Ukraine (International Relations and Defence Committee Report)

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I was not a member of this excellent committee, but I think that this is an absolutely admirable report that is amazingly timely, very important and, indeed, a wake-up call to us all. Although I was not a member, I take a little slice of pride as a godparent of the committee because the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and I had to push the authorities very hard to get the committee set up, which we eventually did, and it has been an outstanding success. This is one of the best reports it has ever produced. I have three points to add, quickly, to the excellent introduction from the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, in which he covered most of the things I want to say.

First, we should note what he said about reserves. At the moment, our reserves, which used to be called territorials, number 34,280—although I am not quite sure about that; there is a lot of dispute about the number. That is on top of the 74,000 regular Army troops, making the total strength of the Army, Navy and Air Force 134,000, or whatever it is. That can be enlarged very quickly. People forget how rapidly, in the 1930s, the reserves went from being held at about 200,000 into the millions, and then merged totally into the Army. All that happened in a matter of weeks. I cannot claim to remember in the case of my father, because I was two years old at the time, but I am told that he had about a fortnight to transform from being a retired regular back into a territorial, and then went into full combat organisation and was in the desert within a month of the war being announced on 3 September. The whole speed of this thing can be greatly improved, as the report rightly says, and to have bureaucracy slowing it all down is a lot of nonsense. We need to look at that very clearly; the call-up can be much quicker. That is my first point.

Secondly, this report is so good because it brings home that the whole issue is much wider than the picture books and child versions of what warfare is about. We think about the trenches and the front line, and it is absolutely true about the drones that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, just eloquently mentioned. The sheer numbers—the report mentioned 2 million—that Ukraine alone is mobilising can really change the whole nature and drive people back into the trenches like in 1914. I am told that, within 200 miles on either side of the front line, and certainly on the Russian side, anyone who comes out of a trench for a smoke—or, dare I say, a pee—is instantly spotted and probably dead within three or four minutes. This is the changed nature of the whole pattern of the front line.

An even bigger nature change is that it is not just about the front line. Obviously, civilians are targeted, rather as Hermann Göring did with trying to smash all our cities—he failed. Now, of course, Putin has far longer-range rockets of far greater accuracy. All the utilities are targeted, and we want to watch, know and learn from the Minister to what extent we are developing new air defences and missile repellents for, for instance, our power stations. If they can be taken out, and if electricity can be taken out of the system, I am told that, within three days, civil chaos and collapse of morale happens behind the lines. Of course, it is the same lesson that Germany in particular learned in 1918: if morale collapses behind the lines, it spreads to a collapse in morale in the Armed Forces as well. The Russians are well aware of that and are using that strategy in Ukraine at this moment. The concept of having total defence against this kind of warfare, total defence in terms of mobilising people on a far larger scale—regulars and territorials—and having more combat-trained troops ready to add to the regular troops is vital.

On my third point, I differ a little, I think, from the report. The report says that it is all about Europe and how we get together with our European partners. It is not; it is a global issue. There are principles—and fears—that go right through Asia, where all the growth of military, civil and domestic economy will take place over the next 30 years. Japan is extremely nervous about any kind of peace that we negotiate in Europe that gives in to Russian force. They say that that would immediately trigger Xi to have a go at suffocating Taiwan, which would lead to Pacific war and then to world war. We have, but sometimes neglect, our great range of Commonwealth network friends, right through Asia and Africa. They are just as concerned and need to be mobilised just as much. In fact, if you add it up, we probably have more friends—you might say they are soft-power friends and their Governments do not always agree—around the world, outside Europe, than the United States has. The United States might be losing friends at the moment, becoming not America the beautiful, but America the feared, in terms of what it will do next. We need America, but it also needs us.

My fear is that Putin will outwit Trump and offer a peace that looks good to start with but in fact can last only 10 minutes. If he does not do that, he may even offer the kind of peace that leads to the conquest of Ukraine by the Russians. That would of course be the worst of all worlds.