That this House takes note of the level of resilience of the Armed Forces, given the reduction in personnel and equipment as set out in the Defence in a Competitive Age command paper (CP 411), published on 22 March 2021.
My Lords, I am delighted to have secured this debate. I think it is a fairly timely debate. We look forward to hearing the maiden speeches of my noble friend Lord Hintze and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Peach, with whom I worked in the Ministry of Defence—now I regret saying it—nearly a decade ago. They will know that it is the convention of maiden speeches to be not controversial. I hope they can both break that mould.
I will not labour my own points for too long because I retired from the Army as a major and we have down to speak four former Chiefs of the Defence Staff, one former Defence Secretary and NATO Secretary-General and one former First Sea Lord, and there is another Chief of the Defence Staff listening to mark my homework. I am not very happy about any of that, but they all have much more knowledge than I do.
Politicians need to understand defence and they do not. Spending money on defence is just like any other insurance policy. You have to pay the premiums on, for instance, a house. While people resent the premiums as a waste of money, when the house burns down, they turn to the insurance policy and find that they have not spent enough on their premiums. It is much more serious for our country if we are unable to defend ourselves because we did not pay sufficient premiums for defence.
What is the first duty of government? It is, and it always has been, the defence of the realm. Treasury Ministers especially see money spent on defence as wasted and continually try to cut it. Defence reviews are intended to reduce costs. I was involved in the 2010 review. It was very traumatic. I spoke to a fellow Minister and said I was thinking of resigning. He said, “Andrew, don’t be such a fool; they’ll just put somebody more compliant in instead of you.” It was weak—I know.
The 2010 review was driven purely by saving money. The Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time had no feeling for defence nor understanding of it at all. In the review, we talked a lot about asymmetric warfare. I do not remember any mention of an invasion of Ukraine with tanks. I do not recall Russia being mentioned particularly at all. We did not understand the threat then, as we do now, despite the invasion of Georgia in 2008. We naively thought of China as an ally for greater prosperity for a “golden decade”. We failed to recognise that the belt and road initiative is basically a tool of economic hegemony and imperialism.
At the same time, the review added the nuclear deterrent to the defence budget from the central government budget, which was of course a huge burden. It also added pension liabilities, which had not been there before—I am sure that someone will correct me if my memory is defective. During the coronavirus panic, we spent £410 billion or so on measures to combat the virus. I think that most people now acknowledge that that was not necessarily all money well spent. In that time, per year, defence got about 1/10th of that. There is now a cash increase, but inflation is wiping it out—and what is the first duty of government?
My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend Lord Strathclyde and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, for generously acting as my supporters. I thank all Members on both sides of the House for their welcome and courtesy towards me. Kafka said:
“Before the Law a doorkeeper stands on guard.”
He was certainly right in that respect. This House would not function without the doorkeepers and ushers, and I am deeply grateful for their guidance and good humour.
The clergyman and essayist Sydney Smith wrote:
“I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so.”
Similar sentiments can be levelled at those who comment on your Lordships’ House without knowing very much about what it actually does. I fear that that may even relate to those who should know better.
Scrutiny is a key function of this House, but it also exemplifies something critical to the freedoms we enjoy today: namely, the difference between being governed and being ruled. Goethe was right to say:
“To rule is easy, to govern difficult.”
To be governed is to have a voice. In the case of your Lordships’ House, it is also to act as a constraint on what the late, learned Lord Hailsham termed the “elective dictatorship” of the other place, but without competing against it.
That your Lordships’ House is ever vigilant over the precious mandate entrusted to it is critical. I am all the more aware of that inheritance for not having been born on these shores. I was born in China, after my family were forced out of Russia following the revolution. A change of regime there sent us on the move once again, making my family and me refugees. We found a new home in Australia, when I was only a few months old. It is a country I continue to hold dear, and it is worth noting that today is Australia Day, 26 January. I came to the United Kingdom in 1984; it is a country that has allowed me to thrive and that has always been seen as the paradigm of parliamentary democracy, good governance and fairness. I feel deeply honoured to have been able to serve on a number of its great institutions, and to continue to do so.
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hintze, in his maiden speech. I applaud and agree with his final sentiment that complacency is not an option. I know him well and recognise his remarkable and successful business career, his pride in his Australian background, especially so on this Australia Day, and his remarkable record for philanthropy, not only to the Armed Forces but to institutions such as the Natural History Museum. He has a lot of experience and wisdom, and we therefore look forward to hearing more from him in future.
I will speak about Ukraine, about which we really should have a full debate in this Parliament, both in this House and in the other House. It is increasingly clear that Vladimir Putin has declared war on the West. It is also clear that we are not responding adequately to that overt challenge to our countries and what we stand for. There is no visible urgency in our national behaviour. It is, of course, a war unlike the wars of the past. However, that old-fashioned type of brutal war is being waged against the territory and the people of the sovereign state of Ukraine. In contrast, Putin’s war on the West is much more subtle, more hybrid, less visible and more multifaceted, but just as potent and damaging. By using misinformation, election interference, cyberattacks, corruption, organised crime and malicious diplomacy, and by exploiting every crack in our democratic societies, he is seeking to disrupt and to weaken the fabric of our liberal, open democracies.
At the same time, that has nothing to do with promoting an alternative economic or social model, as the Soviet Union sought to do with its brand of Marxism-Leninism. Putin may well harbour, in secret, demented dreams about recreating that oppressive empire, but, in reality, he is violently posturing to gain attention and hoping to establish some parity with the United States of America. With his economy tanking and his young, economically active population draining away, those are simply foolish delusions.
