Ukraine (International Relations and Defence Committee Report)
Lord De Mauley Excerpts(1 week, 1 day ago)
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Lord De Mauley
That the Grand Committee takes note of the Report from the International Relations and Defence Committee Ukraine: a wake-up call (1st Report, HL Paper 10).
Lord De Mauley (Con)
My Lords, I speak today as chairman of the International Relations and Defence Committee to introduce our report, Ukraine: A Wake-up Call. The report provides a sobering, and now urgent, assessment of the implications of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine for United Kingdom defence policy and the broader security of Europe. Before delving into the detail of the report, I thank the members of the committee, including my predecessor as chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Ashton of Hyde; the excellent clerk and staff, who put a huge amount of work into the report over the summer; and the witnesses who appeared before the committee.
The findings in our report are stark. The war in Ukraine has shattered the assumptions underpinning western defence thinking since the end of the Cold War. This is indeed a wake-up call not just for us but for the whole of Europe. The war has exposed critical gaps in our capabilities and the fragility of our defence industrial base—all because of our assumption, now revealed as wrong, that future conflicts would be short and limited.
The first conclusion of the report is that NATO deterrence failed. President Putin calculated that the West lacked the political will and the military capability to stop him. This calculation, tragically, was in part correct: our deterrence posture has been found wanting. We must rebuild deterrence through improved military capability, clear messaging and a united front with our allies. This has taken on a new significance following the rift created by the heated exchanges between President Trump and President Zelensky last week and the continuing developments this week.
Another significant development since the publication of our report has been the Prime Minister’s recent announcement of an increase in defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027 and the ambition to increase it to 3% in the next Parliament. While welcome, our report concluded that 2.5% of GDP may not be enough to meet the UK’s growing defence needs or plug existing gaps. Subsequent events have underlined that point.
This leads me to the current state of our Armed Forces. The Army in particular has already shrunk to its smallest size since the Napoleonic era, and it is questionable whether it will be able to field sufficient fighting forces beyond an initial deployment. The Prime Minister has said that he is willing to put troops on the ground in Ukraine to help guarantee the country’s security. While I fully understand his objective, it is difficult to imagine how the Army would be able to maintain a credible deterrent force in Ukraine, for any extended length of time—let alone fulfil its other obligations, which seem likely to grow—without increasing in size significantly.
Crucially, we must rebuild the appeal of military service to the next generation. We also need to revitalise our reserves. Ukraine has shown that well-trained and properly equipped reserve forces can, literally, make all the difference. Ours are woefully underfunded. We must ensure that they are ready to mobilise at scale, when needed, and that numbers are boosted so that they can also be deployed to protect critical national infrastructure at home.
Critical national infrastructure deserves a specific mention, because the experience of Ukraine provides a clear warning to the United Kingdom: Russia has relentlessly attacked Ukrainian energy systems and communication networks. We are already witnessing a troubling shift towards more aggressive hybrid tactics being deployed, in the UK and nearby, by Russia and others. We must up our game in countering hybrid attacks. If not, our enemies will realise that they can get away with it, placing us in an ever more vulnerable position.
Defence is not just about soldiers and capabilities; it is also about cybersecurity, the security of our supply chains and resilience within our communities. The concept of total defence, long practised by nations such as Sweden and Finland, must be adopted here. We must move beyond the notion that defence is the sole responsibility of the military. Total defence entails a high state of readiness by both the state and society to defend themselves in case of threat of war, crisis or natural disaster.
I will now speak in my personal capacity rather than as a member of the committee. There is a little-known but influential organisation, which is critically poised to play a leading role in helping the United Kingdom achieve a total defence stance, called the Council of the Reserve Forces and Cadets Association. I declare an interest in that I am currently its chairman. The CRFCA has strong and embedded relations throughout the United Kingdom, with local and devolved Administration politicians, business leaders and opinion influencers through the extensive nationwide membership of the Reserve Forces and cadets’ associations. The RFCAs are the only defence-related organisations that reach all the regions and devolved nations, and the membership connects with all sectors and communities in society.
The Minister recently commented in answer to a Written Question:
“The RFCA has an extensive volunteer membership … bringing a wide breadth of expertise and community links. The RFCAs’ extensive network of volunteer members, based within communities across the UK, enable the RFCAs to … connect to society … While the number of hours volunteered is not formally recorded either for the volunteer membership or non-executive board members, it is estimated that this figure is around 69,000 hours per year”.
In answer to another, he said:
“The vast majority of active members make no claims, reflecting their sense of service and deep connection with the UK’s Reserve Forces and Cadets”.
There is a move afoot in the Ministry of Defence to dispense with this organisation, first created by Haldane in 1908 when it was realised that, to be efficient, while command and training of the Reserve Forces should be centralised, conversely, the raising and administration of those forces could be efficient only if decentralised, this being deemed essential to the encouragement of local effort and the development of local resources in time of peace. This is what the RFCAs, the successor to what were the county associations, provide today with their wide membership; they are local in origin and situation, cognisant of local capabilities and requirements and thoroughly integrated into their communities.
