Defence: Expenditure

Lord Lee of Trafford Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Lee of Trafford]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether current defence expenditure is sufficient to meet the United Kingdom’s responsibilities (1) nationally, and (2) to international partnerships and alliances.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe) (Con)]

My Lords, we continue to meet our commitments, both to our defence strategic objectives and to our international partners. The Government have committed to meet the NATO defence investment pledge to spend at least 2% of GDP on defence every year of this Parliament. We have the largest military budget in Europe and are the second largest spender in NATO behind the US.

[Lord Lee of Trafford (LD)]

My Lords, those are soothing assurances, as always, from the Dispatch Box but, in reality, we have weekly warnings from the noble Lord, Lord West, on naval stretch, the number of combat of aircraft has fallen from 210 in 2007 to 119 today, and the Army has serious deficiencies in manpower, logistics and equipment. Encouragingly, Boris Johnson, in a letter to Julian Lewis, chairman of the Defence Select Committee, said:

“I can give you an absolute commitment to fund defence fully … I guarantee, of course, that we will exceed the minimum 2% NATO spending target and the defence budget will continue to grow at a minimum of 0.5% annually”.


Given Mr Johnson’s reputation for integrity, consistency and preciseness, how would the Minister prioritise these promised extra resources?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, it is undoubtedly true that the spending review later this year will be an important event for defence. It will build on the modernising defence programme, which will take forward our threefold agenda to mobilise, modernise and transform defence so that the Armed Forces can tackle new threats. As for equipment, we expect to publish our financial summary of the equipment plan in the autumn, and we will address the longer-term affordability of the plan in the spending review.

National Security Situation

Lord Lee of Trafford Excerpts

Thursday 19th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lee of Trafford (LD)]

My Lords, I want to focus my remarks this afternoon on the Syrian missile strike, which is but a small piece of the tragic and complex jigsaw that is Syria today, with civil war, ISIS, tribal conflict, major power intervention, brutality, bloodshed and destruction on a horrific scale. One thing is clear: Assad and his henchmen, sadly, with Russian and Iranian support have virtually won the conflict and are likely to remain in power. The time has surely come for our Government to change their message and drop the mantra that Assad cannot be part of Syria’s future, as so many other noble Lords have said this afternoon. He clearly will be, and it is absurd to pretend otherwise.

The military action that was taken, which I strongly support, substantially degraded Assad’s chemical warfare capability. It reinstated a red line—nothing more than that. I firmly believe that the participation of France and ourselves played a key role in supporting the Mattis Pentagon approach of a limited, focused strike, compared with the wider military action indicated and perhaps favoured by the Trump-Bolton axis in America.

There has been considerable debate about parliamentary authorisation for military action, but the call for prior approval, in my judgment, falls at virtually every hurdle of examination. Could our allies have been expected to wait? No. Could we disclose the precise nature of targets? No. Could we disclose the intelligence on which our decisions were based, which probably came from France, with its historical connections with Syria and deep involvement there, and from the United States and probably Israel and Saudi Arabia? No. Could we say that there would be only one strike? No, because if the first had not been completely successful, we would probably have needed a second strike. So what would have been left for the Government to say? It would have been just, “We intend to attack Syria, probably with the United States and France. Please give us a blank cheque to do so”. Recalling Parliament would likely have further extended the time gap between the terrible initial chemical assault and our military action.

What has also become clear, and I will make a semi-political point here, is that Jeremy Corbyn is a near pacifist and that he and colleagues such as Diane Abbott can hardly bring themselves to criticise Russia. This is despite its involvement in the downing of civilian aircraft, its aggression in Crimea and Ukraine, its military and logistical support for Assad, its repeated blocking of United Nations resolutions—I think we were told there were 12 in all by the Front Bench earlier—its poisoning in Salisbury, its delay and prevarication in letting the international inspection teams into the Douma site and, of course, its cyber activity. I have to say that Jeremy Corbyn is totally unfit for prime ministerial office.

One of the few positives emanating from this situation has been the successful use of the hotline, thankfully keeping allied military action well away from Russian forces and their capability, and avoiding the slide into a potential third world war scenario. We praise the professionalism of our Armed Forces in what was almost a textbook operation. It is quite clear from the briefings we have had that meticulous care was taken to avoid civilian and collateral damage in the selection and choice of targets.

There have been repeated concerns in this House, in previous debates and today, about the size of our Armed Forces—their hollowing out, to use the words of the noble Baroness from the Opposition Front Bench. We have far too few naval vessels. I thought that we were going to hear a speech from the noble Lord, Lord West, that would not actually mention naval vessels, but then he brought them in at the tail-end. There has also been a near unanimous call for an increase in defence expenditure. At the very least, I suggest, the naval vessels that we have should have both defensive and offensive capabilities, where possible. The Type 45 destroyer which was in the Mediterranean at the time leading a NATO force—I believe it was HMS “Duncan”—was originally designed, as were other Daring-class destroyers, to carry cruise and Tomahawk missiles. This was not proceeded with on cost grounds. When the noble Earl, Lord Howe, replies to this debate, can he indicate whether cruise missiles could still be fitted to our Daring-class destroyers and what the cost would be? If we had that military capability, there would clearly be another option for our forces.

