National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015

Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (LD)]

My Lords—

[Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, it is the turn of the Cross-Benchers.

[Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield]

My Lords, I commend the Government for the clarity and realism with which they have displayed the threats in the document before us this evening in the three tiers. However, I have looked very carefully at the ingredients of the three tiers and I can find in none of them a very possible and real threat to our kingdom—the very configuration of the United Kingdom—which is the possibility that, two SDSRs on, if we are having this debate in 2025, we may be in a kingdom outside the European Union and shorn of Scotland. Whatever noble Lords think about that as a prospect, it would be a first-order change in our strategic position in the world and there is not a whiff of it in this document. Does the Minister agree that sometimes the first people we have to defend ourselves against are ourselves?