Defence: Budget

Lord Selkirk of Douglas Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Selkirk of Douglas (Con)]

My Lords, our Prime Ministers have in the past often faced a dilemma over how much to spend on defence. Indeed, on 12 November 1936, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin said during the debate on the Address:

“Supposing I had gone to the country and said that Germany was rearming and that we must rearm, does anybody think that this pacific democracy would have rallied to that cry at that moment? I cannot think of anything that would have made the loss of the election from my point of view more certain”.—[Official Report, Commons, 12/11/1936; col. 1144.]

The Prime Minister Winston Churchill took a very different view. He liked the Roman saying, “If you want peace, prepare for war”. The one who might give us the best clue as to what Governments should do today is Churchill. After all, he participated in more wars than any other world leader of the last century. Speaking in general terms, he was remarkably prescient. He said:

“It is no use saying, ‘We are doing our best’. You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/3/1916; col. 1427.]

By the way, I suspect that, as with us today, Stanley Baldwin would have liked to limit Churchill’s speeches on rearmament to no more than three minutes.

In the present situation, with the regular British Army at its smallest level for almost 200 years, the test of what is necessary should not be driven exclusively by Treasury considerations. There has to be significant recognition of strategic security requirements, and we subordinate these at our peril. When the President of the United States and the former Secretary-General of NATO both express grave concern at the possibility that Britain might fail to maintain defence spending at 2% of GDP, we can only hope that Ministers are listening to them and the concern of others who are Britain’s friends and allies—otherwise, I fear that the wrong signals will be given to those who do not wish us well. Just last weekend, former Chiefs of Staff revealed their concerns regarding further defence cuts. In the words of Admiral Sir Nigel Essenhigh:

“If the outcome of the Review is a further reduction in military expenditure and not a commitment to a sustained increase, then the Government will be neglecting its prime and overriding duty, the defence of the nation, by failing to halt the progressive decline of British military capability into penny packet numbers”.

He called on the Government to ensure that the forthcoming,

“Defence and Security Review does not degenerate into yet another cuts exercise”.

I note that the Secretary of State for Defence has recently warned in another place that,

“defence, to be deliverable, has to be affordable”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/6/15; col. 885.]

My submission tonight is that affordability must not mean lowering our guard and losing the confidence of our allies.