Strategic Defence and Security Review

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, the topicality of the noble Earl’s debate today, coming as it does just a week after the publication of the 2015 SDSR, can surely not be in doubt. It is a delight, too, to have four maiden speeches in the debate, three of them from noble Lords for whom or with whom I have worked in the past. Not only is the debate timely, it provides an opportunity to consider the UK’s security posture at a time of greater international volatility and challenge than has been the case for many decades. Recent trends of a drift towards a new world disorder and away from the new world order which some mistakenly predicted would follow the end of the Cold War are too numerous to require listing. The Government’s commitment to,

“work with our allies and partners to strengthen, adapt and extend the rules-based international order and its institutions, enabling further participation of growing powers”,

is therefore both welcome and overdue if that drift is to be challenged and reversed. It rightly recognises the extent to which Britain’s security extends beyond what could be called the classical formulation of the defence of the realm and requires a major collective effort, if it is to be achieved.

I shall focus my remarks on chapter 5 of the SDSR, entitled “Project our global influence”, and within it on two issues—support for international peacekeeping and help to fragile states. First, in recent years, this country’s contribution to UN peacekeeping has become at best marginal, and at worst insignificant. That could be explained, even if it could not be entirely justified, by our preoccupation with operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. That can no longer be so. The demand for UN peacekeepers, both military and civilian, remains as high as ever, with more than 100,000 currently deployed worldwide, and that shows no signs of abating. We cannot reasonably expect others to fill the whole of that on their own. The decision in the SDSR to double the number of military personnel we contribute to UN peacekeeping operations is therefore welcome, but I hope that the Minister can say whether the baseline for doubling is the present deployed figure or the figure including the 300 additional personnel announced by the Prime Minister in October for South Sudan and Somalia. If it is the former, I have to say that the commitment is thin gruel.

Do the Government accept that what we need to try to do is to make a real contribution not only in numbers—those well-known boots on the ground—but in the provision of more sophisticated equipment to UN peacekeeping, and more sophisticated personnel who are required if modern peacekeeping is to be effective? I refer also to things like reconnaissance drones, helicopters, intelligence capacity and many other logistical aspects of these operations. Are we prepared to contribute such items in the future?

Secondly, I refer to the commitment to spend at least 50% of our aid budget on fragile and failing states. This recognition is really welcome, and I hope that the UN and the OECD’s DAC guidelines will now take better account of the reality that you cannot do development in fragile or failing states. You have to stabilise them first and then you can do development. I hope that we can make a real success of that commitment.

Finally and in conclusion, I congratulate the Government on a review that is generally both more realistic and more action-oriented than the 2010 review. Whether it will also be more effective will depend on its implementation. In recent years, a rather wide gap has opened up between the Government’s rhetoric on international development and their actual performance. The success of this review will be determined by whether that gap can be narrowed, and in that context I welcome the outcome of last night’s debate in the other place and the decision there to authorise the extension of our military operations against IS to include its heartland in eastern Syria, a decision that I believe was morally, legally and strategically the right one to take.