My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, for securing this important debate at such a crucial time for the defence of our country. I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hintze, on an excellent maiden speech, and I greatly look forward to the contribution of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Peach, who has much wisdom and experience to contribute on this subject and to the House’s wider deliberations.
Resilience is a crucial issue for any military organisation, but for ours more than most—and for ours in particular. It is not our policy, on the whole, to start wars; we are usually on the receiving end of them, which means that we are generally at a disadvantage at the beginning of any conflict. An aggressor has the advantage of choosing the time, place and manner of military action, and will very often seek to take advantage of an opponent’s weaknesses. There will be weaknesses, since no nation’s military can be strong everywhere, at all times. That means that we need the capacity to absorb the first blow, to roll with it, recover our balance, adapt to the circumstances and demands of the particular conflict, and then to seize and exploit the initiative. Even the briefest study of military history will serve to illustrate the point.
What gives us the necessary resilience, and what are the particular capabilities and characteristics that enable us to overcome disadvantage and get on to the front foot? The most commonly heard answer to this question and one that we have certainly heard today is the size of our Armed Forces—the numbers of ships, troops and aircraft. Indeed, size does matter. Losses are often highest in the early stages of a conflict. Start with too little, and there may be insufficient capability left on which to base a recovery. The noble Lord, Lord West, may have a view on that from his own experience.
One argument sometimes put forward in defence of reduced numbers is that we do not intend to fight in high-intensity conflict on our own, and that it is our membership of alliances such as NATO that creates the necessary scale. To an extent that is true, but only to an extent. The argument itself can pose dangers. If too many members of an alliance continue to reduce force levels on the basis that contributions of others will create the necessary mass, that mass will never be achieved. That has certainly been the situation in NATO for many years now.
My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, for this very timely debate. I commend the noble Lord, Lord Hintze, on his splendid maiden speech; I am delighted that he changed from khaki in Australia to dark blue in the UK. I am delighted by his links with the Royal Navy and welcome him to the House.
A few days ago, the Defence Secretary repeated, as was said by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, that our armed services were “hollowed out” and had been for a number of years, and that it was getting worse. Well, what a surprise. This is something that a number of us in this place have been banging on about for a considerable time. We were constantly told that we were talking nonsense. I looked back through Hansard; I went back only five years but, time and again, I saw that it was a constant theme of mine and that the government and MoD response every time was that I did not really understand it and that everything was well. Clearly, it was not.
The Ukraine war has been a wake-up call reminding us all of the fact that, in peer-on-peer conflict—I use that term advisedly, I must say—weapon usage rates are extremely high. This is something that we knew but, for a number of years, not least due to financial pressures and because our enemies have been terrorists and not national armies, successive Administrations have ignored what we had learned at such cost. What is quite clear is the inadequacy of both the weapons and munitions stocks across all three services. It is the same for weapon holdings as well. For several years, ships have left their home ports without full outfits of weapons. This is unacceptable because, once a ship deploys, it may well end up in a hot war. Historically, we were aware of that and never let it happen. For example, HMS “Exeter” was in the West Indies guard ship in early 1982; she was deployed south as soon as the war started in the south Atlantic. Although one would never use Sea Dart missiles in the guard ship role in the West Indies—stopping hurricanes and the like—she had the full outfit of Sea Darts and used them to very good effect protecting the carrier, fighting down south and shooting down Argentinian aircraft.
My Lords, I want to speak for the first time in this House on such an important topic, introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, in a debate with so many noble and noble and gallant speakers. I am grateful to the courtesy shown me since my arrival. I express my gratitude to Black Rod and her team, the clerks, the officers, the police and security staff of the House, especially the doorkeepers who helped me and my family on the occasion of my introduction. On that day, I was very fortunate to have as my supporters my noble friend Lord McDonald of Salford and the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach.
I served for almost 50 years in His Majesty’s Armed Forces, in the Royal Air Force, flying as a joint officer. I held command in every rank, deployed in many operations in many countries and have served extensively overseas, including as chair of NATO’s Military Committee. Therefore, I strongly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, and I wish to emphasise the centrality of our alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which grew from the wisdom—including much British wisdom—of those who saw the ugly reality of the Soviet Union’s expansion in eastern Europe.
Once again, over 70 years later, we are seeing the consequence of President Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine, with Russia revealed to all of us as an aggressive, full-scale military dictatorship. The war continues, with no immediate prospect for peace. As we have already heard eloquently described, there are many lessons for us in the UK and for all our allies. Some, if not all, are not new. One I would highlight is the critical importance of unity among allies. As the war approaches its grim first anniversary, sustaining unity in support of Ukraine will require sustained effort.
As we debate our resilience, we should bear in mind that President Putin continues to challenge any narrow definition of national security by weaponising energy supply and energy infrastructure, especially pipelines and the cables and other under-sea capacity upon which we depend and which must be protected—even food security and concepts the UK fought to establish, such as international waters and international airspace. Sustaining freedom of navigation is now at risk and is vital to the prosperity of the UK. Therefore, we need to widen our definition of national security and integrate our efforts to secure our national resilience, as was eloquently described by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup. In this, defence, our outstanding intelligence agencies and others need to play a part.
My Lords, it is my privilege and great pleasure, on behalf of the whole House, to express our warmest thanks to the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Peach, who has shown in that speech, through his great experience elsewhere, a depth of knowledge which we will find helpful, interesting and inspiring in the future. As he mentioned, he has great experience on which to draw, as Chief of the Defence Staff, as chairman of the NATO Military Committee and, more recently, as the Prime Minister’s special envoy to the western Balkans, where he has made significant improvements in understanding and in relationships at the highest level there. To all of that great experience he adds a charm and a friendly manner. I am quite certain that his contributions to this House will be valued extremely and welcomed very much in the future.
