment, and then it will be for the Government to determine, with the defence panel, how we meet those threats going forward.
Defence Programmes Developments
Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts(3 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Lord Coaker (Lab)
We are certainly a brave Government, but it has been a consistent policy of whatever Government have been in power to support the nuclear deterrent. The nuclear deterrent will continue; we will renew the nuclear deterrent. I just say to the noble Baroness, who is quite entitled to the opinion she holds, that I think it incumbent upon us to do that, given the threats we are seeing from President Putin—the irresponsible threats at the present time raise the prospect of it. Let us be clear about this: we support the nuclear deterrent, and we support its renewal. That is an important part of our defence.
Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)
I draw Members’ attention to my relevant registered interest as a member of the Thales advisory board. I offer some sympathy to the Government regarding their defence inheritance, which must appear to be an appalling mismatch between requirements and resources.
When I was in the MoD, when we needed to save money, it often had to be found where savings could be made—that is, in money that was uncommitted—as opposed to where savings should be found, often on money that was committed on historic mistakes. Can the Minister therefore confirm that the process applied has been truly rigorous in respect of operational priorities? Within those priorities, the Minister mentioned the deletion of Watchkeeper. Did its deletion recognise the potential associated sensitivities to defence export sales in the Middle East, including sensitivities that involve GCAP?
Secondly, the Statement mentions a
“fully fledged national armaments director”.
Can the Minister perhaps offer the House some insight into what is the defining element of this fully fledged national armaments director? Particularly, what will define his relationship with the defence industrial primes? Will it be a relationship that ensures that, going forward, defence capabilities are principally bought in the context of benefit to the taxpayer and defence as opposed to shareholders of defence industrial primes?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
First, we recognised the sensitivities around the deletion of Watchkeeper and they were a consideration. In terms of operations, the decisions around decommissioning were made in a way that would not compromise operations. The chiefs were clear to us that operations would not be compromised by any of the decommissioning taking place.
The point about the national armaments director is an extremely important one. The national armaments director is to give greater strength to the idea that we need to rebuild our arms industry and ensure that the stockpiles we have are of sufficient size to meet the threats of the future. In doing that, the relationship with the defence industry—whether the primes or the smaller companies—will be important. The important point is that it is not to be something that is in the interests of the shareholders but something that we need to discuss, which is that it is to be in the national interest and in the interests of our international alliances. That is what is important to us all. We have to have an armaments director which drives forward an arms industry which gives us the weapons and stockpiles we need.
In answer to the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, I have not seen the Financial Times article with respect to the European defence industrial strategy, but that is certainly something we have been discussing with our European friends.
Strategic Defence Review
Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts(2 months, 1 week ago)
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Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)
My Lords, when I spoke in the foreign policy and defence debate on the gracious Speech a few weeks ago, I welcomed the Government’s intention to hold a strategic defence review and to do so quickly. I remarked on the nature of the three defence reviews of which I had the most intimate knowledge—those of 2010, 2015 and 2020—and offered that those three reviews had three things in common.
First, they all had a superficially compelling narrative, one that gave a fairly sobering analysis of the increasing risks to the stability of the world order and the growing diversity of both the defence and security challenges to that order. The second thing was the reality of government austerity. All three reviews were ultimately the product of financial, rather than geostrategic, reality. The third thing, therefore, was that all three reviews delivered a delusion that various alchemies—modernisation, efficiency, technological superiority and fusion doctrine—somehow facilitated an ability to take acceptable risk because, in the end, everything would turn out all right and be okay.
The result of these serial delusions has now been exposed. The International Relations and Defence Committee’s recent report on the lessons for UK defence from Ukraine, brutally but fairly, lays bare the somewhat alarming state of not just our Armed Forces but the machinery of government, the defence industry and wider society’s ability to deter or sustain a conventional war at scale.
