Strategic Defence Review 2025

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what response they are making to the proposals for a ‘whole society’ approach to threats to national security, as set out in the 2025 Strategic Defence Review.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Coaker) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government are committed to reviewing the recommendations outlined in the strategic defence review, which recognises the importance of a whole-of-society approach to strengthening our resilience and readiness against the threats we face. Defence is playing a key role within the Cabinet Office-led home defence programme, which is co-ordinating civil and military preparations against the most serious risks. Our approach includes strengthening our civilian and military links to deliver legislation, enhance critical national infrastructure protection, and develop our reserve and cadet forces.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Does the Minister agree that this is a very radical proposal? The SDR envisages the mobilisation of substantial numbers of volunteers at local level, under local leadership, in civilian rescue teams, with reserve firemen, special constables and a new home defence force. It also calls for a national conversation on security. Do the Government intend to begin a national conversation, and how will they start to mobilise the sort of people who are needed?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right: it is an important matter and a radical proposal, and it is to do with the new threats we face as a country. We cannot any longer simply carry on as we always have done, so the proposals in this strategic defence review are radical and serious, and we intend to deliver them. One way that we intend to do that is to start to talk to the population of this country about the need for us all to wake up to the threat we face. That will require many of the actions that the noble Lord pointed out, and we intend to come forward with proposals in due course.

Royal Navy Submarine Force

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for his Question. He will know that we have been to the Treasury and have secured more money for the defence programme and industry. Just to pick up on a point that my noble friend made, I think it is incumbent on us all to praise our submariners for the work they do and the time they spend at sea. We are seeking to address some of the challenges that my noble friend pointed out. He will know that there are now programmes of investment in the infrastructure of both Devonport and Faslane. He will know that the Dreadnought programme has a commitment of £31 billion, with a £10 billion contingency. He will know that we are seeking to invest in AUKUS, and we also have the Astute programme.

Alongside that, with respect to the problems that my noble friend pointed out with respect to the engineers and technicians who keep our submarines at sea, he will know that we have started to ensure that we recruit more of those. I am also pleased to announce to the House that the recruitment and retention submariners have improved as well. I accept the challenges that my noble friend lays out but, with the First Sea Lord and others, we seek to address that quickly and urgently, as the 100-day plan pointed out.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, could the Minister explain the maintenance problem, which clearly goes back a number of years? On the dry docks that are not ready, are private contractors are failing in their obligations or is there a shortage of money? What is now being done to rectify this enormous backlog of maintenance, which is a very large part of the problem?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

It is a challenge. Part of it is investment into the infrastructure. That can take a long time. One of the things that the Navy has looked to deal with that is the floating dry dock concept, which others could explain better than I can. It is certainly something that can be made available much more quickly than the investment into that, but there is significant investment going in Devonport and Faslane. That was something that I indicated in answer to my noble friend. We are also seeking, through the defence technical colleges that were announced as part of the growth deals and other ways, to ensure that we get engineers and technicians into these areas to work. That has been part of the problem.

If I might just digress slightly, I will say that getting technicians, engineers and the important skills that we need is a problem that has bedevilled our country for decades. We have always had a shortage of them, and successive Governments have tried hard to tackle that. Indeed, the noble Lord mentioned defence technical colleges, or whatever they are called, and they were one of the ways in which we tried to deal with that. Certainly, we need to do more to raise the esteem of vocational education to ensure that we get all the technicians and engineers that we need.

Strategic Defence Review 2025

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Friday 18th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I will focus on two themes in the SDR: the commitment to “NATO first”, and the concept of “whole-of-society” defence and security. NATO first now means sharing European leadership within NATO to keep the US committed, not standing half-in and half-out of Europe through our beloved special relationship with the United States. The UK’s security ties with the USA are vital, but we face an increasingly transactional, and not particularly friendly, US Administration.

