King’s Speech

Lord Peach Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Peach (CB)]

My Lords, I join in welcoming the Minister to the Dispatch Box and I align with the tributes to his predecessors. Your Lordships’ House is well aware of the number and range of wars, conflicts, crises and emergencies, as has already been well set out. My point is that the number of these events and the effect they create are accumulating.

Your Lordships’ House is also aware that predictions are a risky business, but my prediction today is that Russia will not stop being disagreeable, and worse; that China, to agree with the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, will not pause in challenging the rules-based international system, collecting intelligence and intellectual property aggressively; and, to agree with the noble Lord, Lord West, that China will also challenge the freedom of navigation at sea around the world and in the air.

Given this multiplicity of challenges, our Armed Forces need to be ready to deter, to defend—at home as well as our overseas territories and allies—to respond and to support an ever-wider definition of national security, which includes those tasks that remain constant, such as nuclear deterrence, air defence and the maritime defence of our country and its overseas territories, counterterrorism and protecting our critical national infrastructure, including our undersea cables.

My contention, with which I hope the Minister agrees, is that we need to apply the lessons from the war in Ukraine now. We note the critical importance of control of the air. Tragically, Ukrainians now have experience of fighting without it. We see the importance of land and air working together with maritime forces in joint manoeuvre, and, as the noble Lord, Lord West, reminded us earlier, of the electronic warfare that is being practised by Russia against Ukraine. That is a very significant issue that needs to be dealt with. As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, pointed out, we see that space and AI are now not distant dreams; they are reality, and we need to have a strategy for them.

There are no silver bullets, but to expect success we need sufficient regulars, more reserves and contractors, and civil servants who can and will deploy. One model that the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, may wish to consider is total defence, as practised by our very good allies and friends in Finland and Sweden. They bring much capability to our alliance in NATO and set an example of how to organise for defence.

There is much to do: we need to raise the nuclear IQ in our country and therefore bring more focus to nuclear deterrence; we must deliver AUKUS as a strategic programme, interchangeable with our closest allies; we should enhance our conventional deterrence, commit to NATO plans and capabilities and lead the Joint Expeditionary Force. I agree with the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig; we need to consider the need for civil defence through an expanded regular Reserve and better recruiting and retention. Does the Minister agree that we all have a responsibility to make the case for wise foreign policy and a stronger defence?

King’s Speech

Lord Peach Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Peach (CB)]

My Lords, His Majesty demonstrated in his gracious Speech that he fully understands the international context that we face. I welcome the noble Earl to the Dispatch Box and pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie. I also welcome the noble Lord, Lord Roberts. I congratulate him on his brief but very moving and thoughtful speech, and his reminder of the need for victory for Ukraine.

Much has been said on the nature of conflict, with war, violence and coup d’états placing us in an era of concurrent activity, all adding up. We know that bad actors, many of whom have been mentioned in this strong debate, will continue to exploit our boundaries and seams, and find ways to pursue their intentions. We also see in Ukraine that the way we conduct operations is changing. We see in Gaza all too tragically the way in which warfare needs to be constantly updated. We see the importance of new technologies in violent application. We see the way the Russians in particular use high explosives, indiscriminately causing casualties and war crimes. We have to conclude that this era of concurrency requires a sustained effort.

The word I would add to this debate is the importance of enhancing resilience, in particular of our critical, national infrastructure. Is it not time also to discuss the ways and means we may need to defend our homeland? We have had our era of overseas operations; we also need to pay attention to our homeland. All of us are proud of our UK Armed Forces, past and present, and the way they respond to these concurrent risks and operations, but we need also to pay attention to the use of our Armed Forces to enhance our resilience and sustain our operations and our Armed Forces, both regular and reserve, and regular reserves—an old concept but my words are quite simple. After almost 50 years of military service, I can say that mass matters.

The actions of Putin, the lessons from which we must observe, and increasing ethnic tension are spreading beyond the battlefield. I must declare my interest as the Prime Minister’s special envoy to the Balkans. There is hate speech in the Balkans, and that region in our own continent of Europe is awash with weapons. People there are all too ready to make analogies to their own wars of 30 years ago, when, we remind each other, almost 200,000 people died. We must therefore tackle misinformation and disinformation as a matter of national security. As we have debated in this House, we have a good integrated review and a Command Paper to go with it, but others are widening our definition of national security for us. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, made it clear that we need to use all the tools we have available. We need to be creative in tackling the era of concurrency that we now face.

I commend the recent work of insurance agencies and actors in this country, using English law and working with the International Maritime Organization to find ways to move grain in significant quantity around the Black Sea. That is now part of national security. It would not have been considered so a few years ago.

The noble Earl defined competition with China. Of course, China is seeking a different world order under its new rules and norms. Many of the norms that our forebears in this place and past members of our Armed Forces fought and died to create, so that we could trade freely and enjoy freedom, are now under threat. The one I would add to the many that noble Lords have already set out is the freedom of navigation. If we lose that, we lose a lot. In the face of war and tragedy, we need to condemn the acts of terror that we have seen committed by Hamas, we all need to work on deterrence and de-escalation, but we need to be ready to sustain and to respond, and I fear it will be a long haul.

Nuclear Submarines: AUKUS

Lord Peach Excerpts

Monday 3rd July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I can share with the noble Lord that additional apprenticeship and graduate bursary schemes have been implemented across the enterprise, and significant further increases are planned to build the capabilities to increase the cohort of apprentices and new graduate opportunities by 2029-30. Importantly—and it refers to the point the noble Lord, Lord Walney, was making—the MoD, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and employers in the nuclear circuit are all working together as part of the Nuclear Skills Strategy Group to address common challenges. The noble Lord is correct to allude to the challenge: it is there but we are not complacent about it, and we have a number of initiatives designed to try to address it.

