Future Capability of the Armed Forces
House of Lords · Lords Chamber · 16 Jul 2026 · 33 speeches · Official Report
Motion to Take Note
Moved by
To move that this House takes note of the future capability of the United Kingdom’s armed forces in light of the current international situation.
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have signed up to this debate. I am grateful that your Lordships are able to debate the United Kingdom Armed Forces’ capability shortly after the publication of the defence investment plan. I look forward to all contributions, not least that of the Minister and the valedictory speech from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark. I declare an interest as a serving officer in the Army Reserve. Let us confront a single stark reality: the United Kingdom remains the third-largest defence spender in NATO, surpassed only by the United States and Germany. Yet NATO’s own internal assessments rank us 31st out of 32 members in delivering on capability targets, with only Iceland, which has no armed forces at all, sitting below us. This is the critical gap I intend to scrutinise-not the disparity between our forces and our adversaries, real though that is, but the profound disconnect between the funds we invest and the capabilities we can deploy. This is the gulf between the promise and the product. Let me say plainly what this debate is not. It is not a party-political point. I belong to the party that was in government for 14 years and, for much of that time, we did not spend enough on defence. Many of us said so then, and I say it again now. I have no interest in a quarrel about who cut what a decade ago, or who is pledging what for 2035. The two great alibis of defence policy are the distant past and the distant future, and...
Baroness Carberry of Muswell Hill
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, for securing this important debate. He speaks with great authority, particularly about the Reserve Forces. I agree with everything he said about that subject and congratulate him on his service. I speak to employers and employers’ organisations who are keen to support our reserves. I take this opportunity to once again talk up the role of the voluntary reserve. They give us a continually refreshing source of capability and long-term resilience. They are central to our Armed Forces’ present and future capability to defend and deter, and they need to be nurtured. Employers need support to shoulder their share of responsibility. I ask the Government once again to continue to encourage more employers to take on reservists. I look forward to progress reports on the SDR’s medium-term aim of seeing the active reserve expanded by 20%, although I acknowledge that the ambitions of the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, go beyond that. The subject of this debate raises huge questions about national priorities in an era of new external threats. Other speakers in this debate are far more qualified than I am to speak about matters of national security and war-fighting readiness, but I can comment on one essential component of national resilience: the role of the defence industry, which the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, already touched on. The future effectiveness of the UK’s Armed Forces depends in large measure on their access to platforms, munitions,...
My Lords, the most obvious and urgent thing to say about military capability is that we have nothing like enough of it, either now or as currently planned for the future. This must be addressed as a matter of urgency but, in the limited time available to us in this debate, I want to make three points about the nature of those capabilities. First, I warn against oversimplification when considering future force structures. Recent debate has focused on the need for much greater numbers of uncrewed and, in some cases, autonomous vehicles in all three environments-what are commonly but inaccurately termed drones. I agree with the general proposition, but such vehicles are not the solution to everything. Ukrainians have used them very successfully to make up for their relative shortage of front-line personnel, and we can certainly employ them to create more mass. They will be a key feature of the future force mix, but they will form part of the force structure, not the whole of it. It is crucial that we adopt transformational technologies, but we should not imagine that any one of them will solve all our problems. Secondly, whatever capabilities we have at the start of any high-intensity conflict, they will not be sufficient to sustain our effort through to victory. Some, perhaps much of them, will be destroyed in the early fighting and will have to be replaced. At the same time, technological developments and enemy initiatives will force us to adapt accordingly. It is worth...
My Lords, it is a very great honour to follow the noble and gallant Lord. I find myself in no man’s land, squeezed between a former Chief of the Defence Staff and a valedictory Bishop, so I shall try to navigate as best I can through what could be dangerous territory. I particularly welcome back my noble friend Lord Harlech; it is very good to see him. He was sent to the scrapheap. The REME have got hold of him, reconditioned him and polished him up. He has come back to serve on these Benches and we will get a lot of usage from him over the coming years, of that I am certain. I draw attention-not only because I need to under the rules of the House but because it is appropriate to our deliberations this afternoon-to my involvement with BOKA, a company dedicated to security and defence, aerospace and space, sovereign resilience, AI and quantum. I chair the investment committee of that company, which is involved in many of the technologies that we have been discussing and will continue to discuss this afternoon. I listened carefully to what the noble and gallant Lord just said, and he is right. I suspect that many of the speeches this afternoon will dwell on similar topics to underscore the fact that there is a profound change in the economics of warfare. The demand from defence comes from changing defence patterns resulting from our most recent experiences in Ukraine and Iran-two very different military scenarios, but with some common themes. We are now witnessing a rapid pace...
