Armed Forces

Lord Richards of Herstmonceux Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Richards of Herstmonceux (CB)]

My Lords, the Government talk of the UK having military effect globally and of Britain being a global power, yet our Armed Forces have never been weaker or less credible. We have no discernible grand strategy on which to base our defence strategy, other than post-imperial pretensions drawn from a political slogan, “Global Britain”, a conceit our ailing economy cannot hope to fund.

The strategically confused integrated review was meant to bring order to our defence posture. Its failings were neatly summed up by Professor Paul Cornish of Exeter University, who called his essay on the subject Everything Everywhere All at Once. He emphasised that, given their size and capability shortcomings, the Armed Forces could not hope to do all the things being asked of them.

In his resignation letter, Mr Wallace implied that things were not as he hoped. He wrote:

“The Ministry of Defence is back on the path”—


I say again, “back on the path”—

“to being once again world class”.

He went on:

“I genuinely believe that over the next decade the world will get more insecure and more unstable”.


He is right.

Last year the MoD was given an additional £24 billion. Earlier this year it was allocated a further £5 billion over the next two years, followed by £2 billion per year over the subsequent three years—a total of an additional £11 billion. The House of Commons Library usefully informs us that, adjusted for inflation, this amounts in real terms to only an additional £1.1 billion. The nuclear enterprise AUKUS, together with the replenishment of stockpiles gifted to Ukraine, will consume all the additional money. Day-to-day spending is set to reduce by 6.1% or just over £2 billion over the four years of the current programme. The outcome will be a continuing decline in the size, effectiveness and morale of the Armed Forces.

I could talk of the tragedy of lives lost unnecessarily because of soldiers being sent to fight wars in insufficient numbers and with inadequate equipment. I could, I think, rightly bang the table and insist that, to avoid this, defence must get 2.5% of GDP now, but I am a realist. Given the huge pressures on the Exchequer, it is not going to happen—anyway, even 3% of our current GDP would be insufficient. No, the deduction is clear. It is a grand strategic imperative, not simply an economic one, to build a vigorous high-growth economy. This requirement must be placed ruthlessly at the heart of government policy. It is not just because this is the only way to afford the NHS or an ever-bigger welfare bill but for the sake of our security: 2% of the GDP of a booming economy will pay for the Armed Forces needed to protect our way of life, but 2% of a sluggish economy never will.

In the interim, it is vital that we cut our defence coat to our economic cloth. This country must stop deluding itself that it can have a global role. We are a medium-sized country with a faltering economy. The UK must focus ruthlessly on the Euro-Atlantic theatre, not state that this is our priority but then spread our efforts so thinly that we are strong nowhere. Our predecessors faced a similar moment in the 1960s. Denis Healey had the moral courage to devise a new strategy that saw the UK withdraw from east of Suez. He tailored the Armed Forces to their NATO obligations. With an open and inquiring mind, our new Defence Secretary, Mr Grant Shapps, has the opportunity and, I argue, the responsibility to be our generation’s Denis Healey. In so doing, the UK can become once again the second most important state and de facto European leader of the alliance, we can free up some American assets to allow the Americans better to confront the challenge of China on our collective behalf and, importantly, we will recover lost influence in Europe.

In sum, let our economy genuinely be at the heart of a much-needed post-Brexit grand strategy. The ends, ways and means of the associated defence strategy must be kept responsibly in balance throughout. This will mean focusing single-mindedly on NATO, where we will gain most strategically and have most tactical effect should deterrence fail, ensuring in the process, as the war in Ukraine signals daily, that mass as well as technology determines the size and shape of our Armed Forces.