Strategic Defence and Security Review

Lord Robertson of Port Ellen Excerpts

Friday 12th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Robertson of Port Ellen]

My Lords, I declare an interest as an adviser with the Cohen Group based in Washington DC which has a number of clients in the defence industry. I start by paying tribute to Senior Aircraftman Hughes, whose death has just been announced, and, indeed, to all those who have died and been injured in the conflict in Afghanistan. They died defending their country and its values. We should remember them not just this weekend but should pay tribute to them and remember them throughout time.

The mission in Afghanistan was described as crisply in the strategic defence review as I have seen for a long time. The review refers to,

“a UN-mandated, NATO-led mission of 47 nations … helping to deliver a stable Afghanistan able to maintain its own security and to prevent Afghan territory from again being used by Al Qaeda or other terrorists as a base from which to plot and launch attacks on the UK and our allies”.

That is why people are dying and that is why people are serving. We need to say that more and more often to ensure that the tributes we pay are meaningful and that the Taliban and others get the message that we are not going to give up until we succeed.

Noble Lords will know that I have reservations about the coherence and strategic nature of the review, but I wish to start by saying a few positive things about it and the process. I was asked by the Secretary of State for Defence to advise him on this matter and I was part of the previous Government’s advisory board on the Green Paper. I am grateful to the Government for providing me with the opportunity to give advice.

I thank and congratulate the staff under Sir Peter Ricketts, the National Security Adviser, on the work that they have done in a ludicrously short period. They were not to blame for the timetable but the quality of the work is still good, and they deserve our thanks. I also congratulate the coalition Government on taking up the recommendations in the report that the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, and I produced last year for the Institute for Public Policy Research, which advocated the strategic defence and security review, a national security strategy and the concept that defence reviews should take place on a regular four-yearly basis. The Government are to be commended for picking up good ideas when they see them. I also acknowledge that the Government are under severe constraints in the present circumstances. The Secretary of State for Defence sent me a copy of the review and wrote at the bottom:

“You will understand the constraints”.

I do. I carried out a defence review and I, too, was faced with a predatory Treasury.

[Noble Lords]

Unfair.

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[Lord Robertson of Port Ellen]

I hear the ghosts of Christmas past behind me. However, I and my colleagues—some of whom are now in this House—saw off the Treasury.

I, too, faced a legacy of a 30 per cent cut in the defence budget over the previous six years. That was done without any major defence review and left us a very difficult legacy with which to deal, not least in the area of defence medical services and the defence accommodation estate.

Finally, I congratulate the Government on maintaining the deterrent and continuing with the modernisation of the Trident system. However, this review is not strategic. It could not be given the time-scale involved. It does not really follow even the national security strategy. It needs more time and it is a wasted opportunity in that context. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield said, it looks, and indeed is, an interim report, driven mainly by the Treasury’s desire to achieve cuts. I hope that it will be reviewed quickly. One of its serious weaknesses is that it is not inclusive as it has not involved everybody in the ministries concerned or those in the outside world who wanted to give a view. One of the strengths of the review that I conducted in the Ministry of Defence in 1997 and 1998 was that by the end we had built a consensus. That was the strength of the review which took it through so many years to come.

This review has led to a hollowing out of our forces and, indeed, to the same old salami slicing which weakens the case for defence. The Defence Secretary’s letter to the Prime Minister was leaked. It is interesting that a lot of noise was made about the leaking of that letter, but my whole review was leaked to the Tory Party the day before it was officially announced. Given that we accept that these leaks are bad and immoral in principle, one would have expected that the Tory Party would have immediately returned the leaked review to the Ministry of Defence, but instead it gave it to the Daily Telegraph. However, as the Defence Secretary himself wrote:

“This process is looking less and less defensible as a proper strategic review and more like a super CSR”.

He added:

“We do not have a narrative that we can communicate clearly”.

Those are his words, not mine, and I am not sure that in the following days he changed his view massively.

I wish to make a couple of serious points. One concerns procurement. There is a serious crisis over procurement. A lot of the money that the country devotes to defence is simply being wasted. My noble friend Lord Hutton commissioned Bernard Gray, who had been one of my special advisers, to report on procurement. It was a very good and thorough report that concluded with very strong recommendations. He was so frustrated by the previous Government’s response to that report that he offered his services to the current lot when they were in opposition. I hope that the Minister might be able to offer us guidance on why we have to have yet another review when there is one on the table which gives a proper diagnosis and the right prescription. Why has the noble Lord, Lord Levene, been asked to duplicate that? When can we expect him to produce his report?