During the fourth Oral Question on Wednesday last week, the noble lord, Lord Campbell of Pittenweem, asked the Minister for
“credible evidence that the Government are even now replenishing our own stocks of military equipment”.
In response, the Minister said that the MOD
“very closely engaged with industry”,
and with partners,
“to ensure that, holistically, industry is able to understand demand and plan accordingly to supply it.”—[Official Report, 18/1/23; col. 1823.]
I should like to pose again the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell. Holistically or not, the Minister’s response was deeply disturbing; nothing seems to have been ordered, let alone delivered. Perhaps the Minister also shares my concerns.
Is some interdepartmental bureaucratic wrangle about costings causing inevitable and unjustifiable delay? Let me hazard a wild guess. The equipment donated to Ukraine had been pre-owned, so its valuation might not be that of new supplies—even ammunition has a shelf life. As some of the new stock will be to replenish UK holdings, if bought with additional stock for gifting to Ukraine, the unit price might be reduced. What assumptions should be factored in on that score? How much should be ledgered to the defence budget and how much to the consolidated fund, which is there to support operations beyond the normal peacetime activities of the UK Armed Forces? But while our forces are not involved in direct operations, some of their kit and ammunition certainly is involved.
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Robathan for introducing this debate. I agree with everything that noble Lords have said so far. Before saying anything substantive, I must refer to the two maiden speakers; I know I am not really supposed to. The experience of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Peach, in NATO will be invaluable in complementing the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Robertson. I am pleased that he mentioned the importance of logistics, because I will be saying a word about that in a moment. Turning to my noble friend Lord Hintze and his excellent maiden speech, what I find admirable about him is that he initially trained as an engineer and had a short but useful time in the Australian army, in the Royal Australian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, or—I am late—RAEME.
My noble friend Lord Robathan mentioned numbers in one UK armoured division on Op Granby. On Op Telic in Iraq, when the division crossed the start line, it had 25,000 men and women on the nominal roll—I repeat, 25,000. My noble friend mentioned the importance of armoured formations and, by implication, armoured battle groups. As the Russians are finding out, and as was reported in the Times recently, to attack dug-in infantry with anything but an armoured battle group is suicidal.
Touching directly on the war in Ukraine, I entirely agree with noble Lords, but I think it is too early to draw conclusions about what our defence posture should be in the future. We may be learning lessons—we will learn lessons—but we need to see what the outcome is. I also agree that we urgently need a full-scale and non-time-limited debate on the war in Ukraine, which really is an existential threat. We probably need to have regular debates on that.
Like many noble Lords, I think the Government are doing an extraordinarily good job in dealing with the war in Ukraine. Unfortunately, when I took a step back from Westminster during my recent illness, it seemed to be the only thing they were doing well. However, I praise my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for his sterling efforts and his frankness when discussing some of the problems in defence.
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This debate is not intended as an exercise in nostalgia, but, during the Cold War, we typically had something like 55,000 soldiers in West Germany—cavalry, infantry, engineers, signallers and artillery—who were all facing the threat from the East. We had several hundred tanks—I think it was about 900, but I may be wrong—innumerable armed vehicles and a real capability to fight a war. We had, I think, 12 squadrons of fighter aircraft, helicopters, et cetera, as well as 20,000-plus airmen and tactical nukes for most of the time.
Young people—those under 50; I am old—do not really understand the Cold War and look baffled if you mention it. But it was a real war of deterrence, and it worked. There were four armoured divisions in Germany for most of the time, until 4 Div moved to York in the 1980s, as an infantry division. But, even then, we could field three armoured divisions—although they were always being cut by the Treasury, which is why, in the first Gulf War, 1 Div had to borrow units and personnel from across other formations. But, actually, it did pretty well in the first Gulf War: we had over 53,000 UK service personnel in total deployed there, including me.
Now there is war in Europe, which puts the security of all of us at risk. We could not possibly put a single division in the field. There was a good article in Monday’s Times titled:
“‘Hollowed-out’ UK military can’t send a division to war”.
I should say that the reporting was not prompted by this debate. But, 77 years ago, Winston Churchill—it is always a bad thing to quote him—made a famous speech at Fulton, Missouri, which noble Lords will remember. It is remembered because of the Iron Curtain reference—but read on. He said that the Russians desired
“the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines … From what I have seen of our Russian friends and Allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness.”
We have shown military weakness in NATO—notwithstanding the announcement about Leopard tanks yesterday—in the West as a whole and in the UK.
We scrapped most of our tanks. As it happens, I had a discussion in 1991 with the then Defence Secretary, in which I said that I thought the tank would be viewed as the horse of the late 20th century. Actually, I stand by that: they are very vulnerable to drones, laser-guided mortar rounds, et cetera. But they still have utility in war—if noble Lords do not believe me, ask the Russians and the Ukrainians. We have scrapped or amalgamated most of our cavalry regiments: the so-called vulgar fractions—13th/18th, 14th/20th, 15th/19th, et cetera. There is only one regiment—the Royal Tank Regiment—and there used to be four when I served 32 years ago.
This is not nostalgia for the past; these are the facts. I will let others comment on how few fast jets we have to support out troops. But, again, we are told, “Oh, we don’t need jets or aircraft”—but, again, ask the combatants in Ukraine. We are told that drones, cyber and modern technology will mean that we need fewer troops, but this is not a binary issue: we need both if we are to defend ourselves. We need new technology and troops to use it and, above all, to hold ground. Again, ask the soldiers in Ukraine, in ghastly, cold, water-filled trenches.
