That the Grand Committee takes note of the Report from the International Relations and Defence Committee Ukraine: a wake-up call (1st Report, HL Paper 10).
My Lords, I speak today as chairman of the International Relations and Defence Committee to introduce our report, Ukraine: A Wake-up Call. The report provides a sobering, and now urgent, assessment of the implications of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine for United Kingdom defence policy and the broader security of Europe. Before delving into the detail of the report, I thank the members of the committee, including my predecessor as chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Ashton of Hyde; the excellent clerk and staff, who put a huge amount of work into the report over the summer; and the witnesses who appeared before the committee.
The findings in our report are stark. The war in Ukraine has shattered the assumptions underpinning western defence thinking since the end of the Cold War. This is indeed a wake-up call not just for us but for the whole of Europe. The war has exposed critical gaps in our capabilities and the fragility of our defence industrial base—all because of our assumption, now revealed as wrong, that future conflicts would be short and limited.
The first conclusion of the report is that NATO deterrence failed. President Putin calculated that the West lacked the political will and the military capability to stop him. This calculation, tragically, was in part correct: our deterrence posture has been found wanting. We must rebuild deterrence through improved military capability, clear messaging and a united front with our allies. This has taken on a new significance following the rift created by the heated exchanges between President Trump and President Zelensky last week and the continuing developments this week.
Another significant development since the publication of our report has been the Prime Minister’s recent announcement of an increase in defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027 and the ambition to increase it to 3% in the next Parliament. While welcome, our report concluded that 2.5% of GDP may not be enough to meet the UK’s growing defence needs or plug existing gaps. Subsequent events have underlined that point.
This leads me to the current state of our Armed Forces. The Army in particular has already shrunk to its smallest size since the Napoleonic era, and it is questionable whether it will be able to field sufficient fighting forces beyond an initial deployment. The Prime Minister has said that he is willing to put troops on the ground in Ukraine to help guarantee the country’s security. While I fully understand his objective, it is difficult to imagine how the Army would be able to maintain a credible deterrent force in Ukraine, for any extended length of time—let alone fulfil its other obligations, which seem likely to grow—without increasing in size significantly.
Crucially, we must rebuild the appeal of military service to the next generation. We also need to revitalise our reserves. Ukraine has shown that well-trained and properly equipped reserve forces can, literally, make all the difference. Ours are woefully underfunded. We must ensure that they are ready to mobilise at scale, when needed, and that numbers are boosted so that they can also be deployed to protect critical national infrastructure at home.
My Lords, first, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley. I think it is an appropriate thing to do in a week when the House has been debating the hereditary Peers Bill. He is the inheritor of one of the longest-standing peerages that there that there are, I think, but in his time here—and I have now been here for 15 years—he has made a major contribution to the House. I would just like to put that on record.
The report is right that we need a wake-up call, and I think that there are already signs in the way that Keir Starmer is responding to the crisis that that wake-up call is being heeded. I know a little bit about Ukraine. From the late 1990s to 2004, Tony Blair appointed me to head a No. 10 delegation to meet regularly, which we did every three or four months, with the Ukraine presidential Administration. I was lucky, of course, to be given lots of nice trips around that wonderful country to the Crimea, where I sat in Joe Stalin’s chair at Yalta, and to wonderful cities such as Odessa, Lviv and Kyiv itself.
It was always clear to me in those conversations that there was a great division in Ukraine between those who saw themselves as totally dependent on Russia for their security and their energy and those who wanted to become what I would call a normal European country. Of course, Blair was a very strong advocate of European enlargement, so I could readily say to them that the Labour Government of the time respected their European vocation. Indeed, when I went to Brussels with my noble friend Lord Mandelson and the trade talks started with Ukraine, one of the great things that caused the revolution on the streets in Ukraine, both in 2007 and in 2013, was the feeling that they wanted to be part of Europe, not a Soviet satellite.
I think our Prime Minister has done really well, and I am glad to see that so many people on the Opposition agree on that. There is nothing wrong in principle with President Trump’s wish for peace, and he is right, of course, that there is the most awful killing going on. Not least is the brutality of what Russia has done in Ukraine—and we should not forget this in all these discussions—particularly in taking children from Ukraine to be Russianised. That is absolutely shocking, and it should not be forgotten in any peace discussions.
