Strategic Defence Review 2025

Baroness Coussins Excerpts

Friday 18th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

My Lords, I shall raise two issues that were not covered in what is otherwise a thoroughly convincing and comprehensive review. The first is soft power. Perhaps the terms of reference were too tightly drawn or too narrowly interpreted, but defence is not just about weapons and Armed Forces—the hard power—and I do not in any case want to diminish at all the importance of what the review says about that. But defence is also about prevention and deterrence in the broadest possible sense.

A potential aggressor is less likely to attack you if you share a significant degree of intercultural knowledge, understanding and experience. To be “strong abroad”, as the review puts it, the UK must be appreciated, respected and even enjoyed abroad. Our soft power comes in many forms, including the World Service, the British Council, universities, the Royal Family, the Premier League and overseas aid.

It is also very sobering to note that Russia makes no such distinction between soft and hard power. Leaping into the vacuum to occupy radio frequencies given up for cost reasons by the World Service, as Russia has done in Lebanon, is just one example of Russian aggression on what I would call a seamless continuum of what we might call soft and hard power, which Russia just calls power.

Does the Minister agree, therefore, that soft power should be acknowledged as one important element within the broad sweep of defence, on the basis that prevention is better than cure? If he does, will he also agree that the Government need to take a strategic and generous view of the financial support that they give to the World Service, the British Council, higher education and the aid budget?

The second issue that I want to raise, which is missing in the review’s discussion of training, education and preparedness, is the importance of language training for the Armed Forces. The Defence Academy at Shrivenham, which I have visited, provides pre-deployment training in 40 languages for members of the Armed Forces. A report by the British Academy pointed out that the role of military linguists is particularly key to ground operations, is a vital component of defence diplomacy and is also essential for peacekeeping work and conflict prevention. As the BA report put it:

“The ability of military officers and patrols to communicate with local communities during ground operations can help not only with local engagement but might also mean the difference between life and death”.


Crucially, the MoD language training uses the NATO standardisation agreement 6001, which is a common framework for assessing language proficiency for military personnel and ensures that all member nations can communicate effectively in a military context, which is vital for interoperability in joint exercises and operations. Can the Minister reassure me that the SDR recommendation that:

“Defence should only run training and education itself when it cannot be obtained externally at suitable quality and cost”


will not apply to the language training currently provided by the Defence Academy? It is very difficult to imagine how local FE colleges could replicate the NATO standards or engage teaching staff qualified in both the military contexts and terminology, as well as all 40 of the languages currently offered. Will the Minister guarantee that the budget for the Defence Centre for Languages and Culture will not be subject to any cuts?

Finally on the subject of language skills, I have to say that I was alarmed two weeks ago at the closure without notice of the ARAP scheme and the ACRS. Since then, of course, we have also had the revelation of the ARR scheme, also now closed. All this will impact critically on the Afghan interpreters who worked with the UK’s Armed Forces and are still vulnerable from Taliban oppression. I have been told that no interpreters were included in the secret ARR scheme, as they were not thought to be at a high enough level of risk to qualify. Yet the Government’s own Explanatory Memorandum for its sudden withdrawal of ARAP admits that

“there is a risk that eligible individuals will remain at risk, or will seek to use irregular routes, including small boats, following the closure of ARAP”.

Is this really the way to treat those who have already risked their lives for us? The numbers are not vast, but these people are the very definition of a special case, and I ask the Minister to ensure that all the remaining interpreters have a viable option to relocate to the UK, subject of course to the relevant security checks.

--- Later in debate ---

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

My Lords, it is a great privilege to wind up this debate, which has been, as usual, of a very high standard and very interesting. I start by saying to my noble friend Lord McCabe that we came into the other place at the same time, and we have followed each other. I slightly smiled when he said that he found it quite sedate in here: that has not been my experience. So our paths have finally diverged. It was an excellent, outstanding maiden speech, and we all both enjoyed and learned from it. What was particularly powerful was his ending, when he spoke about British values and the importance of those to our debate today. We all welcome him and wish him good luck with his career here.

