Armed Forces

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Soames, for his excellent starting point for this debate, which many of us on this side of the House would wholly agree with in every way. I do not have the experience of military service and defence questions that many Members of this House have, but I share the admiration that he expressed for the people in our armed services. When I was a humble adviser in No. 10, working on the defence review, Charles Guthrie, Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank, took me to Banja Luka in Bosnia to look at the conditions in which our people had to work. I had tremendous admiration for that. He then insisted that I go and get on board one of Admiral West’s frigates. Somehow or other, I managed to climb up a rope ladder to get on and take a look.

It was always a struggle then, in 1997 under the Blair Government, to argue for an increased defence budget. I believed then that we had to have a strong defence budget, and I believe it even more now. But there are always arguments and many other worthy claims—that we have to spend more on overseas aid, or that we have lots of child poverty and pensioner poverty to deal with. At the present conjuncture, our problem with public spending is that we face a huge demographic challenge with increased costs from pensions, health and social care, and the existential, longer-term challenge of climate change, which we have to address and will be expensive.

I must say that, in the present situation, I find all the chatter about tax cuts rather unrealistic—let us put it like that. I believe that we must have a stronger defence budget, but it will be difficult. If there is a change of Government, it will be as difficult on our side as it has been. I remember the sessions we had in No. 10 at every public spending round on what department budgets should be, and I was the only one of the political advisers in No. 10 who fought for a higher defence budget. Fortunately, I had a single ally—the Prime Minister. I hope we can get a bigger defence budget in the years ahead, but defence has to make the case for that. It has to reform where there are obvious weaknesses. We must shake up the procurement system and get on top of those problems.

Secondly, I agree totally with the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton of Richmond, that we must have realism about what we can achieve in the world. We have to balance realism and resources in a sensible way. I am a bit sceptical about the return east of Suez: is that really where Britain should be putting its efforts? Reading the recent defence White Paper, I could not understand why we were increasing the size of our nuclear arsenal. We need a minimum deterrent—I have fought unilateralism all my life in politics—but our deterrent should be as minimal in cost as it possibly can be, yet the Government were proposing an increase in expenditure.

Here is the thing I worry about the most—I know that people have a long and noble history of Anglo-American co-operation and do not like this. I look at the opinion polls in the United States, and Biden might be 1% ahead of Trump. The prospect of another Trump presidency is very real. The prospect of a party that believes that America should become isolationist and withdraw from Europe is very real. We have to get our act together with our European partners. I know that this is difficult because of Brexit but, for me, this is an absolutely key priority in the defence field, given the situation we now face. So, yes, defence has to be a priority. It will be extremely difficult to make it one, but our future in Europe depends on it.