That this House takes note of the Report from the International Relations and Defence Committee UK defence policy: from aspiration to reality? (1st Report, HL Paper 124).
My Lords, I am pleased to introduce today’s debate on our report. I thank the members of the International Relations and Defence Committee for all they have done. As always, we could not produce a report without expert help, which we received from our specialist adviser, Dr David Blagden, and from our committee staff. I am also very grateful to those who made it possible for us to miss—I mean, to visit. Sometimes it felt like missing, when we could not get to Portsmouth, but we were able to get to HM Naval Base Clyde at Faslane, the UK Naval Support Facility, Bahrain and the RAF base at al-Udeid in Qatar.
The purpose of this inquiry was to examine the Government’s ambitions and plans for UK defence as set out in the March 2021 Defence Command Paper, and how these related to the strategic assumptions set out in the integrated review. We launched our inquiry in April 2022, shortly after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. I begin my remarks today as we began our report, by condemning President Putin’s illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. I pay tribute to the extraordinary courage of the Ukrainian people and their armed forces, who are fighting not only for their homeland and freedom but also for our security. I also commend the steadfast commitment of the Government to support the Ukrainians. I know that support has the strong backing of all sides of the House.
The outcome of the war remains uncertain. We should therefore be cautious about drawing lessons from it prematurely. Nevertheless, it was clear as we started our inquiry that, with the return of large-scale conventional war to Europe, the strategic assumptions underpinning the IR and the Defence Command Paper had changed. Our inquiry provided an early opportunity to consider the implications of the war for UK defence policy and, more broadly, whether the UK Government had made the hard choices necessary to convert the broad aspirations of the IR into clear defence planning. Today I will outline just three issues raised by the committee’s report: the UK’s posture within a changing global strategic context; the UK’s current and future defence capabilities; and the Government’s relationship with the defence industry and their approach to new and emerging technologies.
The 2021 IR was manifestly vindicated in its view of Russia as the most acute threat to the United Kingdom. It also rightly recognised the importance of co-operation with both the US and the UK’s European partners, which has only been strengthened in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The committee’s report expressed concern that this co-operation could be undermined by the poor quality of UK-EU relations in recent years. It noted, however, that the UK and the EU lacked a clear framework for structured co-operation on foreign policy, security and defence. I therefore welcome the new commitment in this year’s IR refresh to reinvigorate European security relationships, and I welcome the statement by the Minister for the Armed Forces on 14 June that the UK should be ready to work with and within EU security missions to achieve mutual foreign policy aims.
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I also welcome the greater clarity provided in the IR refresh regarding the nature and aims of the Indo-Pacific tilt. Furthermore, I welcome the clarity of the Defence Secretary’s statement in his letter to the committee regarding the UK’s policy on Taiwan, in which he stated:
“We have clear interests in the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait and do not support any unilateral attempts to change the status quo”.
I endorse the Government’s view that Russia represents the most acute threat to the UK, and that China represents a long-term systemic challenge to our interests. However, our report noted that the Middle East was not given the same level of prominence as other regions in the IR, and this was not corrected in this year’s refresh. The Middle East is home to several ongoing UK military commitments, as well as several key partners. It remains an important region for UK engagement. In evidence to the committee, the Defence Secretary strongly rejected concerns that the Middle East had been neglected in UK strategic planning. Nevertheless, we feel that more work is needed to reassure long-standing partners in the region that it remains a focus for UK diplomacy.
The nature of the war in Ukraine calls into question the emphasis on strengthening capabilities to tackle so-called “sub-threshold” threats and underlines the need to maintain and develop the UK’s conventional capabilities. The committee expressed concerns about the UK’s hard defence capabilities, notably in the land domain, and questioned whether the British Army had sufficient resources to ensure that its capabilities and contribution to NATO remain credible in the eyes of its allies.
The conflict in Ukraine has shown how quickly ammunition and other key assets can run out in conventional warfare, and how inadequate “just-in-time” supply chains can be. The committee found that the UK’s weapon and ammunition stocks were inadequate across all three services, and we recommended that remedying this situation should be the highest priority for the Government. We also called on the Government to build greater resilience into their stocks, supply chains and industrial capacity.