My Lords, I start by thanking our previous chair of the committee, the noble Lord, Lord Ashton of Hyde, and our current chair, the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, and indeed our clerk and her colleagues for the tremendous work that they have done in drawing together the information that emerged in our inquiry and the many thoughts and reactions that we had as members of the Select Committee.
Much has happened since its publication in September 2024, but the thrust of our report remains absolutely relevant and on target. It was, as its title says, A Wake-up Call then; surely the events of the past few weeks have shaken out of their slumber those who did not recognise the urgency of the call at that time and continued to sleepwalk towards disaster. The report sets out with great clarity how Europe as a whole—and our own country, I am afraid—has failed to pay attention to the drift into what I have described as a third global conflict. I have spoken about this in your Lordships’ House before, especially after the Russian invasion of Crimea because, even at that time, the direction in which we were going was clear.
However, as in so many other fields, people tend to live in the world that they wish existed, rather than in the one that they actually inhabit. Europe in general preferred to believe that major international wars in Europe were a thing of the past. After 9/11, many academics and analysts wrote about the new wars, which would consist only of terrorism and intra-state disruption, but insisted that major wars between developed states would not arise. This was an extension of the thought that was around in the later 20th century that technological developments, especially after 1945 and the existence of nuclear weapons, were so damaging and destructive that the truth was that no one would actually contemplate them.
In fact, new technologies rarely replace the old technologies of warfare completely. They simply add more weapons, more tactics and more strategies to the armamentarium. A hundred years ago, most warfare took place on land and sea; then, air became important and, subsequently, space did so as well. But, as if four spaces were not enough in which to have conflict, we developed the cyber world, and we are now in effect engaged in a global conflict in cyberspace.
My Lords, I also have the privilege of being a member of the International Relations and Defence Committee. I will confine my remarks in this debate to one of the points in chapter 3 of our report, “Nurturing partnerships”. This looks at the concept of defence in a more holistic and big-picture way than just the size of the Armed Forces or the supply chains and capability of weapons, crucial though these things self-evidently are.
Alliances, partnerships and reputation also underpin our defence posture and, in the case of Ukraine, have exposed an important weakness when we consider the situation globally and long-term. We need to think very carefully about the response of the countries which we generally call the global South to the support from the UK for Ukraine, partly so that a rounded view of the current situation can take place, but also so that the UK in formulating its future defence strategies and capabilities can be realistic about those alliances, partnerships and reputational risks on which our engagement in any future combat situation might depend.
As the report states:
“International engagement is integral to deterrence and escalation management”.
At the time of the report’s publication—I am certainly not going to go into the astonishing change in voting behaviour by the US at the UN recently—the UN’s 193 member states had voted on six emergency special session resolutions on Ukraine. Most countries supported the first of these, which condemned Russia’s invasion, with only one-quarter of states not in favour. All those that abstained or voted against were countries in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and south-east Asia: the global South. This pattern held in subsequent votes and few countries in any of those regions have imposed any sanctions on Russia or given any material support to Ukraine.
My Lords, our Select Committee was half way through its taking of evidence when we were rudely interrupted by a general election. It is a tribute to the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, and his predecessor in the chair, the noble Lord, Lord Ashton, that we picked up the pieces after the election and completed this report. It is a tribute as well to our secretariat, who were terrific.
If I were to summarise the lessons we learned in our report from the war in Ukraine, I would say that they are a surprising mixture of the old and the new. On the old side, we have the front line and the trenches, which are eerily reminiscent of conflicts over 100 years ago and which showed the importance of mass in military operations. On the new side, we have the evidence of the huge importance of drones, which, as we say in paragraph 183, are ubiquitous in Ukraine for intelligence, target acquisition and reconnaissance, as well as for direct attacks. Then, aside from the mechanics of warfare is the international context in which the war is being fought, on which I very much agree with everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, said. What has the war told us about the standing of the West in the international community, in particular those countries of the global South?
First, on the importance of mass, as we say in paragraph 34,
“the evidence we heard points to the current size of the British Army being inadequate”.
