Strength of the UK’s Armed Forces

Darren Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

I will focus, perhaps slightly unusually in the debate, on the impact of climate change on our national security and, therefore, the resource allocation in the MOD. We know that, so far, the world has not made climate action plans bold enough to limit global temperature growth to 1.5° C above pre-industrial levels. Obviously, we support the COP26 President, the right hon. Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma), on achieving that at COP26 later this year, but the reality is that climate change will affect our national security irrespective of whether we hit the 1.5° C target. That will translate into a number of issues, ranging from significant global climate migration and shortages of food and water to new conflicts around the world and, potentially, a vastly different geopolitical order.

On some projections, if global warming reaches 3° C we will have a world in which most of the United States, and indeed China, as well as other countries along and near to the equator, no longer survive in their current form due to desertification. Russia could become the largest food-producing country in the world. If we turn our minds to Russia’s approach in leveraging oil and gas to meet political objectives, we can imagine what that would look like in a world in which Russia had a monopoly of fertile land for food production. The future management of the Antarctic, following the lapsing of the current treaty in 2041, and presumably with habitable land following the melting of the polar caps, would become a high-risk flashpoint in a desperate world. All those outcomes present risks to Britain’s national security, the rules-based order and the allocation of our defences.

I wish to focus on the Arctic circle because melting caps produce newly navigable seas. For trade, shipping goods from China to Europe through the Arctic region, as opposed to through the Suez canal, would reduce shipping time, fuel consumption and cost. On security, only last week it was reported that Russia is further expanding its military presence in the polar region, testing air missiles and utilising nuclear submarines to break through ice, and is continuing to build military bases along its Arctic coastline.

On access to natural resources, many countries are trying to claim legal jurisdiction in the area, for drilling purposes. The integrated review says that we will seek to maintain high co-operation and low tension in the region, ensuring the safe, sustainable and responsible management of natural resources. Although I support those ideals, I fear the Government are not fully anticipating the escalation of tensions in our own neighbourhood, not least because so little reference is made to the Arctic circle in the integrated review.

That is, of course, an issue for Scottish independence, because England needs Scotland as much as Scotland needs England in being able to respond quickly to threats in the Greenland-Iceland UK entry point to the north Atlantic. I do not wish to be pessimistic, but I fear that all the climate change signs point to an escalation of risk and to tension in the Arctic circle, yet little attention is paid to that in the integrated review and defence statements, or indeed Government policy. I hope that those on the Treasury Bench might give us more insight to their thinking on the issue later this evening.