Strategic Defence Review 2025

Lord Dannatt Excerpts

Friday 18th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dannatt (CB)]

My Lords, I am conscious that I am about the halfway point in our debate and therefore I risk some repetition, although repetition lends emphasis. I add my welcome to the majority of the 62 recommendations in the strategic defence review but emphasise that without sufficient and timely funding, the review will not make the impact to which the authors aspire and which the nation needs.

I believe we universally agree that the current funding plans are woefully inadequate and threaten to deliver the dire security outcomes that the review sets out to avoid. Irrespective of the many other funding pressures the Chancellor is juggling, this review must be fully funded to 3.5% of GDP by 2034 at the latest and not deferred until sometime after 2035.

At risk of further repetition, I remind your Lordships of the key figures relating to the late 1930s, a period of history with worrying analogies to today. In 1935 we were spending less than 3% on defence and failed either to deter or appease Hitler. In 1939, when the war broke out, that figure jumped up to 19%. In 1940, when we were fighting for our very survival, the figure was a staggering 46%. That is the cost of having to fight a war. Surely the Minister would agree that it is much better to pay the correct premium for capable Armed Forces now and insure ourselves against future war. Deterrence must be our strategic objective.

Funding is the big issue, but so too is our agility to respond quickly to new circumstances. If the war in Ukraine has taught us anything, it is that war drives the pace of innovation in ever-accelerating cycles. Changes on or above the battlefield, change on or under the surface of the sea and change within the characteristics of new threats are highly dynamic, but they do not amount only to embracing new technologies as the means for the future. Mass matters, whether it is masses of drones, masses of firepower or masses of soldiers on the ground. As the bloody front lines of Ukraine testify, quantity has a quality of its own. This applies equally to the quantum and timing of change in the defence-industrial sector, as well as in the zones of conflict. We must produce more and do it quickly.

An aspect of the SDR that is particularly to be welcomed is its emphasis on national preparedness and resilience, as a response not just to direct confrontation but to the kaleidoscope of threats in the grey zone. But, as president and founding chairman of the National Emergencies Trust, I am alarmed to hear that the timetable for delivering a more resilient nation mirrors the timelines of spending on hard aspects of defence—not until the mid-2030s. I am told that resilience planning is focusing on the nation being prepared to face new threats domestically—but not before the mid-2030s. I fear that in this area too, the no-money/spending tail is wagging the threat-response dog. Can the Minister comment on the timetable for strengthening our national resilience?

Of course, plans, when made, can be accelerated either for deterrence from threats abroad or for resilience to threats at home. But what intellectual justification can there be for not increasing our capability at home and abroad until the mid-2030s? I am not alone in believing it more likely that, following some form of ceasefire in Ukraine in the coming months, Vladimir Putin, with his armed forces reconstructed through the clear focus on his war economy and defence industry, will be in a position to test NATO’s resolve in two or three years’ time—perhaps sooner but certainly before the mid-2030s. Putin may not want to occupy one or all of the Baltic states again, but a serious incursion into one or other would test the viability of NATO’s Article 5. Would we fight for Estonia, and with what consequences at home or abroad? More to the point, would the United States fight for Estonia? Vladimir Putin, that unreconstructed KGB colonel, would love nothing better than to drive a wedge into NATO and shatter the cohesion that defeated his beloved Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union in the late 1980s.

Our Prime Minister said earlier in the year that he was ready and willing to put British boots on the ground in Ukraine; he may have been willing, but can the Minister tell the House when we will be ready? I submit that not until the mid-2030s will be too late and that it represents a huge risk to our cherished way of life.