NATO: Member State Spending

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, with all his experience of NATO and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and to agree with every single word that he said. It is also always a great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Touhig, who often reminds the House in debates of this nature that NATO was founded in many ways by a Labour Government and that over all the decades since then, whenever there has been a Labour Government there has been absolute support for NATO—as indeed there has been from every Conservative Government that we have had since the war as well.

My noble friend quite rightly reminded us that we live in troubled, turbulent and dangerous times, that the threat from Russia is a real one in many respects, and that these points were made a few weeks ago in a debate in this House led by my noble friend Lord Robertson. He also reminded us that the election of Mr Trump as the President of the United States of America has set us all thinking. I am no fan of President Trump but he quite rightly said that NATO members in Europe, as the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, mentioned, are not pulling their weight in providing the necessary resources for the organisation.

Noble Lords will know that defence spending in NATO fell considerably during last year to this year and that the United States pays 70% of NATO’s spending. You can understand President Trump’s feelings when only the United States, ourselves, Poland, Estonia and Greece—unlikely countries some of them—met the 2% target set down in Newport in 2014 when NATO visited Wales. The noble Lord, Lord Jopling, quite rightly referred to some of the culprits in this regard—Spain, Canada, France, Belgium, Germany and others. In November last year the Secretary-General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, said that if all NATO countries were to meet the 2% target then tens of billions of pounds would be added to the NATO budget for its use.

It is interesting that we are speaking at a time when by now, I assume, the Brexit vote on triggering Article 50 has gone through the other place because that will have an effect on our relationship as a NATO member with non-EU allies. Eighty per cent of NATO spending when we leave the European Union will be the responsibility of non-EU countries, including ourselves. Moreover, three out of the four NATO battle groups in Poland and the Baltic states are currently from non-EU members.

I do not agree, as I have read somewhere, that our leaving the European Union means that we will no longer hold the position of second-in-command in NATO. I think that that is fanciful in terms of the importance of our Armed Forces. However, Brexit will affect spending in the Ministry of Defence, not least because of the fall in the value of the pound and the effect that will have on procurement. Defence cuts over the years will undoubtedly affect our capability as a leading NATO member. I also agree with my noble friend that 2% of GDP should be a minimum, not a target, and that more should be spent.

I want now to spend a few moments on the point made by my noble friend and others with regard to the legitimacy of the 2% figure, something that was touched on a few weeks ago and to which the Minister referred in his speech winding up that debate; no doubt he will do so again today. I reiterate: included in that figure of 2% is £820 million for war pensions, £400 million for UN peacekeeping missions, £200 million for Ministry of Defence civilian pensions, one-off spends that are unable to be carried over, and so on. I welcome the extra £5.7 billion that the Government have put into defence and of course I welcome the new joint security fund, but we have to be honest both with ourselves and with the country—the figures which now make up the 2% spend are very different from what they used to be. My noble friend referred to the House of Commons Defence Select Committee, which has argued that 2% does not mean that we are adequately resourced. It also noted,

“that the NATO minimum would not have been fulfilled if UK accounting practices had not been modified”—

this is what the Minister will tell us later—

“albeit in ways permitted by NATO guidelines”.

The committee went on to say:

“We believe that this ‘redefinition’ of defence expenditure undermines, to some extent, the credibility of the Government’s assertion that the 2% figure represents a significant increase in defence expenditure”.


I have had a look at the Government’s response to the 28 recommendations made by the Select Committee and I have to say that it is a model of obfuscation. It really does not answer the points and totally ignores the fact that, if you are now putting into that 2% sums of money that were not included before and which have no direct impact at all on how an army, navy and air force operate, because those sums are mainly going on pensions, of course it means in effect that we are now putting in less than we used to before the 2% figure was arrived at. RUSI has said that under the old system it would in fact amount to 1.97%, not 2.1%, so it is effectively a reduction in what used to be counted towards that 2%. I am not saying that NATO disregards these things because it does not, but it is what we as a country and as a Government have been doing over the last years that matters most. My plea is for honesty in these things and not some rather spurious reasoning.

Despite all that, I do not doubt the Government’s commitment to NATO because it is the bedrock of our defence, of Europe’s defence, and indeed of the world’s defence. There is a need for the Government and all of us to exercise our influence on the other members of NATO to meet that 2% target but we have to be in such a position that, in arguing that other countries should meet the target, we are responsible about what goes into the 2%.

My noble friend and others have mentioned the US President, but I shall come back to him. Today in the House of Commons the Prime Minister was asked two questions about NATO, two questions about defence spending and two questions about the President of the United States and his commitment. She said that she had received assurances from the President that he was now in favour of NATO, even though he called it “obsolete” during the course of his election campaign. While I agree that NATO members must come up to the mark with regard to their NATO spend, I think that it is stretching it a bit in terms of what he said. All I could make out during the President’s press conference with the Prime Minister was, frankly, no more than a grunt and a nod because he said nothing. What the Prime Minister or perhaps the British ambassador must now do is press the point that the President should come out and say something about NATO which indicates that he is in favour of it. A second-hand account of what he said and the sight of a nod simply do not come up to the mark.

This is an extremely important debate being held late in the evening. The Minister knows that the Labour Party supports him and his Government in these matters. It is therefore important that when he and his colleagues in the Ministry of Defence are in the international forums, they should indicate to our fellow members of NATO that they simply have to come up to the mark.