King’s Speech

Lord Stevens of Birmingham Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

I declare my interest as chair of the UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency. Like many other noble Lords, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, to their new positions—I know they will be absolutely superb Ministers. I join in the welcome for the launch of the strategic defence review by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson. But, as the saying goes, life is what happens while you are making plans, so I will use this opportunity to raise three sets of decisions relating to the defence sector that will confront the Government in the meantime.

The first, obviously, is the people in defence. We learn that, next week, the Government will in all likelihood respond to the pay review bodies for nurses and teachers. Given the pressures on retention in the Armed Forces, it would be highly welcome if the Minister can assure us that, at the same time, the Government will bring a positive response forward for the Armed Forces review body, meeting those recommendations in full and supplementing the MoD’s revenue budget for the extra costs, which were quite clearly not budgeted at the start of this financial year. We look forward to his explicit responses on those points later.

Secondly, without prejudice to the SDR, a number of no-regrets moves are already in train across the defence sector, including rebuilding artillery stockpiles, commissioning further heavy artillery, doing further work on the huge capability gap around UK anti-missile air defence and, as the noble Lord, Lord West, said, continuing with the welcome shipbuilding order book, including the six amphibious support vessels for the Royal Marines. Another move is dealing with the physical infrastructure, which has decayed such that, for example, a nuclear-powered submarine, HMS “Audacious”, has waited for over a year at Devonport for a dry dock to become available. All of these do not require a strategic defence review; they just require continued progress, and I am sure the signals that the Minister can send on that front will be welcomed.

However, there are some bigger capital investment choices before defence. One of the great joys on these occasions is hearing noble and gallant former service chiefs engaging in a little camouflaged blue-on-blue friendly fire as they try to strike out their rivals’ programmes. I have a degree of sympathy for the point that the noble Lord, Lord Lancaster, made about how the Army has to some extent been used as a balancing item on these occasions in the past, precisely because it is less capital intensive than other branches of the Armed Forces. The NAO’s review of the MoD equipment budget pointed out the consequences of that. Nevertheless, I do not think that is a good reason in itself for trying to whack GCAP in order to secure what would otherwise be a pre-emption of the defence budget.

I also do not think it is a good reason to use this as an occasion to make an ex cathedra pivot away from the tilt to the Indo-Pacific, which has been mischaracterised as, in some sense, a folie de grandeur in the suggestion that the Royal Navy can counterbalance or make a major contribution over and above what the US Pacific fleet will do given the rise of the Chinese. My understanding is that that is not what the Indo-Pacific tilt is about: it is a recognition that, as far as Euro-Atlantic threats are concerned, there is increasing connectivity with what China and the North Koreans are doing. It is also a recognition that we need freedom of navigation in order to sustain our maritime trade, and it is a recognition that there are strong industrial partnership opportunities with not just Japan but the Philippines and other countries as well. For all those reasons, I hope we will not come to premature conclusions about the so-called Indo-Pacific tilt.

The reason that all these trade-offs are so acute is, as a number of noble Lords have said, precisely because we have come up with this arbitrary and indefensible proposition that magic happens if we get to 2.5% of GDP by 2030. A 0.2% increase in GDP is about £5 billion. As my noble friend Lord Walney pointed out, in the great scale of public expenditure, that is a trivial sum. The idea that that is the difference between success and failure in defending this nation is for the birds. To put it in context, we spend more than that in this country on speciality coffee and crisps. If we as a nation can afford our lattes, we can afford our defence.

Artificial Intelligence in Weapon Systems Committee Report

Lord Stevens of Birmingham Excerpts

Friday 19th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

My Lords, I too welcome the excellent report from the committee and thank it for this work. My brief contribution will focus on AI in the maritime domain. My starting point is that if, like me, you believe we need a bigger Navy then it is obvious that we will need to use AI-enabled systems as an effective force multiplier.

We should therefore enthusiastically welcome the Royal Navy’s leadership in a wide range of maritime use cases. For example, in the surface fleet there is the so-called intelligent ship human autonomy teaming; in the subsurface environment, autonomous uncrewed mine hunting, partly supported by the new RFA “Stirling Castle”, as well as new sensor technologies and acoustic signature machine learning for anti-submarine warfare; and in maritime air defence, AI-enhanced threat prioritisation and kinetic response using tools such as Startle and Sycoiea, which are obviously vital in an era of drone swarms and ballistic and hypersonic missiles. These and other AI systems are undoubtedly strengthening our nation’s ability to deter and defend at sea. They also enhance the Royal Navy’s centuries-old global contribution to rules-based freedom of navigation, which underpins our shared prosperity.