In their response to our report, the Government stated that they would review the Defence and Security Industrial Strategy alongside the update to the IR and defence Command Paper. I look forward to the results of that review.
No discussion of defence strategy can avoid the question of defence spending and whether we have sufficient resources to meet the security challenges identified by the Government. While the IR announced a substantial uplift to defence spending, our report found that the current defence spending plans mean that the Government may not be able to deliver on the aspirations of the IR and the defence Command Paper. The Defence Secretary has been disarmingly frank regarding the impact of spending constraints on the UK’s military capabilities, describing the British Army as “hollowed out and underfunded”. I have no illusions of course regarding the extraordinary pressures on the public finances. Nevertheless, defence spending must be set with a view to meet the threats we face and the capabilities we require. The IR refresh noted:
“We are now in a period of heightened risk and volatility that is likely to last beyond the 2030s”.
When the Committee was finalising its report, the Defence Secretary described spending 3% of GDP on defence as
“an aspiration or a planned marker”.
Since then, this aspiration appears to have been cut back somewhat, and the Government now pledge to spend 2.5% of GDP
“as fiscal and economic circumstances allow”.
In addition to committing sufficient funds to our defence, it is of course essential that these funds are well spent. Our report makes recommendations regarding parliamentary scrutiny and effective procurement. One of the committee’s key concerns is that the Government can be reluctant to be a little more transparent about their spending on defence. I am disappointed that the Government did not respond to the committee’s request for an update on the ongoing impact of inflation on defence spending. As the Defence Secretary told us, high levels of capital spending mean that the defence budget is particularly vulnerable to inflation.
Given the tendency of UK defence procurement to run over budget and behind schedule, it is essential that Parliament is given the opportunity to scrutinise defence spending plans adequately. The committee therefore believes that the Government should consider granting relevant parliamentary committees, on a confidential basis, access to information setting out how funds are allocated and spent.
In view of the intense pressure on the defence budget, it is also vital that the MoD has robust procurement mechanisms in place and an effective relationship with the defence industry. In this context, I welcome the fact that the Government have conducted a full “lessons learned” review of the troubled Ajax programme, led by Clive Sheldon KC. As the Minister for Defence Procurement noted in another place, the report makes for difficult reading. I welcome the fact that the Government have accepted its findings, and most of Mr Sheldon’s recommendations.
I also hope that the Government will act on the findings of our report regarding the MoD’s co-operation with the defence sector, in particular those companies working with cutting-edge and experimental technologies. The IR places heavy emphasis on investment in innovation and technology as a means to maintain military power in the context of diminished land forces and limited conventional capabilities. Whether or not such a bet on technology is wise, given the enduring relevance of conventional forces in the war in Ukraine, it is vital that the UK effectively leverages its research and development capabilities to maximise its defence capabilities.
However, I regret to say that the committee heard evidence of significant problems in the way the MoD manages its relationships with private enterprises—particularly SMEs that do not have an established relationship with the Ministry of Defence and are often more likely to be among the most innovative firms that abound here and overseas. One defence firm noted that the barriers to entry remained “stubbornly high,” and described the MoD’s approach to innovation management as “byzantine”. Another told us that, from the perspective of a tech company, the MoD remains
“one of the worst customers in the world”.
As a result, the committee concluded that the MoD must consider changing fundamentally its approach to smaller high-tech and start-up companies.
As our report noted, the security circumstances facing our country are now graver than anything the UK has experienced since the height of the Cold War—and I am of an age that I can remember that period. The Government can be rightly proud of the leading role they have taken in supporting Ukraine, and through that support, helping to uphold the European security order. Nevertheless, the war in Ukraine has raised challenging questions regarding the UK’s conventional capabilities and the resources it has available for defence. To maintain credibility with our allies we must ensure that we invest sufficiently and effectively in defence capabilities and improve how we engage with the defence industry through a major culture change in our approach to procurement. I beg to move.