Defence Investment Plan
Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts(4 weeks ago)
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Lord Coaker (Lab)
Indeed, we will come forward with proposals and plans with respect to a national conversation. The noble Baroness is right in her suggestion. We can see—many Members of this House will know this—that some of the ways in which the Government have asked different departments to contribute to this uplift in defence spending are already starting to cause some angst among certain communities. For example, in the east Midlands, where I live, the building of some roads is now being delayed, which is causing people to say, “Where’s the money going? What’s it being spent on?” Of course, having a national conversation is right, and the Government and all of us in here will have to make the case that defence is a priority, and that may require us to reallocate resources from one budget to another. We started that process, but as part of that process we must have the national conversation the noble Baroness refers to.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, I welcome part of this plan—it obviously has some holes in it, as we have already heard. I also welcome, as I do every time I hear the Minister speak, a great deal of his comments and his profound thinking. However, I wonder today whether the brief he has been given really tells the whole story. Not only have we heard about the deficiencies on the arithmetical and budget side but in the Second World War, for instance, our military spending rose to 69% of our total budget, and here we are, talking about 3% and 3.5%—it may be rather more than that when we look at the unfolding scene. I just wonder whether we should not be a bit more frank with the British people—or whether our briefing or the Government’s words should—in reminding them that we are beginning to move towards a total war footing. The late Lord Skidelsky often reminded this House that this is the way we are going, and we will have to seriously consider the sort of percentages that I am talking about. I am not sure that term comes through at all in the blue paper that we have all been given to read.
I am very pleased that we are reaffirming the huge global combat air co-operation between ourselves and Japan and Italy. This link with Japan and Japanese industry is hugely important. It is one of our ways into the giant consumer markets of Asia, which is where all the action is going to be. So good on that, but let us have a brief that honestly faces the fact that we are moving towards a war footing, and that that will cost far more than we are considering now.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his question and his comments, which come from a great knowledge and experience, and I thank him for his remarks about me. Just to reiterate, the GCAP programme is extremely important, and as he just said, that is outlined in the money allocated within the paper. The debate is about how quickly we move towards increased spending, and I have outlined—without repeating myself—how the next spending review in 2027 will look to 3% but that the absolute commitment is to 3.5% to reflect the change in the security environment in which we are operating. In addition, I mentioned the nuclear deterrent, and across this House we have mentioned the importance of preparing for war, because one of the ways you deter war is to prepare for it.
Defence Investment Plan
Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Lord Coaker (Lab)
That is the most difficult question I have had. The serious point, notwithstanding the debate around HS2, is the question of priorities within government. One of the issues that has caused some debate and discussion—I was asked a question about it—was that when the Government made the initial defence spending increase, it was funded by a reduction in the overseas development budget. Now, the debate and discussion are about how we can reprioritise within the existing government spending envelope and use money from other departments, particularly from capital, to spend in the defence investment plan. There is always debate and discussion about priorities within government, and, no doubt, that will continue.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, might not the Government find it a bit easier to deal with their problems explaining defence spending if they distinguished much more clearly between the overall defence of the nation—where the budget spreads across many departments and takes a variety of new forms that change all the time—and the MoD budget, which, just like general spending, is always in trouble? I see in today’s newspapers that more trouble is coming along.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
It is an interesting idea. Indeed, the strategic defence review of the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, pointed out the contribution that many departments, not just the MoD, will make to homeland defence and the protection of critical defence infrastructure. In terms of what happens to the budgets, there will clearly have to be more co-ordination and work between government departments if we are to ensure that homeland defence and the security of our nation is what we want it to be.
Russian Shadow Fleet
Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Lord Coaker (Lab)
I shall make a solemn commitment to the noble and learned Baroness, who is one of the most esteemed Members of this House. It will no doubt be noted by many of those who support me in my ministerial role that I am making a solemn parliamentary commitment that I will ensure that the House is informed of what happens to the oil, the ship and the crew. There we go. I cannot do much better than that.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
One of the problems is that we do not know where these hundreds of ghost ships are at any one time or where they are going. There is a need to identify that. We should have a better system of international port links, possibly working with the Commonwealth, to achieve that.
