Lord Dannatt (CB)

My Lords, yesterday, I had the privilege to visit an exercise being conducted this week deep underground, less than half a mile from your Lordships’ House. It was being conducted by the headquarters of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, a British-led NATO strategic reserve corps. This is the United Kingdom’s principal land fighting component dedicated to NATO. We have committed to make that corps available, with two fully rounded-out war-fighting divisions—that is a force of about 30,000—and the necessary combat support brigades. In the exercise, units of the corps were deployed forward in Estonia and connected to the exercise headquarters here in London. In the exercise scenario, the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps was facing two Russian combined arms armies in Estonia and was integrating military capabilities drawn from the land, air, space and cyber domains, all enabled by AI. It was an impressive demonstration of the best of the modern capabilities to which we aspire, drawing significantly on the Ukrainian experiences gained over five years on the battlefield. I was very pleased to note the ambition, forward-thinking battlefield concepts and levels of innovation shared between the Army and industry, and especially that many are small and medium-sized enterprises and some using hedge fund money. The Army’s aim is to have this level of capability fully developed and deployed by 2030, the date by which it has assessed that Russia could mount a land attack in eastern Europe or the Baltic. If there was to be a ceasefire in Ukraine, this date could of course come forward, as Russia could reconstitute its forces more quickly. There was no doubting the commitment, enthusiasm and professional dedication demonstrated by all involved in that exercise, but the level of capability required to deter or defeat a Russian attack will not be met by 2030 at the current level of investment into our Armed Forces, and certainly not into our land forces. There is talk of an additional £18 billion being spent on defence in the next four years, but that is not the £28 billion that the service chiefs have identified as necessary in the short term, nor will that take us to 3% of GDP by 2029, and certainly not to 3.5% by 2034. There may be a temptation, in trying to find this additional money, that His Majesty’s Government consider raiding the international development budget again. Already, we know that that has been reduced from 0.7% to 0.5% of GDP, and more recently to 0.3%. This dramatically weakens our soft power potential, which, when combined with our hard power capability, is what brings the UK influence on the international stage. More immediately, one has to wonder when, or if, the defence investment plan will ever be published. Without it, defence programmers cannot allocate money, contracts cannot be let to industry, production capabilities cannot be boosted and the security of our nation cannot be assured. Yesterday morning, as I walked to the exercise location, the Household Division was rehearsing for the King’s birthday parade next month. We can all be very proud of the immaculate standards of the bands and the soldiers of the Household Division, and I am confident they will deliver a spectacular parade. But I would be even more proud if we were able to deliver a full war-fighting division into the field, let alone the two we have committed to NATO. Our enemies smile at our weakness and our friends shake their heads in disbelief at our lack of commitment to the security of Europe. I have said it before: we are drinking in the last chance saloon. The leadership of this country needs to wake up and take action before the dead hand of history calls time.