Integrated Security, Defence and Foreign Policy Review

Debate between Lord Touhig and Earl Howe

Wednesday 8th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

I am grateful to my noble friend and can reassure him that those reports have been read. I can only endorse his central point: the world is changing rapidly. Technology is advancing at pace, international relations are becoming more complex, and conflict and climate change are driving migration at scale. That is why the Government must not get stuck in outmoded practices and ways of thinking. We have to be nimbler on our feet, adapt faster and take decisions in an integrated and better fashion. The review will address all these issues.

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, did the Minister listen yesterday to the speech of my noble friend Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, who recalled that he and the late Robin Cook worked together to produce a defence and foreign policy review that lasted an unprecedented 11 years? They achieved this by forming a defence review built on agreed foreign policy objectives. Will the Government follow that sensible pattern? It seems a common-sense approach to this sort of review, although, having said that, I recall my mother telling me as a young man that in life I would find that sense was not that common.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I listened with care yesterday to the words of the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, and agreed with a great deal of what he said. However, this review is about more than defence. It is about both defence and the wider context in which defence operates: our international relations, international foreign policy and national security. Defence will be bound up in this, and I anticipate that the kind of far-reaching and comprehensive review he referred to, which took place under the Labour Government, will be broadly mirrored in the work that we do.