NATO and International Security

Debate between John Healey and Wayne David

Thursday 19th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

I am not sure whether the right hon. Gentleman means to catch your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker, but he makes several important points. His last point, on low tech, is right. In many ways, high tech can sometimes become low-tech weaponry. It is easy to conceive that, in the wrong hands, an unmanned aerial vehicle or drone could almost be a flying car bomb.

It is important that we continue to invest in and develop high-tech systems, which give us the edge and some of the deterrent effect we require. Like the right hon. Gentleman, one of the lessons I take from Ukraine is that, in the reality of battle, conflict and confrontation, we need “now tech” and not just high tech. That is one of the flaws in the procurement system, as the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) said in his intervention.

[Wayne David]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that we all have to deal with the difficulty of the Russians’ apparent willingness, in certain circumstances, to use theatre nuclear weapons?

[John Healey]

Indeed, there is certainly a willingness to threaten to use such weapons. The escalation of President Putin’s rhetoric at times in this conflict has been reckless. That requires responsible leaders in the western alliance to be careful, measured and consistent about the rhetoric we use. That has not always been what we have seen from some of our Ministers. It also requires us to be implacably clear that any use of such weaponry would be met with a strong, special response and that the universal opprobrium that would befall Russia must make a contemplation of this, even by those in the Kremlin, even in circumstances in which they may feel they are losing ground and losing the conflict, unthinkable.

I am going to press on, because many other Members much more expert than I want to contribute to this debate. Whatever the points the Secretary of State has made and I have made so far, NATO’s new strategic concept has to be a major diplomatic agreement on geostrategic goals first and a plan for force generation, doctrine deployment and procurement second. The NATO 2030 plan must spell out how we are going to contain Putin, what forces we will generate, what new technologies we will accelerate and how we will strengthen our homeland societies. It must set out also a strategy for our open democratic societies to deal with China, which the 2030 reflection group now rightly described as

“a full-spectrum systemic rival, rather than a purely economic player or an only Asia-focused security actor.”

As the reflection group prepared NATO for these decisions, it said:

“The line between civilians and combatants is being blurred”.

So we want the alliance to set democratic resilience as a new core task for NATO when its member nations meet in Madrid next month.

We cannot go far online without finding someone to tell us that western democracies are just as bad or even worse than Moscow or Beijing. Putin spends billions a year trying to divide and degrade our democracies. We have seen that in things ranging from meddling in elections to misinformation about covid and to criminal corruption. The waning belief in our own values has perhaps become the west’s Achilles heel. Just as we defend against attacks from beyond our borders, so we must respond to attacks within them, too. The NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s recommendations for this new strategic concept stress also the central importance of resilience in our democracies and our societies. It is the way in which we can both counter hybrid warfare and shore up support for our defence commitments.

Within days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Chancellor Scholz declared it

“a watershed in the history of our continent.”

He overturned decades-long German defence policy and boosted defence spending by €100 billion. This is now day 85 and the Government have taken no action to reboot our own UK defence plans. Instead, we are told by Defence Ministers that

“the invasion of Ukraine has proved the integrated review right.”—[Official Report, 11 May 2022; Vol. 714, c. 136.]

Well, the integrated review was billed as a “threats-led” strategy. It has a prominent section on the Indo-Pacific, yet no section on Europe. It confirms that threats to Britain are increasing, yet it cuts the Army by a further 10,000 troops. It makes no mention of a Taliban takeover in Afghanistan or a Russian invasion of Ukraine. I say to the Defence Secretary that all democracies must respond to the newly realised threats to national and European security. That is why we are arguing that he and the Government must rewrite the flaws in the integrated review, review defence spending, reform defence procurement, rethink those Army cuts and reinvigorate UK leadership in NATO.

In the run-up to Madrid, 30 or—I hope—32 democracies and their civil societies will rightly demand a say in the priorities that are set for NATO for the next decade. As the Opposition party that intends to govern Britain in the near future, so do we—yet it is a closed process, confined to Governments. It is closed to the public and closed to non-governing parties, despite the fact that national elections are due within two years in 19 out of the 30 NATO countries. That is why I ask the Government to open up the UK process to create a common British vision for NATO. I welcome the Secretary of State’s offer, in response, to discuss the strategic concept with us as it develops, but I urge him to go further and to lay out for the public, in this House, the UK’s view of NATO’s strategic goals and military priorities, as well as the contribution that Britain will make to our collective defence. I want the UK to drive the debates as NATO gives a greater focus to defence, alongside deterrence and diplomacy. I want UK leadership in NATO to anticipate areas of future Russian aggression, to respond as the Arctic opens up, to settle the alliance’s relationship with the EU and to challenge and compete with China.