King’s Speech

Lord Peach Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Peach (CB)]

My Lords, His Majesty demonstrated in his gracious Speech that he fully understands the international context that we face. I welcome the noble Earl to the Dispatch Box and pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie. I also welcome the noble Lord, Lord Roberts. I congratulate him on his brief but very moving and thoughtful speech, and his reminder of the need for victory for Ukraine.

Much has been said on the nature of conflict, with war, violence and coup d’états placing us in an era of concurrent activity, all adding up. We know that bad actors, many of whom have been mentioned in this strong debate, will continue to exploit our boundaries and seams, and find ways to pursue their intentions. We also see in Ukraine that the way we conduct operations is changing. We see in Gaza all too tragically the way in which warfare needs to be constantly updated. We see the importance of new technologies in violent application. We see the way the Russians in particular use high explosives, indiscriminately causing casualties and war crimes. We have to conclude that this era of concurrency requires a sustained effort.

The word I would add to this debate is the importance of enhancing resilience, in particular of our critical, national infrastructure. Is it not time also to discuss the ways and means we may need to defend our homeland? We have had our era of overseas operations; we also need to pay attention to our homeland. All of us are proud of our UK Armed Forces, past and present, and the way they respond to these concurrent risks and operations, but we need also to pay attention to the use of our Armed Forces to enhance our resilience and sustain our operations and our Armed Forces, both regular and reserve, and regular reserves—an old concept but my words are quite simple. After almost 50 years of military service, I can say that mass matters.

The actions of Putin, the lessons from which we must observe, and increasing ethnic tension are spreading beyond the battlefield. I must declare my interest as the Prime Minister’s special envoy to the Balkans. There is hate speech in the Balkans, and that region in our own continent of Europe is awash with weapons. People there are all too ready to make analogies to their own wars of 30 years ago, when, we remind each other, almost 200,000 people died. We must therefore tackle misinformation and disinformation as a matter of national security. As we have debated in this House, we have a good integrated review and a Command Paper to go with it, but others are widening our definition of national security for us. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, made it clear that we need to use all the tools we have available. We need to be creative in tackling the era of concurrency that we now face.

I commend the recent work of insurance agencies and actors in this country, using English law and working with the International Maritime Organization to find ways to move grain in significant quantity around the Black Sea. That is now part of national security. It would not have been considered so a few years ago.

The noble Earl defined competition with China. Of course, China is seeking a different world order under its new rules and norms. Many of the norms that our forebears in this place and past members of our Armed Forces fought and died to create, so that we could trade freely and enjoy freedom, are now under threat. The one I would add to the many that noble Lords have already set out is the freedom of navigation. If we lose that, we lose a lot. In the face of war and tragedy, we need to condemn the acts of terror that we have seen committed by Hamas, we all need to work on deterrence and de-escalation, but we need to be ready to sustain and to respond, and I fear it will be a long haul.