While I am on my feet, I add that, having heard the mention of Lord Howard of Effingham keeping the Armada to the windward side of Britain, with the result that the ships all got smashed up and their goats and ships are on the islands of Scotland to this day, we have in this House his descendant, my noble friend Lord Effingham. We should be very proud that our contribution shows that the descendants of these brave people who saved England again and again is memorised and enshrined in that fact.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I have not got that in my briefing, but it is important to recognise the contribution that many have made through the ages, which is reflected in their families and their descendants today, and I take the noble Lord’s point. Alongside that, it is important that we look at how we more effectively work together across the international community to ensure that the sanctions regime is implemented much more effectively. As many people know, through history, economic sanctions and the denial of economic benefit to a country undermine its war effort, so we have taken action to do that. Can we do more working with our international allies? Of course we can.
Military in the Gulf
Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Coaker (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his question. On the regional contact we have, as well as the other contacts from the Foreign Office, the Prime Minister and others, I have met virtually every single week the ambassadors and/or the defence attachés of the various Middle East countries in the Ministry of Defence to discuss what they require. As a consequence of their answers, we have provided further fighter jets, drone capabilities, radar and anti-air defensive capabilities, so we have done a significant amount of work already. There are 1,000 British service personnel across the region. There have been one of two issue that have arisen, but it is important to recognise the important military support we have given to the region, and they have been very appreciative of that.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the real need in this area is for a far more effective maritime tracking system than we have today, for legal and illegal shipping, and for underwater and surface shipping? Armed in this way, something such as the Commonwealth, with a fantastic network of 34 island states and 12 coastal states, would be an excellent ally and supporter in developing a modern network for better control of the seas.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
That is a really significant point. The noble Lord will know that the First Sea Lord has talked about the hybrid Navy, the importance of artificial intelligence, and the importance of intelligence in guiding the systems of the future, including drone capability. In providing that capability, instead of necessarily having minesweepers, the idea is that we should do the sort of thing that the noble Lord is talking about. An example would be RFA “Lyme Bay”, which is moving towards the region. The autonomous systems that it has to operate above, on the sea and underwater to protect our interests is a template which we will follow. That requires intelligence and the co-operation of various nations.
King’s Speech
Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts(2 months, 1 week ago)
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Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Northover. I believe long ago we were in the same Government, but I cannot quite recall which Government it was. We have had some very fine speeches both today and throughout the six days we have been debating the King’s Speech. A couple stick in my mind. The noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, reminded us that we are all under attack by Russia, on all sides and in every way, at all times—and she should know. Then there was the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, who in his last Lords speech—sadly—warned against us sinking into a vortex of pessimism and despair. How right he was.
At the end of the last century, many of us used to visit Japan a lot on delegations and so on, and they always arranged for us to see the Prime Minister of the day. We used to smile a bit, quite politely and privately, that it was always a different person—a constant rotation of Prime Ministers. I suspect the Japanese are laughing at us a bit now, because we too are caught in this whirligig of instability, and instability at the political centre affects everything else: the confidence and attitudes of investment and business and future prosperity. Why are we caught in it? There are all sorts of explanations, but I will add three in my five minutes.
First, any Government now face a far more informed electorate—maybe for better, maybe for worse. I suspect mainly for worse, but in vastly greater quantities than ever before in history. Every grievance becomes turbocharged. Every minor, unfiltered and unedited view is promoted through a massive world system of electronic information. There are 37 million devices in the UK alone—not counting wired telephones—that can be tuned in to any ministerial statement. Everything can be and is challenged, and it becomes a permanent maelstrom of debate.
We have created an entirely new information network, and I am not sure that some in the media or those in political circles have quite adjusted to this huge revolution and its effect on everybody. That, incidentally, is why some of us fought 10 years ago to set up an International Affairs Committee. It did not exist and we had to fight very hard.
Secondly, in this digital, hyperconnected world, most of the root causes lie outside our national government reach. That is not a very popular view, but it is so. Whether it is security and safety, cost of living, funding shortages all round, trade, local government and those potholes of course, interest rates and the bond market, or energy independence, which is largely a chimera—these are all matters that are only partially under our home Government’s control. They are certainly not in control of the root causes of them.
