Strategic Defence Review 2025

Lord Tugendhat Excerpts

Friday 18th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tugendhat (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, on his review, and welcome back the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, whose writings over the years have done so much to influence my own thinking on this subject and others.

Given the time available, it is possible to deal with only one or two subjects in this review, and I will deal with just two. The first is to take up the Prime Minister’s words in his introduction, when he says:

“A step-change in the threats we face demands a step-change in”


Britain’s

“defence to meet them”.

That is a theme many other noble Lords have spoken on, but it is actually only half the story. I am not even sure that it is the most important half of the story, because there has also been a step-change in the position of our great ally the United States, on whom we, like other European countries, have depended for our ultimate defence ever since the war.

President Trump has said many things about the United States and NATO, and he said many things about the United States and European defence, but one thing is absolutely clear: he does not see the world in the same way we do, and it is not now possible to rely on the US commitment to our defence under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, as we have done in the past. That means that, regardless of the threats we face, to which the Prime Minister refers, and regardless of whether Russia is a major, potential or actual threat, we can no longer assume that we will always be fighting alongside the Americans. That in itself requires a massive military expenditure, given the extent to which our Armed Forces would at present be incapable of mounting significant military operations without American support.

Other Europeans are in the same boat and recognise that fact, and we are working closely with them. I congratulate the Government on the way in which they have repaired relationships with Germany, France and our other European allies. To the extent that we and our European allies spend and prepare more and make ourselves more self-sufficient, we will in fact be encouraging the Americans to play a larger part rather than discouraging them. Whatever the truth of the matter, it is essential that we do everything we can to keep the Americans on board and closely involved.

My second point is of a very different order. Whether there will be another crisis that might lead to war, let alone another war, we cannot know, but we do know that our critical national infrastructure of pipelines, fibre-optic cables, wind turbines and IT networks is under constant threat. We also know from the review itself that what it terms the cyber and electromagnetic domain is

“contested by adversaries every day: the United Kingdom is in constant confrontation with adversaries in cyberspace, defending national infrastructure”.

Many other noble Lords have referred to that.

In this as in other areas, we will and do of course work closely with our NATO allies to the east and south of us; but what of neutral Ireland to the west of us, through whose territorial waters and territory the vast bulk of transatlantic cables pass? As noble Lords know, Ireland spends little on defence, has very small Armed Forces and has no submarines. Therefore, my question to the Government is: will our western approaches be as sufficiently protected as those to the east and south of us? If not, can that be fixed? I would be interested to know the Government’s views on this point.