Armed Forces: Troop Levels

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Thursday 21st September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My noble friend is quite correct that NATO has been on a journey of modernisation and transformation, and I think it is a very important journey. The combination of the new NATO force model, the defence investment pledge that was agreed at Vilnius and the NATO political guidance for 2023, in which the UK was a leading influence, represent a modernised, more muscular NATO, to which the UK pledges a full spectrum of capabilities. That includes nuclear, offensive cyber, special forces and space capabilities. For example, the UK was the first ally to offer offensive cyber capabilities to NATO.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

My Lords, like the men and women of the Armed Forces, the Minister has a great can-do attitude, which I admire. But is it not plain to any observer of events that there is a chronic discord between our foreign policy ambitions and the operational capability of our Armed Forces? We know that we have the smallest Army since the Napoleonic period. We have a tiny fleet. We have a shortage of aircraft, to the extent that we have an aircraft carrier that has only eight planes on it in its operations. Is it not time to have a genuine strategic defence review, in an attempt to bring our ambitions into line with our operational capability? Otherwise, we will just delude ourselves, as well as trying to delude others.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

Well, I am not in the business of delusion, and I hope noble Lords will accept that. I think the integrated review, and then the integrated review refresh, followed by the defence Command Paper refresh, do actually align what our strategic policy objectives in terms of our foreign policy are, and the defence Command Paper refresh begins to fill out how MoD will support these objectives. We actually have two aircraft carriers which are the envy of many other global powers. When we put our F35s on to them, contrary to popular perception, what we put on to the aircraft carriers is the aircraft capability we need for the deployment the carrier is on. I said earlier that the capability in MoD may be just about unrecognisable to many people who were familiar with a different format. But to take the platitude that is often trotted out that we have the smallest Army since Napoleon, well, no wonder—in the time of Napoleon and Wellington, we sent thousands of people to the front line to be slaughtered or injured. Now, with technology, we thankfully do not have to do that. Future Soldier encompasses that very different vision and concept for how a modern military operates.