Contribution
My Lords, we are all aware that threats to global stability are greater and more unpredictable than at any time for several decades, and the SDR will, I am sure, lay them out very clearly and starkly. That is of course much easier to do than to articulate what it means for the UK, and what action we should take, to ensure the survival, safety, security and wealth of our nation and people into the future. How should we position ourselves?
The SDR has to identify how we see our position in the world and what we should be doing. We are presently a medium-sized world power: the sixth-richest nation in the world, with nuclear weapons and 14 overseas territories, and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. We still run global merchant shipping from London. We are the major European investor in south Asia, south-east Asia and the Pacific Rim, with consequent benefits for our balance of payments. All this needs protection and looking after. Successive Prime Ministers have been able to walk the world stage, being listened to and courted for alliance membership et cetera, because of our military power and not our considerable soft power. This is no longer the case; defence has been systematically underfunded for many years. Everyone recognises that our forces are hollowed out.
The 1998 SDR produced by my noble friend Lord Robertson was the best of the many produced since the end of the Cold War. It identified a force structure and the alliances required to fulfil what was seen as needed to counter the threats that our nation faced at the time, and it did that very well. It very quickly ceased being fully funded. I was successively Chief of Defence Intelligence, Commander-in-Chief Fleet and First Sea Lord from 1998 to 2006, and I had to wrestle with the problems that caused. I got a bollocking, in fact, from my political masters because I said to the media that a ship could be in only one place at one time. This was in reaction to the fact that our order of 12 45s was reduced to six and we were not going to order any more frigates. My goodness me, how we would love to have them now, with events in the Red Sea and around the world. Decisions made in defence, of course, have a long-term effect and we always need to be aware of that. Numbers have strength in themselves.
Similarly, the design of the Type 45s—this was identified in the SDR—allowed for the fitting of land attack missiles and the ability to shoot down ballistic missiles. Again, when I went to the Secretary of State for Defence at the time to say that this had to be done and fitted, he said, “No, this money is not there now”. I do not know quite where it had gone but it was not there. Again, money was the elephant in the room.
Many have argued that cyber, AI, quantum, satellites, digitisation, drones and so on mean that platforms are unimportant. All I can say is that if you are 500 miles south of Hormuz or in the middle of the Arctic and you have not got a platform, you are swimming. I have done that in the past; it is not much fun. Yes, technology has changed and is changing war, but that has always been the case. It does not actually make things cheaper; if anything, it adds to the cost. Again, I reiterate that money is the elephant in the room.
The nuclear deterrent is extremely expensive. The maintenance of CASD, which is running on old boats as the new boats are introduced into service and new warheads are produced, needs to be seen as a national endeavour. It is very important for our nation but, as it stands, the defence budget cannot support the deterrent without growing damage to our conventional capability.
I am sure that the SDR team will go into resilience; preparedness; sovereign capability; the need for defence firms to be able to ramp up production and ensure supply in times of tension and war; the need for national repair and upgrade facilities; and the need for trained, qualified staff to operate them. I am sure that procurement will be looked at again. It needs to be, not least to address the anachronistic contracting and acquisition system, which is much better suited to the leisurely pace of peacetime than urgency in wartime. Manpower is a mess. We must ensure that we have sufficient, highly trained men and women, in particular computer-literate, digitally aware engineering specialists. A slight surplus of manpower is not that efficient, I know, but it is better than too little. Alliances are crucial as we often do not have the strength to act unilaterally. It is important to ensure that we bring to an alliance the key capabilities it does not really have enough of.
My key question for those conducting the review is: what, in military strategic terms, is most important for our nation? What do our allies value most? What is the most critical environment, bearing in mind that all the environments work together and intermesh, as we do not have sufficient money to focus on all of them? As noble Lords might imagine, to my mind, it is the maritime environment. We are an island. We depend on the sea for our survival and wealth. I can tell noble Lords from my time in the intelligence world that our enemies know that only too well. Maritime capability is what our allies expect of us. The growing strength of the European NATO allies on land and the limits of their strengths at sea reinforce that. For example, the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO and Poland’s army expansion programme alone have added 20 army brigades to NATO’s terrestrial strength, as well as a plethora of fast jets. There is no such naval growth.
I wish the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, well with this huge task ahead of him.