Defence Review

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Grand Committee

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, the Question put by the noble Lord, Lord Sterling, is: should we have a full SDSR? It seems to me that the response to that depends on the effectiveness of the present process, which we were told about on 15 January. The affirmation then was that the threat was as in 2015 or worse, and another was that there was no more money. Another affirmation was that there would be no more muddling or hollowing out—call it what you like—with training cuts, a reduction in spares, ships tied up and repairs deferred. Frankly, those three statements are incapable of delivery. There is at least a £2 billion per year gap and it is necessary to do something about that.

So there is muddling—we know that there is. That is why morale is falling—the morale figures from the last review were dreadful—and it is why we are failing to recruit and maintain the numbers. It is inevitable that there will be cuts. Can we have an assurance from the Minister that when, sadly, there are cuts, there will be detailed explanations of the security and defence threats that we are leaving exposed in our foreign policy? We will know of such threats only at the end of a full SDSR taking place. I believe that the consensus view that we will need a lengthy debate at the end of that process is sound, and I will certainly be working through my channels to see whether we can have such a debate.