The defence review currently under way cannot, therefore, come quickly enough, but it needs to be a review quite unlike its most recent forerunners. It cannot be a cost-capped exercise in public and self-delusion; rather, it must be an honest exercise in self-scrutiny and geopolitical reality. I realise that, ultimately, money will have to be a factor. As long as the review has integrity, it does not necessarily lead to an uncomfortable outcome. Indeed, it might be quite a liberating exercise. To me, the outcome of the review should be a justified choice from which all else flows.
The choice is the strategic one of what role we, the United Kingdom, want to play in the world over the next 10 to 20 years. I do not think that this is a simplistic choice between doing everything or nothing. The nation would not understand or tolerate a wholly extreme departure from our current aspirations. Rather, it is a more nuanced choice between two more subtle options—but it is a very distinct choice.
The context is the increasingly darkening world in which we no longer have a monopoly on the ownership of truth. It is a world in which China, Russia, North Korea and Iran are increasingly mutually self-supporting and in which many of the countries of the poorly defined global South are, at best, undecided as to whom they favour.
One choice is to double down on what we have traditionally aspired to be as a nation—a global leader. It would involve us in a meaningful leadership role in NATO, necessitate a significant investment in restoring conventional deterrence in Europe, require a significant investment in resilience, necessitate the recreation of the mechanisms for generating reserves, involve continued or even greater investment in cyberspace and emerging technologies, and involve us in some more demanding global roles of which AUKUS and GCAP are perhaps the capability forerunners. This would be the more expensive option and would bring its own forms of risk and benefit on the global stage.
A second option is more modest but, some may argue, more rational. It would involve coming to terms with a reduced global ambition and accepting that there are limits to where we envisage projecting force. It would focus on the regional threat from Russia and, more specifically, it might choose to exploit the mutual synergies and interests we enjoy with the nations of the Joint Expeditionary Force. Our maritime and air forces could form the core of a meaningful contribution to the security of the north Atlantic and northern Europe. It might recognise that expeditionary land forces, at scale, looks a highly questionable ambition for a nation that cannot man an army of 72,000 and that has no current mechanisms to mobilise a reserve.
But we do have the ability to exploit space and cyber special force operations, and we retain a practised understanding of high-level command and control. This more modest option would also need to recognise our deficiencies in layered anti-missile defence and offensive missile capability. The latter may provide the necessary escalatory gearing to restore credibility to our strategic deterrent.
I do not want to give the impression that this second option necessarily generates any savings against the current or anticipated budget. It would, however, demand some markedly different capability choices. My point is that the capability choices would be the result of the decisions about our strategic ambition. I fear that, in the past, capability choices have predetermined the policy aspiration, which must be the wrong way around.
My plea is for a review of integrity, not one based on hope, boosterism or doctrinal alchemy. I would certainly be cautious of an alchemy based on the idea of an integrated force fighting an unfair war on the presumption of perpetual technological advantage. To me, such an outcome has some of the hallmarks of a delusion in waiting.
Ministry of Defence: Expenditure
Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Coaker (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for his important question. Whether it is aircraft carriers and planes, the number of soldiers, technology or other capabilities, you have to have the capability you need to meet the threat that you face. My noble friend is right to point that out. That is the fundamental principle that underlies the review of the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, and why he will be working closely with others. I say to all noble Lords that it is an open review and anyone is welcome to contribute to it.
Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)
Does the Minister agree that, at this moment, the Government should remain open-minded on all areas of discretionary defence spending that do not directly contribute to keeping Ukraine in the fight and restoring the credibility of deterrence in Europe?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
Of course we should remain open to any capability that is necessary. The noble and gallant Lord makes a very important point. We are open to all these considerations and factors in the defence of Ukraine, but also in the wider security picture that we face across the globe. No doubt that will be something that the review takes forward. I would welcome the noble and gallant Lord’s contribution to that review, to make the very point that he has just made.
King’s Speech
Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)
My Lords, it might be judged somewhat risky for a general to follow the valedictory speech of a Bishop. Be reassured: right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester is the cousin of the late Field Marshal Lord Peter Inge, who was a Green Howard, as is my noble friend Lord Dannatt and—you guessed it—as am I. It is truly remarkable that a single county regiment can claim three Members of this House and, incidentally, three Constables of the Tower at the Tower of London. We always knew that we had influence in very high places, and John has a special place in our hearts.
