Armed Forces Act (Continuation) Order 2017

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, welcome this timely debate and thank the Minister, who has great respect in the House, for setting out the Government’s thinking and spending on present and future UK defence strategy.

Although I was a Government defence Whip for several years in the last Labour Government and recently co-chaired the Parliamentary Labour Party’s defence committee, it has been some time since I took part in a major defence debate in your Lordships’ House. As I focus again on our domestic and international responsibilities, I am reminded how like the 1980s it seems out there and how the Cold War did not really go away—yet how our response is still inadequate.

As Yeats put it in his poem “The Second Coming”,

“the centre cannot hold …


The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity”.

The new and old forces ranging against the West today, and against NATO in particular, have a new strength and determination. Our major ally, the US, despite its recent announcements on NATO and defence spending, seems very unsure of its value base when it comes to its global responsibilities. The enfant terrible of cyber and hybrid warfare often appears out of control.

I welcome our emphasis on NATO this afternoon. Sweden, one of the shining examples of a modern democracy, is bringing in a new military service obligation, which is being imposed on all men and women there, which allows us to see the anxiety it has for its borders in the face of the emerging Russian aggression. That anxiety is prevalent also in the Baltics, Poland and elsewhere. I welcome the deployment this past weekend of the first of 800 British troops to Estonia, and I know that we all wish them well in their extremely important work there. Could the Minister go into more detail on the discussions the Secretary of State for Defence has had with the new US Defense Secretary, James Mattis, on how we can reaffirm our joint commitments to our NATO allies in the face of Russia in its new bastion mode and in the face of President Trump’s suggestion that he may not come to the aid of a NATO ally unless it has paid its dues?

I welcome the progress, albeit slow, that is being made by NATO members towards meeting the 2% of GDP target for defence spending, agreed in Wales of course in 2014. I understand that five countries in NATO now meet that target, while 10 meet the 20% pledge on major equipment and research. However, like my noble friend Lord Touhig, I would like to press the Minister on his response to the defence committee’s findings that Britain can claim to meet the 2% target only by including areas such as pensions that were not previously counted—certainly not during the last Labour Government. Can the Minister tell us what defence expenditure would be if we used the same accounting rules that we did in 2010? Does the Minister agree that we would have more credibility when urging our NATO allies to meet their spending commitments, were we not barely scraping over the line ourselves? Surely, as other noble Lords have said, the proportion should be whatever is required to allow the UK to respond to the threats of today.

Those of us who grew to adulthood under the chill of the Cold War have seen our hopes for a stabilised and globalised peace grow ever more threadbare in the last few years. Whatever is required should be the only limit to our spending. As someone who grew up in Plymouth—that great naval city—I was particularly pleased to see that the Ministry of Defence has confirmed that Plymouth will be the centre for the Royal Marines. I ask: what additional naval expenditure will come the way of Devonport in the near future?

However, does the Minister feel that there has been an adequate government response to the defence select committee’s report of last November, which concluded that there was a woefully low number of Royal Navy warships? We could not possibly miss out on that position, as we have with us the noble Lord, Lord West, who manages wonderfully and creatively to get the Royal Navy into most Questions in Oral Question Time. As we look to the future, it is still the Government’s planning assumption, I take it, under the Joint Force 2025 of the SDSR 2015, that there will be a maritime task force centred on the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier, with F35 Lightning combat aircraft and consisting of 10 to 25 ships and 4,000 to 10,000 personnel.

While still on naval matters, I for one was content with the vote in the House of Commons last year enabling the Government to take the Successor submarine programme forward into the manufacture phase. The Labour Party remains committed to a minimum credible independent nuclear deterrent, delivered through a continuous at-sea presence. Will the Minister update the House on the various investment stages that will replace the Vanguard class of submarines?

I add my heartfelt thanks and gratitude to the dedicated RAF crews who are working around the clock to defeat Daesh in Iraq and Syria. We all wish success to the coalition forces in the battle to liberate Mosul. I know that the Government are doing what they can to encourage, once Daesh is routed there, a more lasting peace that has political reconciliation between Sunni and Shia people at its heart.

Finally, we come to Brexit. We seem to be doing that a lot. As we leave the European Union—and with it the EU Foreign Ministers’ monthly meetings, the daily meetings of EU ambassadors and diplomats and the thousands of meetings that form the EU’s foreign affairs co-ordination at the United Nations—what detailed planning is going on to set up a meaningful structure for exchange of information, intelligence and assistance between the UK and our EU partners on common positions in international policy? I will give an example from when I chaired the Women’s National Commission at the UN some years ago. Then, the UK always met with other EU countries to form a common EU position—in that case on women’s rights—before meeting with other UN members and coming to UN decisions on issues such as abortion rights, FGM and girls’ education. There was always a European common position—usually the most progressive position at the UN. It would be foolhardy in the extreme for this country to lose its influence and partnership in EU decision-making on international matters. However, at present I am not optimistic.

Do noble Lords think that once the Brexit deal is done, the whole of NATO as a force for democratic solidarity—here I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord King, for whom I have a lot of respect—will be stronger, weaker or just the same as it was when the referendum was but a twinkle in a badly misguided Prime Minister’s eye? This is a very bad time to create friction with our allies. I see a hard Brexit as little more than organised friction, as we can be sure President Putin knows only too well. Brexit is a geopolitical windfall for the Kremlin and all who despise the West. While I wish the Government well in their future defence policy, we are all aware of how rocky that future is going to be.