Integrated Review

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Tuesday 16th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement on the Government’s integrated review of security, defence, development and foreign policy, which we are publishing today.

The overriding purpose of this review, the most comprehensive since the cold war, is to make the United Kingdom stronger, safer and more prosperous, while standing up for our values. Our international policy is a vital instrument for fulfilling this Government’s vision of uniting and levelling up across our country, reinforcing the Union, and securing Britain’s place as a science superpower and a hub of innovation and research. The review describes how we will bolster our alliances, strengthen our capabilities, find new ways of reaching solutions, and relearn the art of competing against states with opposing values. We will be more dynamic abroad and more focused on delivering for our citizens at home.

I begin with the essential fact that the fortunes of the British people are, almost uniquely, interlinked with events on the far side of the world. With limited natural resources, we have always earned our living as a maritime trading nation. In 2019, the UK sold goods and services overseas worth £690 billion—fully a third of our gross domestic product—sustaining millions of jobs and livelihoods everywhere from Stranraer to St Ives, and making our country the fifth biggest exporter in the world. Between 5 million and 6 million Britons—nearly one in 10 of us—live permanently overseas, including 175,000 in the Gulf and nearly 2 million in Asia and Australasia, so a crisis in any of those regions or in the trade routes connecting them would be a crisis for us from the very beginning.

The truth is that even if we wished it, and of course we do not, the UK could never turn inward or be content with the cramped horizons of a regional foreign policy. For us, there are no far away countries of which we know little. Global Britain is not a reflection of old obligations, still less a vainglorious gesture, but is a necessity for the safety and prosperity of the British people in the decades ahead.

I am determined that the UK will join our friends to ensure that free societies flourish after the pandemic, sharing the risks and burdens of addressing the world’s toughest problems. The UK’s presidency of the G7 has already produced agreement to explore a global treaty on pandemic preparedness, working through the World Health Organisation to enshrine the steps that countries will need to take to prevent another covid. We will host COP26 in Glasgow in November and rally as many nations as possible behind the target of net zero by 2050, leading by example since the UK was the first major economy to accept this obligation in law. Britain will remain unswervingly committed to NATO and preserving peace and security in Europe.

From this secure basis, we will seek out friends and partners wherever they can be found, building a coalition for openness and innovation and engaging more deeply in the Indo-Pacific. I have invited the leaders of Australia, South Korea and India to attend the G7 summit in Carbis Bay in June, and I am delighted to announce that I will visit India next month to strengthen our friendship with the world’s biggest democracy. Our approach will place diplomacy first. The UK has applied to become a dialogue partner of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and we will seek to join the trans-Pacific free trade agreement.

But all our international goals rest upon keeping our people safe at home and deterring those who would do us harm, so we will create a counter-terrorism operations centre, bringing together our ability to thwart the designs of terrorists, while also dealing with the actions of hostile states—it is almost exactly three years since the Russian state used a chemical weapon in Salisbury, killing an innocent mother, Dawn Sturgess, and bringing fear to a tranquil city. I can announce that the National Cyber Force, which conducts offensive cyber-operations against terrorists, hostile states and criminal gangs, will in future be located in a cyber-corridor in the north-west of England.

[Mr Speaker]

Chorley.

[The Prime Minister]

Close, Mr Speaker.

We will also establish a cross-Government situation centre in the Cabinet Office, learning the lessons of the pandemic and improving our use of data to anticipate and respond to future crises.

The first outcome of the integrated review was the Government’s decision to invest an extra £24 billion in defence, allowing the wholesale modernisation of our armed forces and taking forward the renewal of our nuclear deterrent. The new money will be focused on mastering the emerging technologies that are transforming warfare, reflecting the premium placed on speed of deployment and technical skill, and my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary will set out the details next week.

Later this year, HMS Queen Elizabeth will embark on her maiden deployment, leading a carrier strike group on a 20,000-mile voyage to the Indo-Pacific and back, exercising with Britain’s allies and partners along the way and demonstrating the importance that we attach to freedom of the seas.

By strengthening our armed forces, we will extend British influence, while simultaneously creating jobs across the United Kingdom, reinforcing the Union and maximising our advantage in science and technology. This Government will invest more in research and development than any of our predecessors because innovation is the key to our success at home and abroad, from speeding our economic recovery, to shaping emerging technologies in accordance with freedom and openness. We will better protect ourselves against threats to our economic security.

Our newly independent trade policy will be an instrument for ensuring that the rules and standards in future trade agreements reflect our values. Our newly independent sanctions policy already allows the UK to act swiftly and robustly wherever necessary, and we were the first European country to sanction the generals in Myanmar after the coup last month.

In all our endeavours, the United States will be our greatest ally and a uniquely close partner in defence, intelligence and security. Britain’s commitment to the security of our European home will remain unconditional and immoveable, incarnated by our leadership of NATO’s deployment in Estonia.

We shall stand up for our values, as well as for our interests, and here I commend the vigilance and dedication of hon. Members from all parties, because the UK, with the wholehearted support of this whole House, has led the international community in expressing our deep concern over China’s mass detention of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang province, and in giving nearly three million of Hong Kong’s people a route to British citizenship.

There is no question that China will pose a great challenge for an open society such as ours, but we will also work with China where that is consistent with our values and interests, including in building a stronger and positive economic relationship and in addressing climate change.