Before we even begin to talk about increasing the size of the Army, we need to focus a little on the immediate problem of the apparent inability to recruit enough people to maintain present strengths. The figures we had were that, up to July 2024, 11,940 people joined the regular Armed Forces, while, in the same period, 15,700 left. We need a 25% increase just to stand still. I would like to hear from the Minister the strategy we now have for delivering the numbers required, particularly in the light of the increased funding announced last week. How much will be accomplished by retaining existing personnel and how much by new recruits? I am sure he agrees with me that retention has great advantages because, in a sense, you already have the finished product.
My Lords, I was not a member of this excellent committee, but I think that this is an absolutely admirable report that is amazingly timely, very important and, indeed, a wake-up call to us all. Although I was not a member, I take a little slice of pride as a godparent of the committee because the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and I had to push the authorities very hard to get the committee set up, which we eventually did, and it has been an outstanding success. This is one of the best reports it has ever produced. I have three points to add, quickly, to the excellent introduction from the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, in which he covered most of the things I want to say.
First, we should note what he said about reserves. At the moment, our reserves, which used to be called territorials, number 34,280—although I am not quite sure about that; there is a lot of dispute about the number. That is on top of the 74,000 regular Army troops, making the total strength of the Army, Navy and Air Force 134,000, or whatever it is. That can be enlarged very quickly. People forget how rapidly, in the 1930s, the reserves went from being held at about 200,000 into the millions, and then merged totally into the Army. All that happened in a matter of weeks. I cannot claim to remember in the case of my father, because I was two years old at the time, but I am told that he had about a fortnight to transform from being a retired regular back into a territorial, and then went into full combat organisation and was in the desert within a month of the war being announced on 3 September. The whole speed of this thing can be greatly improved, as the report rightly says, and to have bureaucracy slowing it all down is a lot of nonsense. We need to look at that very clearly; the call-up can be much quicker. That is my first point.
Secondly, this report is so good because it brings home that the whole issue is much wider than the picture books and child versions of what warfare is about. We think about the trenches and the front line, and it is absolutely true about the drones that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, just eloquently mentioned. The sheer numbers—the report mentioned 2 million—that Ukraine alone is mobilising can really change the whole nature and drive people back into the trenches like in 1914. I am told that, within 200 miles on either side of the front line, and certainly on the Russian side, anyone who comes out of a trench for a smoke—or, dare I say, a pee—is instantly spotted and probably dead within three or four minutes. This is the changed nature of the whole pattern of the front line.
My Lords, I congratulate the members of the International Relations and Defence Committee on this excellent report. It is usually a matter of great regret that we are not able to debate such Select Committee reports until long after they are published, but in this case the delay is a positive advantage. Why? To echo the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, it is because, if the war in Ukraine was a wake-up call for us and our European partners in NATO, surely the events of the past few weeks in Munich and Washington have served to tip us entirely out of our cosy collective bed on to the cold, hard floor. The recommendations made in the report are based on a forensic analysis of the evidence and are well judged. I support them all. However, the context has clearly changed—and not for the better.
We all want NATO to survive and to continue the invaluable work it has done over so many decades to guard our collective security. The United States has been at the core of that endeavour, and we wish American involvement to continue. I believe that it will, but we can no longer expect it to be on the scale that it has been in the past. This goes beyond the vagaries of one President or any sense of growing American isolationism. Senior officials in Washington, both civilian and military, have made it clear that, despite their enduring commitment to NATO, they are substantially shifting their weight of effort from Europe to the Pacific. This should not surprise us. This development has been under way and slowly building in momentum over many years. That the American shift now coincides with a dramatically increased risk to our security has just served to open European eyes that, for too long, have remained resolutely shut.
It is now starkly apparent that if we in Europe do not provide adequately for our own security, no one else will. It is also clear that shouldering this responsibility is the surest way of retaining American involvement in NATO. For too long, we and our European partners have scrabbled around in the smallest margins of public expenditure to fund our defence. It was inappropriate in the past; it would be utter folly now. There is a growing acknowledgement by many political leaders in Europe that we are in an era of rearmament. This is right, but we need to define and follow through on what that means. Europe’s militaries, including our own, are too small as fighting units, inadequately armed and lacking in key strategic capabilities. Rearmament means making good these deficiencies. That will take two things: time and money. We have the first, but none to waste.