I spent nearly four years in the USA in the 1960s, studying government, international politics and defence. I was taught partly by professors who had been born in central Europe. In Washington, I met politicians and policymakers who had spent the war in what I now realise was Bletchley Park, or fighting in the allied armies across France or through Italy. They had deep affection for Britain and for European security. But that generation, most of whom had grown up on America’s eastern seaboard, died long ago. Policymakers we meet now more often come from America’s west coast, or Texas, Arizona or Florida—they look across the Pacific or south to Latin America. There is no special bond with Britain: they want to know how we can be useful and how much we are contributing to Europe’s defence.

NATO’s future rests on European leadership, which has to come from the closest possible co-operation between the UK, France and Germany. I welcome the latest UK-German treaty, building on growing UK-France co-operation, but we cannot achieve all we want through what is inelegantly called in the SDR “minilateralism”. We must integrate back into European multilateralism—the EU as well as NATO.

Putting NATO first also means putting second the dreams of again becoming the United States’ military partner in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea. The SDR bluntly states in chapter 5:

“Finite resources mean the UK cannot be everything to everyone”.


A previous Labour Government withdrew from east of Suez 59 years ago. Boris Johnson dreamed that we could leave Europe and be a global power again; and I have observed in the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, a certain nostalgia for naval deployments in the South China Sea, as well as for the affectionate special relationship of the past.

The SDR clearly states:

“A renewed focus on home defence and resilience is vital to modern deterrence”.


Its first priority defence role is indeed to defend, protect and enhance the resilience of the UK, including reviving civil defence and improving the resilience of our critical national infrastructure. The concept of a “whole-of-society response” to the multiple threats we now face—from transnational crime and terrorism, pandemics and climate change, as well as state threats—requires engaging with the wider British public, local government, voluntary groups and newly trained reserve bodies.

I looked at the UK Government Resilience Action Plan to learn how well this has been integrated with the SDR, and I found it very disappointing. A whole-of-society response has to grow from the ground up, rather than being imposed from the top down. The resilience action plan is thin on how to mobilise civil society and says almost nothing about the value and role of local government. Meanwhile, the Government have just published their English devolution Bill, which takes power from local government and gives it to elected mayors remote from Britain’s towns, villages and local communities.

As to mobilising civil society to respond to our insecure environment, we are promised only a “national conversation”. In terms of mobilising the more public spirited and patriotic, the review cautiously suggests that

“it will become necessary to increase the UK’s Active Reserve forces by at least 20%”—

I think that is about 10,000 soldiers—

“when funding allows, most likely in the 2030s”.

There is a great deal more work to be done here to engage the public in improving our national security and resilience. So far, it looks to me much more like the traditional Labour assumption that things are best left to the experts to organise a passive society, rather than the liberal view that democracy and security are guaranteed best by encouraging all citizens to play an active part in the common endeavour in communities throughout the country.

UK–EU Defence and Security Co-operation

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

The fundamental point is that you cannot access the Security Action for Europe framework unless you have a security partnership agreement with the EU. That is the gateway to it. The fact that the Government, on 19 May, agreed the security and defence partnership means that we now have a gateway to the €150 billion loan available within SAFE. If we had not negotiated that partnership, there would be no gateway. On the loan money that is available, my understanding is that the first loans that could be made available will be towards the end of this year.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, on Tuesday, the Minister made it clear that the United States remains Britain’s prime ally. Does that imply that this is very much a secondary partnership with the EU, or are we engaged in a delicate balancing exercise, recognising that our dependence on the United States is no longer as secure as it used to be and that American priorities are moving away from Europe and we therefore need to prioritise our security relationship with Europe more than we used to?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I think that is in our interests. To run through this, NATO is our prime alliance and something of which we can all be proud—we have been a member for decades. Alongside that, having a better, more secure relationship with Europe and working with it where that is appropriate, whether in Bosnia or in other missions, such as in Georgia or Moldova, is in our interest given the threats that we face. It is in our interest to pursue that. Let us be absolutely clear that, alongside NATO and the security and defence partnership with the EU, the US and the UK standing together is of immense importance to our own security, as well as to the security of Europe and global security. That is the point that we continue to make. It was the policy under the last Government and is the policy under this Government. The US-UK relationship is fundamental to global security. We of course pursue other alliances and agreements where we need to, but let us always remember the US-UK relationship. It has kept the peace for years and will do so in the future.

