Integrated Review

Baroness Northover Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I welcome the noble Lord’s welcoming of this announcement. He has been a vocal and consistent strong voice for the Navy within this House, and I am glad that he is pleased. He is right that the carrier strike group 21 is an ambitious global deployment. From 2023, it will be permanently available to be routinely deployed globally, and, in fact, HMS “Queen Elizabeth” will lead a British and allied task group on our most ambitious deployment for two decades, encompassing the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean and east Asia. We are currently finalising our plans for the deployment with regional partners.

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, pandemic was on the 2015 review risk register. Does the noble Baroness recognise that failing to address that has resulted in costs to the economy which are multiples of this defence uplift? What is the point of an integrated review, dismantling DfID even before the review began and this announcement before it concludes if we do not know what challenges the Government think we face and how we might tackle them with our allies? Does she think that global Britain is enhanced or undermined by cutting the development budget?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

As I said, we have already worked through the main findings within government to inform this announcement and they are the first conclusions of the integrated review. The Government are working to ensure that we have an integrated strategy. As I have said to a number of noble Lords, that will be published in its entirety in the new year.