My Lords, those were wise words from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup. I join him in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, and his committee.
All seem to agree that the context within which the report was drafted has changed dramatically. Obviously, one would be the announcement by our Prime Minister of an increase in defence expenditure and more to come, but also the flurry of announcements made since Munich by the President and the Vice-President, which makes some argue whether we can still rely on the US and whether all the assumptions we have made since the Second World War about transatlantic relations are put in question. Are we still confident that the US will come to our aid? I note that the former US ambassador to Moscow said over the past few days that we need to rethink the side on which the US is now, because there have been so many things said by the President which favour Moscow, and there has been no criticism of Moscow but much criticism of President Zelensky, who was lectured, indeed humiliated, when he visited the White House and may yet again, Canossa like, have to go on his knees when next week he visits, or is likely to visit, the President, possibly with President Macron and our Prime Minister. The question of trust must arise and must affect all our relations, including our reliance on the US for the nuclear deterrent.
There is an old adage, “Think it, don’t say it", and we have to understand our Prime Minister when he bites his tongue, I guess, about things he would like to say about the utterances of President Trump, but he cannot say them, and we are more able to do so.
You can talk about the responsibility for the war. President Trump mentioned Ukraine as starting the war. He wants to increase the G6 to the G7, and it is sad to see the way in which Congress, or at least the Republicans, a few days ago sycophantically rallied around the President, yet a few months ago, they would have given just the same response to President Zelensky. Now they exult in the President’s new clothes.
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Critical national infrastructure deserves a specific mention, because the experience of Ukraine provides a clear warning to the United Kingdom: Russia has relentlessly attacked Ukrainian energy systems and communication networks. We are already witnessing a troubling shift towards more aggressive hybrid tactics being deployed, in the UK and nearby, by Russia and others. We must up our game in countering hybrid attacks. If not, our enemies will realise that they can get away with it, placing us in an ever more vulnerable position.
Defence is not just about soldiers and capabilities; it is also about cybersecurity, the security of our supply chains and resilience within our communities. The concept of total defence, long practised by nations such as Sweden and Finland, must be adopted here. We must move beyond the notion that defence is the sole responsibility of the military. Total defence entails a high state of readiness by both the state and society to defend themselves in case of threat of war, crisis or natural disaster.
I will now speak in my personal capacity rather than as a member of the committee. There is a little-known but influential organisation, which is critically poised to play a leading role in helping the United Kingdom achieve a total defence stance, called the Council of the Reserve Forces and Cadets Association. I declare an interest in that I am currently its chairman. The CRFCA has strong and embedded relations throughout the United Kingdom, with local and devolved Administration politicians, business leaders and opinion influencers through the extensive nationwide membership of the Reserve Forces and cadets’ associations. The RFCAs are the only defence-related organisations that reach all the regions and devolved nations, and the membership connects with all sectors and communities in society.
The Minister recently commented in answer to a Written Question:
“The RFCA has an extensive volunteer membership … bringing a wide breadth of expertise and community links. The RFCAs’ extensive network of volunteer members, based within communities across the UK, enable the RFCAs to … connect to society … While the number of hours volunteered is not formally recorded either for the volunteer membership or non-executive board members, it is estimated that this figure is around 69,000 hours per year”.
In answer to another, he said:
“The vast majority of active members make no claims, reflecting their sense of service and deep connection with the UK’s Reserve Forces and Cadets”.
There is a move afoot in the Ministry of Defence to dispense with this organisation, first created by Haldane in 1908 when it was realised that, to be efficient, while command and training of the Reserve Forces should be centralised, conversely, the raising and administration of those forces could be efficient only if decentralised, this being deemed essential to the encouragement of local effort and the development of local resources in time of peace. This is what the RFCAs, the successor to what were the county associations, provide today with their wide membership; they are local in origin and situation, cognisant of local capabilities and requirements and thoroughly integrated into their communities.
