King’s Speech

Lord Empey Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, like other noble Lords, I congratulate our new Ministers on their appointments, but I also congratulate their immediate predecessors. We have been treated this morning to the menu in Annabel’s kitchen—the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie’s—but she cooked pretty good when she was on the other side of the House, so we have to thank her for her work.

They say that there is not a lot new under the sun. Well, I was just looking up what was happening in June 2010, when the previous Government came into office and launched their review under the guidance of the then Defence Secretary, Dr Fox. The release at the time said that this review was

“to deliver and support the sort of foreign policy this country needed”.

Dr Fox said that

“we would have to confront the harsh facts of the economic climate in which we operate”.

It went on to say that the SDR

“will make a clean break from the military and political mindset of Cold War politics”.

Really? Looking at what is happening in Ukraine, far from the Cold War, we are back to the Somme. Therefore, I think we really need a root-and-branch review of this. It is good news that our colleague here, the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, is leading that, but we also have to bear in mind that the new Chief of the Defence Staff told us that we needed to be prepared for war in three years, though he said that there is no inevitability.

I will focus on what the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, said at the beginning of her remarks about this mythical 2.5% or 2% or whatever. Who says that 2.5% is going to deliver? If you are going to do a strategic review, you do a strategic review. But if the envelope is already sitting there with your boundaries before you even start, it is not a strategic review. The question therefore is: what do we need in the modern world to defend ourselves? If we are starting—to coin a phrase—with the bat of the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, being broken in the pavilion before he gets on to the pitch, that would be the wrong direction of travel. I think we need to do it strategically, and to come back and tell people what it means. That may not be palatable—we all want to see certain elements of welfare improve, to see people looked after in health and education—but everybody agrees, and this Government and the previous Government agreed, that the key priority for every Government is the protection of their people, their way of life and our values. I hope that the review by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, will not be constrained simply by arithmetic. Let us see what it is. If the Government, Parliament and all of us decide not to take the advice and have a different mechanism for arithmetic, that is fine. But let us at least get it out there and open in public.

I also wanted to raise, and mentioned to the Minister in advance, one local issue—I suppose all politics is local. My hometown, Belfast, has the Harland & Wolff shipyard. It is not the business side of that arrangement that I want to focus on but the infrastructure side. The only other alternative that we depend on for a lot of our repairs is at Rosyth, in Fife. If that is overwhelmed with demand or damaged by an enemy, where do we go?

I ask the Minister to let us know that the Government are focused on the fact that Harland has a strategic asset and piece of infrastructure that is necessary to protect our country in the future, and that we are not going to be sidetracked by short-term business considerations. I wanted to make that point because not only are we concerned, obviously, about the jobs and the business, but the type of infrastructure in place there cannot instantly be replaced in any other location. We wish the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, well. I have little doubt that if the review can be done in the time available, that itself will be a bit of a breakthrough, but we simply do not have the time left.