Queen’s Speech — House of Lords, 2022-05-18
Topic: Defense
Graham Stirrup (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I imagine that, a few months ago, many people would have expected the debate on this year’s gracious Speech to be conducted in air of optimism as we emerged from the shadow of Covid and looked forward to continuing economic recovery. Instead, we find ourselves confronted by a war in Europe and its consequences for our own security. However, I fear that at the moment we are not paying sufficient attention to those consequences. We are rightly focused on providing all possible assistance to Ukraine as it resists Russian aggression, but we cannot postpone a consideration of the wider lessons of the invasion. The implications for our future security are far too profound for us to delay such an analysis To my mind, there are three strategic conclusions that we should draw from the events of recent months. The first is, alas, an old lesson—the unbounded capacity of the future to surprise us, usually in very unpleasant ways. International crises, and the armed conflicts that sometimes flow from them, have seldom been anticipated, nor have we been well prepared to meet them. Since no one has a functioning crystal ball, we will no doubt continue to make wrong judgments about the future, so we must expect to be surprised by it and develop military structures and capabilities that will provide us with sufficient agility, adaptability and sustainability to cope with the unforeseen. But we can do that only if we are prepared to make the necessary level of investment—something we are currently failing to do. Despite recent increases, our defence expenditure as a percentage of GDP has not even recovered to its 2010 level, and current rates of inflation will rapidly erode its effectiveness. In such a dangerous world, we simply have to do better The second issue that I want to touch on is the security impact of globalisation. The drive for commercial advantage that led to lean manufacturing, just-in-time logistics, outsourcing and offshoring and many other such developments has brought significant benefits to western consumers. But we are seeing now how such dependence can constrain our actions in a crisis. In an interconnected world, security cannot be about just military power and economic strength. It must also be about our ability to sustain our economic and social structures in the face of severe disruption to global connections. We have to strike a much better balance between short-term economic advantage and sustained national resilience. As a starting point, perhaps we should consider introducing a national equivalent to the kinds of stress tests that were mandated for banks in the wake of the global financial crisis The final lesson—another one that we seem to have to relearn every few decades—is that autocracies are very dangerous things. The lack of constraint on their leaders means that they can, at least in the short term, act very quickly in ways that create huge threats to peace and stability. Putin is therefore not just a dangerous individual; he is a personification of the risks we run if we fail to confront autocracies from the outset. For too many years, we pandered to him, and we are now paying the price. We should not make the same mistake with other regimes The elephant in this particular room is clearly China, which is moving back along the road to autocracy. At the same time, it is engaged in a sustained effort to reshape the international order to its own advantage. As some have observed, China is seeking to make the world safe for autocracy. When it seeks to unbalance the rules on which we rely for our own security and prosperity, we must be prepared to contest it. But, if we are to do that successfully, we must expect China to respond vigorously in support of what it sees as its own national interest. Those responses may well include the use of draconian economic, commercial and technological measures intended to sway and possibly coerce those on the other side of the argument. Again, therefore, we must ensure that we have the necessary resilience within our societies to withstand such assaults The Government must act on these lessons, and they must act immediately. I hope that, in winding up, the Minister will commit to this. We do of course face many domestic challenges, but, if the Government fail in their first duty to provide for the security of their citizens, all else will be for naught. The challenge on that front is here and now; it needs to be met here and now.