UK Weapons Systems

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 1st July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

Well, “independent” means what it says. I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Empey, and the House, that we have complete operational use in terms of independence. We can use all our weapons systems in the way that His Majesty’s Government choose to. Of course there are arrangements about how you maintain that and what you do, but independence means independence and we work to ensure that we maintain all our capabilities to the standard that the noble Lord and this House would expect.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, when the Conservative Government announced in 1957 that we had again an independent deterrent, they meant independent of the United States—a British warhead and a British weapons delivery system. Since then, we have compromised the delivery system with dependence on American missiles, and the recently announced airbase delivery will also have an American warhead. If I understand it correctly, some of those warheads will be stored on US bases in Britain. How far does that mean we can depend on the next American Administration, let alone this one, to give us permission when needed, in what might be a prolonged war rather than an immediate crisis?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

We need to unpick that. It is a very good question the noble Lord asks, but no Government will comment on the storage of nuclear weapons, for obvious reasons. The strategic nuclear deterrent is completely operationally independent. It cannot be used without the agreement of the United Kingdom Prime Minister. As for the F35A, which I presume he referenced with respect to the Government’s announcement, that forms part of the nuclear mission of NATO. For that capability to be used for a nuclear mission, it will require the agreement through the nuclear planning group of the United Kingdom Prime Minister. So both the strategic deterrent and the fighter deterrent of the 12 F35As will require the authorisation of the United Kingdom Prime Minister.

F35A and F35B Jets

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 1st July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

The answer is yes to all those points. The F35As come from the F35 schedule, so 12 of the additional 27 will be F35As instead of F35Bs. F35As are some 20% cheaper than F35Bs, so the noble and gallant Lord is right: that creates an additional sum of money which can be used in a way that the Government feel is appropriate and consistent with the SDR. He is right about the refuelling capability; there will need to be allied support for that. Many of our capabilities require allied support and help to function. I do not see a particular problem with that, but he is right to point it out.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the SDR and the national security strategy emphasise the threats to us locally and regionally, as opposed to the global projection of power to Singapore and the South China Sea, which is what the aircraft carriers are for, above all. Are we sure that we still have our priorities right in wanting to stand firm with our prime ally, the United States, in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, or should we pay more attention in our defence priorities to the North Sea, eastern Europe, the Baltic and that part of the world which is closest to our insecurity?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I understand the point the noble Lord makes, but I do not agree with it. We, with our allies, simply have to guarantee the security of regions across the world, whether it be the North Sea, the Mediterranean or the Indo-Pacific. Our carrier went through the Red Sea, through the BAM into the Indian Ocean, which is under threat from the Houthis. The sailors and others on the ship had to write a letter home saying what might happen. We should celebrate the fact that we have people with a sense of duty that allows them to put their lives in danger to ensure that trade, communication and all the things we depend on can get through that narrow bit of sea. If that did not happen, our shops would soon be empty and our data would not work. Many of the things on which our standard of living depends would not function.

That is why it is important that we go to the Indo- Pacific and stand alongside the Americans. Let us be clear: we do not go there because only we want to—Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia want us to go there. All those countries ask us to go there because they recognise the importance of ensuring the global trade routes stay open—it is the trade and prosperity on which our nation, and the nations of the world, depend.

80th Anniversary of Victory in Europe and Victory over Japan

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Friday 9th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, only the oldest of us can remember VE Day—still less the Second World War itself. Exceptionally, the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, will be able to remind us. For our grandchildren, this is relatively ancient history, and the issue for us is what aspects of that history we choose to emphasise. What lessons should we say they should learn from the chaos, the cruelty, the slaughter and the sacrifice, the final victory and the contested peace that followed?

The two world wars remain central to Britain’s national identity. My own grandchildren have been learning about them in school over the past year. We have taken them to the Western Front, to walk over the fields where in the spring of 1918 my 18 year-old father joined the Highland Division and lost so many of the friends he had trained with. We have taken them to Bletchley Park, where my parents-in-law worked during the Second World War. We tried to explain to them what it meant to my mother to lose her younger brother—my godfather—when his Lancaster crashed on a training flight. For all of us, linking historical narratives to personal stories is a way to help the younger generation understand the past.

