Strategic Defence Review 2025

Lord Stevens of Birmingham Excerpts

Friday 18th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

My Lords, in trying to summarise the debate so far, I suggest, roughly speaking, that the sentiment of the House is huge support—with the exception of one contribution—for the strategic defence review, but with a big question mark about whether we really mean it: what would it actually take to get it done? The noble Lord, Lord Sarfraz, did not like the “NATO first” slogan. I suggest an alternative might be “NATO for real”—in other words, we stop kidding ourselves. We knew that the claims we made in recent times about the capabilities we were declaring to SACEUR and other resources were essentially phoney. SACEUR knew they were phoney; our adversaries knew they were phoney; the only people we were not straight with were the British people. The defence review is straight with the British people: that needs to change.

For that to happen, we have been having a significant debate about what the phasing of the extra resourcing will look like. Unlike the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, I took the commitments that the Prime Minister made at the NATO summit to be a watertight commitment to 3.5% by 2035, rather than the prior aspiration around 3%. Picking up on the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, though, I wonder whether the Government can be clear with us as to the incremental spend that we are talking about. I think they are saying that, by 2027, we will be spending 2.6% of GDP on core defence spending and 4.1% on security in the round. That implies that, by 2027, we will already be spending 1.5% on the non-defence infrastructure and other security spending and, therefore, that we have 0.9% to add to core defence spending between 2027 and 2035.

The question for the Government is: when will they show their workings on that? Will we see in autumn what the incremental sequencing of the 0.9% is going to look like for the next three years over the balance of this Parliament? Without that, as the debate has revealed, we are quite unlikely to make progress.

In light of the announcements made alongside President Macron last week updating the 1995 Chequers declaration to include greater operational co-ordination of our strategic nuclear deterrent and—as the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, and others referred to—the readoption of a tactical nuclear capability through the F35As, do the Government intend to clarify the United Kingdom’s nuclear defence doctrine? We all understand that nuclear deterrence is a subtle combination of explicit signalling and studied ambiguity, but are the Government planning to do more than these incremental announcements and actually set this out as a new UK doctrine?

Do the Government believe that legislation is required to implement any elements of the SDR? We have previously talked about the requirement for a new Armed Forces Act to help manage the permeable membrane between active duty and reserve members of the Armed Forces. Likewise, within StratCom there has been talk about the need for a new category of Crown servant—who would be non-military but not civil servants—to do some of the cyberwarfare. That presumably would take an Act of Parliament. Are we going to see that statutory framework brought before us in the next King’s Speech?

Finally, on the executional capability required to get the SDR done, there has been some mild criticism that there is a degree of ambiguity about when some things are going to happen. Actually, there are one or two extremely ambitious commitments apparently nailed in for next year and the year after, one of them being the digital underpinning of the integration between the different branches of the Armed Forces, the digital targeting web and so forth. This apparently is going to be an MVP next year and is going to be in place by 2027. It has taken the Americans 20 years of effort in this space, and they still have not got to a situation where a US naval vessel can communicate in real time with all the US Air Force jets that might be in the same battle space—let alone pilots of different planes being able to communicate with each other. So the idea that we will have at least a light version of this in place from next year is a truly laudable and ambitious goal. It would be superb to hear more about what it will take to get it done.

In a nutshell, like others I strongly support the direction set out by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, and welcome the Government’s commitment to it. It is all about executional bandwidth, whether that is money, law or the sheer implementation muscle required across the military.

Defence Programmes Developments

Lord Stevens of Birmingham Excerpts

Monday 25th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

We certainly will be purchasing a number of fast jets—the exact number will obviously be subject to debate, but we expect a number of F35Bs to be purchased. On the training of pilots, which the noble Baroness raised, the training and retention of pilots is something for which we have an ongoing review within the Ministry of Defence; we are looking at that very carefully, but she is right to raise that as an issue.

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

My Lords, a bigger reason for the number of Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships stuck alongside is not the age of the vessels but the absence of seafarers to staff them. Can the Minister update the House on the ongoing industrial action affecting the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, which is obviously having a significant impact on the Royal Marines and the Royal Navy?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for raising the point about the industrial dispute affecting the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. The only thing I can say is that discussions are ongoing. We obviously hope it can be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction in due course.

Ukraine

Lord Stevens of Birmingham Excerpts

Friday 25th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

My Lords, obviously, like the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, I too think that the NHS matters, but when the geopolitical facts change our defence posture needs to respond accordingly. Inevitably, I am afraid that will mean a far higher priority for defence spending than we have seen over the past several decades. At this stage of the debate, in an effort to be non-duplicative, I will try to focus a few remarks on the defence industrial lessons that we have seen from Ukraine over the more than two and a half years since the full Russian invasion began.

Parliament often legitimately criticises the Ministry of Defence for its procurement, but I suggest that today it would be fair to congratulate the Ministry of Defence on the speed and effectiveness of its mobilisation and on its material support for Ukraine, particularly under Op Scorpius. I think 34 countries have provided military support, but the UK’s is the third-largest contribution after the US and Germany. Indeed, there have been disproportionate contributions from countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands. We have committed over £7.8 billion of support from the reserves and, as the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, said right at the beginning, there is the very welcome commitment to at least £3 billion of funding support a year, stretching out to 2030 as required.

As the National Audit Office pointed out in September in one of its more favourable reports—I say this as a connoisseur of National Audit Office reports, not all of which have had quite that flavour—there has been tremendous innovation and good practice in defence procurement, including at Defence Equipment and Support in Abbey Wood, in shortening procurement timescales, in getting anti-aircraft equipment in six weeks that would normally have taken one to two years, in getting small contracts out the door in 115 days, and in using a degree of creativity in reverse engineering Soviet-era T72 tank tracks using old blueprints at the Tank Museum in Bovington. All this is to be welcomed.

Reading between the lines, there might have been one government department that did not quite get the memo. The NAO says that the formal approval process from HM Treasury

“can take place months after the funding total has been publicly announced”.

It goes on to say that after the then Prime Minister had committed the Government to

“£2.3 billion funding for Ukraine”

in the year just gone, it took the Treasury until 10 months after the First Lord of the Treasury made that announcement to formally agree that that funding should be released. I can imagine the accounting officers of the departments have been arguing over those sentences before they saw the light of day.

Let us not let that detract from the broader point, which is that HMG has a great deal to be proud of. That, however, should not blind us to three uncomfortable revelations on the defence industrial side of the equation from the last several years. The equipment that the UK had donated to Ukraine up until March 2024 had a current value of £172 million; the cost of replacing it is estimated at £2.7 billion. That underlines just how atrophied and time-expired much of the equipment and munitions available to our Armed Forces are. It forcefully illustrates former Defence Secretary Ben Wallace’s point about the “hollowing out” of the Armed Forces and, indeed, comments that the current Defence Secretary, John Healey, has again made this week. The two years of donations we have made will, according to the NAO, take us until 2031 to replace, which underlines the lack of depth and resilience in our defence industrial base. As we have all been well aware, delays in supplying Ukraine with critical-use permissions for major pieces of equipment—the Storm Shadow debate and others—arise partly because of export permit approvals being not forthcoming from other countries, which underlines the importance of sovereign defence capability.

In short, congratulations are due to the Ministry of Defence for what it has done with the hand it has been dealt. Nevertheless, the experience of the last two and a half years has shown some profound weaknesses in the defence industrial base, which the forthcoming strategic defence review and the subsequent spending review must confront head on.

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.