Thirdly, in 1945, liberally minded visionaries built a new world order out of the rubble of the Second World War. All the institutions they created then served us well, but they are all in trouble. They are supposed to be the rule-makers and the fora where there are referees, without which chaos and a world without rules develops. We need a new Bretton Woods, new trade rules, a new International Maritime Organization, a new health organisation and, of course, a new, unblocked United Nations. Where are these visionaries today? They are certainly not in Washington. Where are the Trumans, the Marshalls, the Keyneses, the Dexter Whites and the other figures who built this world order almost 100 years ago?
Mentioning Keynes allows me just a few seconds to share sadness that we no longer have Robert Skidelsky with us, who was a great biographer of Keynes. Of course, not everyone agreed with him—certainly not on Ukraine, where the robots are winning and not losing.
All this is ignored or barely reported in the press. We need the spirit of 1945 all over again, but many times over and many times more ambitiously. Without that, we can all attack the nearest targets and have a bit of an inter-party battle and so on, but we will remain the plaything of past economic fantasy theories, being swept along in a rudderless craft—a world without rules—which is absolutely fatal to a country such as ours. I refuse to be a pessimist. We must listen to the warning of the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy. We ignore these facts of our totally altered world at our peril.
Strait of Hormuz: Mine Clearance
Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Coaker (Lab)
The truth of the matter is that we of course need more ships, and investment is going into that now to produce the ships that we need. We are currently trying to maximise the use of the capabilities we have available to us to ensure that we deal with the problems and challenges we face—not only in the Middle East but across the world, as we recently saw in the North Sea and the High North. It is important, as we wait for these new ships to be delivered and the investment to go in, to ensure that we have the capabilities we need to deal with the threats we face.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
I think I have heard the Minister remind us from the Dispatch Box that the pipelines bypassing the Strait of Hormuz are working and carrying, apparently, 7 million or 8 million barrels a day—I had thought it was 4 million barrels a day. Will he and his colleagues, when they have general discussions, keep that in perspective? When you add that to the fact that 70% of the oil going through the Strait of Hormuz will not be stopped because it is either Iranian or comes from Iran’s friends—and when you add the release of more Russian oil and the increase of shale oil—we are back roughly where we started. While it is infuriating to have the rule of law on the seas threatened by Iranian bandits—which is what they are—and while it is a very serious defence point, it is not as dramatic an oil point as some people seem to be making out.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
The noble Lord has huge experience in this area, and he is right to point out that it is interesting to watch the way in which the pipeline that goes across Saudi Arabia into the Red Sea and comes out through the BAM is being used. That is another way of getting oil out; certainly, that is one of the ways in which the Saudis and others have tried to maintain the supply of oil. I am sure that, in the face of the current threat in the Strait of Hormuz, people will look to see how we ensure the delivery of the oil and fuel we need. At the end of the day, that Iran is illegally closing the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping is of concern to us all and must end as soon as possible.
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference 2026
Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts(7 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Coaker (Lab)
My Lords, we will always consider any suggestions, but let me be clear: we chair the P5 as part of the NPT. We are very proud to do that. We established the process. This country has as its goal a nuclear-free world, but we also recognise today’s strategic realities, and to meet these challenges, we have to take the action that we do. We are very proud to be part of the P5 and the NPT, but we also recognise in the strategic context that we are in that the nuclear deterrent and its modernisation are essential to our security and that of the global world.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
The Minister takes this extremely seriously, and so he should. Does he agree that the NPT review now faces the worst challenge in the 50 years since its inception in 1968? Will he assure us that our team, when we go into the review, will press on all three of the pillars he described extremely hard and bring home to people the extreme danger of smaller countries wanting to get in on the act, already applying to see whether they can break the existing five’s monopoly, which, of course, is broken a bit anyway, and bring to the public a much stronger understanding of the intense danger of the proliferation everywhere of nuclear bombs?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I strongly agree with the noble Lord’s analysis. The NPT is an essential cornerstone of global security. I suggest that in many ways it has been particularly successful. I was looking at the figures earlier on. In 1986, there were an estimated 70,300 nuclear warheads, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, and the most recent figure I could find was 12,241. Although there are challenges, as the noble Lord points out, we have managed in many ways to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons and to ensure that, as far as possible, the architecture of the post-war world remains the same. However, the noble Lord is right to point out the challenges, and this country, along with our allies and friends, will do all we can to ensure that the NPT remains successful and that all three pillars are pursued.
