Defence: Support Ships and Type 32 Frigates

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Tuesday 20th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I have already indicated to the House that this ship is in the concept phase; there is no more that I can add to that. The programme and procurement strategy will be decided following the current concept phase, once that has concluded. However, I would observe that this is part of a shipbuilding programme for the Royal Navy that is substantial, significant and very important for the Navy’s future operational effectiveness.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, on this particular argument I find myself more in favour of the Minister’s point, inasmuch as the lineage of these questions, although entertaining, occasionally gives the impression that the sole purpose of the defence budget is the maritime renaissance. Increasingly, the issue of military advantage will be born not of hardware but of software. Can the Minister confirm that it is this strategic shift, and not necessarily by accounting for military competence and capability in the counting of input numbers, that is the qualitative output of a sophisticated and technologically equipped Armed Forces—the point of the Minister’s expression of frustration—and a more balanced approach to the investment necessary?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I thank the noble and gallant Lord. He makes the point more eloquently and with greater authority than I can. I do not seek to pre-empt the defence Command Paper refresh, which is imminently in the stages of becoming public, but the hybrid nature of our capability will be obvious from that paper. The noble and gallant Lord is quite correct: we cannot put things in silos. We have to work out what we are trying to deal with, what the threat is, what the hybrid character of the threat is and how we can have a capability—whether by land, air or sea—that will effectively combine to address that threat.

Ukraine

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

Many people will be in sympathy with the important point made by my noble friend. We do everything that we can through intelligence outlets to try to ascertain what is happening in Russia—what the mood is and what the sentiment is. It is difficult to elicit any specific information, apart from a general observation that there is now evidence that morale is being impacted by this illegal war in Ukraine. Increasingly within Russia, as a consequence of that war, the brutal effect upon families who have lost loved ones or seen loved ones seriously injured is beginning to tell its own story. My noble friend makes an important point. I wish that I had some more specific instrument available to me to ascertain in detail what he asks. We continue to monitor the situation as best we can.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, I have a question on the high-level strategic purpose of the UK’s support and the international support for Ukraine. To an interested observer, it appears to be an attempt to allow Ukraine neither to lose badly nor to win decisively. The net result is a sustained, mutually hurting stalemate. Can the Minister comment on the morality of that? Would it be fair to say that pragmatism has trumped morality in UK policy?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

The morality is that, when someone behaves in an inexcusably illegal and brutal fashion, it must be resisted, in the interests of international respect for upholding law and for a country’s sovereignty. That is what Ukraine is doing, supported by many countries around the world. How Ukraine wishes to approach that conflict is not for me to interpret or advance an opinion upon, but, as the noble and gallant Lord is aware, everyone understands the propriety of what Ukraine is doing. The United Kingdom, with our allies and partners, will support Ukraine as very best we can.

Armed Forces: Resilience

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, I start by offering my own mixture of welcome and congratulations to our two maiden speakers. The noble Lord, Lord Hintze, of Dunster, is a new friend; I knew his speech would be a mixture of the humility, warmth and remarkable worldly wisdom that define him as a man. Such qualities make him a most welcome addition to this place. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Peach, of Grantham, I know too well: he stalked me through the latter years of my military career. However, he went on to better things, as the chairman of the NATO Military Committee, and few in this Chamber will match his knowledge of international defence and security issues. As both their maiden speeches testify, we have gained enormously by their addition to our number.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, and welcome this debate on the resilience of the UK’s Armed Forces. In many respects it is overdue, and it is probably the unfolding reality of conventional warfare at scale, in Ukraine, which has stirred greater concern in this House and more widely among informed commentators.

I will start with what might seem a somewhat offensive observation. It is very unlikely that we will get a wholly clear or candid statement on the resilience of our Armed Forces from a government Minister or even a chief of defence. That is not because they are habitual liars but because of three very obvious and, to be fair, largely defensible reasons. We do not want to parade the totality of our national military shortcomings to our enemies, nor internally always to our own Armed Forces, nor more widely to the British people.

