Strategic Defence and Security Review

Lord King of Bridgwater Excerpts

Friday 12th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord King of Bridgwater]

My Lords, on that important note I rise to join the debate. Many noble Lords have drawn attention to the coincidence of this debate taking place between Armistice Day and the Sunday on which many of us will be involved in Remembrance Day parades. I was reflecting that many of those that we will remember from both world wars and in the most recent conflicts actually lost their lives either through failures of defence planning or inadequacy of equipment. Ministers, Governments and leaders of the Armed Forces have sent people into conflict without proper preparation, and those people have made the supreme sacrifice. The brave widow of Sergeant Steven Roberts was interviewed in the paper this week. Sergeant Roberts served in Iraq and had to hand over his protective equipment. Within a week he was dead. That is an illustration of failures in the most recent events.

It is against that background that I welcome this review. There was no question that we needed a prompt review. It is most unfortunate and we are where no one would have wanted us to be, but one has only to look at the present situation in Ireland to see that a country faces grave risks if it does not show brave determination to face a grave financial situation. As many noble Lords have mentioned, essential to defence security is economic security. There was no way in which defence could have been left out of the present work.

For many years I had the privilege of working with Sir Michael Quinlan, who is a good friend of many people in this House. Three years ago, he wrote in the Financial Times:

“The defence budget is in deeper trouble than at any time since Labour came to power. But so are the general public finances, so the Treasury will not come to the rescue. In such situations, squeeze-and-postpone never suffices. Nettles have to be grasped - the sooner, the better”.

Sadly, that is precisely what the previous Government did not do nearly three years ago—I listened with despair to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Davies—because they went ahead with ordering more and more equipment. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, misquoted his noble friend Lord Rosser, who did not say that there was not a deficit but challenged whether the figure of £38 billion was correct. I do not want to misrepresent the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, but I think that that is exactly what he said. I would like to know what the Benches opposite think the deficit was because no correct observer of the present situation would suggest that there is not a substantial deficit.

It is against that background that one realises the scale of some of these challenges. The previous Government’s decision not to grasp the nettle but to postpone the carriers cost, as I understand the estimate, £1.4 billion. The total cost of next year’s Foreign Office budget was spent on one delayed item of equipment procurement within the Ministry of Defence. Given the importance of soft power in the current situation, as the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, said, and the need to turn to defence diplomacy, one should not underestimate the contribution that the Foreign Office can make.

In the review the Government are prioritising success in Afghanistan and tackling the deficit problem. Phase 2 will be to rebuild capabilities and increase spend, with a genuine real-terms growth in the period 2015-20. Generally, the review is impressive. My colleague James Arbuthnot was quoted as saying that the process was rubbish. That was his personal view—the Defence Committee has not yet come up with a formal view, as I understand it—but he then went on to say that, although the process was rubbish, the outcome was much better than he expected. I agree with that.

I welcome particularly the establishment of the National Security Council. In my lifetime we have moved from a separate War Ministry, an Admiralty and an Air Ministry to a Ministry of Defence, which at least brought those three services together in one unit. Now we are moving to a National Security Council. Obviously, in the current strategic threat situation, there is a need for the cross-departmental involvement of all those who face the challenges that threaten this country.

I think everyone agrees that a conventional military threat is remote. I was involved at the time when that threat finally seemed to have disappeared with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union. There are, of course, new threats, such as Islamic extremist terrorism and cyberattacks, whether they come from sovereign states, from non-state organisations or from individuals. The noble Lord, Lord, Lord Reid, rightly referred to the threat of individual efforts in that direction as being among the most difficult to tackle. The blackmail that we may face in various ways threatens our economy, our food security, our energy security and the collapse of essential services. Against that background, I welcome the importance of the resilience established in the review.

There are to be a number of sensible changes. There has been little criticism of the proposals to reduce the Challenger fleet, to reduce the number of artillery and to withdraw from Germany. I was interested in the point that the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Walker, made, with which I am not familiar, about the reinstatement costs and what they may represent. I am delighted so see a cyberoperations group set up, the reinforcement of the Special Forces and a concentration on more UAVs. I am particularly pleased to see the noble Lord, Lord Levene, returning to the scene. I hope that he will look hard at the extraordinary statement, referred to by other noble Lords, that at the end of the day a further four years will be required after 2015 to establish the arrester and catapult capabilities of the new carrier.

On the outstanding issues, I will say one thing even though I go slightly over my time. There was a letter about the carriers in the Times two or three days ago from some very distinguished people, a number of whom I know personally and much admire. One of the most ill advised inclusions in that was telling the Argentinians that they were practically invited to invade the Falklands and then adding, as I saw it reported yesterday in the Buenos Aires Herald, that if they did, the islands would be almost impossible to recover. I have heard phrases about giving comfort to the enemy. One is perfectly entitled to make arguments as strongly as one wishes on these issues, but one has to be very careful what one says because other audiences listen. I was concerned about that.

I shall simply say this. I have already quoted Michael Quinlan, who, as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Boyce, knows, has not been the greatest enthusiast for carriers. He made the point that Mount Pleasant is the key to the defence of the Falklands and that, if the Falklands were lost and we tried to recover them with Mount Pleasant in the wrong hands, a carrier should not be an awful lot of use. The vulnerability of having only one carrier is an important point.

Very quickly, on the outstanding issues, let me say that there are some difficult commercial negotiations and some difficulties about the civil servants in the MoD. I agree with noble Lords that they are not all pen-pushing bureaucrats; a lot of valuable, important people are contained in that description, and they certainly need to be properly considered.

I want to make one more point. The defence planning assumptions set out what we may be able to do, but the review contains the important statement that the United Kingdom,

“will be more selective in our use of the Armed Forces, deploying them … only where key UK national interests are at stake; where we have a clear strategic aim; where the likely political, economic and human costs are in proportion to the likely benefits; where we have a viable exit strategy; and where justifiable under international law”.

If that had been more carefully observed in recent years, we might not face some of the problems that we have at present.

Those problems do not fall on us in this House. As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Walker, said—and many have emphasised the covenant—we have a duty and a responsibility, not merely to those serving now, critically important though that is, but to those who have served as well. Every decision that we take to spend more money in one way or another means an option lost in another direction. My great worry on this subject, although I am pleased about the importance that the Prime Minister attaches to the covenant, is that this should be uppermost in the Government’s mind as they proceed with their further work, in which I wish them, in a very difficult situation, my fullest support.