Royal Navy Submarine Force
Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, it is the turn of the Cross Benches.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
It would be interesting to have a conversation outside the Chamber with the noble Baroness about her challenge to me. Certainly, we are talking to other departments about what more we can do to encourage technical education and I would like to discuss this with the noble Baroness. When I go to MoD establishment after MoD establishment, there are vacancies and they cannot recruit people into those bases to do some of the work they need to do. There is a particular problem and I would be very keen to talk to the noble Baroness about what we might do about it.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, is not the most immediate and serious threat to our national prosperity and security the safety of our entire subsea cable system, on which the nation depends daily and hourly? I do not think the Minister has mentioned subsea cables and how to cope with them, or the role of submarines in dealing with this. Can he assure us that, even if we do not have the submarines now, we are planning to build the vehicles—submarines and new technologies—to deal with this rather promptly, because the threat is coming soon?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
That is a really important question; I apologise if I have not mentioned undersea cables, because there is an important need and requirement for us as a country to protect them and the critical national infrastructure that flows under the sea. If the noble Lord has not had a chance yet, I suggest that he reads the First Sea Lord’s speech this morning at the International Sea Power Conference, where he talked about Atlantic Bastion, which seeks to deal with many of the points that the noble Lord has quite rightly just raised. These are new undersea technology vessels, for want of a better word, that can operate through the use of artificial intelligence and, as a result of that artificial intelligence, military personnel can make decisions about what they should do. They can stay under water for a considerable period of time and they liaise not only with ships but with aircraft and indeed submarines. That is the sort of thing that I was talking about in the earlier Question about the new warfare and new threats that we face, and the new equipment that we will need to deal with those threats. So, having these uncrewed vessels, alongside our submarines, our ships and our aircraft, as outlined in Atlantic Bastion earlier today, is certainly the way forward, and I hope that that reassures the noble Lord with respect to that threat that we face.
Nuclear Regulatory System
Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts(10 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Coaker (Lab)
As I said to my noble friend, we will do everything as speedily as possible. We will move forward on this. I say to the noble Lord: safety is of paramount importance, of course it is, and there cannot be any compromise on that, but we have to get on with this. In the mid-1990s, 25% of our electricity was generated through nuclear; it is now 15%. Even with the new power stations that have been agreed, unless we do more it will go down. That is not good enough; we have to do better than that—with the small modular reactors that my noble friend talked about and with the new power station that was recently agreed by my right honourable friend Ed Miliband MP. There cannot be any compromise on safety, but neither can there be the situation where, time after time, decisions are delayed and nothing happens. The consequence of that is that our economy suffers and jobs are lost. That is not good enough and we are going to do something about it.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, we should concentrate on and give priority to building smaller nuclear reactors, as the Minister’s noble friend has suggested, which can be built in two years, rather than building the gigawatt giants, which apparently we are dedicated to doing, which take years to build and are far more politically risky and far more likely to raise political dangers.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I agree up to a point with what the noble Lord has said. Our big power stations such as Sizewell and Hinkley Point C are part of the answer. He is quite right to say that alongside that the small modular reactors are necessary. He will know that Rolls-Royce has three which have gone through the generic design assessment. Two additional GDA requesting parties have met the threshold to enter and there are others at other stages of the process. He is quite right to point out the need for small modular reactors, which can be done more quickly and are part of the answer to our energy needs, but nuclear has to be a part of that. Small modular reactors will be a part of it, alongside the big stations such as Sizewell and Hinkley.
Strategic Defence Review 2025
Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts(1 year ago)
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Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, like others, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McCabe, on his maiden speech, which seemed to be robust and sensible. No doubt we will hear many more excellent words from him. I cannot conceal from noble Lords my extreme pleasure that we are able to hear again the tones of my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, who guides our thoughts so skilfully on the constant need for constitutional evolution and reform for our society to stay together. Indeed, he begins to cast a beam of light on the whole changing relationship between the state and the citizen, which of course affects everything else, including in particular the nature of defence in our society.
