- 3:35 pm
- (Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on his commitment to spend 2.5% of GDP on defence.
- I congratulate the shadow Defence Secretary on securing the first Defence urgent question of the new Parliament. Previous Defence Secretaries answered just two urgent questions in the whole of the last five years. Although I cannot promise to answer every future UQ, I wanted to answer the hon. Gentleman’s first one today to underline just how seriously I take our Department’s responsibility to report to this House.The Government have a cast-iron commitment to spending 2.5% of GDP on defence. We promised it in our manifesto at the election, the Prime Minister promised it at NATO in Washington in July, and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor promised it in the Budget two weeks ago, as well as announcing a £3 billion boost for defence spending next year to start to fix the foundations for our armed forces. That, of course, is on top of £3 billion each year for Ukraine. I remind the House that the last time this country spent 2.5% of GDP on defence was in 2010, with the last Labour Government—a level not matched in any of the 14 Tory years since.Everyone agrees that defence spending must increase to match and deal with the threats we face. One of our very first acts as a Government was to launch the strategic defence review, which is working at pace to look at the threats we face, the capabilities we need and the resources we have available. It is not just about how much we spend, but about how we spend it. The Prime Minister said at NATO that our plan in the SDR will come first, and then we will set out the pathway to spending 2.5%; the Chief Secretary to the Treasury said yesterday that this will come in the spring.Today is Armistice Day. At the eleventh hour, I had the honour of laying a wreath at the Cenotaph. Today is a reminder of what is at stake in this new era of insecurity; a reminder that our dedicated servicemen and women, around the clock, around the world, work to keep us safe; and a reminder of the ultimate sacrifice that so many have made in the past so that we may live in freedom today. We will remember them.
- Thank you for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker, especially on Armistice Day. I am grateful for the Secretary of State’s response, but he keeps going back to 2010 when we spent 2.5%. That is true, but he says it without adding the fact that his Government had bankrupted the country. In fact, I asked the House of Commons Library about this. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has confirmed that if Labour had returned to government, it was planning cuts to the defence budget of 20% to 25%.But this question is about today. The threat picture is far graver than it has been for many generations, as the Chief of the Defence Staff confirmed at the weekend. As the Secretary of State says, the Labour party committed in its general election manifesto to a“path to spending 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence.”The Prime Minister said shortly after taking office that it was “cast iron”, which the Secretary of State has repeated today.With President Trump’s election victory, there will inevitably be a greater focus on what more European NATO members can do to boost Europe’s own defence, but yesterday the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and this morning the Secretary of State himself were unable to say whether the Government would deliver on 2.5% in the current Parliament. In addition, yesterday The Sunday Times reported that Defence Equipment and Support in Abbey Wood has effectively been instructed to avoid any new procurement at all for the rest of this financial year.Spending 2.5% is not an end in itself. The key reason that in April we set out a fully funded multi-year pathway to 2.5% was to enable the Ministry of Defence to procure, at pace and at scale, the munitions that we need to urgently replenish our stocks to warfighting levels. With the whole world wanting to buy more munitions, we cannot afford to delay any further.
- Please remember that when I grant urgent questions, the time each person has is limited. It is two minutes for the main Opposition party and one minute for the other Opposition party.
- Fourteen years the Conservative Government had to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, and there was not a plan or a pathway from the last Government, as the shadow Defence Secretary tries to claim. It was a political ploy that was announced four weeks before they called the general election. It was unfunded, and it was a con on the armed forces and on the British people, who gave their answer emphatically by sweeping away Tory MPs in many of the proudest military communities and constituencies across the country.On the shadow Defence Secretary’s accusations about a total spending freeze, I am putting in place a grip on the out-of-control spending that the last Government left. We are securing value for money, we are cutting waste and we are getting a grip on defence spending in a way his Government did not.We greatly value the continuity of education allowance and greatly recognise the role it plays in helping avoid disruption to the education of the children of serving personnel. In line with how the allowance operates, we will continue to pay up to 90% of private school fees following the VAT increase in January. By uprating the cap, we will take account of any increase in spending.On the Chagos islands, of course I know the details because I was heavily involved in the negotiations. This secures Britain’s military base, and it secures a military base for our US allies, which is why they welcomed it so strongly. I have said to the shadow Secretary of State and to the House that when it debates the treaty, this House will have the full information.Nobody knows better the defence inheritance that 14 years of Conservative government have left us for the past four months than the shadow Defence Secretary: he was a Defence Minister at the heart of the problems, with billion-pound black holes, service morale at record lows, and a crisis in the recruitment and retention of personnel. Never again must a Government leave our armed forces in a worse state than they found them, and this new Government will make this country more secure at home and strong abroad.
- I call the Chair of the Select Committee.
