Royal Navy: Type 31e Frigate

Lord Sterling of Plaistow Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

I greatly respect the noble Lord’s point of view, but I humbly suggest that we should not get too distracted by percentages. We need to look at the threats and make sure that we have the right capabilities to deal with them. That work is ongoing through the modernising defence programme. We continue to have one of the largest defence budgets in the world, and it is growing by £1 billion a year.

[Lord Sterling of Plaistow (Con)]

My Lords, I have just come back from the conference in Portsmouth with the First Sea Lord yesterday. I have been to many of these and I found it inspiring because, for the first time, with all the younger officers there, the climate of interest in changing the culture and delivering that is dramatically different from what it has been during the last two or three years. It really was something you could capture. The Second Sea Lord, who has the responsibility of delivering the Type 31 ships, has no illusions as to what needs to be done. He made the point, which I totally agree with, that you have to make the best use of the money you have actually got and not just pile more money on top of it. We need more money in practice and perhaps the Minister would be kind enough to ask again because, over and above what is being done—I think they will deliver that on time—the key, as has just been said, is that we need it to enlarge the whole capability of our armed response.

[Earl Howe]

My noble friend speaks with considerable authority on this matter. The modernising defence programme is about making our Armed Forces more capable, against the harder threats that we now face, and it is looking at how best we can use our growing budget to that effect.