Looking forwards, my second point is that Parliament itself can help. When it comes to experimentation and trialling, there is a sense in some parts of defence that peacetime risk-minimisation mindsets are not currently well calibrated to the evolving and growing threats that we now face. Parliament could therefore accept and encourage a greater risk appetite, within carefully set parameters. Many innovations will come from within the public sector and we should support investment, including in the excellent Dstl and DASA. But in parentheses, I am not convinced by the report’s recommendation at paragraph 17 that the MoD should be asked to publish its annual spending on AI, given that it will increasingly become ubiquitous, embedded and financially impossible to demarcate.

Where Parliament can help is by recognising that most innovation in this space will probably involve partnerships with the commercial sector, often with dual-use civil and military elements, as the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, argued. In fact, figures from Stanford published in Nature on Monday this week show that the vast majority of AI research is happening in the private sector, rather than in universities or the public sector. The MoD’s and the Navy’s accounting officers and top-level budget holders should be given considerable latitude to use innovative procurement models and development partnerships, without post-hoc “Gotcha” censure from us.

This brings me to my third and final point, which is that we need to be careful about how we regulate. The Royal Navy is, rightly, not waiting for new international public law but is pragmatically applying core UNCLOS requirements to the IMO’s four-part typology of autonomous maritime vehicles and vessels. As for the Navy’s most profound responsibility, the UK’s continuous at-sea deterrent, the Lords committee’s report rightly reasserts that nuclear weapons must remain under human control. Anyone who doubts that should Google “Stanislav Petrov” or “Cold War nuclear close calls”. But the report is also right to argue, at paragraph 51, that this paradigmatic case for restraint is not wholly generalisable. Parliament would be making a category mistake if we attempted to regulate AI as a discrete category of weapon system, when in fact it is a spectrum of rapidly evolving general-purpose technologies.

An alternative approach is set out in the 2023 Political Declaration on Responsible Military Use of Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy, which includes key ethical and international humanitarian law guard-rails. That framework is now endorsed by more than 50 countries, including the US, France and the UK, but, regrettably, not by the other two permanent members of the UN Security Council, Russia and China, nor of course by Iran or North Korea. Work should continue, however, to expand its reach internationally.

To conclude, for the reasons I have set out, AI systems clearly offer enormous potential benefits in the maritime environment. Parliament can and should help our nation capitalise on them. Although the committee’s report is titled Proceed with Caution, for the reasons I have given today, the signal we should send to the Royal Navy should be: continue to proceed with speed.

King’s Speech

Lord Stevens of Birmingham Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, I have the privilege of being a member of the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme. As we have heard throughout this afternoon, the gracious Speech sets out immediate objectives for defence in this country—including supporting Israel, strengthening Ukraine and sustaining NATO.

On Israel, humanitarian aid clearly must get through, the hostages must be released and hospitals must be able to operate. That is why it is all the more outrageous that, as the European Union confirmed on Sunday, Hamas is using

“hospitals and civilians as human shields”.

For those of us like the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, who have now seen the sickening video footage shot by the Hamas terrorists themselves, it is tragically obvious that there can be no enduring peace until Hamas is decisively militarily removed from Gaza. Only once that has been achieved will massive reconstruction and support be possible—as, indeed, will certainly be necessary in Gaza, as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, reminded us.

However, that cannot be a botched withdrawal of the type that we saw from the US leaving Afghanistan, followed almost immediately by the Taliban reasserting itself. Israel does not have that luxury; it is right next to Gaza. Germany has today proposed that the UN should oversee that process—the same UN that a fortnight ago appointed Iran to chair a UN Human Rights Council meeting. It would be of great interest if the Minister could tell us the British Government’s view of the correct approach for the post-Hamas reconstruction of Gaza.

However, in the meantime, as Timothy Garton Ash has put it in a different context, I think today’s debate is really reminding us that

“European countries need to abandon the post-Wall illusion that peace can be secured entirely by nonmilitary means”.


Nowhere, of course, is that more evident than in Ukraine, and I agree strongly with what the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has just said, commenting on the remarks of Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, General Zaluzhny, who recently issued that very salutary and controversial warning of the risk of attritional stalemate there. Again, echoing the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, it would be wonderful to hear from the Minister what enhanced support we and our allies can offer to ensure that what the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, correctly described as an epochal disaster does not befall us with that outcome in Ukraine.

