Defence Investment Plan

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on the effect of the delay in the defence investment plan on our armed forces’ ability to defend the United Kingdom.

Before I turn to the matter before us, the whole House will want to join me in recognising the remarkable work of our armed forces this weekend. In the channel, UK forces bordered a sanctioned vessel from Russia’s shadow fleet to disrupt the flow of funds to Putin’s illegal war in the Ukraine. The Defence Secretary will be making a statement on that shortly.

These are extraordinary times for defence. The threats are real and they are increasing. It is no secret that I worked in lockstep with the former Defence Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough (John Healey). He is a friend and mentor. I was his deputy and I am still standing at the Dispatch Box because he asked me to stay and because we need continuity in this complex and difficult operational environment.

The DIP will be published before the NATO summit. Do we need to spend more on defence? Yes. Do the Prime Minister and the Chancellor agree with that? Yes. Are we spending more? Yes. This year the defence budget is £11 billion more than it was in the final year under the Conservatives. Are we learning the lessons from Ukraine? Yes. Are we retiring old kit to invest in new capabilities? Yes. Are we backing our people? Yes, with the biggest pay rise in 20 years and a £9 billion plan to fix the defence housing crisis that we inherited. It is working: intake is up 11.6%, outflow is down 8.9%, and morale is up.

It speaks volumes that a junior Minister has been sent to answer this question today. If the new Defence Secretary is too scared to face tough questions at the Dispatch Box, waiting for an easier statement later, then I do not have much confidence in him facing down the threats from Russia.

It has been two years since Labour paused the Conservatives’ plan to fund our armed forces, and a year since Labour’s strategic defence review. [Interruption.] We have been warning that the delays to the defence investment plan—

Order. Those who have recently got on to the Front Bench should not bring their Back-Bench habits with them, please.

We have been warning that the delays to the defence investment plan are making our troops and our country less safe. Last week, the Defence Secretary and the Minister for the Armed Forces quit the Government, because they knew that those warnings were true and they were no longer willing to defend the indefensible. They have done the honourable thing by resigning. It could not have been easy for the former Defence Secretary—a Labour man through and through—when he said that

“I am being forced to make decisions that would…increase the risk to personnel on operations, and could make the country less safe.”

That is absolutely shocking. What on earth are the Government playing at?

The statement that the Minister has just given shows that the Government are still in denial. He did not say that there would be extra money for the defence investment plan, as his former mentor—so he says—asked for. The Prime Minister needs to tell the Chancellor to find the money. The answer is to cut the welfare budget, and I am willing to lend the Government 116 votes to do just that—I know Labour Back Benchers will not do it—with the proviso that the defence investment plan meets three simple tests.

First, the Government must at a minimum find the £28 billion that the Chief of the Defence Staff has said is needed. Will they? Secondly, the funding must be provided before 2030. Will it? There is no kicking into the long grass here. If the answer to both of those questions is no, the Minister should have resigned along with his colleagues. Thirdly, the funding must ensure that we are ready to fight the wars of the future, not the past.

I thank the right hon. Lady for her question and for the tone in which she asked it. We often have a lot of shouting from Members on her Front Bench, but I appreciate the professionalism and calm with which she asked those questions—[Interruption.]

Order. I think there are two Members who want to spoil it, but I am sure that they will not.

Let me be very clear. The Defence Secretary is currently with His Majesty the King, and he will be in the House this afternoon to make a statement on the operations over the weekend.

I recognise that the right hon. Lady got her revenge in early by saying that I will seek to blame the situation on the Conservatives. Let me be very clear. She will know that we inherited forces that had been hollowed out and underfunded by the Conservatives. We inherited defence housing in which families were being asked to sleep in bedrooms with black mould, leaky roofs and broken boilers. Of the major defence programmes we inherited at the general election, 47 of 49 were overbudget and unfunded.

However, we have been very clear that we are increasing defence spending. I appreciate that the right hon. Lady had her pre-scripted questions, but, if she had listened to what I said at the start, she would know that we are increasing defence spending. We have an extra £11 billion—[Interruption.]

Order. I think Members have just proved my point. When you request an urgent question and it has been asked, you must allow the Minister to answer without comment and without two of you—on either side of the Leader of the Opposition—chipping in. I do not need it, and you do not want it. I am not being funny; this issue affects all our constituencies and our constituents.

We are increasing defence spending. The budget this year is £11 billion more than the budget in the last year of the Conservative Government. We are ending the hollowing-out, but of course I want more money in the defence budget. We continue to make that case as the profile of defence spending increases. I would welcome a debate that says, “What capabilities will we spend that increasing defence funding on?”

The right hon. Lady is right; we need to fight the wars of tomorrow. That is why we are investing in more autonomy, more drones, a hybrid Navy and the increased stockpiles that we need to deter Russian aggression. There is more work to do, and the new Defence Secretary is working with his sleeves rolled up to deliver the best deal that we can. We will publish the defence investment plan ahead of the NATO summit.

For the past 18 months, I have been talking to the former Defence Secretary and Ministers across Government as part of my campaign for the UK to co-found the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough (John Healey) noted in his resignation letter, we need to find different ways to finance our defence industry, and that should include standing with our allies and working internationally. Will the Government listen to calls from across the House to join this world bank for defence as a matter of urgency? We cannot afford for the British defence industry to be locked out of this bank. The charter will be signed at the NATO summit, and the clock is ticking.

I thank my hon. Friend for her work, and not just on lobbying for the DSRB—as an MP for a military town, she champions not just the Army but local businesses in her patch. We are looking at what multinational mechanisms would best deliver for defence and, importantly, for the defence supply chain, enabling us to finance the growth we expect in that supply chain. That work is continuing, and I encourage my hon. Friend to continue having conversations with the Treasury, which leads on that aspect.

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

With the defence investment plan now nine months overdue, I hear almost daily from small and medium-sized defence enterprises that face a funding precipice. Many are warning that without certainty from Government, they will be unable to invest, hire, or—in some cases—continue operating. Will the Minister tell the House what assessment has been made of the financial impact on the UK defence industry of the continued delay to the defence investment plan?

The Government’s national security adviser has said that our armed forces need a minimum of £18 billion extra—and likely a lot more. Given that his former colleagues resigned on principle over the Government’s failure to fund defence properly, will the Minister resign if he fails to secure at least that minimum allocation? In the spirit of constructive opposition, may I suggest a way for him to avoid that fate entirely? Will he consider backing Lib Dem defence bonds, which would raise £20 billion over two years and give our armed forces the immediate injection of funding they need for certainty?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his questions. He will know that since the general election, we have signed 1,400 major defence contracts, which have supported thousands of SMEs. He will also know that we have stood up the Defence Office for Small Business Growth, a single doorway to increase the Ministry of Defence’s direct spend with SMEs by 50% by 2028. We will continue to work on that, and as someone who was a defence-focused MP before I was a shadow Defence Minister, let alone a Defence Minister, I am proud of my advocacy for Devonport, for Plymouth and for our armed forces. I will continue to make that case from within Government, to give our forces the funding they need and the increase in defence spending that we need. The Government have already set out an ambition to deliver that.

My hon. Friend may know that Aeralis, a British aerospace company seeking to develop a replacement for the Red Arrows, has gone into administration, and the company is in part blaming the delays to the defence investment plan for that terrible outcome. I thank my hon. Friend for the time he has taken with me, looking for opportunities to invest defence spend in my constituency, but can he do more to ensure that the defence investment plan creates good-quality jobs across the country?