Strategic Defence Review
Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)
My Lords, when I spoke in the foreign policy and defence debate on the gracious Speech a few weeks ago, I welcomed the Government’s intention to hold a strategic defence review and to do so quickly. I remarked on the nature of the three defence reviews of which I had the most intimate knowledge—those of 2010, 2015 and 2020—and offered that those three reviews had three things in common.
First, they all had a superficially compelling narrative, one that gave a fairly sobering analysis of the increasing risks to the stability of the world order and the growing diversity of both the defence and security challenges to that order. The second thing was the reality of government austerity. All three reviews were ultimately the product of financial, rather than geostrategic, reality. The third thing, therefore, was that all three reviews delivered a delusion that various alchemies—modernisation, efficiency, technological superiority and fusion doctrine—somehow facilitated an ability to take acceptable risk because, in the end, everything would turn out all right and be okay.
The result of these serial delusions has now been exposed. The International Relations and Defence Committee’s recent report on the lessons for UK defence from Ukraine, brutally but fairly, lays bare the somewhat alarming state of not just our Armed Forces but the machinery of government, the defence industry and wider society’s ability to deter or sustain a conventional war at scale.
The defence review currently under way cannot, therefore, come quickly enough, but it needs to be a review quite unlike its most recent forerunners. It cannot be a cost-capped exercise in public and self-delusion; rather, it must be an honest exercise in self-scrutiny and geopolitical reality. I realise that, ultimately, money will have to be a factor. As long as the review has integrity, it does not necessarily lead to an uncomfortable outcome. Indeed, it might be quite a liberating exercise. To me, the outcome of the review should be a justified choice from which all else flows.
The choice is the strategic one of what role we, the United Kingdom, want to play in the world over the next 10 to 20 years. I do not think that this is a simplistic choice between doing everything or nothing. The nation would not understand or tolerate a wholly extreme departure from our current aspirations. Rather, it is a more nuanced choice between two more subtle options—but it is a very distinct choice.
The context is the increasingly darkening world in which we no longer have a monopoly on the ownership of truth. It is a world in which China, Russia, North Korea and Iran are increasingly mutually self-supporting and in which many of the countries of the poorly defined global South are, at best, undecided as to whom they favour.
One choice is to double down on what we have traditionally aspired to be as a nation—a global leader. It would involve us in a meaningful leadership role in NATO, necessitate a significant investment in restoring conventional deterrence in Europe, require a significant investment in resilience, necessitate the recreation of the mechanisms for generating reserves, involve continued or even greater investment in cyberspace and emerging technologies, and involve us in some more demanding global roles of which AUKUS and GCAP are perhaps the capability forerunners. This would be the more expensive option and would bring its own forms of risk and benefit on the global stage.
A second option is more modest but, some may argue, more rational. It would involve coming to terms with a reduced global ambition and accepting that there are limits to where we envisage projecting force. It would focus on the regional threat from Russia and, more specifically, it might choose to exploit the mutual synergies and interests we enjoy with the nations of the Joint Expeditionary Force. Our maritime and air forces could form the core of a meaningful contribution to the security of the north Atlantic and northern Europe. It might recognise that expeditionary land forces, at scale, looks a highly questionable ambition for a nation that cannot man an army of 72,000 and that has no current mechanisms to mobilise a reserve.
But we do have the ability to exploit space and cyber special force operations, and we retain a practised understanding of high-level command and control. This more modest option would also need to recognise our deficiencies in layered anti-missile defence and offensive missile capability. The latter may provide the necessary escalatory gearing to restore credibility to our strategic deterrent.
I do not want to give the impression that this second option necessarily generates any savings against the current or anticipated budget. It would, however, demand some markedly different capability choices. My point is that the capability choices would be the result of the decisions about our strategic ambition. I fear that, in the past, capability choices have predetermined the policy aspiration, which must be the wrong way around.
My plea is for a review of integrity, not one based on hope, boosterism or doctrinal alchemy. I would certainly be cautious of an alchemy based on the idea of an integrated force fighting an unfair war on the presumption of perpetual technological advantage. To me, such an outcome has some of the hallmarks of a delusion in waiting.
Ministry of Defence: Expenditure
Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts(4 months ago)
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Lord Coaker (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for his important question. Whether it is aircraft carriers and planes, the number of soldiers, technology or other capabilities, you have to have the capability you need to meet the threat that you face. My noble friend is right to point that out. That is the fundamental principle that underlies the review of the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, and why he will be working closely with others. I say to all noble Lords that it is an open review and anyone is welcome to contribute to it.
Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)
Does the Minister agree that, at this moment, the Government should remain open-minded on all areas of discretionary defence spending that do not directly contribute to keeping Ukraine in the fight and restoring the credibility of deterrence in Europe?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
Of course we should remain open to any capability that is necessary. The noble and gallant Lord makes a very important point. We are open to all these considerations and factors in the defence of Ukraine, but also in the wider security picture that we face across the globe. No doubt that will be something that the review takes forward. I would welcome the noble and gallant Lord’s contribution to that review, to make the very point that he has just made.
King’s Speech
Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts(4 months ago)
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Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)
My Lords, it might be judged somewhat risky for a general to follow the valedictory speech of a Bishop. Be reassured: right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester is the cousin of the late Field Marshal Lord Peter Inge, who was a Green Howard, as is my noble friend Lord Dannatt and—you guessed it—as am I. It is truly remarkable that a single county regiment can claim three Members of this House and, incidentally, three Constables of the Tower at the Tower of London. We always knew that we had influence in very high places, and John has a special place in our hearts.
Bishop John has been a remarkable servant of this House and wider society. At Durham, he was a chemist as well as a thespian. He trained as a teacher at Keble, Oxford. Dangerously, he has a degree in systemic theology and is a doctor of philosophy. He was ordained at Chichester and became the chaplain at Harrow. He is one of the longest-serving diocesan bishops in the Church of England. He is affectionately known for his great sense of humour and his sartorial dress: a fascination with Edwardian frock coats, episcopal toppers and Panama hats—sometimes other people’s. He has a passion for people, cycling and international affairs.
As he said, he has served the House for the last 12 years, speaking on international development, the childcare system, hospices, schools, assisted suicide, migration, asylum and much else. A few short words cannot begin to do justice to a remarkable man, but I know that the House will join me in thanking him for his service and wishing him well for the future.
Noble Lords
Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)
I turn to what I want to say in this debate. My time is now short, so I will concentrate on one aspect of the gracious Speech: the Government’s welcome intention to conduct a defence review.
I will offer a view on what sort of a review this needs to be, because it needs to be very different from the last three. The SDSRs of 2010, 2015 and 2020 had a number of things in common. First, they had an elegant narrative regarding the state of the world, which was increasingly alarming in its portrayal of the growing diversity and intensity of danger, threat and instability in the world. Secondly, there was the reality of government austerity and the imperative to deliver national security to an ever more constrained budget; and, thirdly, to me they were all exercises in a delusionary reassurance to the nation.
Each of those SDSRs produced some form of alchemy that appeared to make an acceptable level of national security somehow affordable. In 2010, it was defence reform. In 2015, it was defence efficiency. In 2020, it was technological advantage. Somewhere in the mix was fusion doctrine.
I offer that all three reviews produced the common and indulgent delusion that our Armed Forces were fit for purpose and the country was safe. I bore witness to many defences of this delusion even in this House. I fear that those defences came close to a failure of honesty both to Parliament and to society—a failure that, to our collective shame, we were all party to. We asked our questions, made our speeches, felt that we had done our bit and sat down.
The result is now extremely concerning. The Armed Forces of this country are most definitely not fit for purpose; they are completely hollowed out and, even more concerning, the men and women of those Armed Forces are now voting with their feet. Just as concerning, government has no truly effective narrative with society that alerts it to the dangers that exist and the risks that we are running. It seems as though so long as we somehow spend 2.5% of GDP on defence, all will be well, and the only really substantive question is when we reach that figure.
I say this in such stark terms to make the point that we cannot afford another SDSR that is a protracted and largely academic exercise that is wholly constrained by issues of cost, reflects a 20-year vision on the size and shape of the Armed Forces, and employs delusional rhetoric to conceal the realities of clear and present danger. Rather, we need a review that is clear about the dangers that we face, our ambition to meet them, the true state of our military capabilities, and the realistic resources required.
However, the review must do something even more important: it must accelerate the actions needed to win a war that we are already in. If we move, and NATO moves, with sufficient pace, we can still win this war without having to fight it. Ukraine does not have that luxury.
If I were to offer three priorities for action, they would be, first, to do whatever is necessary to keep Ukraine in the fight. We must not delude ourselves that Ukraine can win in military terms, but they can help to buy time for the second imperative: the re-establishment of conventional deterrence in Europe. NATO has a strategic deficit in deterrent credibility. We must be a leader and exemplar to make good this deficit. Thirdly, for pity’s sake, we must invest in our people. It is our people, not shiny platforms, that are our strategic edge.
I could go on, but the sole point I wanted to make is one of principle. We are at a point in history when we need an SDSR that urgently balances ambition, capability and resources, and one that is focused primarily on the short-term imperative to defeat, hopefully by deterrence, those who seek to destroy the values we hold dear.