I have been struck by how quickly my grandchildren understood that neither war was one in which Britain actually stood alone. There are monuments to Canadian and Australian troops on the Western Front, and we saw references to French, Portuguese, Indian, Moroccan and Belgian troops alongside the British, and to the Chinese Labour Corps that maintained British tanks in 1918 and dug trenches and graves. Some 20 years later, Poles provided crucial help for decryption in the early stages of Bletchley Park, and an American contingent arrived there in 1942. There were Polish fighter squadrons in the Battle of Britain, when Britain was “standing alone” against the German threat, and I was surprised to discover when we visited the Yorkshire Air Museum that there were a great many Belgian pilots in Bomber Command.

The Imperial War Museum’s display on World War II shows us something of the Caribbean contribution to Britain’s war effort, in all three armed services. I felt it underplayed the importance of the 2.5 million Indians in the British Imperial Forces, and the role Indian divisions played in Burma and the Eighth Army, fighting—alongside Polish and South African divisions, as well as the American Army—across North Africa and Italy.

Recalling this part of our wartime history matters because the descendants of those Allied soldiers and airmen have now become part of our national community. My parents-in-law are buried in a Bradford cemetery alongside well-kept Polish and Ukrainian sections, the latter containing the bodies of displaced persons—we used to call them “DPs”—unable to go back to their homeland as the Russians reasserted hostile control. I have met many Sikhs and south Asian Hindus and Muslims in Yorkshire whose grandparents fought for Britain in World War II, most of their grandchildren and neighbours unaware of what they did. This should now be an intrinsic part of our historical understanding of today’s British national identity.

What should we tell today’s children about why we fought the war, beyond the immediate threat of Nazism? We should teach them about the war aims that the British and Americans agreed on behalf of the world’s beleaguered democracies. The Atlantic Charter, drafted by the British and revised by the American President, declared in August 1941 that its countries

“seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other; … they desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned; … they desire to bring about the fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field with the object of securing, for all, improved labor standards, economic advancement and social security”.

President Roosevelt’s speech to the US Congress earlier that year had spelled out why the United States was already acting as “the arsenal of democracy”. He said:

“We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point … that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world. … The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society”.


Yesterday, our Defence Secretary reminded us also of Ernest Bevin’s Western Union speech, delivered to the Commons on 22 January 1948 as the Cold War began to end the hopes that the victory of 1945 would lead to global peace. Bevin declared that

“the free nations of Western Europe must now draw”

closer

“together. … Our sacrifices in the war, our hatred of injustice and oppression, our Parliamentary democracy, our striving for economic rights and our conception and love of liberty are common among us all. Our British approach … is based on principles which also appeal deeply to the overwhelming mass of the peoples of Western Europe … If we are to preserve peace and our own safety at the same time, we can only do so by the mobilisation of such a moral and material force as will create confidence and energy in the West and inspire respect elsewhere, and this means that Britain cannot stand outside Europe and regard her problems as quite separate from those of her European neighbours”.—[Official Report, Commons, 22/1/1948; cols. 395-97.]

I listened to Nick Thomas-Symonds, our Europe Minister, also quoting those words a few weeks ago.

We all recognise how far short our world today has fallen from these ideal objectives. The current US President has repudiated Roosevelt’s international and domestic legacies. Globalisation has spread global prosperity but has also fed a degree of inequality within and between states which threatens social cohesion and leaves too many unfree from want. We are learning again the lesson of the 1930s that constitutional democracy and open societies are not the natural order. Populist politicians offer easier answers, and authoritarian regimes are hard to dislodge.

Our British public do not yet appreciate how difficult are the domestic and international challenges we now face. We have managed to hold taxes down by skimping on public investment and cutting defence expenditure to fund the rising cost of health and welfare for our ageing society. Now, we have to raise defence spending and engage our citizens in national security. The war in Ukraine is a threat to our security to which we must respond. The Chinese drive to dominate global manufacturing and high technology also requires greater public and private investment. Yet there are populists out there still pretending that taxes can be cut while spending more on defence and without cutting public services.