I pay tribute to my right honourable friend the Member for Uxbridge for his lead, when he was Prime Minister, in sending armaments to Ukraine. I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench will convey my message to the MoD and No. 10 that, first, we need to continue our support. But we also need to replenish our war-fighting stocks. How many MLRS have we sent, and how many do we have left? I am not sure about NLAWs; I read that we are spending some money on them, but we need to replenish our stocks. We know that sending one squadron of Challenger tanks is reducing our limited armoured capability. We must now spend extra money to fill up our armouries, as a first step—remember the insurance premiums.
I will touch briefly on the failings of procurement, which is a subject for further debates and which, frankly, is a scandal. They are caused in part by the swift turnover of military personnel, by incoming defence chiefs always wanting new and expensive additions to equipment to catch up, and by defence contractors, who can run rings round civil servants, who know little about industry. My noble friend Lord Hammond of Runnymede got a grip of this pretty well when he was Defence Secretary, when I was his Minister for the Armed Forces, but, sadly, it appears to be out of control again: witness the Ajax debacle. There is huge waste, which is to the detriment of our defence budget and operational efficiency.
I turn briefly to personnel. Resilience requires a steady flow of personnel to be recruited and retained. We will not even nearly hit our recruitment targets for this year, and the numbers leaving are increasing—I spoke to someone who should know quite a lot about this only the day before yesterday. Part of the issue is pay, but I suggest that it is more about a sense of purpose or mission. We desperately do not want conflict, but operations do encourage recruitment. We need reserves for resilience, but the numbers are in decline. From the figures, the Reserve Forces apparently decreased by 3%, and the number of new people joining has gone down by over one-third.
Personnel need to feel valued; it is the same as any other job. Over the years, the Treasury bean-counters have looked at reducing quality of life across the board. The messes of soldiers, sergeants and officers have been subjected to endless cost-cutting, so the mess is less likely to viewed as an alternative to home, which is what it used to be 40 years ago. For instance, the catering is outsourced; I have eaten some of it, and the quality is much reduced in general. I will not mention married quarters, which are again in trouble, or the determination to sell off the attractive houses for commanders because civil servants say, “Why should a general live in a big house?”—perhaps because they do not. It is about the perks being whittled away. One has to make an attractive offer to keep good people, who can earn more in the civilian world.
I chanced on this section of a former Defence Secretary’s autobiography:
“Britain can count itself fortunate in having such clever and capable people at the top of its armed forces. I often wondered why they seemed so much better than their counterparts in other similar countries. I came to the conclusion that it was the result of family history. Many of Britain’s senior officers have followed in their fathers’ footsteps”.
This is from See How They Run by Geoff Hoon, who was Defence Secretary for six years. There is some truth in it, but there are other reasons as well—it is particularly because people do not feel valued. So many Ministers over the years—I do not blame Geoff Hoon for this—have said, “What a good system we’ve got. We have such good Armed Forces and commanders. How can we change it and make it less good?”
Our Armed Forces are hugely admired at home and abroad, although I do not think that they are necessarily the envy of the world. But Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth’s funeral in September, which was seen by many millions around the world, showed discipline, attention to detail, pride and tradition, which astonished many, I suspect. But it is not by chance: the service personnel involved also fight wars, so let us not destroy our admirable Armed Forces by penny-pinching in so many ways. Tradition, pride and effective fighting and defence go hand in hand.
Finally, as an historian, I say that we should learn the lessons of history. In the 1930s, disarmament after the First World War was very popular: we could not possibly fight another major war. It is the same today: we are cutting our troops, ships and aircraft as I speak. A House of Commons Library paper published last April said:
“the Ministry of Defence’s day-to-day budget is … set to decline in real terms”—
that was before inflation reached what it has. There has been no change since that was written, so I say to my noble friend the Minister, the Ministers in the Ministry of Defence and the Prime Minister: let the Government change tack. Speak softly, but carry a big stick. I beg to move.
I have always had an interest in politics and, to be clear, given my family’s history—which, if anyone wants, we can discuss over a beer—I have always had an acute interest in geopolitics. The world is becoming more complex and dangerous. That is exacerbated furthermore by climate change, which not only is very real but presents its own security challenges. Though having qualified in science and engineering, my career for the last 40 years has been in global finance, and I am deeply aware that economics is intrinsic to the effectiveness and well-being of the country.
I declare an interest as an honorary captain in the Royal Naval Reserve and as a former captain in the Australian regular army, where I served in the Royal Australian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. For our civil society to function, it is critical for it to be served by professional Armed Forces. Their sense of service and duty is exemplified by my friend—and I do mean friend—the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Peach, with whom I share this maiden speech day.
The ability to legislate freely is something many take for granted. We should feel blessed, rather than burdened, that we have a solid constitution with checks and balances, built up by precedents and the lived experience of generations over centuries. That is not easy; it is protected by our exceptionally professional, ethical and effective Armed Forces, who are there by consent, commanding the respect of the nation, our allies and the world.
My noble friend Lord Robathan is correct to highlight the issue of resilience. Support for the Armed Forces at this time is an absolute priority, and, for our services to be effective, we must also ensure that service families are adequately cared for. I was delighted to note the announcement of a revised families strategy. I declare another interest as a patron of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines Charity.
The ambitions set out in the Command Paper, Defence in a Competitive Age, underline the range of threats we face. It is well known that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, but that vigilance is not free. Given what we see in Europe currently, it is not contentious to say that the world is becoming increasingly challenging, complex and dangerous. The UK’s regular place at or near the top of annual soft power surveys is something to be proud of, but soft power without hard power is, frankly, no power at all. The integrated review aims to
“create armed forces that are both prepared for warfighting and more persistently engaged worldwide”.