In its stead, the MoD wishes to create a non-departmental public body with one centralised board of paid non-executive directors with little or no experience of, or commitment to, reserves or cadets. There is a significant risk that this, as well as the proposal that the current membership should be retained merely in an advisory or associate capacity, will disenfranchise the members when they recognise that they will have little ability to have a say on how central government directives are implemented in the regions from which they come and on the support they give to sustain the reserve.
At a stroke, the MoD will have lost a body of natural supporters with deep links into the society of their communities and regions, just as the strategic defence review may well place a greater reliance on the reserve for the total defence of the United Kingdom. To quote a former commanding officer tasked with raising a new reserve battalion: “My experience of raising a new battalion has convinced me that the associations are essential to look after the interests of the Reserve Forces as a whole, not just a harmless institution that has to be humoured. It therefore concerns me that there is a view among some civil servants and regular officers of the MoD that the RFCAs are anachronistic and expensive bodies which work against the established chain of command and are positively detrimental to the ‘one Army’ concept”. The RFCAs are here to help and can make a significant contribution to the defence of the nation.
To return to the committee’s report, yet another urgent lesson from Ukraine concerns our defence industrial base. Decades of budget cuts and reduced industrial capacity since the end of the Cold War have left the UK’s defence industry unprepared for high-intensity prolonged conflict. Our procurement processes are too slow and risk averse. Ukraine has, by necessity, embraced a model of rapid innovation, working hand in glove with commercial technology companies and adapting in real time on the battlefield. This is the agility we need. To achieve this, the Government must rebuild trust with the defence industry, whose leaders repeatedly told us that it needs clear, long-term commitments—not shifting goalposts—to enable it to scale up production.
We must also broaden our partner base, including those we may not traditionally think of as military suppliers, in order to provide the cutting-edge capabilities our Armed Forces require. Recent events have underscored the critical need to strengthen our industrial engagement with our European partners. We found that increasing collaboration in integrated air and missile defence should be high on the list of priorities for the Government. The report also highlights the importance of nurturing partnerships. Of course, it did not predict the schism in the western alliance we are witnessing right now, but that only serves to make it even clearer that the UK Government must now use all their diplomatic skills—as I think the Prime Minister seems to be doing, and I commend his efforts—to ensure the unity of the western alliance in support of UK and European security efforts.
Finally, we must acknowledge an uncomfortable truth: the UK is a medium-sized regional power. This may not be a bad thing, but it requires hard choices to be made and a realistic narrative from the Government about what our Armed Forces can deliver. Our report calls for a coherent model that leverages technology, industry, the reserves, diplomacy and society itself to rebuild our deterrence posture and make sure that it is credible. This should be at the heart of the strategic defence review, and the Government must ensure that their response to the review is swift and provides a clear road map for how this can all be achieved. The hard-earned lessons from the war in Ukraine are our wake-up call, and the time to act is now. I beg to move.
The basic condition of a peace has to be that Ukraine remains a free and independent country able to pursue its European vocation and membership of the EU. Clearly, security guarantees such as NATO membership have not been ruled out, but the European arm of NATO really has to step up to the plate. That is absolutely crucial. There is, of course, no certainty that the guarantees from the US that we are seeking will actually come. Keir Starmer is doing his best. The Ukrainian President seems to think that the minerals deal, with Americans on the ground in Ukraine, will itself provide a security guarantee; I have to say that I do not agree.
We are on course for a very big need for European rearmament. I welcome the step towards 2.5%, but in my personal view that is nowhere near enough. I think that, with the Robertson review, we need to be thinking much more in terms of something like 3.5%. There is encouraging news on this today from Germany, where the likely new German coalition under Friedrich Merz has decided that all defence spending over 1% should come outside the fiscal brake that they have. I think we need to do something similar in Britain.
Britain has to be full part of this European rearmament. This is not anti-NATO; in fact, it is the only way of saving NATO, by convincing the Americans and President Trump that we are ready to stand up to the plate. But this must be done in a co-ordinated way if it is to secure efficiency and rationalisation of the way that Europe works. I am a little sceptical of talk of buying British in this context, because we have to be co-ordinated. One of the reasons that Europe is so weak is because of that lack of planning and co-ordination.