- We live in an increasingly dangerous and volatile world, with hundreds of thousands of people dying or being injured on our own continent in Ukraine, and wars and conflicts raging in the middle east, Africa and beyond, not to mention the increased nefarious activity in the grey zone. Without a shadow of a doubt, we are dealing with exceptional circumstances and we need to grasp the gravity of the situation. I have a great deal of time and respect for the Secretary of State because I know that he gets it, but do others in government understand the gravity of the situation, because we need clarity? We need a timetable so that not only our allies, but those in our defence community, know where we are heading.
- Yes, they do. Everyone agrees that defence spending must increase, and it is increasing under this Government. It increased in the first Budget of this new Government by nearly £3 billion for next year. Alongside that is the cast-iron commitment that we are a Government who will set a path to spending 2.5% of GDP on defence.
- I call the Lib Dem spokesperson.
- We are deeply concerned about the impact of the US elections on Ukraine and Europe. President Trump is an unreliable partner and, within days of his election, US support to Ukraine is regrettably under question. Clearly the UK needs to urgently set out a path to spending 2.5% of GDP on defence. We need to lead in Europe. Does the Secretary of State agree that the previous Government’s legacy on our Army, which is the smallest since the Napoleonic era, is deeply regrettable? Will he commit to securing a UK-EU defence and security agreement, as was on the table while Theresa May was Prime Minister? Will the Government convene a summit on saving Ukraine, to begin the process of seizure of frozen Russian assets, so that the UK and our European allies can support Ukraine regardless of the path the US takes?
- We do not need a summit to release the interest on the frozen assets—the corrupt Russian money—as we are doing that already. The Chancellor and I are working closely on that, and we have announced that, from early next year, £2.3 billion will be available for Ukraine for that purpose. I give the hon. Lady the assurance that we will pursue a UK-EU security pact, alongside the deep bilateral agreements we have already started to strike, including the one last month with Germany, which was the most comprehensive defence agreement this country has signed in many years. Finally, the hon. Lady is right—I have argued this before—that at a time of increasing global threats, European nations in NATO must do more of the heavy lifting. We must be prepared to spend more on defence, but we must also be prepared to work together to increase the level of deterrence we can offer to those who would do us harm.
- Was President Trump not right in his first term, when he pushed NATO countries to increase defence spending? The numbers have gone from six countries meeting the 2% target back in 2021, up to 23 countries meeting the target now. Is this not serious, because if President Trump makes decisions on Ukraine in his second term, we might be faced with a choice either to accept those decisions or to step up and ensure Europe’s defence ourselves?
- I welcome the fact that 23 NATO nations will hit the 2% spend this year. I regard that as a floor, not a ceiling. The UK, under Governments of both parties, has always spent well above and set the pace for other European countries. We will continue to do that, because European countries in NATO must take on more of the NATO leadership. We are determined that the UK will do that, which is why we have said that our approach to defence will be a NATO-first policy. We will, wherever we can, look to be first in NATO, so that we set the pace on the sort of transformation to the better equipped, better able and more lethal forces that our nations need to deter adversaries and to defend ourselves if required.
- The Secretary of State is right that we used to spend a lot more than 2%: in the 1980s we spent between 4.5% and 5.1% of GDP on defence. Does he share my concern at what I heard on the radio this morning, when a Labour politician in another place was saying that he could see an outcome in Ukraine whereby Russia gets to keep the territory it has occupied, while Ukraine does not get any guarantee of joining NATO but merely some more security assurances? We know what happened last time with the security assurances previously given. Does the Secretary of State agree that, whether we spend 2.5% on defence now or in the near future, it is important that whoever we send to Washington does not capitulate in advance?
- The right hon. Gentleman made the important point, implicitly in his question, that it is the Ukrainians who are fighting and the Ukrainians who will make the call about whether to talk and on what terms. Our task, as one of the leading supporters of Ukraine and its fight for sovereignty, freedom and its own future, is to support it and to step up our support for its fight, and then to step up our support, if necessary and whenever required, in any negotiations, as well as to play our part, as we have made the commitment to do, in providing any security guarantees for the longer term.
- Russia has gone to war in Europe, starting in Ukraine. It was America and Britain that saved Europe in the last war; it looks like this will be the same. Europe simply must step up. What discussions has the Secretary of State had with Lloyd Austin about America’s role in the way forward?
- To be quite honest with my hon. Friend, it is a little early to have discussions with America. It is less than a week since the presidential elections and the current Administration have more than two months to go. As she would expect, I am in detailed discussions with the current Administration and my counterpart there, in particular about how we together, as two of Ukraine’s leading allies, can step up our support over the couple of months ahead.In the future, I expect a President Trump-led Administration to recognise that it is in America’s interests, NATO’s interests and the interests of all countries that believe in the international rules-based order and a stable and secure peace that Putin does not prevail, because if large countries like Russia are able to redraw international boundaries by force, that sends a signal that undermines the security of all nations. If reports are right that President Trump has already spoken to President Putin and warned him against the escalation that we see from Russia in Ukraine, that is a good first step and early sign.