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, for bringing this debate. Let me begin my valedictory address by making it clear that it is not my intention to advise His Majesty’s Government on the number of dreadnought battleships they should be laying down or what the future of the Blue Streak missile programme should be. I wish to address some wider issues that I believe are directly relevant to our future capability and which arise out of our current situation. Quoting from the Global Peace Index 2026 , the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich reminded the House during a debate on the Armed Forces Bill on 6 July that “the world has continued its longstanding trajectory of deteriorating peacefulness”. It has always been my contention that, since the UK left the European Union, the costs of our security, diplomatic efforts and cultural reach will need to rise, since we no longer benefit from the partnership and pooled resources that the union provides. Instead, our defence spending has stagnated and NATO is in difficulty, with the United States now in unpredictable mode. We are planning to reduce the Diplomatic Service, and the BBC and other major cultural players continue to make cuts. I appreciate that, as we shall hear, a different trajectory is planned for UK defence. A good deal will be said about the changing nature of warfare in the light of the appalling assault on the territorial integrity of Ukraine by President Putin. However, the continued...
My Lords, it is always a distinct privilege to rise in your Lordships’ House, particularly when the subject matter before us concerns the key priority of any nation: the defence and security of the realm in an era of unprecedented global volatility and conflict. However, before I turn to our physical defences, it is my great honour to pay tribute to a defender of a different kind, one who has spent years fortifying the moral and spiritual armour of our nation. I refer of course to the right reverend Prelate-and my dear friend-the Bishop of Southwark, and I congratulate him on a poignant and reflective valedictory speech. I feel immense warmth towards the right reverend Prelate and his neighbourly affection, for he is the person who is the spiritual guide for many of the good people of Wimbledon-indeed, he is the shepherd, as many remind me. I have always maintained that trying to guide people spiritually, especially when they are quite diverse, including the occasionally highly opinionated folk of south London, requires a level of tactical patience, strategic diplomacy and sheer resilience that would challenge any seasoned peacekeeping commander around the world. Yet, the right reverend Prelate has done so for over 15 years with quiet but effective diplomacy and, as we have seen again today, boundless grace and deep humility. In this House, the right reverend Prelate has been a reassuring and welcome presence. He has never been one, as we have heard again today, to shy away...
My Lords, I join my noble friend Lord Ahmad in congratulating the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark on his final speech. I hope he enjoys an excellent retirement and has every opportunity to go on worshipping God and doing his best to swell the congregations in our churches. I think he will find that easier when he is no longer encumbered by the necessary political compromises that have to be made in your Lordships’ House. My noble friends have made the point that we do not have enough money for the defence budget, but nobody is asking why. A tremendous amount of money is being spent by this Government on welfare that is not achieving what it is intending. It is supposed to be lifting people out of poverty, and it is not; it is condemning people to poverty. There are enormous savings to be made in the welfare budget but, unfortunately, the Labour Party in the other place will not allow those reforms to go through. That has grave implications for our democracy, and I would be very worried if I were a member of the Labour Party. If it cannot fulfil its functions as a Government with the enormous majority that it has, one has to ask whether it would ever be worthy of forming a Government again. If I were in the Labour Party, I would be very worried about that. This comes at a particularly unfortunate period in defence. There have been a lot of false forecasts of peace in Ukraine, but as the Ukrainians develop technology in the amazing way that they have and, with...
