Strategic Defence Review 2025

Lord Craig of Radley Excerpts

Friday 18th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Craig of Radley (CB)]

My Lords, like other noble Lords, I commend the authors on a major and wide-embracing review. It looks well into the future, but draws the obvious conclusion that, without guaranteed funding and being strong enough with allies to deter aggression, our security is suspect. We are not safe—or, at least, we are not yet safe.

This must be the 12th major review I have been personally involved in, or followed from the sidelines. In 1952, a Chiefs of Staff defence review concentrated on the Soviet Russian threat, and how best to deter it in the depths of the Cold War. Here we are again, facing an angry Russia. It were spreading communism 75 years ago; today it chooses to fear and threaten NATO. In 1957, Defence Secretary Duncan Sandys was relying on the nuclear deterrent and had decided that the days of the manned fighter were rapidly ending. Getting it right is no easy task.

In the time available, I shall concentrate on two major issues covered in this review. The first is people. Recruitment has already been mentioned; it is showing improvement, but is well below needs. It must be sustained and enhanced over the whole of a decade and more. Recruitment success of course depends not only on getting the recruit signed up but on the training effort that can be made available over a decade-plus, and the trainers found to turn the recruits into front-line performers. Recruiting targets will take even longer to reach if there are many premature retirements. This aspect is well recognised by this review. All improvements that sustain retention must be fully funded. People are the sine qua non of the forces. It should be remembered that the senior military leaders of the 2050s and 2060s are today’s recent recruits, or are about to join. The calibre of that 2050s and 2060s leadership will depend on the ability to retain and reward the most able of these new arrivals at every stage of their career.

Various proposals, both in this review and in the 2023 Haythornethwaite one, will be considered, but the respect for and status of rank, as well as special rates of pay, must not be forgotten. The present pay review body for the Armed Forces needs new guidelines that will encourage and sustain full careers for the brightest, and that attract and retain the types and range of skills now so urgently required.

The second major issue, also fully recognised in this review, is the “broken” nature of defence procurement. Regrettably, it is a recurring issue in just about every single one of the reviews of the past 75 years. Each new Government have a review and usually point to the procurement failures of their predecessor. New procedures are devised and trumpeted, only to prove ultimately as inadequate as before.

While new procedures may well be necessary, lessons to be learnt from past failure do not seem to be so fully analysed. For me, it is the Treasury’s mandate to spend wisely and be averse to risk. This seems to be one reason why just about every expenditure is not solely the responsibility of the budget-holder; it must be signed off, and at its own measured pace, by the Treasury.

The experience of procuring and financing urgent operational requirements, shortening or bypassing the Treasury’s more measured tread, may have lessons for the future; but setting shortened all-MoD procurement procedure target dates—maybe proving unrealistic for cross-government approvals—is not likely on past experience to be the right answer.

The failure of past reviews to deliver on their authors’ proposals was largely due to an inability to finance and deliver to time on the outcomes proposed and originally accepted. I wish this review a better legacy.