I hope that the excellent and wise reviewers, whom I greatly respect, will not in any way feel I am being deprecatory in saying that I see this review as very excellent in parts—there are many new insights and concepts about the changed nature of warfare in the digital age recognised in it, and about time too—but that, alongside those, there are some very curious omissions and flaws that challenge the value and thrust of the whole exercise. I will come briefly to those.
First, on the positive side, the emphasis the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, put on whole-of-society thinking is absolutely right and, of course, it is the same as the emphasis in the national security review. It is not a new thought; as noble Lords know, the Russians have made an open aim of trying to undermine civilian morale and destroy civilian facilities in order to undermine, in turn, the front-line troops. The aim, in all these things, is to destroy civilian life and morale—to put that first, and the military collapse will follow. That is what has happened in history: the Germans thought they could do it in 1939, and the Russians are trying to do it now. They are trying to kill the supply lines, kill civilian life and kill the nation. It probably fails every time, and it will probably fail again. But it is what the whole thrust of modern, as opposed to traditional, warfare has introduced.
Secondly, there is a marvellous emphasis in this review on new technology: microchips, hyperconnectivity, fundamental change brought on by drones of every shape and size in huge quantities, amazing missile accuracy, and enormous range. As the review itself says, technology is driving the greatest change in how war is fought for a century—I would say almost the greatest change in the whole of our history. Then there is a call for a new national armaments director, something we tried back in 1970 with Sir Derek Rayner and the new ministry of procurement. There were difficulties. We learned from it, but I am not sure we have yet learned enough.
There is the huge expansion of reserves, which the noble Lord, Lord Soames, has just welcomed—that is absolutely excellent—and of course the cadet forces as well. This sounds a bit like restored national service, and I would like to know more; this is a big move in the right direction. There is quicker recruitment and much better force integration, although I note there is no actual merging of forces, which is always a delicate matter with regimental loyalties. There is talk of the hybrid Navy: yes, the Navy will have to concentrate on undersea drones and unmanned submarines patrolling the seabed. These will be features 10 years from now, and they will require a whole new approach via the naval strategy. There were good remarks on space warfare. That is the good part of the story.
The bad side has briefly to be mentioned; I do not think it can be hidden. First, there is no reference in this whole document to nuclear proliferation, which the rest of the world is discussing. We have spent 50 years trying to prevent nuclear proliferation through the NPT, but now, suddenly everyone is talking about it and saying that, if Ukraine had hung on to its nuclear weapons, it would not be where it is now.
There is nothing on the central financial issue of Treasury overdominance, the need for a revised private finance initiative and the sort of ideas touched on just now by the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy—restoring a central drive to a budgetary strategy system at the very heart of government, one that is not always dominated and delayed by Treasury bean-counting. I would like to see much more island patriotism in this report. I do not mean nationalism; I mean that everyone needs a country to love, and we certainly do. I am worried about placing too much emphasis on NATO first: the next challenge may well come from a new war zone in the Indo-Pacific, which has now become the really dangerous crossroads of world trade and prosperity, with Diego Garcia in the middle of it.
The Commonwealth was mentioned. The coastal and island states of the Commonwealth are the ideal network for the integration of maritime data on movements of all shipping—surface and subseas—and they should be exploited. I could not find any reference to that in this report. Bearing in mind that the Red Sea entrance is now closed, the Strait of Hormuz is now threatened and the Cape route is now also being challenged, these are very dangerous times for this nation on the high seas. I would like to see a much stronger hand stretched out to Japan, which is anxious to merge with us on all sorts of new projects, including AUKUS and the combat aircraft it is working on.
Finally, what about the United Nations? Everyone says that it should either be reformed or replaced because it is not doing its job. We will not be safe until we have joined in and contributed powerfully to what should replace the international order for the new international issues in the present time: climate, energy, migration and all the rest. Populism is more assertive—
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Jones of Whitchurch) (Lab)
My Lords, the House has been very encouraging of the noble Lord, but he is two minutes over the advisory time, so perhaps he could wind up now.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
On all sides, the international rule of law and rules of war are being broken, and for that, above all, we must be alert, prepared and defended.