In its stead, the MoD wishes to create a non-departmental public body with one centralised board of paid non-executive directors with little or no experience of, or commitment to, reserves or cadets. There is a significant risk that this, as well as the proposal that the current membership should be retained merely in an advisory or associate capacity, will disenfranchise the members when they recognise that they will have little ability to have a say on how central government directives are implemented in the regions from which they come and on the support they give to sustain the reserve.
At a stroke, the MoD will have lost a body of natural supporters with deep links into the society of their communities and regions, just as the strategic defence review may well place a greater reliance on the reserve for the total defence of the United Kingdom. To quote a former commanding officer tasked with raising a new reserve battalion: “My experience of raising a new battalion has convinced me that the associations are essential to look after the interests of the Reserve Forces as a whole, not just a harmless institution that has to be humoured. It therefore concerns me that there is a view among some civil servants and regular officers of the MoD that the RFCAs are anachronistic and expensive bodies which work against the established chain of command and are positively detrimental to the ‘one Army’ concept”. The RFCAs are here to help and can make a significant contribution to the defence of the nation.
To return to the committee’s report, yet another urgent lesson from Ukraine concerns our defence industrial base. Decades of budget cuts and reduced industrial capacity since the end of the Cold War have left the UK’s defence industry unprepared for high-intensity prolonged conflict. Our procurement processes are too slow and risk averse. Ukraine has, by necessity, embraced a model of rapid innovation, working hand in glove with commercial technology companies and adapting in real time on the battlefield. This is the agility we need. To achieve this, the Government must rebuild trust with the defence industry, whose leaders repeatedly told us that it needs clear, long-term commitments—not shifting goalposts—to enable it to scale up production.
We must also broaden our partner base, including those we may not traditionally think of as military suppliers, in order to provide the cutting-edge capabilities our Armed Forces require. Recent events have underscored the critical need to strengthen our industrial engagement with our European partners. We found that increasing collaboration in integrated air and missile defence should be high on the list of priorities for the Government. The report also highlights the importance of nurturing partnerships. Of course, it did not predict the schism in the western alliance we are witnessing right now, but that only serves to make it even clearer that the UK Government must now use all their diplomatic skills—as I think the Prime Minister seems to be doing, and I commend his efforts—to ensure the unity of the western alliance in support of UK and European security efforts.
Finally, we must acknowledge an uncomfortable truth: the UK is a medium-sized regional power. This may not be a bad thing, but it requires hard choices to be made and a realistic narrative from the Government about what our Armed Forces can deliver. Our report calls for a coherent model that leverages technology, industry, the reserves, diplomacy and society itself to rebuild our deterrence posture and make sure that it is credible. This should be at the heart of the strategic defence review, and the Government must ensure that their response to the review is swift and provides a clear road map for how this can all be achieved. The hard-earned lessons from the war in Ukraine are our wake-up call, and the time to act is now. I beg to move.
Lord De Mauley (Con)
My Lords, I am sure that noble Lords all want to rush away and catch their trains, so I will only be a couple of minutes. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. There was an unusual convergence of views among the vast majority of those who spoke, which I think should be encouraging to His Majesty’s Government and to us all. I do not have time to give credit to all noble Lords who have spoken but, save for the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, and my noble friend Lord Balfe, there was little I heard that I disagreed with. Even with them, I am sure there are things that we can find to agree on.
The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, and others, concurred that increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP will not be enough. As we said in the report, it is not just that we spend more, but that we spend more astutely. I agreed strongly with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, on the need for the MoD to sort out recruitment. The Minister told us a bit about how that will be done.
My noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford spoke specifically about reserve numbers. He is right that it would not be difficult to increase reserve numbers dramatically, and we should. I will not go into detail, but I have the experience of recruiting reservists based on 50 years of close involvement. I joined the Territorial Army in April 1975, and I am the honorary colonel of the reserve unit that I joined then. I know exactly what needs to be done. It does not need to be hugely expensive. I am available on call to the Minister. I beg him not to rely entirely on the counsel of regular soldiers in the MoD; I respect them hugely, but point out that reservists’ motivations are different to those of regular servicepeople who have shown, time after time, that they misunderstand the motivations and needs of reservists.
The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, gently chided us, pointing out that we forecasted a gradual shift of US priorities. I hope the Grand Committee will forgive us our optimism. I think the views expressed by most noble Lords today suggest that the vast majority of the report is, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said, as valid today as it was when we wrote it. I thank the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, and my noble friends Lord Soames, Lady Fraser and Lady Goldie, for echoing my concerns about the future of the RFCAs. I say to the Minister that we want to help; please do not tie one hand behind our back.
I thank the Minister for his response to the debate. I am pleased that we agree on so much. It is often said that we always plan and prepare to fight the last war, rather than the next. We must break that mould.
