Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, when the integrated review was announced by the Prime Minister, we welcomed it. We wanted it to succeed, to keep our citizens safe and to secure Britain as a moral force for good in the world. But, after its publication, the chorus of concern has only grown. To put it simply, it is a plan for fewer troops, fewer ships and fewer planes. There is no assessment of current or future capability, no strategic principles and nothing about how the Ministry of Defence should be structured to best provide national security.

For this speech, I will focus on defence, and my noble friend Lord Collins will focus on the foreign and development policy components—but, of course, they are interrelated. On defence, I start with the Prime Minister’s comments. He said that the integrated review would end what he described as an “era of retreat”. The review and subsequent defence Command Paper made it clear that the threats facing the UK are “increasing and diversifying”. Despite these promises and expanding threats, the review is set to repeat the mistakes of the past.

The Prime Minister even broke an election promise by announcing that the size of the Army specifically will be cut by 10,000 by 2025. We urge the Government to think again. Former military chiefs, including the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Richards, have said that further cuts to the Army would mean that the UK was

“no longer taken seriously as a military power”

and would

“damage our relationship with the US and our position in NATO”.

A slew of Navy and RAF retirements have been announced. These include “at least” two Type 23 frigates, well before new frigates will be brought into service, Typhoon tranche 1 aircraft and Hawk T1 training aircraft. We urge the Government to think again.

I will also touch on threats. The review outlines a number of threats to the UK, but fails to present a coherent strategy for deterring them. Rightly, the Command Paper names Russia as the

“greatest nuclear, conventional military and sub-threshold threat to European security.”

This is evidenced by the build-up of 100,000 Russian troops on the border of eastern Ukraine but, despite their own warning, the Government still have not fully implemented any of the Russia report’s 23 recommendations, 18 months after the report was completed. I ask the Minister a simple question: why?

With the integrated review, Ministers are making the same mistake—responding to increasing threats with more cuts. Of course, we must develop new technologies in domains such as cyberspace and artificial intelligence, but new technologies have always been harnessed to strengthen our Armed Forces; they will never entirely replace the need for boots on the ground.