It is right; it is time to invest more, not less. One thing is very sure: complacency is not an option.
I thank noble Lords for welcoming me. I sincerely hope that I will add constructively to your Lordships’ House, and I have every intention of doing so with the courtesy and graciousness I have seen in others here.
The issue for us today as we approach the 365th day of Putin’s three-day war against Ukraine is: what should we be doing in response to the declaration of war by the Russian President? Here is my checklist of what we need to do. First, we need to secure our own societies and democratic systems. With London still a reservoir of Russian dark money, as we heard earlier, and London’s lawyers still doing the dirty work for Russian money men and women, more needs to be done to enforce and toughen sanctions against those who do the Kremlin’s bidding or who profit from his regime.
Secondly, our defences need strengthening, as has already been said and will be said again in this debate—and I am sure in the other maiden speech, from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Peach, who I know and respect very well as a friend. That does not just mean spending more on defence; it means replenishing the stocks we are giving to the Ukrainians. Thirdly, we need to give the Ukrainians more. If, as Ministers continually say, the Ukrainians are fighting for themselves, their country, and for us, as indeed they are, by holding stocks and equipment here, when our front line is actually in eastern Ukraine, we leave ourselves dangerously exposed.
The fourth thing we need to do is to tell the Russian people that we, NATO, the European Union and the West are not attacking Russia. Instead, we are helping the sovereign state of Ukraine to defend itself against an unprovoked attack. How do we get that message across? The answer is that we did it in the Cold War and can do it again. More Russian language information needs to get into Russia, and we need to promote the independent BBC World Service, as well as YouTube, Instagram and a host of means that can get past the wall of deceit and lies which characterise Russia’s propaganda outlets. A younger generation can access the web, but the older folk—that is, the majority—in Russia depend on the official media, with its Orwellian approach to truth and facts.
Fifthly, we need to tell the Russian military, whose advice Putin clearly ignored when he ordered the invasion, some bold truths. The Russian high command knows that it was ill-prepared for such an ambitious war, and that it had, through faulty and over-optimistic intelligence, completely underestimated the opposition, resilience and ingenuity of the Ukrainians. The Russian military know that they are struggling against a formidable, highly motivated Ukrainian population, now being armed with western-supplied, sophisticated weaponry that they have no answer to. In their collective memory must be the parallel with the Red Army in Afghanistan in February 1989. They were faced with an endless, unwinnable war costing lives and precious resources, so the Kremlin ordered the mighty Red Army of the Soviet Union to come home. Nobody was asking at that time for an off-ramp or a ceasefire, or some face saver for the Russians. They simply folded their tents and left—and 32 months later there was no Soviet Union.
Sixthly, we need to tell Putin and the small number of cronies around him advising him and telling him all the time what he wants to hear, that all his strategic objectives have failed. He wanted to stop NATO enlargement, he wanted to split Europe, and he wanted to split Europe from the United States of America—all failed. He wanted to crush and eliminate Ukraine from the map, and instead he has produced a new, deep, permanent feeling of nationhood in that country. He wanted to annex and absorb the Donbas and the land corridor to Crimea, but now his spokesman cannot even describe what has been annexed and what they still hold.
We need to tell Vladimir Putin this: one step over the Article 5 NATO line and there will be an existential risk to the Russian motherland. Here is another message for the man in the Kremlin, who gave us this terrible war. Speaking, as I do, as the only person ever to announce the invoking of Article 5—that guarantee that an attack on one NATO country should be seen as an attack on them all—I can tell Vladimir Putin this. I met him nine times during my time in NATO, and at that point we did good business together, but I tell him now that the Article 5 guarantee of a nuclear weapons alliance goes well beyond normal red lines.
Finally, we need to address the global south and the lack of understanding of Ukraine’s position in Africa, South America and India. It seems that many countries in the south see this is as a regional conflict of payback for NATO enlargement or a challenge to the over-mighty US and the arrogance of the West. However, they must understand that, if it becomes accepted that borders can be changed by force and that sovereign states can be invaded and annexed, if nuclear blackmail intimidates neighbouring states, many more countries than Ukraine will be on the danger list. We need urgently to get that message over and to make an effort to get it heard loudly.
I end with a sentiment worth the House pondering on if anybody is worried about further escalation. The greatest nuclear threat we face today is a Russian victory. We must do everything possible to prevent that happening.
We need larger Armed Forces. Numbers have been progressively reduced by successive Governments on the basis of cost saving, with no underpinning strategic rationale. In the early 1990s, for example, the Government insisted on defence cuts as a post-Cold War peace dividend, despite the fact that we had just been involved in a conflict that had stretched our resources to the utmost and had nothing to do with the Soviet Union. It is worth remembering that the only way that we were able to field a division in the first Gulf War was by cannibalising just about the whole of the British Army of the Rhine—and all three services are much smaller now.
Inadequate force levels are not just a problem in high-intensity conflict, though. The Government’s appetite for the employment of the military instrument frequently exceeds their willingness to sustain appropriate capacity. At the moment, for example, Typhoon squadrons are spending long periods deployed on operational duty in response to the dangerous situation in Ukraine. Of course, it is absolutely right that they should do so, but the relatively small size of the force means that people are frequently away from their families, they are unable to train effectively when they are at home base, and morale is suffering as a consequence. Poor morale leads to poor retention, which simply exacerbates the problem.