Strategic Defence Review
Lord De Mauley Excerpts(5 months ago)
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Lord De Mauley (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, for bringing this important debate today. I thank him particularly as a former member of the International Relations and Defence Committee—which I now have the honour of chairing—for his contributions to the committee’s work. I also declare my interest as chairman of the Council of the Reserve Forces and Cadets Association.
The strategic defence review provides a welcome opportunity for the Government to rethink their approach to defence. I will focus my remarks largely on the role that Reserve Forces could play in that.
Over the last couple of years, the global security environment has changed dramatically. As other noble Lords have said, we are witnessing a period of growing instability. Russia’s illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has been a turning point for European security and has raised serious concerns about Russian intentions elsewhere in Europe. In the Middle East, the conflict between Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah threatens to escalate into a wider regional war, potentially drawing in Iran. Tensions in the South China Sea are escalating, and a wave of coups in the Sahel is plunging millions into physical and economic insecurity. This raises the question as to whether our Armed Forces are equipped to deal with this new reality.
The International Relations and Defence Committee recently published a report, which the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton, referred to, and which we have submitted to the SDR team, on the implications of the war in Ukraine for UK defence. We found that years of strategic neglect have left our forces stretched thin and limited in size. We are underprepared to respond to the worsening global threat environment, and in particular to meet the very real and growing threat from Russia.
Our Armed Forces lack the necessary mass, resilience and coherence to sustain prolonged, high-intensity conflict at scale. This of course also weakens their deterrent effect. If we are to prevent conflict with Russia, deterrence is our best insurance. After all, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine itself represented a failure of NATO’s deterrence posture. We must therefore restore the credibility of our deterrence posture, which has to include, as other noble Lords have said, increasing troop numbers.
Yet even apart from the well-documented challenges of recruitment and retention, increasing troop numbers comes at a significant cost. This is where my own submission to the SDR comes in; the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, and the noble Lord, Lord West, may be glad to hear that it is a tri-service proposition. Ukraine has shown that recruitment of the rank and file of a second or third echelon force need not be the problem. It recruited half a million from a population about two-thirds the size of ours in six months in 2022. What it could not do was provide the experienced people to train them. We, and other nations, had to step in and help.
My concept, in simple terms, is based loosely on the very successful Home Service Force of the early 1990s. It is that we should utilise some of the quite large number of experienced people who have recently left the regular and Reserve Forces to form cadres of about 50, as the nucleus each of a battalion-sized unit, 500 strong, the bulk—the other 450—of which would be recruited only at a time chosen by the Government when the threat level warranted it. I hope the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, and the noble Lord, Lord West, will forgive me for using army language, but I do it for simplicity. The cadres would need, say, 10 to 15 days of training a year to maintain and update their skills. I ask only that this concept—the submission goes into considerably more detail—is given thorough consideration, and I would of course be delighted to discuss the detail with the SDR team and/or the Minister.
I turn to our Reserve Forces as they are currently constituted. As my committee’s inquiry into Ukraine revealed, their capability has been eroded over recent years. Successive Governments have failed to articulate a clear vision for how the reserves can effectively supplement and support our Armed Forces. It is time to reverse this. Our report says that the Reserve Forces, whose numbers have declined over recent years—largely because of reduced funding and a broken recruiting system—need a co-ordinated approach, including addressing clarity of purpose, demanding training, appropriate logistical and administrative support, equipment and proper funding. I know that the Reserve Forces and cadets associations have specific attributes that are able to help, and they stand ready to help.
I ask the Minister for his assurance that the Government will give due consideration to enhancing the role of the reserves. What plans are there, if any, to respond to the recommendations made by General Sir Nick Carter in his Reserve Forces review?
This is not just about troop numbers; the whole of society has a role to play in defence. We need to move beyond the idea that defence is solely the military’s responsibility, become better at conveying the significance of national security to the wider public and set out how they can contribute to a more resilient society. The volunteer reserves are part of the answer, but the Government must also draw the wider public into a conversation about defence—including the potential for higher, and especially better and cleverer, defence spending—as well as greater civic responsibility.
One useful lever available would be to involve the signatories to the Armed Forces covenant, especially the gold award holders, who ought to have a predisposition to help. There needs to be a greater sense of urgency and awareness about the risks facing the UK. An honest dialogue about the country’s vulnerabilities and what is required to keep it safe is essential. The Government must develop a compelling value proposition that resonates with citizens, emphasising the importance of national security in their daily lives and moving beyond the notion that defence is solely the military’s responsibility. There is much we can learn from our Scandinavian partners and their concept of total defence, which integrates civilians into national security. The Government should build on this framework to create a similarly compelling vision for the UK.
We are at a crossroads. The choices we make now will determine whether we can restore our nation’s credibility and remain an influential player on the global stage. Alternatively, we risk the fate of being relegated to reactive crisis management rather than playing a proactive role in preventing conflicts. The war in Ukraine has moved this debate from theoretical speculation to urgent reality. Complacency in defence is no longer an option.