Iran: Military Power

Lord Swire Excerpts

Tuesday 20th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Minto (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness will know that we cannot go into any great detail on this sort of thing. However, we have a permanent presence in the area, as do our allies, and we maintain an integrated international force to act as a deterrent. We also use financial and other sanctions, disrupting supply chains for all forms of activity.

[Lord Swire (Con)]

What is my noble friend the Minister’s current assessment of those who are under threat, in this country, from Tehran directly or through its proxies?

Conventional Weapon Stocks: Expenditure

Lord Swire Excerpts

Monday 19th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Minto (Con)]

The noble and gallant Lord knows only too well that procurement is really difficult when it comes to military assets. We had a conversation last week about appetite for risk, but getting SMEs involved at the correct level will always be quite tricky because of the scale of operation that we need to deal with weapons and munitions. However, it is absolutely a focus in the MoD to ensure that procurement is much more light-footed that it has been in the past.

[Lord Swire (Con)]

My Lords, what is my noble friend the Minister’s assessment of Russia’s current conventional weapon stocks and its reliance, so we are told, on importing shells from North Korea?

[The Earl of Minto (Con)]

My Lords, the Russian threat is paramount, and Russia must not on any account be allowed to prevail—there is no question about that, and the Government, the Opposition and everybody else are on the same page. Russia has ramped up its production capacity and has been using North Korean equipment, although its reliability is not quite clear. It is certainly something of which everybody is increasingly aware.

King’s Speech

Lord Swire Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Swire (Con)]

My Lords, the bonus ball for sitting through this debate from the start, other than what we must euphemistically call comfort breaks—although in this place there is not much comfort involved—is that I got to hear two magnificent maiden speeches. The first, of course, was from the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, which was typically excellent. His Wikipedia entry says:

“Andrew Roberts, Baron Roberts of Belgravia … is a British popular historian, journalist and member of the House of Lords”.


Given the reception he has had, we can now amend that to a popular British historian, journalist and popular Member of the House of Lords. See, I told you it was worth staying for. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Old Windsor, gave a most elegant maiden speech, as one might expect. As deputy chairman of the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council, I very much welcomed his thoughts on how we can do more and do it better, and I look forward to working with him on Commonwealth matters going forward.

At the risk of repeating what many of your Lordships have already said, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, who did such an excellent job on the Front Bench, and agree how wonderful it is that the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, is still there, as constant as the great North Star, to guide us through these deliberations. On the appointment of David Cameron as Foreign Secretary, whatever you may think about the individual, and I am of course very positive about him, I think it is a huge bonus for your Lordships’ House to have the Foreign Secretary among us. I hope it is also a precedent that we can have another great office of state held by somebody in your Lordships’ House because it makes us more relevant and more potent—I think we are all winners by that appointment.

The noble Earl, Lord Minto, spoke about the interlinking of what is going on in this tricky world at the moment, and everything we have heard so far today proves his point. I am a former chairman of the Conservative Middle East Council; I visited Israel a number of times, the West Bank and Gaza. I am not going to talk specifically about that because I hope we will have more opportunity to do that for longer another time. I want to talk about two specific things in the time allocated this evening: the first is Afghanistan and the second is the DPRK.

I have spoken before about the plight of many women in Pakistan—the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, knows this well—who previously held high office in Afghanistan: judges, police, all kinds of positions. I have asked the Minister in the past to reassure us that they will not be in any danger or forcibly repatriated to Afghanistan, and I am horrified by the news that Pakistan has now started forcible repatriation. Can the Minister again, therefore, reassure us that nobody who will be vulnerable to the Taliban, the authorities in Afghanistan, will be returned there against their will?

More than 100 Afghan special forces personnel, trained and funded by the UK, have also apparently been denied entry to the UK under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy scheme and left to the mercy of the Taliban. I very much welcome what the Minister has to say on that.

I wonder if the Minister has heard the rumour that 500 volunteers for suicide bombings are en route to Gaza. The Taliban leadership is keen to see the back of them, because they are hardliners. That would certainly add a new dimension to what is going on in Gaza. Apparently, a lot of US weapons left behind in Afghanistan are finding their way to Gaza—they are not from Ukraine, as former President Trump has claimed. Afghanistan is not finished business, and anyone who thinks it is seriously underestimates the malign role that it can continue to play.

I continue on the theme of the axis of evil. Your Lordships will be aware that Russia and North Korea have now entered relations at what they describe as “a new, strategic level”. The Russian Foreign Secretary, Sergei Lavrov, went to Pyongyang following the summit between Putin and Kim Jong Un in September. Pyongyang has now sent a thousand containers of equipment and munitions for Russia to use in Ukraine. As worrying, perhaps, is that, in return, Pyongyang is to receive Russian weapons technology to augment its nuclear programme, as well as its first military reconnaissance satellite. Incidentally, Lavrov then travelled to Iran to hold talks with President Raisi in Tehran, and Iran has subsequently supplied Russia with Shahed kamikaze drones.

John Kirby, the spokesman for the US National Security Council, said that China, Russia and North Korea presented “unique and pernicious threats” to Washington. It is not just to Washington but to the rest of us as well. We know that Russia cannot continue the fight in Ukraine alone. As I have said, North Korea has provided over two months’ worth of supplies for Russia to use in Ukraine. I welcome the Government’s recommitment in the gracious Speech to supporting Ukraine, but I urge them to redouble their efforts to stiffen the resolve of those who are beginning to waver and to continue to support the Ukrainians in their fight.

Ukraine: Update

Lord Swire Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

Perhaps it is easier if I tell the noble Lord what I cannot reply to. I do not know what is in the mind of President Putin—does anyone? As to the attitude of Germany, I have said before that this is a subject of fluid discussion at these important fora, and that discussion is taking place as we speak. I very much hope that the force of that discussion will be to make clear the desire for the Leopard tank to be included in the facility being provided to Ukraine.

On training, I said in response to an earlier question that the UK will train Ukrainian detachments to operate all the platforms we donate. That will start as soon as Ukrainian troops arrive in the UK, which is likely to be by the end of this month. There is a mutual interest in making sure that training is conducted as effectively and swiftly as possible. The estimate is that the equipment we are announcing will be operated by Ukrainian troops on the battlefield in the coming months. I obviously cannot be more specific than that.

[Lord Swire (Con)]

I thank my noble friend the Minister for the Statement and update. It is right that much talk is concentrating on holding the coalition together in Europe, and we must guard against inevitable fatigue beginning to creep in. Can the Minister also confirm that our wider diplomatic network, right around the world but particularly at the UN in New York, is working tirelessly to stiffen the resolve of countries which have been slow to come forward and share our view about the situation?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I think I can give that reassurance to my noble friend. Obviously, his question is more within the remit of my noble friend Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, but as he will be aware, we have been very active on the diplomatic front. The United Nations General Assembly vote on 12 October last year was a powerful demonstration of the international community’s widespread condemnation of Russia’s outrageous and illegal attempt to annex the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

That global pressure is continuing. I had the privilege of meeting a group of United States Congressmen and Congresswomen earlier this week. I was very struck by the unanimity of acceptance that what is happening is wrong and has to be resisted. This may be happening in Europe, but it is understood in the United States that if you do not address that wrong, there are consequences which could be global in their impact. I reassure my noble friend that diplomacy is a critical part of what we are doing to support Ukraine in its endeavour.