The following Answer to an Urgent Question was given in the House of Commons on Monday 15 June.
“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 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 honourable 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.
To answer the leader of the Opposition’s question directly: if asked to fight tonight, could our forces defend the UK? Yes, and they already do every single day. Are we planning to increase their capabilities to deter and to defend the UK and our allies? Yes, we are. Would I like to go further? Of course.
The new Defence Secretary has stepped up to serve, as he has done before, sleeves rolled up and determined to meet the moment to get defence the best deal. Let me say plainly that I know the Prime Minister is committed to do so as well. He said in Munich:
‘To meet the wider threat, it is clear that we are going to have to spend more faster’.
At the weekend, he said,
‘3% in the next Parliament … defence will be the number one priority at every spending review, including the next spending review’.
The disagreement in recent weeks was never about whether we should fund our forces; it was about how fast we increase the spending for defence and on what capabilities. That is a serious argument to have—I make no apology for pushing hard within the Government to win it, because that is the job. But the job is also a team sport, and that is why the Ministry of Defence, with the new Defence Secretary, is working with the Treasury, other government departments and No. 10 to get this right”.
My Lords, the Chief of the Defence Staff has today given the International Relations and Defence Committee of this House stark evidence of what funding is needed and why we need it to maintain our defence capability. Does the Minister agree that, whatever ends up being in the defence investment plan, there must be an emphasis on funding ongoing operational activity such as boarding sanctioned tankers, paying for drones, equipping our serving Armed Forces personnel with everything they need to maintain operational readiness, and ensuring that our reserves are trained and equipped to optimise military and national resilience support? Does he accept that these are priorities?
The priorities, and the moneys for the future, will be laid out in the defence investment plan. The noble Baroness is right to point out some of the important capabilities we have to protect our country and to work with our allies. She was right, for example, to point to the importance of the reserves—it is good to see the noble Lord, Lord Lancaster, here—and to the ability to maintain our operational requirements. This goes back to a question asked by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, who is not in his place. As the DIP goes on, an important thing that will have to be wrestled with is the relationship between RDEL and CDEL, which is crucial to the way we will operate in the future.
My Lords, the Government have committed to increase defence spending to 3% by 2030 and to 3.5% by 2035. But what is required, and is chaotically missing, is a clear timeline that would enable the MoD and the defence industry to budget, plan and procure. Even if the DIP is published, as promised, before the NATO summit, it will not end the uncertainty. Holding out unspecified prospects for future spending does not really cut it. So when will the Government make a clear medium-term to long-term decision and remove damaging uncertainty for our defence industry and for other departments, which fear cuts, in order to fund what they do not know is happening?
Money for defence is already increasing, notwithstanding what happens in the DIP, which will further increase defence spending. In answer to various questions yesterday about defence spending going forward, I simply referred to what the Prime Minister told the BBC on Friday afternoon. The Prime Minister laid out that defence will be the number one priority in every spending review, including the next one, which, I remind the noble Lord and the House, will be in 2027. There is the additional commitment, which I made at NATO last year, to get to 3.5% by 2035. The commitment laid out by the Prime Minister to the BBC and Chris Mason was important.
My Lords, I have £50 billion in my back pocket. In 11 years’ time, my noble friend the Minister and every Member of this House will be able to get to Birmingham 20 minutes faster. Some £102 billion is due to be spent on HS2 going forward. If we cancel this project now, it will cost us £33 billion. The net saving will be somewhere between £50 billion and £70 billion. I ask my noble friend the Minister to take this away and see whether he can persuade his colleagues in the Cabinet to chop HS2, which is utterly useless, is going nowhere and was a bonkers vanity project right from the beginning. I invite him to do so.
That is the most difficult question I have had. The serious point, notwithstanding the debate around HS2, is the question of priorities within government. One of the issues that has caused some debate and discussion—I was asked a question about it—was that when the Government made the initial defence spending increase, it was funded by a reduction in the overseas development budget. Now, the debate and discussion are about how we can reprioritise within the existing government spending envelope and use money from other departments, particularly from capital, to spend in the defence investment plan. There is always debate and discussion about priorities within government, and, no doubt, that will continue.
My Lords, might not the Government find it a bit easier to deal with their problems explaining defence spending if they distinguished much more clearly between the overall defence of the nation—where the budget spreads across many departments and takes a variety of new forms that change all the time—and the MoD budget, which, just like general spending, is always in trouble? I see in today’s newspapers that more trouble is coming along.