My Lords, I appreciate that this debate has already focused, and I am sure will continue to focus, on the challenges facing our Armed Forces-issues around funding, the defence investment plan and, of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, eloquently argued, the role of our reserves. I declare an interest, as my husband is a reservist. However, in the context of a strategic defence review that put NATO first, and a defence investment plan which headlined our NATO commitment as its first priority in stepping up UK leadership, I want to focus on our Armed Forces’ nuclear deterrent capability. Sir Adam Thomson, former UK permanent representative to NATO, gave evidence to the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy on Monday and made an important point that I wish to amplify in this Chamber. The UK is one of only two European nuclear powers, and the only one that has committed its nuclear capability to NATO. In the DIP, our Government set out their key investment commitments, including to the UK nuclear deterrent. The plan committed to over £20 billion more investment in the defence nuclear enterprise over the next four years, compared with the previous four, to modernise the UK’s nuclear capabilities and the facilities that deliver them, including new submarines. This is a commitment that contributes significantly to European deterrence against our adversaries. It also recommitted, following the original June 2025 announcement, to joining NATO’s dual-capable aircraft...
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Harlech on introducing this debate. I join other noble Lords in wishing the right reverend Prelate the best for the future and in thanking him for his work and his valedictory speech. I begin by commending the Lord Speaker’s lecture, delivered by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, yesterday evening. I encourage all noble Lords to read it, if they have not already. He posed a fundamental question: is Britain really safe? His answer was very clear: the threats that we face are real, they are growing, and meeting them will require urgency, resilience and sustained national resolve. Our Armed Forces, regular and reserves, remain among the finest anywhere. But the question is not the quality of those who serve but whether they are being given the equipment, support, resources and training they need. The strategic defence review, led by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, recognised that Britain is responding to an immediate and growing threat, not preparing for a distant possibility. The Government’s acceptance of the recommendations is welcome. The challenge remains delivering on them at the pace that the security environment demands. The Prime Minister has warned that Russia could pose a direct challenge to NATO before the end of this decade, a view echoed by NATO’s secretary-general. If that is the Government’s assessment, procurement and investment must reflect it. Yet some priority capabilities are not expected until the early 2030s....
My Lords, much has been said in recent months about the possibility of a Russian conflict with NATO. Such a war will be deterred if we and our allies react to strengthen our weak arms posture now. NATO’s potential military, economic and technical strength far exceeds that of any potential adversary. The challenge is to ensure that this strength is credible, visible and ready to deter any prospect of open conflict. Such determination must be led from the top of Governments. For the UK, a clear graph of intended progress to 3% then 3.5% is required, not ring-fenced with any “if fiscal conditions allow” type caveats of uncertainty. As it takes two to tango, the assessment by the potential aggressor of their own warlike capabilities and chances of strategic success matter. If Russia were that opponent, what is there to learn from its fight with Ukraine? Far from being what was expected, namely, a quick conquest of Ukraine and a change to a Russian-subservient Government in Kyiv, the Ukrainians, after great difficulty and challenge, are now able, with much NATO help, to hold Russian advances and operate far into Russia itself, to Moscow and St Petersburg as well as into Crimea and elsewhere. Maybe Putin sacked some senior commanders for bringing him only bad news. Maybe their successors rely on holding their posts by reporting only good news from the front. Maybe Putin even feels that all adverse results reported reflect western propaganda and so cannot possibly be true, but what...
My Lords, a week ago in the Times , Andy Burnham wrote that “increasing our national security … will be my first priority”. It made me ask: does he really mean this? This Government have had loads of top priorities. The current Prime Minister has said: “Growth is the number one priority”. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, told the House that the “absolute priority for the Government” is “to have a water Bill ”.-[ Official Report , 6/1/26; col. 1046.] The noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, disagreed: she told this House that “making creative careers accessible” was the Government’s “key priority”. I have a whole dossier of number one priorities tossed out by government Ministers, all utterly meaningless. I have to ask myself: does Andy Burnham mean what he says? Is he really going to give a cast-iron guarantee that service chiefs will get the equipment and resources to meet our NATO commitments? Is he really prepared to make the money available, and for domestic programmes to take the hit-and, if so, which ones? In the annual spending round, Ministers have to pit the claims of their department against the competing claims of other departments. If one department is always to get its way, you would no longer be evaluating its bid for more money. By the way, which departments win and which lose does not always depend on a rational evaluation. It also depends on who has the political weight in the Government and the Cabinet. I hope Andy Burnham means what he says and will throw his...