Numbers of troops and of platforms are by no means the whole story. Soldiers in battalions, sailors in ships and air crew in aircraft are of little use if they do not have the systems that allow them to succeed in modern combat or the weapons with which to fight. The Defence Secretary has confirmed what we have all known for a long time: that the Army cannot field a fighting division. But this shortcoming is not a consequence of too few soldiers; it is because they do not have the necessary communications, logistics support, armoured mobility, weapons systems or munitions. The same is true of the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. Both services can field some remarkable capabilities, but not in the number required or with the necessary sustainability. One of the earliest lessons of the war in Ukraine was the reminder—for those who needed it—of the appalling rate of consumption of weapons in such conflict.
I will not give comfort to potential adversaries by detailing the UK’s specific weaknesses here. The noble Baroness the Minister knows full well what they are. I will simply note that, in evidence to your Lordships’ International Relations and Defence Committee at the end of last year, the Defence Secretary confirmed that the UK had for far too long “hollowed out”—his words—our stocks of weapons and munitions. He has publicly repeated this statement in just the past few days. So, while we certainly need to expand the size of our Armed Forces, our immediate and urgent priority is to ensure that our current force structure can fight effectively and enduringly in high-intensity conflict. At the moment, it cannot.
This brings me to another dimension of the problem. Additional defence expenditure is of course required to bring weapons stocks not just to where they before we—rightly—donated a significant portion of them to Ukraine, but to where they should have been in the first place. We need suppliers, however, with whom we can contract for such purchases. The kinds of complex weapons that have been so successful in Ukraine cannot be produced overnight, and particularly not in the numbers that we and our allies need. That will require industrial capacity that does not exist at the moment.
We must expand our idea of resilience beyond the military community to encompass the industrial base that supports it. Such industrial capacity depends on private sector investment in the appropriate plant and personnel. But this will be forthcoming only if the investors see a reasonable prospect of a sustained return, which will in turn depend upon a fairly steady drumbeat of orders from our and other Governments. All too often, however, the procurement tap is turned on and off erratically in the face of short-term budgetary pressures. This is not the way to encourage long-term investment in industrial capacity. There is a need for a much more strategic approach to defence procurement if we are to sustain the industrial base necessary to national resilience.
Such an approach needs to address issues of culture as well as quantity. May I recommend the recently published report from your Lordships’ International Relations and Defence Committee into the extent—or otherwise—that defence policy has moved from aspiration to reality? One of the report’s more concerning findings is that high-technology companies consider the Ministry of Defence to be one of the world’s worst customers. They say that its institutional resistance to innovative ideas, its low appetite for risk, its unwillingness to invest in experimentation and the subsequent commercialisation of novel approaches all conspire to deter high-tech companies from working with the MoD. But we have seen in Ukraine how an imaginative fusion of civilian and military approaches and technology can produce startling battlefield successes.
War and the threat of defeat can of course force co-operation between apparently strange bedfellows, but we cannot afford to wait until we are embroiled in an actual conflict before we face up to this challenge. We need a change of culture in our day-to-day processes, but the Ministry of Defence cannot do this alone. The Treasury, too, needs to adopt a much more entrepreneurial and co-operative approach to innovation, risk and long-term investment.
I have tried this afternoon to demonstrate that defence resilience is a complex issue and not just a question of numbers, important though they are. But underpinning all this is the inescapable question of money; 2% of GDP is simply inadequate to fund the aspirations set out in last year’s independent review and defence Command Paper. Both of those documents are being reviewed, but the reviews are taking place in the face of an even more dangerous world, so the equation will only have become worse. It is well past time that the Government faced up to their responsibilities in this regard. Fine words butter no parsnips—particularly when we cannot afford the parsnips in the first place.
Addressing these problems should be one of the highest priorities for the Government, as was recognised by the International Relations and Defence Committee, which has been referred to already: its very good report recognised this. The other thing that has been highlighted is the importance of spares, support and maintenance back-up. As defence funding has been squeezed—and it has been, year on year, over the last few years—so crucial maintenance has been curtailed due to lack of stores items. This actually impacts on personnel: if you are a key maintenance rating on a ship, you are proud of your weapons system, you are ready to do the work, you will work overnight when the ship is in harbour, and then you are told, “We haven’t got that bit of spare gear: I’m sorry, you will just not be able to do it.” That is really bad for morale and it impacts on people staying in the service or leaving. Of course, it leads to breakdown of very key machinery and weapons systems and you then end up deploying without them.
There is clearly a need to build greater resilience into the UK’s own stocks, supply chains, as was mentioned by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, and industrial capacity. Industrial capacity needs to be looked at very closely. I will not go into that now but, my goodness me, it does. It is not just quantity of ammunition, missiles and spares that are significant; the number of people and platforms have a significance as well. We have not faced a peer enemy in a hot war, really, since the Second World War—only briefly in Korea and briefly in the south Atlantic. Like the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, I do not want to be nostalgic about it, but between the break-out from Normandy and the surrender of the Germans on Lüneburg Heath, when we had huge, overwhelming air power, the British Army in Europe lost 4,500 tanks in action against the Germans. This gives an idea of the scale of these things.
The loss rates of tanks in the Ukraine war and the clamour by Ukraine for more armour show that tank numbers are important. There had been a growing consensus that the tank was a thing of the past. Attack helicopters, drones and smart long-range missiles meant they were rather like the battleship and no longer relevant. It always struck me as strange, I have to say, when I sat in committees in the MoD: if the tank was no longer important, why the hell were we spending so much money on systems to destroy them? But that is another issue. We have been too quick to discard tanks, and the fall in numbers is now a real problem, I believe, for the Army. Of course, we have given some away as well—quite rightly, but, my goodness me, I think we need to look at that carefully.