The greater our unity at home, the stronger our influence abroad, which will, in turn, open up new markets and create jobs in every corner of the UK, not only maximising opportunities for the British people, but, I hope, inspiring a sense of pride that their country is willing to follow in its finest traditions and stand up for what is right. With the extra investment and new capabilities of the integrated review, the United Kingdom can thrive in an ever more competitive world and fulfil our historic mission as a force for good. I commend this statement to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Prime Minister]

I know that my hon. Friend was listening very carefully to the statement, and she will have spotted that there is a commitment to the north-west and to cyber in Lancashire. [Interruption.] I have heard your representations, Mr Speaker. You will have to wait for the Defence Secretary to explain exactly where it is going to be. To boost those skills and jobs for the long term and to make that transformation in defence technology that Lancashire is undoubtedly going to lead, we are investing £6.6 billion in defence research and development over the next four years.

[Mr Speaker]

We will certainly take Lancashire, even if the Prime Minister cannot say whereabouts.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab) [V]]

The review and the Prime Minister’s statement are typically big on words, but scant on detail or strategy. It was a mass of contradictions steeped in a lack of realism when it comes to affordability and scope, and there was zero acknowledgement of the harm that years of underinvestment in our nation’s defence have caused. Ultimately, the world will judge him and his Government on their actions, so can he explain how breaching article 6 of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty fits with his commitment to international law?

[The Prime Minister]

I never saw such a seething mass of contradictions as the Opposition Front Bench, because we only have to go a few yards from the Leader of the Opposition to the shadow Foreign Secretary to find a complete gulf in their view on the very matter that the hon. Lady raises. The Leader of the Opposition claims to be in favour of the nuclear deterrent, and the shadow Foreign Secretary voted against it. The most consistent thing that our friends and allies, as well as our foes around the world need to know is that the UK is committed to the defence of this country and to our nuclear defence.

[Mr Speaker]

We do have to make sure that when we say how people voted, we are correct.

[Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con) [V]]

There is much to commend in this statement from the Prime Minister, but I am saddened to hear that we will be balancing the books on the backs of the poor. We are devastating the amount of money going to Yemen and Sudan, to mention just two countries where children, mothers and whole families are devastated by what they have to face. We are also aware that although funding is being decided, VSO currently does not know when that funding is coming. If it does not have funding by the end of this month, it will have to end its covid-19 response programme in 18 countries, leaving 4.5 million people without support. That decision cannot easily be reversed, so will the Prime Minister tell the House whether VSO will have some money to continue, and if not, when that funding decision will be taken?

--- Later in debate ---

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

—[Inaudible.]

[Mr Speaker]

We cannot hear. We will come back to Ms Eshalomi.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con) [V]]

May I welcome the Prime Minister’s putting diplomacy at the very heart of the integrated review? With new resources going into the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, do we not have an independent Britain which still needs to be at the heart of multilateral democracy, multilateral institutions and multilateral diplomacy around the world? That includes conflict prevention and conflict resolution.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Prime Minister]

This is the country that spends the most on the global vaccine alliance. This is the country that spends £548 million on COVAX and £1.6 billion on Gavi. We lead the world in health protection, in tackling conflict and poverty, in championing female education around the world. I really think international observers who come across Britons around the world working in these fields would simply not recognise the discussion and debate that they are hearing today in the House of Commons. They know that this is a country that is massively committed to the welfare of the poorest and neediest in the world and will remain so.

[Mr Speaker]

Let us go back to Florence Eshalomi.

[Florence Eshalomi [V]]

Many of my constituents are concerned that much of this review seems to have prioritised the global projection of hard power. The Government have chosen to cut our aid budget to countries in need, such as Syria and Yemen, and this will have serious knock-on effects. My constituent wrote to me and said:

“Britain has a good track record in recognising the crucial role that aid has in alleviating poverty and enhancing health equity.”

Does the Prime Minister agree that this Government’s cuts to aid will not just let the world’s poorest down, but make it more difficult for the Government to achieve their foreign policy objectives and maintain Britain’s global moral authority?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Prime Minister]

As the House has heard many times, it is up to a competent court to determine whether genocide has taken place. We have consistently called out what has happened in Xinjiang, and what continues to happen. As for the use of Magnitsky sanctions, actually they have been used by this Government against Russia for what it did, and by the way, at that time, Labour Front Benchers, including the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras, were sitting like great squatting Buddhas, immobile, while the then Labour leader was effectively endorsing the line from the Kremlin.

[Mr Speaker]

I think we need to be careful about what allegations we are making.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con) [V]]

“Global Britain” remains the buzzword, and our armed forces have a key role to play with the integrated review. With that in mind, and given the many responsibilities that my right hon. Friend has committed to, can he reassure me that he will expand the Army to 100,000 as our chief ally, the US, has recommended, rather than see it wither on the vine to 72,000 by cutting recruiting, thereby avoiding redundancies?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that the Army, including reserves, will be over 100,000, but it is the duty of this Government to take the tough decisions that are necessary to modernise our armed forces as well. That is why we are investing £24 billion and undoing some of the mistakes that I am afraid were made by the previous Labour Government.

[Mr Speaker]

I will now suspend the House for two minutes in order for the necessary arrangements to be made for the next business.