My Lords, I join with the noble Lord, Lord Swire, in welcoming the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, has been recycled; the value of that is before us this afternoon. We have talked repeatedly about percentages of GDP to be spent on defence. I do not like the concept of percentages of GDP. The amount of money you need to spend is what you need to spend, and some artificial percentage does not make much sense. We need to re-evaluate that. I was fortunate enough to be present when President Zelensky came into this building in March. I attended the meeting in Committee Room 14; many noble Lords will have been there. He had a big screen and a laptop, and he was able to show us in real time what was happening on his own battle-front: what was coming in and what was going out. There were four other laptops in Ukraine that were doing the same thing. Most of us went to that meeting on the understanding and acceptance that he presumably wanted more money or more ammunition. No-he was selling at that meeting, not begging. With his colleagues, he has developed a wartime economy. He has been agile and innovative, not simply for commercial reasons but out of sheer necessity to survive. The noble Lord, Lord Robertson, started his lecture last night by mentioning that we are not engaging in a meaningful conversation with the general public on what confronts us. This is not a political thing; the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, opened the debate with that point. This goes back 40 years, to...
My Lords, this debate is particularly timely as the Farnborough International Airshow begins on Monday. We do indeed live in a volatile and dangerous age, but there is no Member of your Lordships’ House who cannot recognise that, over time, our influence on the world stage has been reducing. At the heart of this has been an anaemic economy and an insufficiently sizeable and focused defence budget. Nowhere is the lack of direction more glaring than in the space domain-the very central nervous system of modern high-intensity warfare. Instead of accelerating our surveillance satellite programmes, a new plan cancels critical narrowband communication networks. By failing to secure our own space infrastructure, our future forces will risk being dependent on non-sovereign networks controlled by external providers. Furthermore, our approach is drifting. Space resilience is heavily cited in official documents but remains entirely unfocused, lacking specific variable requirements for system recovery and capability generation. Worryingly, we are falling critically out of step with the United States, which has made a fundamental conceptual shift towards an offensive space control mindset. The strategic defence review called space “a domain that is central to warfighting”. Indeed, rapidly increasing congestion in space means that there are now 16,000 satellites compared with 3,000 five years ago, and 100,000 are expected by 2030, offering nefarious actors more opportunity to conceal...
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, on securing this debate, which is essential to the future of our country. I thank him for his service, as I thank all our Armed Forces volunteers for theirs. I associate myself with many of the comments he made in his opening remarks. I begin with a simple truth: the world has already changed, but our defence capabilities have not kept pace. The threats we face are no longer neatly divided into war and peace, foreign and domestic, military and civilian; they are hybrid, continuous, complex and aimed at undermining the very resilience of our society. Across Europe and beyond, nations have recognised this shift. Finland’s total defence, Sweden’s civil military integration, Israel’s Home Front Command and Singapore’s multi-pillar resilience doctrine all demonstrate one lesson: the defence of the nation is no longer the job of the Armed Forces alone; it is a job for the whole of society. Our Armed Forces remain world class, but they are being asked to do too much with too little in systems designed for a different era. We cannot meet today’s threats with yesterday’s structures. With the winds of political change in the air, I want to argue for three radical shifts. First, we must build a whole-of-nation resilience-not a patchwork of agencies or a set of disconnected emergency plans, but a statutory, integrated approach that brings together defence, civil contingencies, local government, critical national infrastructure and...
My Lords, I join with others in thanking my noble friend Lord Harlech for initiating this debate. This House meets to consider a question that goes to the very heart of our future national security. Just weeks ago, the Chief of the Defence Staff publicly stated that the United Kingdom is running out of time to boost its Armed Forces, and that our adversaries are definitely “raising the stakes” and risk “crossing a line”. Let us be clear: this is not a distant, hypothetical threat; it is a present reality. Russia’s war against Ukraine has entered its fifth year; our critical infrastructure is being tested daily in cyber space and beneath our sea, and there is an assumption that the sustained decades of relative peace in Europe no longer hold. Meanwhile, the conflict in Iran has shown how trade routes can be easily disrupted and the prosperity of our nation threatened by the closure of vital international waterways that we might be required to help unplug. We must resist the temptation to treat defence policy as a matter of budgets and spreadsheets alone. To do so would be to diminish what is really at stake: the ability of this country to keep its people safe, honour its alliances and deter those who would do us harm. This is a moment for not only ambition but candour, because the hard truth is that our war-fighting readiness has been degraded for years. It did not happen in a single Parliament and it will not be restored by a single spending review or investment plan. It is...
