Defence: Budget

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I want to follow the line that the noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham and Lord Luce, have taken and focus on long-term foreign policy and national strategy—because we are not at all clear on what either of them are. In the course of this debate, it has been mentioned that we should provide military force against China and build up our forces in the Gulf. I am very surprised that noble Lords have not spent more time talking about the problem of Africa, where we are going to have to be engaged in conflict prevention, state rebuilding and active peacekeeping in the next 20 years, partly because as those states collapse their desperate people will try to flood across the Mediterranean to Europe.

We do not know what our foreign policy is about, and that means it is very difficult to have a coherent defence policy. A Conservative MP of my acquaintance said in a private meeting some months ago, “Of course, our problem is that we don’t know who we are and we don’t know where we want to be in the world”. That is a huge problem. We have lost our standing in Washington over the past five years. There is a strong perception in Washington that we are, as the noble Lord, Lord Luce, suggested, withdrawing from a wish to be a power in the world.

We are also renegotiating our economic relationship with the rest of Europe without recognising that the European Union was always a security system as well as economic arrangement: that our Foreign Secretary negotiates and consults on foreign policy and security policy with his opposite numbers within the European Union framework much more frequently than in any other multilateral framework; and that in Washington NATO is regarded as “the European allies” and the message from Washington is that NATO and the European Union should work more closely in containing Russia and dealing with Ukraine. The question of whether we wish to be involved in containing Russia and dealing with Ukraine is there in the Foreign Secretary not being present when our German and French counterparts negotiate with the Russians on Europe. That is as visible a sign of lack of cohesion, lack of coherence and withdrawal as one could possibly have.

The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, talked about the 200th anniversary of Waterloo. Waterloo was Britain with our allies: the Germans, the Dutch and the Belgians. The question of whether we are standing alone and how far we are working with others is also fundamental to our defence policy. I welcome the extent to which over the past 15 years we have built a close defence relationship with the French, reinforced our relationship with the Dutch and helped the Nordic countries and now also the Baltic states. I deplore the extent to which Conservative Ministers have attempted not to tell the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail or Parliament the extent to which we now co-operate with them.

I agree strongly that sharing facilities, assets and procurement is one way to make short defence money go further. That is an important part of where we should be. However, unless we know what our relationships with France, Germany and the Nordic countries are, we will not go far enough. So, yes, we need a coherence defence budget—but first, we need a coherent national strategy and foreign policy.