I also say to my noble friend Lord Robertson that it would be remiss of us not to thank him formally from the Government Front Bench, along with General Barrons and Fiona Hill, for the work that they did, plus all the other people that he mentioned. It is a hugely important report. It challenges the Government, the country and our alliances as to how we move forward. In our parliamentary scrutiny here, noble Lords have accepted the premise of the report in this debate, but the challenge for the Government is how they take forward the recommendations that they have accepted in full and how they make them a reality, which is the important task for all of us.

The truth is that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, and from the Liberal Front Bench, the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said, and as all of us recognise, this report would be important whenever it was written. But the fact that it is written in 2025, with all the challenges that we see: with the war in Ukraine, other challenges such as the stresses and strains in the Indo-Pacific, the change in the nature of warfare, cyberwarfare and with the need for homeland resilience—which I will come to in a minute—we see that all those issues are of crucial importance.

One thing that I have said, which many noble Lords have said in this Chamber, is that we are debating issues now—let alone the Cold War legacy with respect to money—that we never thought we would be debating again: war in Europe and threats to the homeland and attacks on it. Four, five, six years ago—you can argue about the number of years—many of us would have found that difficult to predict. That is what makes the report so important.

I will start to deal with some of the points that have been made. I apologise in advance if I do not answer every single question; no offence is meant to any particular contribution that has been made. If anybody wishes to take anything up afterwards in particular, I will be very happy to meet them and discuss that.

On money and trajectory, as mentioned by the noble Baronesses, Lady Goldie and Lady Smith, the noble Earl, Lord Courtown, the noble Lords, Lord Purvis, Lord De Mauley, Lord Soames, Lord Dannatt, Lord Hannay, Lord Stevens, and many others, and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup—I will come particularly to the point about urgency—I will say this as a starting point. When the Government came into power, we were spending 2.3%. The demand then was about when the Government were going to spend 2.5%. Up until three or four months ago, I was being criticised in this Chamber for not committing the Government to 2.5%. I do not say this in my defence because at the time, all of us thought we needed to get to 2.5% and that the debate would then be about where it would go to after that. For a Government taking decisions about proper financial and fiscal management, these are difficult decisions—I will come to the national conversation about that in a moment—but clearly that was the debate then.

At that time the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, was demanding more, as were others, but also talking about the urgency of it. So we got to 2.5%, and then it came to, “What about this and what about that?” I say to the noble Baroness, and I do not often do this, because we all know that sometimes press releases reflect a particular point of view, that I thought the press release that came out from No. 10 Downing Street specifically outlined the agreement to meet the NATO commitment in 2035—my noble friend Lord Robertson referred to that commitment. Specifically, that was not the Government making the figure up; it was NATO, demanding of each and every one of its individual countries to come to a 5% commitment by 2035. Is the trajectory clear as to exactly how that will be arrived at? It is not, and it says in the press release that the trajectory will need to be thought through. NATO itself has said it will need to come back to that.

The importance of the 5% figure in the debate we are having—I will come to national resilience in a minute—is, of course, that 3.5% is for core defence. I take the point of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, about urgency, but 3.5% is the NATO figure for core defence. The demand from all of us, and from the report by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, is, what about national resilience, national security and critical national infrastructure? That is why, for the first time, it is included in the NATO target.

The press release was released on the same day as the national security strategy, which is a hugely important document. These are the words of our Prime Minister. In the same way that Prime Minister Sunak would have made commitments, you have to believe that, when your Prime Minister puts something as explicitly as this, he means it. The Prime Minister said:

“That’s why I have made the commitment to spend 5% of GDP on national security. This is an opportunity to deepen our commitment to NATO and drive greater investment in the nation’s wider security and”,


as I said to my noble friend Lord Harris, resilience.

The argument will be that this needs to happen sooner, and people will ask, when will it happen, how are we going to pay for it and what will we do with the money? Those debates and discussions will have to take place, but the commitment is there. A year ago, I would not have said that the British Government would commit to 5% on national security and defence. I am delighted that that commitment is now there, as I am sure nearly everyone in this House is, because it is responding to the changed context and more dangerous world in which we operate. That is a real and important commitment, and I look forward to all the noble Lords whose names I read out, including the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, talking to us about the urgency of the situation and asking when it will happen.