My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Harlech for initiating this debate. I declare my interest: my grandfather was a soldier, my father was a soldier, my brother was a soldier and my son was a soldier. My son Edward, a captain in the Irish Guards, saw active service in the second Gulf War in Basra, Iraq, and subsequently served with Special Forces in Afghanistan. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, widely respected on all sides of this House, has spoken movingly about members of his own family who served the Crown in conflict. He will recognise, as all serving families necessarily have to, the traumas of uncertainty, apprehension and fear, hoping the telephone is not going to ring, which are part and parcel of such family involvement and commitment. One does not forget those days of such very considerable anxiety. Yet, once again, we face the prospect that our own forces will find themselves increasingly on a front line where technology is changing the character of warfare at the fastest rate in history. The UK is woefully and inadequately prepared for the challenges now likely to be faced. Starmer’s Administration have comprehensively failed to meet their responsibilities for the very necessary further rapid enhancement of the defence of the realm. It is all the more notable that the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, has presided with increasing exasperation over the extensive debates held in this House on the June 2025 strategic defence review and, subsequently, the...
I am sorry. Will the noble Lord wind up, please?
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, for securing this debate. The level of engagement on a Thursday afternoon shows the interest in your Lordships’ House. The debate has been particularly useful in that, unlike nearly all the discussion in the other place and in the media, it has not just focused on, as the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, framed it, “What are we spending?” but rather on “What are we using defence and security money for?” Is it on capabilities that make us more secure, or is it driven by imperatives of private profit or pride? There is one form of defence spending to which I want to draw attention and to question. It is one that noble Lords who are regular Tube users here at Westminster Station will know. As we descend the escalators, we are confronted by, blared at by, a shiny advert for BAE Systems. Future jet fighters; Navy capabilities: the subject occasionally varies, but, for the seven years that I have been in this House, that prime and no doubt very expensive advertising spot has been permanently occupied by BAE Systems. Ultimately, of course, the cost of that no doubt very expensive, endless advertisement, directed at a small number of Tube users-parliamentarians and officials-is part of our defence budget. But it is not, I suggest, spending that makes us any safer. I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark for, in his valedictory speech, introducing another point that I want to make: that our security is about much more than...
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this debate, which was secured and opened so powerfully by my noble friend Lord Harlech. I begin by referring the House to the register of interests, in particular my support for the charity Ukrainian Action, which provides humanitarian assistance, recovery and reconstruction in Ukraine. When you visit Ukraine, you see first hand not only the destruction caused by Russia’s illegal invasion but something else: I saw a country that continues to innovate, to manufacture and to adapt, despite fighting a war for its very survival. That resilience deserves not only our admiration but our attention, because Ukraine is no longer simply a recipient of military assistance; it has become one of Europe’s foremost centres of defence innovation, as highlighted earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Empey. One of the defining lessons of this conflict is that innovation has become a strategic capability in its own right. Modern warfare is no longer determined solely by who possesses the most sophisticated equipment, but increasingly by who can improve it most quickly. Ukraine has demonstrated an extraordinary ability to shorten the cycle between identifying a problem on the battlefield, developing a solution, testing it under operational conditions and rapidly scaling production. That culture of continuous innovation is something all Ukraine’s allies should be studying carefully. I believe that Britain has much to learn from Ukraine, and Ukraine has...
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, on initiating this debate. I apologise for starting with something that he might feel he left out, because I am inviting this House to remember 1968. Quite a number of us will remember it, but I am not sure how many noble Lords will remember where they were on 21 August 1968 and how they felt that day. I do remember. I lived in a small Bavarian village, about 80 miles from the Czech border. The Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries started to invade Czechoslovakia, and the tanks started rolling. We did not know if the tanks would stop at the border, but we listened to the World Service as the one reliable source of information. We did not need to be persuaded that defence was important or that there were bad actors out there, or that at some stage people would have to give their lives to defend our values and what we stood for. Today we are discussing the future capability of the Armed Forces against a slightly different backdrop. We should remember that the Armed Forces do not exist in a vacuum. They are part of a whole society and need its support, because true resilience requires a complete approach from every sector. It also means that if you spend more money on defence, then you forgo spending on other things. Military capability requires an underpinning of soldiers and the right equipment, and I am sorry to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord West, because I am not asking for more ships, even though I am an Honorary...