The short and medium-term future for the Middle East and Syria looks bleak. This is deeply worrying. At the start of the year, intelligence sources were predicting a serious Hezbollah-Iranian/Israeli conflict this year. Estimates of the number of missiles supplied by Iran directly and indirectly to Hezbollah range from 30,000 to 100,000. I have to say that I fear the worst. With President Trump quite clearly emboldened by the recent military success—“Mission Accomplished!”—his very strong and close support for Israel and his antipathy towards Iran, where could all this lead? In the longer term, there has to be some form of negotiated political solution in Syria and the wider Middle East, but it could be a very long time coming, with terrible humanitarian suffering in the meantime.

Defence Review

Lord Lee of Trafford Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Grand Committee

[Lord Lee of Trafford (LD)]

My Lords, I have a few brief points. I have great respect for the noble Earl, Lord Howe, but I say this in the nicest way: if he chooses to remain in office, he has to bear some responsibility for the financial situation that is ongoing at the Ministry of Defence. It is clear from the exchanges earlier in the week that the review has been nobbled and is being dovetailed, as was said earlier, into the existing budget. I strongly support greater NATO-European co-operation, and welcome the Anglo-French announcements today. Sadly, such greater co-operation is not helped by the tragedy of Brexit. We live in an increasingly dangerous world: China and Russia are modernising their forces and increasing defence expenditure, and the underwater threat is a particular concern. In my view, the current ratio of 3:1 defence expenditure to overseas aid is unsustainable. I favour a reduction in overseas aid from 0.7% to 0.5%, which would provide at least £2 billion annually for the defence budget.

I want to finish with a brief question to the Minister. Will he inform us of the latest position on the propulsion systems for the Type 45 destroyers?

UK Defence Forces

Lord Lee of Trafford Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lee of Trafford (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord on securing this debate. Thanks to the evidence given to the Defence Select Committee last week by former senior military figures, we now have confirmation of what many of us have been saying for so long: our Armed Forces have been dangerously hollowed out and inadequately funded for many years. I have read the full transcript and I quote General Sir Richard Barrons:

“The people who are in defence have to keep going every day. They are never going to say publicly, or to themselves, their enemies, or their allies that we are broken, but when they fly, sail, or deploy on the land and they look at their equipment, their sustainability, the shortfalls in their training, and at their allies, they know that they are not fit for purpose”.


We should also read the Times article today on our Type 25 destroyers.

Admiral Sir George Zambellas said:

“If you take as a premise, what certainly the three of us know, that defence has been under-resourced for years, the challenge that is being set to the Chiefs of Staff now is try to make further savings”—


all this against a background of a very dangerous world with Daesh, the Taliban, North Korea, and Russia and China substantially increasing and modernising their defence capability, to say nothing of cyber. The head of German foreign intelligence said very recently:

“Russia’s military has undergone an ‘amazing’ modernisation”.


I repeat: “amazing”.

Of course, we will be told by the noble Earl, in his usual conciliatory and soothing way about the 2%, the new naval orders and the current defence review. However, we know from the evidence given at the Select Committee hearing by the former National Security Adviser, Sir Mark Lyall Grant, that defence reviews are compromised and effectively nobbled. He said:

“So there was a Treasury official seconded to the Cabinet Office team who was in regular touch with the Treasury to ensure that whatever ended up being in the review would be affordable”.


We cannot go on like this. Enough is enough. We have to find more money to rebuild our defence capability; tinkering will not be enough.

Last week, I asked an Oral Question on the ratio of overseas aid to defence expenditure and was told that it was 3:1 one in favour of defence. I cannot accept this ratio. The 0.7% GDP commitment is very laudable when we can afford it but circumstances change. All domestic government budgets are under huge pressure, particularly defence, where the fall in the value of the pound creates exceptional pressure because of the necessary purchases from abroad, particularly from the United States. In our present situation there can be no sacred cows. I agree very much with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt: the time has come to revisit our aid commitment and reduce it from 0.7% to 0.5%. I know that I will have no support from any of the Front Benches but that would release approaching £4 billion, of which £2 billion could go to defence and the balance to other programmes. It would still leave us with a £9 billion overseas aid budget, which is a very substantial figure.

I have also doubted, as others have, whether overseas aid needs a separate department of state. The Times recently advocated that it should be subsumed into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Certainly, overseas aid, defence and foreign expenditure should be considered as one.

Of course, our defence assets, personnel and equipment frequently play a significant role in humanitarian relief—yet another reason to retain our amphibious capability—and our new carriers could, given their size, operating theatres and potential helicopter lift add a whole new dimension of scale to our humanitarian effort. In addition, the requests for our military training missions, so important around the world, always exceed the resources available. Enhanced funding would enable us to do so much more.