I have another figure from years ago. One hopes there is never fighting like this again, but 105 years ago, post the battle of Amiens where we defeated the German army, the British Army, probably the most powerful British Army we ever had, was advancing and beating the Germans day by day until the surrender on 11 November 1918. We suffered 412,000 casualties out of the 1.9 million men fighting. Once again, personnel losses in the Ukraine war have been highlighted: when you are fighting like this, you suffer large losses and the massive conscription efforts by the Russians, in particular, but also by the Ukrainians, show this. When I did my platoon commander’s course in 1966, the average regiment had about 760 men in it. Now, the average regiment has about 400 men in it. I cannot believe that is just because they are doing things more efficiently. When it comes to rifle teams and such things, you need certain numbers. So numbers are actually important, and with war raging in Europe and the possibility of a world war, do we really believe that 70,000 is the right strength for our Army? I am not sure that is right.
Certainly, as an island nation—I would say this, would I not?—in the final analysis, the maritime is the most crucial environment for the security, survival and wealth of our nation. In World War II, the Royal Navy lost 132 destroyers ensuring that survival. We presently have six in our Navy. In the Falklands, 16 of our frigates and destroyers were lost or very badly damaged. We do not actually have that number operational today. Numbers are important.
As for logistics, it is interesting that, between the wars, we used to think about these sorts of things. We actually ensured that, with our 850-ship Navy, we had enough oil in stock in the UK to fight for six months at war rates. People were thinking about resilience. People do not seem to think about resilience now: everything is just enough, just in time. Yet our NATO allies look to the UK to provide maritime capability. The chairman of the US joint combined chiefs said that sea power was something that
“the United States, for a variety of reasons, expects our British allies to contribute to.”
Our contribution, I have to say, is smaller than is needed.
I find it extraordinary that, as almost every other country has raised defence spending, some by huge amounts, as the war in Ukraine has progressed, the UK has not. How much risk are we willing to take? It is all very well providing Ukraine with equipment, and it is absolutely right that we should, and if necessary, provide even more, but I think we should make sure that our forces our ready and fully equipped for a possible war. By doing that—people watch this—we are much more likely to prevent a world war. People such as Putin look at our Armed Forces. He has looked, over the past few years, at how we and Europe seem to have had no interest in our defence forces, and he has taken that as a green light to go and do things. I end by saying that I believe the Government are sleepwalking into disaster unless they rapidly grip this issue and increase defence spending.
Many of our Scandinavian friends and allies practise total defence, which is a blend of defence, regular and reserve, national reserve, border security, protection of infrastructure, cyber defence and integration of what some noble Lords may recall as civil defence. If our infrastructure needs to be protected, we should organise our national security to do so. As the geographical consequences of the climate emergency to our own north threaten the high north and the Arctic, where geopolitical disturbance threatens us directly, one way we should respond is to develop the UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force, which the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Richards of Herstmonceux, created 10 years ago and many of us have evolved ever since.
This force embraces our close allies in Scandinavia, the Baltic states, the Netherlands and Iceland. I would argue that this idea’s time has come. With shared values and culture, the Joint Expeditionary Force is NATO-facing, flexible and has the potential to do more. We could digitise it with a UK-created secure, future-proof command and control network—an important lesson from Ukraine. We could continue to integrate and share intelligence and co-operate on future capabilities. In short, we have created something special; we should exploit it.
As noble Lords have heard, other lessons from Ukraine are also not new: the importance of intelligence-led operations; manoeuvre and armour; air-land integration with artillery at the rates of exchange that we have heard; and agile, empowered command and control at the tactical level. Above all, I emphasise the importance of logistics. My first predecessor as chair of the Military Committee was General of the Army, Omar Bradley, who said famously,
Any discussion on UK defence resilience has to include stock replenishment and sustainment.
As we have heard today, there is a place for innovation and new technology which, through research and development, is being brought rapidly to the battlefield by, with and through NATO, and there is a new centre to do that in London. However, as we have also heard, technology is not a substitute for the Armed Forces. As we focus on logistics, we need to understand technology’s additive to the qualities we need of mass, motivated people, equipment, and a sense of mission and purpose.
The war in Ukraine is not the only challenge we face. The rise and global ambition of China, including as a military power, continues to be an issue. There is instability in Africa and there are unresolved issues in the Middle East. Closer to home—and here I declare my interest as the Prime Minister’s special envoy to the western Balkans—we need to remain vigilant to President Putin’s wider ambition to sow division, create instability and undermine NATO. The Russians remain very active in the Caucasus and the Balkans. We and our allies need to be active in response and remain strong to prevent the political crises in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, and especially between Serbia and Kosovo, becoming security issues. As I have been taught on many visits to that troubled region, the price of freedom is not free.
The problems we face have been highlighted by many eloquent speeches, and many of the solutions have been tried before. I would argue that the time we are in makes implementation of those solutions urgent in the interest of our national security. The British Armed Forces continue to attract regular and reserve wonderful people, and they need our support. To paraphrase another famous speech from Winston Churchill, we need to brace ourselves to our duty. I am personally grateful for the patience and courtesy that has been demonstrated to me, and I hope to contribute to the important work of this House.
There will of course be uncertainty about for how long and how much more we should give fighting equipment to the Ukrainians. Industry will need to know quantities to cost their new or renewed production. What is already only too clear is that much of that given to Ukraine is not surplus to the MOD’s requirements, awaiting destruction or the auctioneers. What might be termed the UK Armed Forces’ war stocks have been justifiably used in some quantity—after all, is that not what war stocks are there for? But in almost 12 months since the initial gifting of arms to Ukraine, no replenishing orders and contract stages have been reached; this is extremely worrying. Maybe the Minister will be able to reassure the House that these concerns are much misplaced. As other noble lords have already pointed out, a key component of resilience is the ability to fight on effectively even after initial losses may have been inflicted. Gifting from war stocks is another form of loss.