Fundamentally, what the Russians want is a defeated and demoralised Ukraine, where they can convince the people that they should elect leaders who accept Russian satellite status. That is not what we want. There has to be no Munich in Europe as a result of the present crisis.
An old intelligence officer with whom I worked for many years used to talk about the need to be an educated customer of intelligence. What he meant was that we need not only to accumulate ever more data but to analyse it satisfactorily. That means looking at it realistically. When Vladimir Putin wrote and talked a lot about his intention to take territory and restructure the global security architecture, many western analysts said, “Oh, his speeches are just bad history and foolish nonsense”. Even when he amassed troops on the borders of Ukraine, many regarded this as just showmanship and did not prepare themselves for the coming conflict.
It is much the same with President Trump. People often complain that, when politicians get elected, they do not do the things they promised during their election campaigns. The problem with President Trump is the opposite: he does try to implement the things that he has promised. It is necessary to listen carefully to what he says. When he talks of wanting peace, what he is talking about is peace between Russia and the United States; it is not a peace that will satisfy Ukraine or Europe. As far as he is concerned, they are small fry that he can happily disregard because the big players are just the United States, Russia and China; the rest are just what the French call garniture—kinds of vegetables.
This report sets out clearly the urgent need to review our failed deterrence policy, not least because we cannot have the same confidence that our nuclear capacity will always be able to operate with the necessary current US collaboration. We can hope that it will, but we cannot be certain. There are colossal financial and technical implications—and, indeed, implications for our alliances. The NATO we knew is simply not able to be depended upon, but we do need alliances and we need to work closely with others.
It is also true that one downside of having a full-time professional military is that the country as a whole gets to believe that the defence of the country is somebody else’s responsibility: “It’s the Government. It’s the military”. They are absolutely crucial, of course, but, particularly as the amount of resource available has been cut back, it is not possible for the Government and the military on their own to give citizens a guarantee to fulfil the absolute fundamental responsibility of defence and protection. We need a whole-of-society approach and sense of responsibility; as has already been mentioned, our colleagues in Finland and some of the other Scandinavian countries have recognised this for some time. That will need a change in the psychological posture of our people as a whole, as well as in the provision of materiel.
In regard to our weapons systems, bigger is not always better. Some of the things we have seen Ukraine being able to do with small amounts but with creativity need our attention. We need steady nerves but a commitment to face the fearful reality before us and to face the current underpreparedness with necessary funding, personnel and a change in attitude of our community as a whole.
Meanwhile, Russia has been able to divide and rule between the positions of the West on one hand and of the global South on the other, by talking up the Soviet Union’s historical support for decolonisation, attracting support particularly in Africa and Asia. Our report quotes a former Portuguese Minister, who said:
“Ukraine’s plight would receive a lot more sympathy in the Global South if it were presented as a war of national liberation … if you described Russia as the last European empire”.
While the UK has been reluctant to embrace this narrative, Russia has gone full speed ahead with diplomatic initiatives to court and secure support from the global South.
For example, it held a Russia-Africa summit and parliamentary conference in 2023 and described a new foreign policy approach in opposition to the so-called western neocolonialism. It also held the first ever Russia-Latin America conference in the same year. This has resulted in countries of the global South feeling aggrieved at what is perceived to be a distracting concern of the West with Russian aggression. They would prefer to see attention towards issues such as debt and climate change, rather than what is being viewed as western hypocrisy and double standards, particularly towards the suffering of people in regions of the world other than Ukraine.
Evidence we received from the Henry Jackson Society suggested that these undesirable trends could be shifted by a more assertive role by the UK in the Security Council and the G7, away from a subordinate position of reliance on the US, and stressed the importance of maintaining a physical presence in regions of potential conflict.
I suggest that this all adds up to a clear pointer that the Government’s recent decision to fund greater defence spending—vital though that must surely be—by raiding the international aid budget might be short-sighted and ultimately self-defeating. If the UK’s future defence capability, strategy, deterrence and engagement are to command the respect of global leadership rather than risk a global cold shoulder, we will need a more holistic definition of defence and the support, not the cynicism, of the global South. We should pay more attention to Latin America and avoid short-changing Africa. On the surface, I can see that that sounds literally miles away from our defence agenda, but the interconnectedness is now more important to understand than ever before. I look forward to the Minister’s comments on these points.
