Defence Spending

Statement

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Wednesday 24 April.

“With permission, Mr Speaker, I shall make a Statement updating the House on the Government’s commitment to increase defence spending to 2.5% this decade.

In my speech at Lancaster House in January, I warned that we were entering a much more dangerous period in the world and I made the case for a national conversation about defence spending. Since then, Putin has stepped up his attacks on Ukraine, China is increasingly assertive, and tensions have escalated in the Middle East culminating in Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel 10 days ago conducted in parallel with the proxies Iran has nourished around Israel’s border in the Middle East, including of course the Houthis who continue to hold global trade hostage in the Red Sea.

Since January, the world has become even more dangerous, not less, and we continue to ask more of our courageous and professional Armed Forces. Our sailors have served under constant risk of attack in the Red Sea, helping to protect international shipping and our own cost of living. We have bolstered our Royal Air Force presence in the Middle East, enabling Typhoon crews to intercept Iranian drones and missiles recently fired towards Israel. And around 20,000 of our personnel from all three of our services, with a huge inventory of naval, air, and land assets, have been active around Europe as part of the largest NATO training exercise since the Cold War. In short, we increasingly need our Armed Forces, and we increasingly are asking more of them.

So yesterday the Prime Minister committed to hit spending 2.5% of GDP for defence by 2030. It means we will invest an additional £75 billion into defence over the next six years, and that will be funded in full without any increases in either borrowing or debt. This represents the biggest strengthening of our national defence in a generation and, as the NATO Secretary-General said yesterday, it will ensure the UK remains by far the largest European defence spender in NATO, and it means we are the second-biggest NATO spender overall.

It will provide a very significant boost for UK defence science, innovation and manufacturing. It will make our defence industries more resilient and bigger. And it will mean we are able to restock some of the global supplies required in order to continue to ensure that we are both able to provide our own Armed Forces and those in Ukraine and be a competitive export sector. We also recognise the important role defence plays in our national resilience by developing a new plan that for the first time brings together the civil and military planning for how we would respond to the most severe risks that our country faces.

Our additional £75 billion on defence is also enabling us to ramp up that support for Ukraine. Members on both sides of the House will share the Government’s concern about the warnings President Zelensky has been issuing, and his most senior generals have confirmed that their ability to match Russian force is increasingly difficult. So, as NATO partners, we are looking at each other to see that leadership.

The UK Government have stepped forward: we are providing the alliance with the decisive leadership demanded in this knife-edge moment of this existential war. This week we have committed an extra £500 million of military aid to Ukraine for this year, bringing our total package to £3 billion. In fact, our total since Putin’s full-scale invasion is now more than £12.5 billion, £7.5 billion of which is in military aid.

In addition, we have provided NATO partners with leadership by delving even deeper into our own military inventory, to give Ukraine our largest package of equipment and support to date. The support announced this week includes: millions of rounds of ammunition; 1,600 key munitions, including air defence and precision long-range missiles; over 400 armoured, protected and all-terrain vehicles; support with logistics to support and bolster the front lines; support to get the F16 pilots who have trained in the UK into the air as soon as possible; and a further 60 boats to help Ukraine strengthen its remarkable grip over the Black Sea, including offshore raiding craft and dive boats.

Our £75 billion defence investment will help Ukraine get back on to the front foot. Coupled with the reforms that we have introduced to make procurement faster and more effective, it will put our defence industrial base on a war footing. It will fire up the UK’s defence industry with an additional £10 billion over the next decade for munitions production. That will bring our total spend on munitions to about £25 billion over the same period.

We are delivering for those who serve to guarantee our freedoms as well, with over £4 billion to be invested in upgrading accommodation to build new living quarters for our personnel over the next decade. We are also working seamlessly with key allies to strengthen our collective deterrence and develop new, innovative capabilities. Just last month, I was in Australia with our Australian and US partners to advance our AUKUS programme, which will develop and deliver a range of cutting-edge kit in addition to the next generation of nuclear-powered submarines. At the end of last year, I was in Japan to advance our Global Combat Air Programme, which is the development of the sixth-generation fighter jet with Italy and Japan.

