Strategic Defence and Security Review

Lord Hutton of Furness Excerpts

Friday 12th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hutton of Furness]

My Lords, it is an enormous privilege to make my maiden speech in this debate today. Defence has always been an issue of very great interest to me. That began with listening to stories from my grandfathers, who served in the First World War, my great uncle, who served in the American Army in the First World War and my late father, who served in the Royal Marines in World War II.

That interest in defence matters developed very significantly when I became the Member of Parliament for Barrow-in-Furness nearly 20 years ago. As has been alluded to today, my former constituency has a unique association with the Royal Navy going back more than 150 years. The shipyard in Barrow built the first of the Royal Navy submarines; today, it is completing the latest generation of nuclear attack submarines—the Astute class, which is a formidable addition to the Royal Navy.

The links with the armed services in my former constituency extend much wider than the Royal Navy. I am glad to say that there is a very strong Army tradition in my constituency, too. Initially, the local infantry regiment was the King's Own (Royal Lancaster Regiment), which saw service in the First World War and other, earlier conflicts along with the Border Regiment. Both those great regiments of the British Army are now unified in the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment.

Those who wear the uniform of our country render public service of the very highest kind. We have all noticed a rising tide of sympathy and support for our country’s Armed Forces. That is palpable and tangible. I personally believe that it owes a very great deal to the heroism, service and sacrifice of these young men and women in recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think that this rising tide of support for the men and women who serve our country in this way is a profoundly good thing. It has helped our Government to focus on ensuring that we stand by them and fully discharge the debt that we owe them all. However, I suspect that there is always more to be done in this area. The primary responsibility rests with government, but the role of the service charities is hugely important, too, because they give all of us as individual citizens a practical means to show our own appreciation for the service and sacrifice of Armed Forces personnel. During my time in this House, I want to focus on that in particular.

In this context, I am concerned, as I am sure are many other noble Lords, about the front-page news story in the Times this morning. I believe that this must be an unintended consequence of the Government’s decision to change the rules about how pensions and benefits are indexed. For noble Lords who have not seen the story today, I should say that it looks likely that serving men and women who are injured on active service will see a very substantial reduction in the amount paid to them as a result of any injury that they have sustained. I simply believe that to be wrong.

Today your Lordships’ concern is with the strategic defence and security review. Like my noble friend Lord Robertson, I want to start on the positive side. There are many things in the strategic defence review that we should be positive about. I strongly welcome the attention now being paid to cyberwarfare, which is a real and sinister threat to national resilience and security. I also welcome the renewed emphasis on conflict prevention and stabilisation and on improving the capabilities of our special forces. I welcome the increased size of the Chinook fleet, which will be a great help to our forces in future. These are all sensible and welcome measures and are in the mainstream of defence thinking today, following some of the changes that have been made in the United States. Our forces are becoming more flexible and deployable, and that is absolutely right. I also welcome, as other noble Lords have done, the emphasis on ensuring success in Afghanistan. That mission is vital to our national security, and I believe very strongly that all of us in public life, in this House and elsewhere, should always remember why we are in Afghanistan and why we ask our young men and women to fight in our name there.

However, significant concerns have been expressed today about the strategic defence and security review, and I believe that those concerns are fully justified. The last time that defence spending was cut significantly in this country was about 20 years ago in justifiable response to an improving strategic and security environment. That cannot be said of this situation. This time, we are reducing defence spending in response to a worsening fiscal environment. One thing that we should all be clear about, here and elsewhere, is that spending less on defence does not make the threats that we face—which are all clearly set out in the national security strategy—any less serious. Unfortunately, it simply makes us less able to deal with them properly.

There are a number of reasons to be concerned about the strategic defence and security review. The idea of aircraft carriers being without aircraft for a decade is not an example of sensible strategy and undermines the very concept of carrier strike. The early decommissioning of the Harriers is a profound mistake. It is disappointing that Ministers have not stuck to their guns on this. For a small amount of money, the Harriers would have given much more strategic credibility to this vital part of our future force projection. If we are to have aircraft carriers, we need to be able to defend those vital assets should they deploy in an active theatre of operations. We cannot rely on others to do that for us. In this context, I believe on the basis of advice I was given when I was Secretary of State for Defence that the loss of Nimrod poses an unacceptable risk to those vital capital warships. I notice, as have many others today, that the First Sea Lord has expressed his unease about the loss of this very important anti-submarine capability.

I am also concerned about the overall reduction in our capability to deploy ground forces. It is clear from the SDSR that we will not be in a position to mount another operation on the scale of the Iraq invasion of 2003. Why we are making such a reduction from a strategic point of view is not entirely clear to me. There is a danger that the SDSR will look to some like salami slicing—the one thing that Ministers should, above all else, have tried to prevent.

If the real context for this review was the fiscal situation, it would have been helpful, as many others have noticed in this debate, to have had more clarity about the future resources required to fund even this diminished level of capabilities. My understanding is that there will need to be significant real-terms increases in spending on defence to make the books balance over the next decade, which is a perfectly laudable ambition of the Government. We could benefit from greater clarity here about the Government’s future spending intentions.

At the heart of the financial assumptions is the need for the MoD to reduce its costs, and I believe that there is ample scope for doing that. As Bernard Gray’s excellent report made abundantly clear, the defence procurement process needs fundamental reform. I wish the noble Lord, Lord Levene, well in his endeavours in this regard, but if the projected savings do not materialise it is far from clear that, without additional resources, the MoD may not have to look at even further reductions in front-line capabilities.

My final point, which has not been raised so far, is on the future of our defence-industrial base. I believe it to be of vital national significance that we retain sovereign capability in key areas. The SDSR does not say a great deal about the defence-industrial strategy, but we certainly need one, so I look forward to the White Paper that the Government are proposing.

I accept that the Government, through the SDSR process, have tried very hard, and I praise the efforts of Ministers and officials, to maintain a balance of effective military capabilities on land, sea and air. Sadly, I have to say that very few people think that the Government have fully achieved that objective. Along with many others, I hope that there will be time in future for Ministers to reconsider aspects of their strategy as we go forward.