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Lord Livermore (Lab)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 19 May 2026

Debate

Defence, Security and Resilience Bank

Contribution

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his Question. I am pleased to see that he has made a full recovery; I know he was battling a very heavy cold during our recent King’s Speech debate. I fully recognise that I am no defence expert, but I thought that the Prime Minister put this point particularly well in his recent Munich speech. He said that “we must move forward together to create a more European NATO. As I see it, Europe is a sleeping giant … We have huge defence capabilities, yet too often this adds up to less than the sum of its parts. Fragmented industrial planning and procurement have led to gaps in some areas, and massive duplication in others. Europe has over 20 types of frigate, and 10 types of fighter jet. We have over 10 types of main battle tank, whilst the US has one. It’s wildly inefficient, and it harms our collective security”. The noble Lord may well share that analysis and worldview. That is why the Government’s focus is, as I said, to work on the proposed multilateral defence mechanism with a core group of EU and NATO allies and partners, with the goal of establishing it by 2027.

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