I thank my noble friend Lord Harlech of the Coldstream Guards for securing this debate and I thank the Minister for hosting us with such courtesy, as he always does. I start by noting that the strategic defence review presented our defence position very clearly last year, but at that time made almost no commitments to expenditure and, fatefully, made just a reference to an ambition for 3% of GDP as being a kind of soft target. The Government at the time accepted all the recommendations of the strategic defence review, as noble Lords will remember. Notwithstanding their acceptance, it turned out that expenditure and the position of the public finances were central to the problem, and became central, alas, to the last Prime Minister’s fate. We might ask how that came to be. Possibly rather unhelpfully for the Government, the OBR put out its financial sustainability report in July, which explains quite clearly that the public finances are on an unsustainable trajectory. That is because, as we know, and as we often talk about in this House, we are deficit financing the Government at the moment. The gap between the amount we raise in taxation and what we spend is very wide, and it is risky for the Government to be funding on that basis. We will be raising £150 billion of new money for the Government in debt this year, which is much more than we spend on defence, just in the current deficit. We are at quite a risky, delicate moment. The need for defence arises at just the moment...
My Lords, I join everybody in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, for introducing this debate and for the non-political way in which he did so. Across the whole debate and from all sides, we have recognised that the threat is real and our preparedness is inadequate-that is the message we are getting across. In the fourth century AD, Vegetius said, “si vis pacem, para bellum”- if you want peace, prepare for war. That is precisely the point of deterrence. Our Armed Forces, as everybody has said, are highly professional and a credit to our nation. However, the peace dividend has left us seriously depleted in numbers and capability. As a number of Members have noted, the Government have talked about starting a national conversation, as did the strategic defence review-but where is it and what is it? Denmark has established a Ministry of Resilience and Preparedness and, as the noble Lord opposite said, other countries have engaged in preparing something like this. We have talked about it but we are not doing it, so can the Minister give us an indication of exactly when this will happen? Preparing the public requires engagement. Recent YouGov polling showed that three-quarters of Britons consider it “important” to strengthen both the UK’s hard and soft power, including approximately four in 10 who rate it “very important”. However, only a minority favour tax increases or spending cuts to fund greater spending on the British Armed Forces. That is what we need to engage in. I am...
My Lords, this has been an excellent and fascinating debate, with hugely perceptive contributions. I thank my noble friend Lord Harlech not only for securing the debate but for his insightful and powerful contribution, made in a characteristically elegant and gracious manner-which I do not promise to emulate. The Government’s defence policy can be summed up in four words: too little, too late. It is too little money and too little equipment, all delivered too late. I make that claim because the plans the Government have laid out are for the future; they do not meet the threats we face right now. The NATO Secretary-General has warned that we may face war with Russia within the next five years. If that happens, we need to be ready to fight a major war by 2030, not after 2030. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that I know the advertisement to which she refers from BAE Systems above the escalator in the Tube station, but, unlike her, my view is: what an advert for British skills, and what a formidable capability this terrific British company is capable of delivering. May I see it translated into our defence capability before too long. On the Secretary-General’s memo, the Government seem to have missed that point. Indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Stuart, reminded me-poignantly, because I remember where I was in August 1968-that the invasion of Czechoslovakia caused shock. As she rightly pointed out, you cannot assess risk on the basis of what you can afford. Risk is...
My Lords, it is a great privilege to respond to this debate. I thank everyone for taking part and I will try to respond to many of their points. I start by declaring an interest: my son-in-law is currently mobilised as a reserve, so I just make your Lordships aware of that. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, on introducing this debate, on the way he did it and on his own service. We all recognise the importance of that. He made the point that the Armed Forces, the defence of our country and our work with allies and friends is not a party-political matter, as the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, and the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, demonstrate. It is about how we challenge each other to deliver the best defence that the country needs. That is an extremely important point for all of us, and I am very grateful that it is the attitude across the Chamber. I will answer some of the specific points from the noble Lords, Lord Harlech and Lord Bruce, and the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, then move to some other matters. It is important to say at the start that, although much of this debate has been about the future capabilities laid out in the defence investment plan-we can debate and discuss whether it has all the right measures in it to develop our future capabilities and the spending that we will need for them-the concern expressed by many in this debate is about the capabilities that we have now and how we will develop them. That is an interesting debate. I am going to commission...