Just last week I was in Telford to see the first fully British tank for 22 years coming off the production line. That is just one strand of our Future Soldier programme to make our Army more integrated and much more lethal. Of course, defence already supports hundreds of thousands of jobs, with real quality to them, in the UK, including over 200,000 directly in the industry. Our additional £75 billion will open up many more opportunities in regions up and down the country.

This is a turning point in UK defence. We must spend more because defence of the realm is the first duty of every Government. We on the government side of the House recognise that fact. But while I want to see peace and international order being restored, I am also absolutely convinced that it is hopeful thinking—even complacency—to imagine that we can do that without ensuring that we are better protected. The best way of keeping a country safe and protecting our way of life is deterrence: being prepared; being clear-eyed about the threats we face; being clear about our capabilities; backing UK defence science, technology and innovation; carrying not just a big stick but the most advanced and capable stick that we can possibly develop; and yes, using our military muscle alongside our allies.

Our investment in our continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent makes would-be adversaries think twice. We on the government side of the House have not come to the conclusion that our nation’s nuclear deterrent is there because an election is approaching; we have always believed in our nuclear deterrent.

This is an additional £75 billion boost for our forces. In the build-up to the NATO summit in Washington, I will do all I can to get alliance members to follow our lead and bolster their armed forces, strengthen their industrial base, invest in innovation, maximise their military deterrence and, most importantly of all, maximise their support for Ukraine. In a more dangerous world, where we face an axis of authoritarian states, 2.5% must become the new baseline for the entire alliance. If we are to deter, lead and defend, that is what is required of us. I commend this Statement to the House”.

My Lords, I remind your Lordships’ House of my registered interests, specifically my associations with the Royal Navy.

As my friend, shadow Defence Secretary John Healey, said in the other place yesterday, there is “much to welcome” in this Statement, and any and all commitments of additional resource for our national security will receive cross-party support. It is clear that we live in an increasingly dangerous world. Our dedicated and professional service personnel are operating in multiple theatres, securing UK interests and supporting our partners. Every day we ask more of them and their families, asking them to make sacrifices so that the rest of us remain safe and secure at home.

These Benches welcome the new commitments to build up stockpiles, boost defence exports, give priority to domestic defence production and set up a new strategic headquarters in the MoD—all commitments for which the Labour Party has been calling for months. It is welcome to see the Government listening to the arguments made by the Opposition. I also take a moment to applaud the additional support for Ukraine, announced both here and in the US. Its fight is our fight.

A fortnight ago, when confirming our cast-iron commitment to the deterrent, Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of the Opposition, made our position clear. A future Labour Government will have a fully funded plan to spend 2.5% of GDP on defence, so our aspiration is the same as the Government’s. As always, there should be no political point scoring on matters of national security and defence. What there should and must be is the Opposition holding the Government to account for their policies and competence.

On that note, I hope the Minister can assist your Lordships’ House in answering questions that the Secretary of State struggled to answer in the other place yesterday. Where is the fully costed plan to get us to 2.5% by 2030? Only a matter of weeks ago, His Majesty’s Government presented and passed a Budget. The associated Red Book made it clear that the Government were planning to cut real-terms spending on defence by over £2.5 billion in this financial year, so where is the additional money coming from, and why did it not feature in last month’s Budget?

My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent, and on behalf of these Benches, I fully support His Majesty’s Armed Forces. How proud we are of His Majesty’s Armed Forces and what they have done in recent months and years. I endorse the spending commitments that His Majesty’s Government are making, but I also express some concerns about where the funding will come from.

The noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, obviously has a better version of the policy document than I received, because the one I have has no page numbers at all—so if there is a page 20, I have no idea where it is. But we do have the spending detail annexe.

That is page 20.