When I was Chief of the Defence Staff, I know that, on occasions, I was either not allowed to speak or else had to publicly defend decisions on resources and capability using politically cleared scripts with which I was not always entirely comfortable. I was prepared to do this for a number of reasons. The first was the fact that, after all, it is not the responsibility of the Chief of the Defence Staff to determine the Government’s spending priorities. Moreover, it is not the responsibility of the Chief of the Defence Staff to determine what level of defence and security risk the Government are ultimately prepared to tolerate. Both of these things are for the Government of the day alone to determine, and they are definitely not enviable judgments to have to make.

However, it is the responsibility of the CDS, supported by the chiefs of staff, to maximise the benefit in military capability terms of a given level of resources, to deploy those resources in support of government policy, and to confirm to government, in as accurate a manner as possible, the degree to which that military capability reduces the defence and security risks to the nation. To me, the key responsibility of the CDS, in this aspect of his role, is to be loyally but brutally honest to the Government about his judgments on resources, capability choices and national risk. Therefore, the least—I hope the best—we can hope for as a result of today’s debate is the reassurance that the Government are being honest with themselves.

I make my contribution from the standpoint of an ex-CDS who believes that, in the specific context of war-fighting resilience, the situation today must—absolutely must—be even more concerning than it was in 2016 when I stood down. Drawing on my own personal experience as CDS, my first attempt, if you like, at moderated public honesty was in December 2013 at the annual Christmas CDS lecture to RUSI. In my address I first, I think, raised the spectre of the hollow force: a force I defined as increasingly built around exquisite platforms and around the capabilities that represented the iconic totems of a global power—capabilities perhaps more focused on supporting international prestige and a domestic industrial base than on rigorously based assessments of genuine national threats. In truth, it was a force that risked consuming so much of the defence budget on exquisite platforms that it was affordable only at the expense of manpower numbers, high-quality training and the stockpiles of war-fighting consumables that resilience on high-intensity operations require.

It would not be appropriate to publicly expose the detail of my private expressions of honesty to government. However, I will say that I wrote, formally, an annual letter to the Prime Minister, agreed with my fellow chiefs, offering a professional view on the state of our military capability. It was written in the clearest Yorkshire that I could muster. I can recall my final such letter to the Prime Minister, in summer 2016. I reflected one principal concern: that the strategic imbalance of investment between equipment, manpower, training, material support and infrastructure had effectively created the hollow force. The issue now was not the risk of the hollow force but whether the Government were happy to live with the reality.

Much has happened since I stood down in 2016 to suggest to me that the risk must now be intolerable. A number of external factors have occurred, many of them largely outside government control, which make the risk difficult to ameliorate quickly or cheaply. I offer three such factors, not to be exhaustive but purely as examples.

The first is that threats which were latent in 2010 and patent in 2015 are now realities, and the military outcome of the war in Ukraine will largely depend on a brutal test of national resilience. We are a part of that resilience, if only by proxy, and it seems, if the words of the current CGS are to be believed, that our contributions to date have already undermined and prejudiced our national liability to NATO.

The second example I offer is that, in pursuit of efficiency, we have created a defence industrial base in the UK which largely runs on supermarket lines: a competitive marketplace with just-in-time delivery, partly based on the guarantee of international supply. We no longer have the sovereign manufacturing base capable of sustaining war-fighting scales of consumption.

A third example would be my fear that we have done serious damage to our manpower resilience. We seem now, both institutionally and societally, unable to successfully recruit and retain. We have, by choice, reduced our military manpower strength; and, perhaps most remarkably of all, given the lessons from Ukraine and Covid, we have again neglected our Reserve Forces and have no plan in motion to address their purpose or vibrancy—although we have plenty of unacknowledged studies. I pause here to declare a personal interest, recorded in the register, as the president of the Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Association.

As I said at the outset, it is perhaps not fair to expect a wholly candid or clear public statement on the resilience of our Armed Forces. Many, if not most, countries involve themselves in either internal deceptions or external evasions about the true state of their military capability. President Putin is perhaps just the latest to be horribly surprised. But more widely, we need to face a disturbing reality. Simply put, what we ask of defence and our Armed Forces is based on a wholly unachievable set of mutually conflicting ambitions, given the current levels of funding. We simply cannot, at one and the same time, face the threat of land warfare in Europe, commit to a strategic tilt to south-east Asia, sustain a nuclear deterrent, undertake a maritime renaissance, be the default government response to strikes and domestic emergencies, contribute to the nation’s prosperity agenda, help it to become a tech superpower and perform remarkable acts of state ceremonial, all while supporting a defence industrial base that looks first to its shareholders, and achieve all this with fewer people, not much more money and through a misplaced reliance on the enduring alchemy of efficiency.