One of the most telling lessons of the present conflict between Russia and Ukraine is not the repeat of World War I trench warfare but the reach and accuracy of missiles and other kinetic attack delivered over considerable distance from the air. For example, take the Ukrainian’s sinking of the Moskva, a missile cruiser; or the severe damage and destruction of key bridges and arms dumps; or Russia’s successes against Ukrainian infrastructure, even hundreds of kilometres from the actual front lines. Such successes underline more than ever why our own Armed Forces must have the ability to absorb losses well behind, as well as along, the front line, without losing the ability to fight on. When it comes to the viability of the UK’s deterrent, a paucity of conventional fighting capability in war would be catastrophic. It could mean that all too soon the Prime Minister faced an Armageddon decision to use our deterrent or to surrender.
If a major fighting ship or two are lost with all hands, or aircraft or aircrew are caught by air attack on parked aircraft or on the mess, or key artillery pieces are destroyed, our limited fighting strength is further reduced. To fight on, replacements need to be immediately to hand. That is resilience—a resilience all too clearly lacking, I am afraid, in today’s ORBAT. Surely it is time to gear up replenishment as though we were ourselves at war. The urgency required seems non-existent. If, as the Secretary of State admits, our stocks are hollowed out, let us see and hear of procurement action this day. Maybe we need a Kate Bingham-style approach to defence procurement in the future.
I am sure all noble Lords want to support the UK Government by speaking at various events about the war—but with authority. Speaking for myself, I cannot do this if I can rely only on a combination of the Times and the Economist, no matter how good they both are. Last year, I asked:
“Is the Minister aware of one difficulty: the paucity of briefing that we are receiving?”—[Official Report, 27/4/22; col. 354.]
In answer, my noble friend the Minister made the expected noises, including citing Parliamentary recesses, but I think I have had only one invitation to a briefing since that date.
The House will recognise that there will be a range of erroneous reasons why the Putin regime thought the time was right to invade Ukraine. Among these are—to some extent—Brexit, the accompanying instability and a weak UK Government caused by a hopelessly divided Conservative Party. The United States has its own problems. So far as the UK is concerned, there is also the false impression that we are no longer interested in defence and deterrence, despite the protestations of Ministers. When our opponents do their analysis of our Armed Forces, that must be the inescapable conclusion. We look happy to be able to deal with bush fires in the Sahel with “persistent engagement”, but not willing or able to deploy a fully bombed-up armoured division—or even exercise a small one.
We might be able to provide a mechanised division but, since we lack the necessary resilience, this will take nearly 12 months. However, what the Americans want from us is a fully supported armoured division at a useful state of readiness—a point made in the recent Select Committee report. When our opponents analyse our capabilities and resilience, they could be forgiven for thinking that we have only a heavily armoured gendarmerie with no depth, no redundancy and no reserves, especially in terms of logistics.
To provide your Lordships with just one illustration of hollowing out, I will have to go into the realm of military logistics; I apologise if this is too much detail. It is obvious that military logisticians will seek to have as few different types and models of logistics vehicles as possible. One reason is to reduce the spares inventory and the special tools and test equipment that is necessary to support these vehicles in theatre. This applies in particular to engines and main assemblies.
In the years towards the late 1990s, the British Army was supplied with numerous batches of Land Rovers. However, in terms of engines and main assemblies, they were not interchangeable, although outwardly similar. This caused huge logistics problems in supporting the Land Rovers in the field, especially in the Balkans. The last Labour Government carefully procured a range of trucks called the Support Vehicle, or SV, manufactured by the MAN company in Germany. At the time, the maximum number needed would have been carefully calculated, allowing for attrition and, most importantly, unexpected demands. In other words, that Government were prepared to pay the insurance premium referred to by my noble friend Lord Robathan. It would have been a disaster to have to buy a subsequent batch of these trucks, because they could never be built to the same build specification and the Land Rover problem that I referred to would then be repeated.
I mentioned unexpected demand. During the UNPROFOR days and Op Grapple in the Balkans, we were lucky enough to have a Malaysian battalion come and help on a UN deployment. Supporting their own trucks so far from their home base would have presented the Malaysians with insurmountable logistical difficulties, so we loaned them several of our own Leyland DAF four-tonners. We had plenty available, and we had the spare parts in theatre. We were able to provide second-line equipment support or, if necessary, give the Malays a replacement vehicle. Most importantly, we had the resilience—we had the fat.
Up until recent years, the MoD would not sell or dispose of logistics vehicles unless either the fleet concerned was obsolete or there was no longer any obvious use for the vehicle—the latter being hard to imagine for a general service truck—or, of course, the truck was damaged beyond economic repair. About two years ago, I became aware that the MoD was selling unused or nearly new MAN SV trucks with very low mileages. I asked my noble friend the Minister a suitable Written Question, and my heart sank when, on 13 January 2021, I received this answer:
“Due to a change in threat assessments, a surplus of MAN SV6T … trucks has been identified. To economise storage and support costs, a number have been identified for sale.”
We used to have what we called a war maintenance reserve; we obviously do not have one now. Would my noble friend give the same answer now? Are we still selling off perfectly serviceable MAN SV trucks? I ask, rhetorically, what signal does deliberately reducing our resilience send to a potential opponent? My overarching point is that our military capability is carefully measured by our opponents, as observed by the noble Lord, Lord West. They will pay particular attention to our resilience and whether or not we are serious about defence.