History does not repeat itself, but it does offer warnings. Our divided and complacent country in the 1930s was slow to respond to the threat of authoritarian fascism and Nazism. We now face threats to the liberal international order that Roosevelt and Churchill led the allies to build, and to the peaceful Europe that the end of the Cold War promised. Temporarily or permanently—we hope only temporarily—we have lost American support and leadership. It is our shared duty to work together to carry the public with us, and to work with our democratic allies, in Europe and beyond, to defend the principles for which our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents fought more than 80 years ago.

Defence: 2.5% GDP Spending Commitment

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

First, I congratulate the noble Lord on his service and all that he has done. He makes a good point about the importance of the cadet service. We all recognise the importance of cadets and their valuable contribution to social mobility, social cohesion and the rest. Certainly, I will reflect on the importance of that and see where we go to in discussions with government colleagues.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, if the strategic defence review recommends and the Government accept that we need to spend more on defence because of the deteriorating international environment, can the Minister assure us that the additional spending will be taken out of additional taxation and not out of cuts to domestic programmes such as education, prisons and local government, and that the Government will come clean to the public that this is what they are doing and therefore, the additional taxation will be necessary?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I do not think that I am going to answer that. We have no plans with respect to additional taxation. I am trying to sound like my right honourable friend the Chancellor now.

On the serious point the noble Lord makes, the defence review will come forward and will put forward the threats we face as a nation and how best to meet them. We have set out the Government’s expenditure plans. I gently say to noble Lords who talk about the need for increased spending that it is important that we spend it on the right things, the things that will make a difference. Waiting for the defence review for us to determine how we best meet those threats is a sensible policy option.

Relations with Europe

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I was puzzled by the assumption in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, that while the European Union’s negotiators have not been entirely rational in their approach to bilateral relations with us, the British negotiators since Brexit—David Davis, Boris Johnson, the noble Lord, Lord Frost, and others—have been entirely rational actors. That is perhaps something that the noble Lord will cover in a future Telegraph column.

I want to talk about the situation that we are in now. We are in a very dangerous situation for British foreign policy. For the last 60 to 70 years, we have assumed that our closest and most mutually trusting relationship is with the United States. In four weeks’ time, there will be a presidential election, which will give us either a second Trump presidency—it is highly unclear what that will mean for transatlantic relations, as he pays little attention to Britain except for his golf courses—or a Harris presidency, which will arrive contested, with law suits and quite possibly disorder, and will also distract the United States. We will have lost American leadership. In this situation, we need to go as far as we can to develop the closest possible relations and better mutual understanding with our neighbours in Europe, because those are the most trustful and important partners we have. If we are going to build closer mutual understanding, it has to include a range of relations, formal and informal, at all levels.

That is why so many of us think that youth exchanges are very important. When I first started studying the European Union, I remember discovering how much effort the French and the Germans had made to rebuild relations between their countries by encouraging student and youth exchanges and putting money into them. When we joined the European Community, as it then was, the then pro-European Conservative Government tried to do something similar, and in 1973 suggested a range of those models. Of course, in 1974, the then anti-European Labour Government cancelled those, and we have never put enough effort into it since. I say to the Minister that the argument against going back into Erasmus is that more students come to Britain than British students go there and it therefore costs us more money; the argument for going back to Erasmus ought to be that we need more British young people to travel abroad and more British students to study at European universities and learn the language. That is a matter of sufficient importance for the future of British society and British foreign policy to make going back into Erasmus worthwhile.

Furthermore, we need to have exchanges not just between parties and parliamentarians, which has already been discussed, but between police. We have lost that through leaving Europol. There is no organised crime that is purely national these days. Cross-border contacts and understanding between police forces are very important, as they are between officials at all levels. We have lost our European cadre in the Foreign Office, and the European Union works the way it does precisely because there are intense and regular contacts between officials from different countries, bilaterally and multilaterally. That is what we need to regain and what this Government need to begin to build. At that point, we will have again the mutual understanding that we need.

These are our neighbours. We need to understand each other, to work together and to negotiate with each other. For that, we need to change the way that we behave in our relationships.