I, among others, wait with bated breath for the outcome of the revisitation of the integrated review. I hope that the Minister will at least confirm that honesty and realism will be the review’s defining characteristics, and that the regeneration of resilience in all its dimensions will result.

Ukraine: Challenger 2 Tanks

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I know that the noble Lord takes a keen interest in this and has posed similar questions before. I can reassure the House that the Secretary of State is cognisant of this and indeed commented in his Statement in the other place on Monday that we are very closely engaged with industry, as are our allied partners, because we are not in a silo in respect of industry supply and security of the supply chain. We are having to work with partners to ensure that, holistically, industry is able to understand demand and plan accordingly to supply it. Certainly, we are confident that we have retained sufficient equipment and ammunition so that we are able to undertake our primary responsibility to the security of the United Kingdom.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, in pursuit of a more precise answer on this issue of funding, will the Minister answer two questions? First, does the aggregate of all our activities in support of Ukraine meet the formal title of a military operation? If that is the case, do the NACMO procedures apply; that is, that the net additional costs of military operations are met not from the defence budget but from the Treasury reserve?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My understanding in relation to the donation of munitions and equipment granted in kind to Ukraine out of our own stocks is that replenishment of granted assets is managed under a standing arrangement between the MoD and the Treasury, and funding is provided from HMT reserves.

Ukraine: NATO

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

As the noble Baroness will be aware, the best that we can do, along with our allies and partners, is to support Ukraine in the defence of its territory in trying to see off the barbaric and illegal attacks to which it has been subjected by Russia. The principal concern has probably been the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, for understandable reasons. We welcome the efforts of the IAEA and United Nations staff to be on site, and we hope that will enable a robust inspection to be concluded. We are cognisant of the risk, and we will do everything that we can to continue to help Ukraine to see off the threat.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, the interest of the House in the progress of the military situation in Ukraine is entirely understandable, but can the Minister reassure the House that the Government recognise the two very separate objectives of conflict termination and conflict resolution, and that it is not in policy formulation that we aspire to resolve the conflict through military means alone?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

It has been clear from the outset that our desire—or mission, if you like—was to support Ukraine in its attempts to defend itself against this illegal aggression and invasion of its sovereign territory. That is our role, as it is the role of NATO and other partners. As to the future, and whether the conflict can ever be resolved and negotiations embarked on, that is absolutely for Ukraine to determine.

Ukraine

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

The noble Baroness’s colleague posed the same question to me on Monday evening. I was able to pledge that I would take that matter back and have done so. I have referred it to officials; it will essentially be an FCDO responsibility. We have been very clear as a Government that we want to co-operate with all those who are sympathetic to supporting Ukraine.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, given the state of the ground conflict in Ukraine, I will ask a domestic question on reserves. In doing so, I declare an interest as the president of the Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations. It is quite clear from the ground situation that both Russian and Ukrainian ground forces are sustained as combat effective only through the massive mobilisation of reserve forces. Compare that with our domestic situation, where the current policy, confirmed by a Minister in the other place earlier this year, is that the Army Reserve will be reduced over the next 10 years by 10%. Can the Minister confirm that this is still the policy and that there will be some urgent revisitation of it?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I cannot perhaps give the noble and gallant Lord the specific reassurance he seeks, but he will understand that, with a new Government and the constant presence of threats confronting us, we constantly review what we think our need will be and what we think will be our required capability. He will be aware that there is an exciting programme for the reservists to be much more of a united force with our regular service personnel. He raises an important point; I cannot answer him specifically but it is an area of opportunity.