I would also like confirmation—I think this is such an important point in recruiting—of the fact that skills acquired in a career in the Armed Forces are extremely valuable for life outside the military, and special emphasis should be given to this powerful selling point. In our evidence, we heard that the armed services are consistently in the top 10 of UK apprenticeship providers, with no fewer than 24,800 people undertaking their apprenticeships in 2022.
Finally on recruitment, the Government said in their response to us that:
“The Armed Forces need to continue to attract a range of diversity, talent, skills and experience which is fully reflective of the society it serves”.
Which groups are particularly underrepresented, and are there good grounds for believing that targeting them will bear fruit in the recruitment challenges facing the forces?
Now to the significance of new technology, especially drones, in the lessons learned in Ukraine. The sheer scale of the use of drones in Ukraine is staggering. Dr Ulrike Franke from the European Council on Foreign Relations told us that drones
“are omnipresent on the battlefield”.
She said,
“we are talking about hundreds of thousands of small drone systems being used, and lost, every month”.
Two issues concerning drones stand out from our evidence. The first is the rapidity of development of drones and of defence systems to counter them. This means that there is, in effect, a drones arms race, with any advantage to either side always in danger of being short-lived. The second issue is simply one of drone production capacity. As we say in our report, it is estimated that
“Russia is producing around 300,000 drone units per month”,
compared with Ukraine’s production of 150,000. I ask the Minister: where are we in the drones arms race? Are sufficient resources being provided to keep us ahead in drone technology and defence systems? Is the industrial capacity available to produce drones on the scale that modern warfare requires?
Finally, I turn to the lessons we should learn from the Ukraine conflict about the international context and the standing of the West. In paragraph 34 of our report’s recommendations, we say:
“As the UK Government is facing a world where the Global South is becoming more assertive, with some countries leaning towards China or Russia, it is vital for the UK to be more proactive and have a strategy on how to engage with the Global South”.
The fact that 40 countries are sanctioning Russia because of its aggression can give only limited comfort to the West, bearing in mind that the overwhelming majority of countries are not imposing sanctions, and many of those are helping Russia, in one way or another, to evade the effects of sanctions. I would like to hear the Minister’s judgment about what the war in Ukraine has told us about the standing of the West in general in the international community and of the UK in particular. The war in Ukraine has been long and bloody. Lessons have to be learned. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
An even bigger nature change is that it is not just about the front line. Obviously, civilians are targeted, rather as Hermann Göring did with trying to smash all our cities—he failed. Now, of course, Putin has far longer-range rockets of far greater accuracy. All the utilities are targeted, and we want to watch, know and learn from the Minister to what extent we are developing new air defences and missile repellents for, for instance, our power stations. If they can be taken out, and if electricity can be taken out of the system, I am told that, within three days, civil chaos and collapse of morale happens behind the lines. Of course, it is the same lesson that Germany in particular learned in 1918: if morale collapses behind the lines, it spreads to a collapse in morale in the Armed Forces as well. The Russians are well aware of that and are using that strategy in Ukraine at this moment. The concept of having total defence against this kind of warfare, total defence in terms of mobilising people on a far larger scale—regulars and territorials—and having more combat-trained troops ready to add to the regular troops is vital.
On my third point, I differ a little, I think, from the report. The report says that it is all about Europe and how we get together with our European partners. It is not; it is a global issue. There are principles—and fears—that go right through Asia, where all the growth of military, civil and domestic economy will take place over the next 30 years. Japan is extremely nervous about any kind of peace that we negotiate in Europe that gives in to Russian force. They say that that would immediately trigger Xi to have a go at suffocating Taiwan, which would lead to Pacific war and then to world war. We have, but sometimes neglect, our great range of Commonwealth network friends, right through Asia and Africa. They are just as concerned and need to be mobilised just as much. In fact, if you add it up, we probably have more friends—you might say they are soft-power friends and their Governments do not always agree—around the world, outside Europe, than the United States has. The United States might be losing friends at the moment, becoming not America the beautiful, but America the feared, in terms of what it will do next. We need America, but it also needs us.
