US National Security Strategy

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 16th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Baroness Chapman of Darlington)]

My Lords, the Government’s ambition is to spend 3% of GDP on defence and 5% on security by 2035. On China, our position is clear and has been consistent, unlike that of the previous Government, where we will compete, co-operate and challenge as appropriate. The US Administration, to my knowledge, have not expressed an opinion on a planning application.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as someone who lived in the United States for four years and has spent a lot of time since then working on US-UK and transatlantic relations. The Government should not underestimate the seriousness of what is behind this. We have three more years of a Trump presidency. In terms of the ideas behind it, can I recommend to the Minister the piece that the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Belgravia, wrote for Policy Exchange the other week, defending Churchill against those on the MAGA right in the United States who now see Churchill as a warmonger who should have made peace with Hitler in 1940 and who dragged the United States into an unnecessary European war? In view of the isolationist, back-to-the-1930s, “America first” moves going on within the American right, with the echoes of white supremacism and Christian nationalism of the southern states, do the Government not need to be a great deal braver to start the national conversation that the SDR called for about the new circumstances for national security, in which we are to move earlier with an increase in defence spending than it has so far said, and to be much more positive about closer links with our European neighbours and the European Union, both in security and economics?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My view on Churchill is very straightforward: we are immensely grateful, proud and in awe of the way he led this country through an incredibly difficult period in our history. Obviously, there are complexities and people have views, and there are many people far better placed to give an opinion on Churchill’s legacy than me, but that is my view and I think it is consistent with the view of the Government.

The noble Lord urges us to be closer to our European allies and partners. He is right to do that, and we have reset our relationship with the European Union, I think quite successfully. It has its own positions, and we are rebuilding what was quite a fractured relationship. It is now much more constructive, and we are working together on some very difficult issues, not least the defence of Ukraine. But I do not see it as a question of having to choose between the US and the EU. It is important—indeed, it is our responsibility and our global duty, actually—to step up, as the UK is, and act as a bridge between the EU and the United States and to make sure that we maintain the very best of relationships with both.