British Armed Forces: Global Britain

Lord Dannatt Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Dannatt (CB) [V]]

My Lords, some might thing that the UK, in claiming for itself the title “global Britain”, was being more than a little pretentious. The challenge is to substantiate the claim, and the route to that substantiation is the gaining of influence in the world, a reasonable ambition in the post-Brexit era. The real influence comes through a combination of the UK’s hard and soft power, a true integration of the skills of our diplomats, the strength and versatility of our Armed Forces and the correct focusing of our international development budget.

While I applaud the recent and significant increase in our defence budget, a welcome addition to our hard power, I am utterly dismayed—along with former Prime Minister Theresa May, the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury and others—by the decrease from 0.7% to 0.5% of GDP in our international development budget. In the overall context of the Chancellor’s fiscal challenge, this £4 billion saving is tiny, but the damage that it does to the global Britain aspiration and our international reputation is huge. Would the Minister like to comment on whether this truly awful decision will either be reversed shortly or maintained solely for one year?