The noble Lords, Lord Purvis, Lord De Mauley, Lord Soames, Lord Hennessy, Lord Howell, Lord Alderdice and Lord Tugendhat, and my noble friends Lord Harris and Lady Goudie, who made a very important point about women, spoke about the whole-society approach and the need for us to defend underwater sea cables. The noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, asked whether it is a 360-degree approach. The answer is yes—there is not much point defending sea cables in one place and being vulnerable somewhere else. Defending them, as the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, pointed out, is crucial. We are looking, within the defence review, at how we do that.

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, that part of the issue about spending is that we have to be clear about what we will spend the money on. That is what the defence review is for. We will bring forward a defence investment plan in the autumn. Those discussions are taking place now.

The noble Earl brought forward the point about drones. Of course we need more attack and surveillance drones, and we need to develop our small and medium-sized enterprises to do that, but what is the balance between our drones and the number of tanks, fighter aircraft and ships that we have, or indeed the type of ships that we have? What do we do about radar and all the other technology we need? Of course we have to spend that money, but we also have to make sure that we spend it wisely and appropriately on things that will make a real difference. There will be a debate and discussion about that. I suspect that if we had that debate in here now and I said, “There’s £10 billion. What are you going to spend it on?”, there would quite rightly be a discussion about that. The important thing is that there is a rationale to it that delivers the strategic objectives that this country, with its allies, wants not only in Europe but across the world.

On the defence readiness Bill, I will have to resort to the traditional formula when you do not really know, which is “when parliamentary time allows”, but we are developing it. The important point is that a defence readiness Bill is being prepared and there is ongoing consultation on it, and we will come forward with it when we can.

On the national conversation point, I cannot think of anything more crucial. Sometimes I feel a bit more optimistic about it. One reason is that we just need to be a bit more creative. The relationship between the public and the Armed Forces, when we have things like VE Day, as we had, or last night’s military extravaganza on Horse Guards Parade, which I attended with thousands of the public and people from other countries watching the musicians and the other things that were taking place, is very strong. The noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, and others—the noble Lords, Lord Soames, Lord Harlech, Lord Glenarthur, Lord Bailey and Lord Wallace—have mentioned the point about cadets. At many of the Armed Forces events that I go to, there are, if not thousands, numerous young people and cadets there, and that is in every region of the country. I was in Northern Ireland recently and there were lots of young people at the Armed Forces event, and no doubt when I go to the military tattoo in Edinburgh in a couple of weeks’ time there will be lots of young people there.

So that relationship is there, and we need to be more creative and think more about how we talk about the fact that, while that relationship is important, there is also the serious matter of what we have to have our Armed Forces for. Maybe we need to think more creatively about the fact that the Armed Forces are also about the deployment of hard power and the service that we need.

I apologise to the noble Lords, Lord De Mauley and Lord Harlech; I have promised a meeting about the future of the reserves. I very much appreciate their thoughts about how to deliver the target with respect to reserves, which are exceedingly important, when we move forward. I take the point about the estate and about parity, which the noble Lords and others have mentioned. We need to think about how we do that. The defence investment plan will have competing priorities, but maybe that will be one of the ways forward.

The noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, made the point about soft power. In the report by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, there is a specific commitment to a defence diplomacy strategy, which we will deliver in due course. That will be about soft power and will take forward many of the other things that are particularly important.

The noble Lords, Lord Stevens and Lord Hannay, and the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, all mentioned soft power, as did the noble Lord, Lord Bates, along with the importance of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. We have a real commitment to that treaty. We will try to take it forward and try to stop the expansion and proliferation of nuclear weapons—the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, mentioned Iran and North Korea—and we will take action in respect of all that. We do that within the context of believing that our own independent nuclear deterrent is essential to the defence of our own country and the defence of the alliances to which we belong, and we will continue to do that.

