Asked by: Lord Sarfraz (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask His Majesty's Government what percentage of the Ministry of Defence's HR, finance, and commercial functions have been automated to date.
Answered by Lord Coaker - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
The HR, finance and commercial services already make extensive use of enterprise digital systems and automated processing. There is, however, no consistent historic baseline which would allow the Department to express this reliably as a percentage.
Asked by: Lord Sarfraz (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many military personnel have been released from back-office roles to front-line roles as a result of automation since the publication of the Strategic Defence Review 2025.
Answered by Lord Coaker - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
The Department remains committed to maximising the operational effectiveness of the Armed Forces and ensuring that Defence personnel are focused on activity that best supports front-line outcomes. As set out in the Strategic Defence Review, Defence is taking forward work to move Regular personnel from administrative activity into front-line roles and to automate at least 20% of Human Resources, Finance and Commercial functions by July 2028.
This commitment is being delivered through the Defence Reform and Efficiency Plan, including the Corporate Services Modernisation programme, which is redesigning and modernising Defence’s People, Finance and Commercial services. The programme is simplifying policy and processes, standardising activity, consolidating services where appropriate and introducing modern digital tools to reduce manual work, strengthen access to reliable management information and improve the user experience. This will reduce the back-office burden, improve productivity and release capacity for front-line activity while maintaining effective support to all personnel.
Asked by: Lord Sarfraz (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the decision by the United States to establish an Autonomous Warfare Command; and what consideration they have given to establishing an equivalent integrated capability within UK defence.
Answered by Lord Coaker - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
Given the importance of autonomous systems to the future of warfare, we will continue to engage closely with our US counterparts as they establish an Autonomous Warfare Command and see what lessons apply to the UK Defence system.
The UK’s approach reflects our own operating model and structure. Defence is developing an integrated approach to optimise the balance between crewed, uncrewed and autonomous systems across the Armed Forces. This includes the establishment of the Uncrewed Systems Centre as a Defence centre of excellence alongside Defence’s Rapid AI Delivery (RAID) taskforce, to accelerate the development, integration and adoption of these capabilities. This is backed by a defence investment plan commitment of over £5 billion by 2030 in autonomous systems across the Integrated Force. This investment will support capabilities including the Hybrid Navy, uncrewed ground vehicles and Collaborative Combat Aircraft, increasing the mass, lethality and readiness of the Armed Forces while retaining appropriate human responsibility and accountability. We will continue to assess the most effective organisational arrangements for delivering these capabilities.
Asked by: Lord Sarfraz (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of reports that Russia is planning to open a naval base in Tobruk in Libya.
Answered by Earl of Minto - Shadow Minister (Defence)
The UK has made clear our apprehension towards Russia's destabilising activity in North Africa. We are concerned about open-source reports that Russia has plans to establish a naval base in eastern Libya, which will strengthen Russian influence in the central Mediterranean. The Ministry of Defence continues to maintain thorough assessments of the threats to stability and security across the North Africa region including Libya. The Government is also committed to working with the international community in support for peace and stability in the region.