I appreciate that, and the Minister and other Ministers frequently say that, but the reality is that the British Council is nearly bankrupt, the BBC is struggling and our diplomatic forces are being reduced. On that particular point, can he feed back to the Government that, if we do not have diplomats on the ground, we are not able to influence the world?
I will feed that back to the department. All I am saying is that there is now a much more co-ordinated, effective diplomatic strategy that links the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence together to deliver the objectives that the noble Lord wants. The noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, made the point about immediate threats. I hope that putting a paper together and putting in the Library will answer the particular questions she asked about what we are doing about those immediate threats, as well as future threats. I say to her that there are difficult decisions to be made. She made difficult decisions when she was in government. This Government made the really difficult decision to replace the Type 83 and Type 32 with the common combat vessel. That will help develop the hybrid Navy that we will need, rather than continuing with vessels that we were advised by the military advisers will not meet the threat in 10 or 15 years’ time. To have a warship that can deliver drone capability, above the surface, on the surface and below, increases the mass available to tackle the threats we face. That is the hybrid Navy concept. We had the debate and we said, “We’re going to get criticised, you know? They’re going to say, ‘There you go, you’re cutting ships. You’ve taken away this capability and that capability’”. All I would say is that, if I have to take some criticism by doing that with others, because we believe that opens up the opportunity to create the Navy we need, I am willing...
The JEF point is interesting. Does the Minister agree that, if neutral countries such as Finland and Sweden can join, then so could Ukraine?
That is a matter for discussion between all of us. The relationship with Ukraine remains crucial. How that is taken forward will have to be discussed. I thank my noble friend Lady Antrobus. We are committed to the nuclear deterrent. I sometimes think we should talk more about it. When people ask what is the UK’s commitment to Europe, it is not a bad start to say that the UK has been committed to the nuclear deterrent for the defence of Europe for decades. It is a proud thing for us to state. I know the point she made about the ladder of escalation and the involvement of tactical nuclear weapons in future through the F35A. I think the spending review of 2027 will answer some of the points that the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, made about spending. She will recognise the point about defence and security being the number one priority within that. I agree with the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, about thinking imaginatively as well as responding in a tough way to Russia and about some of the other things that he mentioned in dealing with that. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne, that the Prime Minister-in-waiting clearly means what he says about defending our nation. I thank the noble Lord for his kind words about me. The noble Lord, Lord Empey, mentioned the national conversation, which is fundamental and crucial to us, and the priorities for the public. Particularly important, as he mentioned, are the grey zone, underwater cables and cyber attacks. Those sorts of...
My Lords, I am truly grateful to all noble Lords, all noble and gallant Lords, and the right reverend Prelate for taking part-I wish him godspeed in his future endeavours. I am extremely grateful to the Minister for answering my questions and those of others, and for his powerful, impassioned reply at the end, which we all fully support. I add my voice to those. Whatever happens in terms of a reshuffle, we hope very much that the Minister stays in post. This has been a fascinating strength/weakness, opportunity/threat analysis, because it has been cross-party, from all sides of the House. Again, I am truly grateful to everyone who signed up. It has also been a cross-interest debate: we have had the defence voices, but we have also heard diplomatic, economic and political voices too, which has added to its richness. I truly want the media to play its part in stimulating the national conversation; I just wish that it would give more column inches to this debate and others like it, rather than the Punch and Judy stuff that happens in the other place. It is rare to have such unanimity of opinion but, as the Minister has said, we have heard that today. The direction of travel is right, but we must go further and faster. To govern is to choose. Yes, 3.5% or 5% is more, but it is a damn sight cheaper than the alternative of fighting a war with a peer adversary. I will finish, as I know there is additional business to come. The campaign slogan of the right honourable Member for...
Motion agreed.