UK Defence Forces

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Soley, posed the underlying question for this debate: are we prepared to pay more to maintain our status and influence in global security, or do we have to reduce our ambition? The related question, which has come up in several speeches, is: will Brexit further reduce our diplomatic and global status or our importance both to the United States and to our European partners, or will it somehow enable us to regain our sovereign status as “global Britain”? There is a third, unspoken question: if we are to spend more on defence, what other public services are we going to cut or which taxes are we going to raise? Juggling with the aid budget, as several have suggested, might assist at the margin with the humanitarian role of defence, but it will not raise spending to 3% of GDP. Of course, the Brexit shock is likely to squeeze tax revenues and has already raised the cost of overseas procurement from the United States and elsewhere.

There are dangers of nostalgia about our global status and illusions about our global standing and influence. The image of a global Britain, re-established by freeing ourselves from the chains of EU membership, has formed a frequent theme in our wonderful Foreign Secretary’s speeches, in which he announces that we are back east of Suez, that Diego Garcia is now a major British base and that we intend to send an aircraft carrier task force through the Malacca straits. He has not mentioned whether we have to have the aircraft on it first. The reality of the 2010 defence cuts was that, as the United States recognised, we had reduced ourselves below the level at which the United States regarded us as a fully capable partner. We did that and are now in a situation where our relationship with the United States is much less clear than it was before. We lost our overall capability and found ourselves dependent on the French and others for maritime surveillance among other things. The focus, over a long period, on high-end, prestige capabilities—the independent deterrent force and the large carriers—has meant that we lack the supporting ships, forces and helicopters that we also need.

I asked the Minister not long ago where we would find the frigates to complete the task forces for aircraft carriers. His reply was, “They don’t necessarily have to be British frigates”. That is a very interesting reply, because it raises the whole question of how far we are trying to have an independent capability, or how far our future posture depends on close collaboration with others, and if so, with whom. There has been a suppressed history over the past 40 years of co-operation with our European partners. The UK-Dutch amphibious force has been there for 40 years, rarely celebrated in Britain—rarely reported in Britain. In 1999 the then Labour Government signed a UK-French defence agreement. A stronger one was signed—by Liam Fox, of all people—in 2010. He thereupon did his utmost to prevent press interest in the whole dimension of UK-French collaboration. I am told that he told the civil servant responsible that he was glad to meet him but he did not want to know too much about what he was doing.

That is part of the illusion between Britain standing alone and the realities of where we are. Fear of the Daily Mail and the Telegraph is such that Liam Fox also resisted taking a press team to see what I thought was the rather splendid Operation Atalanta joint command centre at Northwood, which had almost every single member of the European Union engaged in a joint operation. Even in the commemoration of World War I we run into problems about recognising how much we did things together with others. I am told that the commemoration of Third Ypres/Passchendaele downgraded the input of the French and Belgian troops in the battle. After an effort, there is to be a small but “modest” commemoration next year of the point at which British troops came under French overall command in April 1918. I think “modest” means, “We hope the TV won’t notice it”.

That feeds the whole idea that we are somehow an independent power on our own and we can do it all even though we do not spend enough money. The position paper published two or three months ago on foreign policy and defence co-operation with the EU after Brexit was remarkable. It was the most positive government statement I have ever seen of the importance of European foreign policy and defence co-operation to Britain’s national interest. I assume it was written by officials and Ministers did not actually look at it in sufficient detail before it was published, to cut some of that out.

More recently, the Government have welcomed the European Union’s proposals on closer defence co-operation and expressed hopes that the United Kingdom will be closely associated with it—for obvious reasons. There is logistical co-operation that saves money. There is joint procurement, which is of active interest to our arms industry. There are joint forces and joint exercises, and operations in the Mediterranean and Africa, which are dealing with the sorts of humanitarian crises, conflict prevention and conflict resolution that others have spoken about in the debate.

Can the Minister tell us more about how the Government propose to maintain co-operation in defence with our European partners as we leave the European Union? We have not heard anything in detail from the Government on this. Does he recognise that the Government are working against the onslaught from the right-wing media? I saw a one-and-a-half-page article in the Daily Mail yesterday warning about what was happening. Apparently there is a populist surge on the European continent—not here, of course—and Britain should disengage from the European continent as far as possible.

Brexit is reducing our global status and influence. Our prospects for economic growth have just been downgraded. Our public services continue to be cut and our public infrastructure is desperately short of investment. I, for one, cannot go out and persuade people in West Yorkshire, who are facing real cuts in education and further cuts in public services—local services, child support services, social services and social care—to accept further cuts in order to increase our defence spending and prop up our global status. My answer to the challenge posed by the noble Lord, Lord Soley, is that we must modify our posture and ambitions. We have to admit that we cannot claim global status for Britain on its own, whatever fantasies Liam Fox or Boris Johnson may still be pursuing. Our contribution to global peace, stability and security must be a shared one, in which our defence forces work closely with those of our allies and neighbours.