Bishop John has been a remarkable servant of this House and wider society. At Durham, he was a chemist as well as a thespian. He trained as a teacher at Keble, Oxford. Dangerously, he has a degree in systemic theology and is a doctor of philosophy. He was ordained at Chichester and became the chaplain at Harrow. He is one of the longest-serving diocesan bishops in the Church of England. He is affectionately known for his great sense of humour and his sartorial dress: a fascination with Edwardian frock coats, episcopal toppers and Panama hats—sometimes other people’s. He has a passion for people, cycling and international affairs.
As he said, he has served the House for the last 12 years, speaking on international development, the childcare system, hospices, schools, assisted suicide, migration, asylum and much else. A few short words cannot begin to do justice to a remarkable man, but I know that the House will join me in thanking him for his service and wishing him well for the future.
Noble Lords
Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)
I turn to what I want to say in this debate. My time is now short, so I will concentrate on one aspect of the gracious Speech: the Government’s welcome intention to conduct a defence review.
I will offer a view on what sort of a review this needs to be, because it needs to be very different from the last three. The SDSRs of 2010, 2015 and 2020 had a number of things in common. First, they had an elegant narrative regarding the state of the world, which was increasingly alarming in its portrayal of the growing diversity and intensity of danger, threat and instability in the world. Secondly, there was the reality of government austerity and the imperative to deliver national security to an ever more constrained budget; and, thirdly, to me they were all exercises in a delusionary reassurance to the nation.
Each of those SDSRs produced some form of alchemy that appeared to make an acceptable level of national security somehow affordable. In 2010, it was defence reform. In 2015, it was defence efficiency. In 2020, it was technological advantage. Somewhere in the mix was fusion doctrine.
I offer that all three reviews produced the common and indulgent delusion that our Armed Forces were fit for purpose and the country was safe. I bore witness to many defences of this delusion even in this House. I fear that those defences came close to a failure of honesty both to Parliament and to society—a failure that, to our collective shame, we were all party to. We asked our questions, made our speeches, felt that we had done our bit and sat down.
The result is now extremely concerning. The Armed Forces of this country are most definitely not fit for purpose; they are completely hollowed out and, even more concerning, the men and women of those Armed Forces are now voting with their feet. Just as concerning, government has no truly effective narrative with society that alerts it to the dangers that exist and the risks that we are running. It seems as though so long as we somehow spend 2.5% of GDP on defence, all will be well, and the only really substantive question is when we reach that figure.
I say this in such stark terms to make the point that we cannot afford another SDSR that is a protracted and largely academic exercise that is wholly constrained by issues of cost, reflects a 20-year vision on the size and shape of the Armed Forces, and employs delusional rhetoric to conceal the realities of clear and present danger. Rather, we need a review that is clear about the dangers that we face, our ambition to meet them, the true state of our military capabilities, and the realistic resources required.
However, the review must do something even more important: it must accelerate the actions needed to win a war that we are already in. If we move, and NATO moves, with sufficient pace, we can still win this war without having to fight it. Ukraine does not have that luxury.
If I were to offer three priorities for action, they would be, first, to do whatever is necessary to keep Ukraine in the fight. We must not delude ourselves that Ukraine can win in military terms, but they can help to buy time for the second imperative: the re-establishment of conventional deterrence in Europe. NATO has a strategic deficit in deterrent credibility. We must be a leader and exemplar to make good this deficit. Thirdly, for pity’s sake, we must invest in our people. It is our people, not shiny platforms, that are our strategic edge.
I could go on, but the sole point I wanted to make is one of principle. We are at a point in history when we need an SDSR that urgently balances ambition, capability and resources, and one that is focused primarily on the short-term imperative to defeat, hopefully by deterrence, those who seek to destroy the values we hold dear.