House of Commons Defence Committee publishes HSC evidence on the UK contribution to European Security

13 February, 2025

The House of Commons Defence Committee has published the HSC’s evidence on the UK contribution to European Security. The inquiry comes amidst an ongoing Strategic Defence Review, and as the Russian invasion of Ukraine enters its fourth year. The full submission can be read here.

Our evidences notes that:

• The UK plays an important role in the deterrence posture of Europe and NATO, including in the nuclear, conventional, intelligence gathering, diplomatic, economic, industrial, geographic and infrastructural realms.
• The UK has had a ‘NATO-first’ approach since at least the latter half of the 1960s, and adjustments since that point have largely been around the degree of absolutism of focus on NATO. Further orientating UK defence policy around the Alliance would have to centre on an increase in the overall resources for defence to represent meaningful change.
• NATO is revising its posture and planning for defending Europe. The details of the UK’s current commitments to the continent’s defence are classified, although certain elements of it, most notably ground forces, can be deduced from current deployments, exercises, force structure, and policy statements.
• Capability gaps exhibited by European NATO members are rooted in a mix of post-Cold War policy decisions and defence spending reductions. While they vary from nation to nation, they include shortfalls in air and missile defence, land, maritime and air and space capabilities, force enablers, recruitment and retention, and defence-industrial capacity.
• Capabilities that the UK is relatively well-positioned to provide in comparison to most of its European NATO Allies include strategic nuclear forces, intelligence, airlift, anti-submarine warfare (ASW), conventional precision strike, arctic operations, special forces, and leadership/rapid response.
• The UK could to an extent rely on European NATO Allies to provide land force mass, non-strategic nuclear forces, and logistics and basing support.
• Outside of NATO, the UK supports the security of Europe through bilateral efforts such as the Lancaster House treaties with France and multilateral arrangements such as the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF). Defence-industrial cooperation also supports collective defence.
• UK efforts to support global security and stability play both a direct and indirect role in supporting European security, with the anti-ISIS campaign being an example of the former and the Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) Treaty the latter.

Image: An RAF Chinook on an exercise in Estonia (Source: Petty Officer Joel Rouse/UK MOD/Crown Copyright/Open Government License)