Defence Modernisation Programme

Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I hope noble Lords will agree that I have always been open with the House about the stresses on the defence budget, not least those arising from the EU referendum. In particular, we have been quite open about the fact that the exchange rate has impacted our procurement budget, so I cannot agree with the noble Lord that we have tried to obscure the strain on our budget. I am not aware that there is the prospect of any in-year money, but I take issue with his word “crisis”. Speaking to my finance colleagues in the Ministry of Defence, it is pretty clear that we can get through this year, albeit with some temporary cuts to training which I agree are regrettable. But we can get through this year in good shape. The decisions that we need to take affect next year and beyond.

[Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield (CB)]

My Lords, I warmly welcome the winnowing out of this exercise from the Cabinet Office’s capability review, but could the noble Earl explain the difference between a defence review and a defence modernisation programme?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, as I tried to explain a little earlier, a fully fledged defence review would look very like the exercise that we conducted in 2015: going back to basics on what threats we face, what our ambitions are as a country and what we need to do to deter those threats and to provide for those ambitions. This modernisation programme takes the fundamentals of the SDSR as read, because we believe them to be credible. It is to decide what capabilities we now need, in the face of intensifying threats around the world, to counter those threats in a way that ensures that we have a sustainable programme going forward.