My fear is that Putin will outwit Trump and offer a peace that looks good to start with but in fact can last only 10 minutes. If he does not do that, he may even offer the kind of peace that leads to the conquest of Ukraine by the Russians. That would of course be the worst of all worlds.
Russia’s military capability, particularly in its ground forces, is depleted after three years of gruelling combat in Ukraine. This will take time to rebuild, but it can and will be rebuilt. Meanwhile, Russia has learned some important operational and tactical lessons from its early failures in the war, and its nuclear, aviation and maritime capabilities remain largely untouched. So, in one sense, we are in an arms race with Russia, and we cannot afford to fall behind.
This brings me to the cost of rearmament: it will be considerably greater than the Government have yet acknowledged. It is worth reflecting that, at the time of the first Gulf War—the last time we fielded a full armoured division for high-intensity conflict alongside an extended air campaign—we were spending 4% of GDP on defence. Even then, we had to cannibalise the whole of the British Army of the Rhine in order to field that armoured division. So the Prime Minister’s commitment to raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP in the financial year 2027-28 is clearly inadequate; 2.5% of GDP would merely close the gap between the current level of resource and the cost of the existing programme, and there are two years before even that happens. As things stand, it seems that defence will actually receive less cash next year than it will in this. I cannot imagine quite how the Minister will defend this in the House.
So what is the cost? SACEUR has set out a defensive posture that, in his view, would deter Russian aggression —something the inquiry report rightly identifies as the overriding requirement. SACEUR has also identified the contribution that he needs from the UK. This should be costed and a plan drawn up to achieve the necessary force levels and sustainability as soon as possible. I cannot put an accurate price on this, but it will be well north of 3% of GDP so, to put us on the right path, we need 2.5% immediately and we need to pass 3% before the end of the decade.
Of course, the money should be spent wisely. Other noble Lords have commented and will comment on this, but I identify two important issues that need to figure prominently in our plans. The first is the requirement for continuing technological innovation and rapid capability development. This will involve a much closer and more flexible use of SMEs than has been normal in our procurement system to date. The second is the importance of well-trained and equipped reservists. With this in mind, I echo the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, in opposing any suggestion that this crucial part of our capability be put under a non-departmental body. That would be a bad idea at any time but folly today.
The Prime Minister has said that Europe must do the heavy lifting in Ukraine, but heavy lifting requires muscle. We have allowed our military muscle to atrophy for far too many years; we now need substantially to rebuild it and to rebuild it quickly, before it is too late.
Paragraph 155 of the report states that we should:
“expect a gradual shifting of US priorities”.
There has not been a gradual shifting. There has been a fundamental reversal by President Trump, by the pause, in terms of Ukraine, on both the military side and intelligence. To remove intelligence, in terms of both the offensive and defensive capability of Ukraine, can harm the war effort immensely so that Putin can take yet more land in advance of any peace treaty.
Since the publication of the report, we have seen this flurry of declarations, and we need to re-evaluate our relationship. It is argued that the specialist cadre in the Foreign Office regarding Russia has hollowed out. I recall that many years ago when I was in the Foreign Office in response to that challenge, we responded to the Hayter report to increase concentration on Russia. Do we now need a similar Hayter report?
I turn to particular aspects of the report: the wider challenge of defence in a more diverse society and the role of the reserves, which the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, spoke wisely about. The older generation in our country is more ready to relate to the military than the younger generation. When I sell for the Royal British Legion for 11 November, I often find that young people are reluctant to give to the military whereas older people are very ready to do so. We need to educate our communities.
Many have made points about the global South, as it is now called. The committee says that we should deal with that with ODA—that does not sit easily with the recent cuts to ODA.
Finally, there is the question of realism, mentioned in the summary and discussed well by the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley. Can we still afford the full spectrum on defence and to what extent should there be a substantial move to our European allies and a rejection of some of the ideological antagonism towards Europe? It is very important that the Government respond to the new Germany, as Chancellor-to-be Merz asks to be brought within the circle of our nuclear powers. On this point of realism, we should invite everyone to go to Delphi, consult the oracle and perhaps be ready to examine ourselves and know ourselves better than we do at present.