More broadly, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Peach, reminded us of the wider threats to our security. I want briefly to mention just three examples of increased risks in the maritime domain. In the past year, in the South China Sea, the Chinese Navy has been threatening not just Taiwan but the Philippines and many other nations. Just last month, we saw further interference with vital undersea gas and communications pipelines in the Baltic and a growing threat in the High North. Just last week, Russian missiles hit commercial shipping entering Odessa—as noble Lords well know, the Black Sea is to world grain supplies as the Gulf is to oil.

So, the bottom line is that we cannot allow our adversaries’ naval supremacy to threaten our allies and control world trade and prosperity. That in turn means a strong and properly resourced Royal Navy: not just ships, munitions and equipment but people. The Royal Navy is going to have an expanding need for highly specialised technical skills in engineering, cyber, logistics and nuclear. As the noble Earl said at the start, that requires more flexible careers and a so-called spectrum of service. Fortunately, a blueprint has been provided to the Government in the form of the Haythornthwaite review, mentioned by the noble Earl. I think he said that all 67 recommendations were being implemented, but Recommendation 17 is for new legislation to overcome the rigid split between regulars and reservists. Of course, such legislation was missing from the King’s Speech. Will the Minister let us know when we might expect that?

Defence Policy (International Relations and Defence Committee Report)

Lord Stevens of Birmingham Excerpts

Friday 30th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

My Lords, I hesitate to speak in such distinguished company, but my short contribution today concerns the maritime domain, which the committee’s report rightly addresses.

Over the past year or so I have had the privilege of spending some time with the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines, both here and overseas. That has brought home to me just how much, as an island nation, we tend to forget how dependent we are on the oceans and our Navy, not just for our security but for our prosperity. The First Sea Lord refers to this as “sea blindness”. It ignores the fact, for example, that 95% of our imports arrive by sea and 97% of our data arrives not by satellite but by undersea cable. Competition for control of the seas is clearly intensifying. It is said that, around 2020, China’s navy overtook that of the United States, in size if not capability.

As we have seen in the far north, and as the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, reminded us, Russia is seeking to control new sea lanes that will halve the time it takes to move goods from Asia to Europe. As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, said, unlike the Russian army, Russia’s northern and Pacific naval fleets have been largely untouched by the devastation of the Ukraine war.

Given these inescapable facts about the world, it is wholly obvious that defence spending will need to increase, and it is right that we invest in a modern and capable Royal Navy. The Government are therefore to be commended for the pipeline of new ships and boats that will come into service over the next 10 to 15 years, which of course includes modernising the continuous at-sea deterrent. The committee refers to the cost of that as the MoD’s biggest single defence investment, but, to put it in context, it is worth noting in parentheses that as a country we spend less on nuclear deterrence—our ultimate guarantor of freedom and sovereignty—than we spend on pets and pet food.

However, as these long-term programmes progress, the committee’s report is surely right to express concern, in paragraph 221, about the here and now, particularly the impact of inflation on the Government’s investment plans for the Royal Navy. If anything, our Armed Forces are already living with the consequences of previous flawed efficiency and procurement efforts. Ships are stuck in port, waiting for spare parts, thanks to supposedly cheaper just-in-time supply chains that often fail. Submarine refits chronically overrun, so their crews have to spend extended deployments at sea, and the cost of living crisis is now clearly taking its toll on front-line service personnel.

The MoD has just published its annual survey, and under one-third of Armed Forces personnel now see their pay as fair—down 21 percentage points since 2010. In raw human terms, people are stuck on base at weekends, for example, because they cannot afford the petrol to go home to their loved ones, and they are working second jobs to make ends meet. Although the Armed Forces cannot strike, in a tight labour market, people are voting with their feet, be they engineers, chefs or cyber experts.

Earlier this week, the Defence Secretary rightly said that he wanted a new single Armed Forces Act, enabling so-called “zig-zag careers” between regular and Reserve commitments. Can the Minister say whether we will see legislation on that before the next election? Will the Ministry of Defence commit to implementing in full the Haythornthwaite review, published last week? In the meantime, given that the Government want people to stay, can the Minister confirm that they will back this year’s recommendations from the independent Armed Forces’ Pay Review Body?

In summary, the 33,000 people in the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines have a remarkable global impact, entirely disproportionate to their size. They support our security and prosperity, and we, in turn, should support them.