Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, parts of this integrated review read more like a party manifesto than a closely argued analysis of threats and capabilities. We learn a lot about the Prime Minister’s ambitious visions for the future but much less about how they are to be achieved.

Some sections invite satirical comment. Page 64 tells us:

“The UK is the nearest neighbour to the Arctic region.”


That will surprise the Governments of Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Finland, Canada and Russia—unless Boris Johnson is planning to imitate Donald Trump by making a takeover bid for Greenland.

Like others, I was struck by the many contradictions and inconsistencies in the document. It proclaims that Britain is a “soft power superpower” which benefits from the global reputation of the BBC, our world-class universities and the quality of our cultural life. It also underlines and emphasises the importance of integrating domestic and external policies. In domestic politics, however, Ministers are hostile to the BBC and dismiss and condemn university teachers, artists and writers as the core of the despised metropolitan liberal elite. Observers in other countries notice these attacks on such national assets, even if the Prime Minister’s vision is too short-sighted to recognise them.

There is a fundamental contradiction between the assertion of sovereignty as a core value and the representation of the UK as a champion of multilateralism, global order, human rights and international law. The Chinese are right to say that criticism of their treatment of the Uighurs is an invasion of their sovereignty. We defend global values against Chinese sovereignty. The British Empire could both assert its full sovereignty and impose its views on others, but we no longer have an empire and we cannot pretend to be world-leading in all the fields that the Prime Minister fondly imagines that we can. He should talk more about partnership and less about leadership.

The identification of Russia as the most direct threat to British security is undermined by the priority given to the Indo-Pacific. Almost the only reference to the European Union—as has been remarked—states that the UK will

“find new ways of working with it on shared challenges”

but it does not tell us what those new ways might be. Later, it says:

“We will also look for ways to work more closely with European partners, including France and Germany.”


Ministers should not have to look very far: the UK has had a bilateral defence partnership with France since 1998, although Conservative Ministers have done their best not to tell Parliament about it since 2010. Indeed, one Defence Secretary told me directly that he accepted close co-operation with France provided that Parliament knew as little about it as possible.

The claim that the UK will become the European power with the strongest presence in the Indo-Pacific is also an exaggeration: the French are there already with territories, citizens, armed forces and diplomats. In winding up, therefore, will the Minister commit the Government to informing Parliament about the current state of the Franco-British defence partnership and plans for its future development? A review that devotes so much more attention to relations with India than with our nearest continental neighbour—Europe’s other military and global power—is not an entirely serious document.