Other speakers have mentioned Nimrod, as did the Secretary of State for Defence in his letter. Two things worry me about this defence review. First, it is more focused on the year 2020 than on 2012 and 2014. There are serious questions about what will happen in these years if it goes forward on the present basis. Secondly, I do not think that it says nearly enough about European co-operation. Yes, we have the 50-year treaty with the French, which is commendable and extremely good, but other countries in Europe would like to be part of these consortiums and I hope that they will be taken account of. Perhaps this mothballed aircraft carrier that has been produced might yet be seen as a NATO shared capability. That idea has been put forward. It is a wasted opportunity but that does not mean to say that in the interests of our Armed Forces and our country we cannot think again and do better the next time.

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[Lord Robertson of Port Ellen]

I just want to clarify that I was talking about the leadership in the Treasury, more than the people who executed the policy.

[Lord Boateng]

I am comforted by that, and I am sure that the civil servants, who follow with great attention the debates in this House, will be similarly comforted. In response to the noble Lord, I make one observation about my time as Chief Secretary that he may find comforting. My experience is that if you are to have comprehensive spending reviews, which are necessary, and if you are to have strategic defence reviews, which are certainly necessary, it is better that the strategic defence review follows the comprehensive spending review, in this sense. The strategic defence review ought to impact on the comprehensive spending review that follows it, rather than the other way round. To have the two at the same time runs a danger—and it must be said that this strategic defence review demonstrates that danger all too clearly. As Chief Secretary, it is a help to have your feet held to the fire by the chiefs and Ministers who are able to refer you to a strategic defence review, to say that this is the commitment that the Government have made and then to expect you, as Chief Secretary, to live up to that commitment. That was certainly the approach taken during the two CSRs that I conducted and, yes, I was duffed up—Chief Secretaries always are—but at the end of the day there was a result that I think did justice to the cause, the national interest and to the service.

I fear that this strategic defence review has been unduly impacted upon by the fact that a CSR was taking place at the same time. There is too much influence of the concerns that have to dominate a CSR evident in the strategic defence and security review, but we must give it time to sink in, and we will see what emerges.

There is one very welcome statement within the review:

“Recent experience has shown that instability and conflict overseas can pose risks to the UK, including by creating environments in which terrorists and organised crime groups can recruit for, plan and direct their global operations ... A lack of effective government, weak security and poverty can all cause instability and will be exacerbated in the future by competition for resources, growing populations and climate change”.

That is true, and during my time as a high commissioner in sub-Saharan Africa, I certainly found that to be true.

One of the greatest bulwarks against that insecurity is an all too often under-remarked upon and under-recognised aspect of the Ministry of Defence’s effort: defence diplomacy. It is the soft power instrument applied by the MoD and by the dedicated band of men and women who do the business of defence diplomacy, which the MoD described in its policy paper 1 of 2000. Defence diplomacy is,

“activities undertaken by the MOD to dispel hostility, build and maintain trust and assist in the development of democratically accountable armed forces, thereby making a significant contribution to conflict prevention and resolution”.

That is a very important task, and it is conducted by very skilled and experienced service men and women who deserve credit for what they have done and are doing. However, the sad thing is that—and my own Government must take their fair share of responsibility for this—having made a very good start in the strategic defence review of 1998, which identified Africa as being a place where we ought to be applying this form of soft power, in the intervening years defence diplomacy activity in Africa and elsewhere has slowly declined. We have in fact cut back on the British military advisory and training teams, the short-term military teams and the consultancy services undertaken by security sector advisory teams. They have all been cut back as a result of the distorting influence of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I hope that this new strategic defence and security review will begin to reverse that process. I hope that the conflict pool, which is now to be increased to some £300 million by 2014-15, will not be used just to fund programmes but will be underpinned by a strategy. That is the one question I have for the Minister. Is there to be an Africa strategy? Is there to be a strategy that calls upon DfID, the FCO, the MoD and, importantly, on the very considerable resources available to DfID that are not available to the FCO and the MoD to underpin that strategy? If so, that will be welcome news in Africa because there cannot be development without security and there are no better men and women at doing it than those in our military services. They deserve credit and support, and I hope they get the resources from this conflict pool and a strategy that underpins the application of those resources. All of us across government, in both Houses and on all sides, need to be concerned about not just the quantity of our spend, but its effectiveness, and give the strength and support to the men and women of our services that they deserve in their valuable work in Africa.