Select committee: Defence Committee
Recommendation 2
Eleventh Report - UK Defence and the Indo-Pacific
Published 24 Oct 2023
Paragraph 24
Addressed to Ministry of Defence
Defence Committee UK Defence and the Indo-Pacific All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
The Committee supports the Government’s assessment that China under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is “an epoch-defining and systemic challenge”. China seeks to erode the current rules-based international order by exploiting weaknesses in the system. Rather than looking to act as the world’s policeman in a mutually beneficial system, China’s interest is in establishing dominance over its wider region to purely Chinese advantage. In military terms, China’s publicly stated ambition to “fight and win” global wars by 2049 illustrates the threat it poses to international security. An important waypoint is China’s goal of establishing a fully modernised military—and a peer adversary of the United States—by 2027. The Government should carry out an assessment of China under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to consider whether it should be labelled as a threat to national and international security.
From: Defence Committee, Eleventh Report - UK Defence and the Indo-Pacific (HC 183), paragraph 24, 24 October 2023
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 11 January 2024.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Government states that it has achieved the ambition set for Defence in the 2021 Integrated Review and challenges the Committee's recommendation for a published Indo-Pacific strategy, while agreeing with or noting other recommendations.
- On China, the Government "disagrees that there is a need to carry out an assessment of how to label China", saying that summing it up in one word would be "impossible, impractical and unwise". It will provide a private briefing on Defence's crisis planning process.
- On AUKUS, it "partially rejects" the request for a plan on costs and submarine numbers, saying decisions on numbers and the build contract "will be made in due course". It notes the recommendation on skills and points to a Nuclear Skills Taskforce announced on 1 August 2023.
- It agrees with the recommendations on India and on ASEAN and the Pacific Islands, and supports not seeking Quad membership "at this time". It states it has "committed to the return of the UK Carrier Strike Group to the Indo-Pacific in 2025".
- On the Committee's rejection that the tilt has been achieved, the Government "notes the Committee's criticism" and states that "Defence has met the ambitions set out in the Integrated Review 2021".