[Lord Peach (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that moving from the step change we have all agreed this afternoon will require an integrated approach? That will then leave the question of command and control. Who will lead on AUKUS for the whole of the Government to make sure that, end to end, we deliver this important programme?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I hope I can reassure the noble and gallant Lord that the Cabinet Secretary has asked the MoD’s Permanent Secretary, David Williams, to be the UK’s AUKUS principal. That is a very significant position. He will have overall responsibility for the programme in the UK with support from the Director General Nuclear, the Deputy Chief of Defence staff, military capability and senior civil servants from a number of relevant departments from across Whitehall. He will be at the very top of the chain, the essential co-ordinating presence.

Armed Forces: Resilience

Lord Peach Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Peach (CB) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I want to speak for the first time in this House on such an important topic, introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, in a debate with so many noble and noble and gallant speakers. I am grateful to the courtesy shown me since my arrival. I express my gratitude to Black Rod and her team, the clerks, the officers, the police and security staff of the House, especially the doorkeepers who helped me and my family on the occasion of my introduction. On that day, I was very fortunate to have as my supporters my noble friend Lord McDonald of Salford and the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach.

I served for almost 50 years in His Majesty’s Armed Forces, in the Royal Air Force, flying as a joint officer. I held command in every rank, deployed in many operations in many countries and have served extensively overseas, including as chair of NATO’s Military Committee. Therefore, I strongly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, and I wish to emphasise the centrality of our alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which grew from the wisdom—including much British wisdom—of those who saw the ugly reality of the Soviet Union’s expansion in eastern Europe.

Once again, over 70 years later, we are seeing the consequence of President Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine, with Russia revealed to all of us as an aggressive, full-scale military dictatorship. The war continues, with no immediate prospect for peace. As we have already heard eloquently described, there are many lessons for us in the UK and for all our allies. Some, if not all, are not new. One I would highlight is the critical importance of unity among allies. As the war approaches its grim first anniversary, sustaining unity in support of Ukraine will require sustained effort.

As we debate our resilience, we should bear in mind that President Putin continues to challenge any narrow definition of national security by weaponising energy supply and energy infrastructure, especially pipelines and the cables and other under-sea capacity upon which we depend and which must be protected—even food security and concepts the UK fought to establish, such as international waters and international airspace. Sustaining freedom of navigation is now at risk and is vital to the prosperity of the UK. Therefore, we need to widen our definition of national security and integrate our efforts to secure our national resilience, as was eloquently described by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup. In this, defence, our outstanding intelligence agencies and others need to play a part.

Many of our Scandinavian friends and allies practise total defence, which is a blend of defence, regular and reserve, national reserve, border security, protection of infrastructure, cyber defence and integration of what some noble Lords may recall as civil defence. If our infrastructure needs to be protected, we should organise our national security to do so. As the geographical consequences of the climate emergency to our own north threaten the high north and the Arctic, where geopolitical disturbance threatens us directly, one way we should respond is to develop the UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force, which the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Richards of Herstmonceux, created 10 years ago and many of us have evolved ever since.

This force embraces our close allies in Scandinavia, the Baltic states, the Netherlands and Iceland. I would argue that this idea’s time has come. With shared values and culture, the Joint Expeditionary Force is NATO-facing, flexible and has the potential to do more. We could digitise it with a UK-created secure, future-proof command and control network—an important lesson from Ukraine. We could continue to integrate and share intelligence and co-operate on future capabilities. In short, we have created something special; we should exploit it.

As noble Lords have heard, other lessons from Ukraine are also not new: the importance of intelligence-led operations; manoeuvre and armour; air-land integration with artillery at the rates of exchange that we have heard; and agile, empowered command and control at the tactical level. Above all, I emphasise the importance of logistics. My first predecessor as chair of the Military Committee was General of the Army, Omar Bradley, who said famously,

“Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics.”

Any discussion on UK defence resilience has to include stock replenishment and sustainment.

As we have heard today, there is a place for innovation and new technology which, through research and development, is being brought rapidly to the battlefield by, with and through NATO, and there is a new centre to do that in London. However, as we have also heard, technology is not a substitute for the Armed Forces. As we focus on logistics, we need to understand technology’s additive to the qualities we need of mass, motivated people, equipment, and a sense of mission and purpose.

The war in Ukraine is not the only challenge we face. The rise and global ambition of China, including as a military power, continues to be an issue. There is instability in Africa and there are unresolved issues in the Middle East. Closer to home—and here I declare my interest as the Prime Minister’s special envoy to the western Balkans—we need to remain vigilant to President Putin’s wider ambition to sow division, create instability and undermine NATO. The Russians remain very active in the Caucasus and the Balkans. We and our allies need to be active in response and remain strong to prevent the political crises in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, and especially between Serbia and Kosovo, becoming security issues. As I have been taught on many visits to that troubled region, the price of freedom is not free.

The problems we face have been highlighted by many eloquent speeches, and many of the solutions have been tried before. I would argue that the time we are in makes implementation of those solutions urgent in the interest of our national security. The British Armed Forces continue to attract regular and reserve wonderful people, and they need our support. To paraphrase another famous speech from Winston Churchill, we need to brace ourselves to our duty. I am personally grateful for the patience and courtesy that has been demonstrated to me, and I hope to contribute to the important work of this House.