Ukraine: Weapons

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I partially covered my noble friend’s question in my earlier response, because it is these multiple launch rocket systems that we have committed to provide. The training has already begun for these. The objective is that, along with the contribution of the United States and Germany, we will deploy these systems urgently and without delay.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

Can I press the Minister on the original Question? It is not a matter of what allies have, or what our stockpiles are and the degree to which they have been run down. What the House needs to be reassured of is whether the MoD is conducting a review of the contractual linkages between the MoD and the defence supply base to ensure that we have the agility to sustain our war-fighting resilience—because it is our war-fighting resilience that has historically been most run down and is potentially the most vulnerable part of our overall national military capability.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I say to the noble and gallant Lord that, as previously indicated, the department is fully engaged with industry, because we want to ensure that all equipment granted in kind to the Ukrainian armed forces is replaced as expeditiously as possible, but also that, by continually managing and reviewing our own UK stock of weapons and munitions, we ensure that while we meet that commitment to Ukraine, our UK Armed Forces’ stocks are sufficiently maintained.

Ukraine: UK Military Support

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

We routinely engage with Turkey on regional matters, at all levels. Recent engagements have included the Montreux convention and vessel movements through the Bosphorus strait during the Ukraine-Russia crisis.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

Given the risks of escalation in the military elements of the conflict in Ukraine, it is quite clear that any further military aid will have to be less than decisive. In policy terms, therefore, is a prolonged and mutually self-hurting stalemate between Ukraine and Russia probably the best that can be achieved in the current circumstances?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My honourable friend in the other place used the adjective “attritional” to describe the conflict. That is probably pretty accurate. We are very clear about the magnitude of what the Ukrainian armed forces are contending with. Our role, along with that of other NATO partners and other global allies such as the United States and the EU, is to support the Ukrainian armed forces in their endeavour. I am afraid this will not be resolved in the near future. It is important that, as a country, we do everything with our allies to support what is right and to ensure that Ukraine is assisted in seeing off what is wrong.

Ukraine: Lethal Weapons

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Tuesday 5th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

Again, the noble Lord speaks for us all in the Chamber. This illegal war, with all its hideous and barbaric consequences, must fail. Certainly, we in the United Kingdom, with our allies and partners, are doing everything we can to ensure that Ukraine is robustly supported in its attempt to see off this evil.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, the question illuminates a difficult choice for the Government. The war in Ukraine, by military definition, remains limited. It is limited in strategic aim, in geography and means employed. Injecting greater lethal aid into that war is unlikely to be decisive. Indeed, far from it, it runs two very severe risks. One is the risk of prolongation and the other is the risk of escalation. The way to eliminate those risks can only be through dialogue. Can the Minister please update the House on what she believes to be the progress of that dialogue?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I think my noble friend Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon answered a Question recently on this very issue. He was quite clear that, although normalisation of relations with Russia is not possible at the moment, robust diplomatic engagement is necessary. This is very much an FCDO responsibility. I can reassure the noble and gallant Lord that the MoD is regularly in dialogue, not just with our defence allies and partners—whether within NATO or outwith—but also, of course, with the armed forces of Ukraine.

Defence: Type 45 Destroyers

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I say to the noble Baroness that the programme is under way; it is scheduled, and the other Type 45s will be going in subject to their operational obligations and their availability for the refit. I think the noble Baroness should understand that the conversion is a complex engineering project. The noble Lord, Lord West, and I may disagree on many things, but I think we are both agreed on the technical complexity of this and it is being delivered against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic. There has been a significant challenge that has tested industry and it has impacted the schedule, but we continue to monitor and review the programme.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, as we have seen in Ukraine, the most important vector of attack in conflict below the threshold of formalised warfare is a form of politicised war based on an effective narrative. I am sure the problem of the Type 45’s power plant will be expensively resolved, but what steps are we taking to improve our speed and effectiveness in translating military activity into an effective political narrative?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I am almost tempted to answer the question the other way around and say that, with the integrated review, the defence Command Paper and the allocation of budget to defence over the duration of this Parliament and exactly what that means for both equipment and shipbuilding, we have seen that there is a very manifest political resolve to support defence and ensure our capability is as good as it can be. As to the more strategic questions of how you relate what you are doing at the MoD end with what is required out on the front, as the noble and gallant Lord will understand, we are constantly assessing, identifying and recognising threat and addressing that with the multifaceted character of the capability we have.