I also take the point about the reinvigoration of the P5 in the context—I think the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, or the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, made this point as well—of us being allowed to have nuclear weapons under the international laws and treaties that allow that. There is still a responsibility upon us to continue to ensure that things are as stable as they can be. So I take the point mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, notwithstanding the point that at present our posture remains the same.

I should have also mentioned the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, about health. I take that point, about the necessity of individual health; it is really important.

Various noble Lords mentioned the regions of the world. The noble Lord, Lord Purvis, mentioned the western Balkans. I met the Defence Minister from North Macedonia the day before yesterday. It is a new member of NATO, as noble Lords will know. We talked about the importance of the western Balkans and, as others will know, the importance of Bosnia. The noble Baroness will know that I met two of the three Presidents from Bosnia. We continue to understand the importance of that region.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, that we have said very clearly that we have a NATO-first policy, but not a NATO-only policy. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Soames, that we recognise the importance of Estonia and the Baltic states, which are right on the front line. I was talking to the ambassador from Finland, another country with an extensive border with Russia, only last night. As JEF nations, they know the commitment we have to them. Obviously, choices are sometimes made about the movement of various military units but, at the same time, our commitment to them remains absolute. I thank him for raising the point about NATO.

The noble Lord, Lord Howell, made the point about NATO first, the Commonwealth, and not NATO only. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, spoke about alliances and the importance of Europe as well as NATO, and we count that.

The noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, has always mentioned Japan. He will know the importance of Japan to us with the GCAP treaty. He knows that the carrier strike group is going there in the not-too-distant future.

I say to others that, notwithstanding the unreliability—as some have put it—of the US, we see the US as our strongest partner. It is a crucial relationship, and we will continue to maintain it.

The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, mentioned procurement. We understand the need for change there. We hope the new armaments director will make the difference. The noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, made the point about the need for sovereign capability, and she and I have been in discussions about the space launch possibility. We can continue to discuss that. The noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, also spoke about the importance of space, as did other noble Lords. We will continue to take that forward. I have covered a number of points. I want to leave myself a minute at the end to take up something, but noble Lords made other points. If I have missed anything, I will deal with it.

I want to come to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy. I have never had the privilege to meet him, but he talked about where we should finish in this debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Helic, spoke about law and order and the international rules-based order, as did many others. The noble Baroness, Lady Hogg, referred to it as well. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, said that the Prime Minister and the Defence Secretary have not mentioned it. I have not heard that. I think the Prime Minister has mentioned it a lot, as have most senior politicians in this country, and as has nearly every noble Lord I see in here. Maybe that is what the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, had just reminded us about. Increasingly, this Parliament and our leaders have said clearly that we are at a crossroads. Every now and again history brings crossroads, and we are at one of them now. The international rules-based order is facing a challenge from various countries, and sometimes you have to stand up.

That is why people have, in many cases, talked about the importance of deterrence and the awfulness of sometimes having to prepare for war to stop war. That is one of the places we are in now. I am proud of our Parliament. We are standing on the shoulders of giants in what we are trying to do: the leadership we have provided in Ukraine under both the last Government and this Government, and the various attempts now to rearm to get the defence industry and the war-fighting capability that we need—however we have got to this particular point and whatever the reasons for that. I think that if those people from the past looked at us now, they would say, “At last, they’ve woken up and are now trying to take the actions that they should have been taking”.

Why are we doing this? It is because, at the end of the day, we all believe in our democracy, in the values we stand for, in freedom and in the rights of women across the world. We want those values and rights to be available in our country and our continent, and we want to stand with like-minded peoples across the world. That has been our history. That is part of our culture, and we have always stood, and will continue to stand, for that.

It is a privilege to meet the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, even if it is in this strange way. I thank him for reminding us that, sometimes, we have to go back to why we do things and why we bother. We bother because the democracy, freedom and values that we stand for are as important now as they ever have been.

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

Will the noble Lord be kind enough to write to me with his response to my points on the Defence Academy and the issue to do with Afghan interpreters?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

Of course.