Engagements

Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 1 July.

Our thoughts, and I am sure the thoughts of the whole House, are with the people of Venezuela—the scenes of destruction are simply harrowing. We have committed humanitarian funding and deployed expert search and rescue teams, and I can announce today that we will match public donations up to £2 million on aid.

In an increasingly dangerous and volatile world, our defence investment plan commits more to investment in our armed forces. It delivers the modern kit and capabilities our personnel need to keep us safe, meaning we buy British to create jobs here at home and strengthen our international leadership.

Sunday marks the 78th birthday of the NHS, and I am pleased that under this Government, waiting lists are down, A&E waits are shorter, and we have the shortest cancer diagnosis times on record. I also welcome the agreement reached with the resident doctors to end the strikes, so that our full focus can be on delivering further improvements for patients.

This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

I associate myself with the Prime Minister’s condolences and his birthday good wishes to the NHS.

Everyone in my constituency of Surrey Heath wants a new Frimley Park hospital, but the chosen site—the last remaining fragment of the ancient Frimley common—is wholly inappropriate. It is inaccessible, behind multiple schools, and environmentally devastating. Worse, over recent weeks, I have received deeply troubling evidence that the preferred relocation site was known and being openly discussed by local political figures in 2023, before the official site selection process had even begun. The entirely reasonable conclusion is that this project has been compromised from the outset and the site predetermined. I think the Prime Minister would agree that this is no way to begin a multibillion-pound public procurement process, so will he please step in, commission an urgent independent review—

Order. I think the Prime Minister has got the question.

The hon. Gentleman’s NHS trust has identified its preferred site for the new Frimley Park hospital, and detailed technical work can now start. Let us be frank about this hospital. The Tories promised 40 new hospitals with no funding and no delivery plan, and we have had to fix that. Thanks to Labour investment, the hon. Gentleman’s hospital is at the front of the queue. It will be one of the first in the country to be rebuilt, but his approach has been, on the one hand, to demand a new hospital, and then to oppose actually building it. He has urged his constituents to oppose it because, to quote him,

“if this hospital goes ahead, there will be no golf course.”

Labour is building new hospitals, and the hon. Gentleman is standing up for golf courses. I cannot think of anything more Lib Dem.

Q2. A good, safe and secure home is the foundation of everything, and access to a council home at social rent continues to be the biggest issue that my constituents get in touch with me about. However, under this Labour Government in 2024-25, councils delivered the highest annual number of social and affordable homes since 1991-92. Does the Prime Minister agree that we must build on this achievement and accelerate progress on council house building to ensure we deliver the biggest council housing programme since the post-war era?

I am proud that this Government are delivering the biggest boost to social and affordable housing in a generation. That is backed by £39 billion, and it means we are unleashing the biggest surge in council house building in more than 30 years. That includes a thousand new social and affordable homes in Luton and Bedfordshire. Our Social Housing Bill will reform right to buy to deliver even more social houses. That is a Labour Government delivering the homes that we need.

I call the Leader of the Opposition.

Can I associate myself and those on the Opposition Benches with the Prime Minister’s comments about Venezuela, and also about the Lib Dems? [Laughter.] But seriously, the Chief of the Defence Staff made it known that the armed forces needed a minimum of £28 billion more to defend the country. Can the Prime Minister tell us why he thinks half that amount is enough?

I am proud that this Labour Government have delivered two major funding increases in just two years in government. The first, which was funded by overseas aid, took us to £270 billion over the spending review period. That is a record. The defence investment plan gives us the capability we need for the future and sets a new record of £300 billion over the next four years. That will be invested in drones and autonomous weapons—the largest ever investment—strengthen the UK’s nuclear capability, upgrade our naval bases in the most significant way for 45 years, and confirm our commitment to the next generation of fighter jets. That is what is needed to keep our country safe.

The Prime Minister did not say that it was enough, and that was a very long list of things that he is not yet paying for. It is not right and it is not fair—certainly not to our troops, who put their lives on the line for all of us every single day. Three weeks ago, the Defence Secretary, the right hon. Member for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough (John Healey), resigned saying,

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

Since that letter, the Prime Minister has increased spending by only 0.01%. We can count, the generals can count, and the Kremlin can count, and his plan does not add up. How can he possibly stand there and say that this is enough?

This is the most significant upgrade in defence spending since the 1980s. The Chief of the Defence Staff has been clear that the plan accelerates the transformation we need for our armed forces. The First Sea Lord said that it funds the capability we need to fight and win, and the Chief of the Air Staff said that it strengthens our contribution to NATO. The Leader of the Opposition must have missed that yesterday, the Secretary-General of NATO welcomed the plan. Those are all people who know what is in the plan and welcome it.

We can contrast that with the Conservatives’ record in government. They hollowed out the armed forces. Their record is cutting defence spending; my record is raising it to £300 billion and rising. Their record is cutting frigates by a quarter, cutting minehunters by a half and leaving 47 out of 49 defence programmes delayed or over budget; my record is the biggest boost to defence investment since the 1980s. Their record is missing Army recruitment targets every year for 14 years. We have given our armed forces the biggest pay rise for 20 years and increased defence funding by £15 billion a year. That is a record I am proud to stand on.

The Chief of the Defence Staff is an honourable man, and what he and the NATO Secretary-General have done is welcome the fact that the plan has been published—just that it has been published. They have been waiting for more than a year. The strategic defence review was last year. The Chief of the Defence Staff is an honourable man who is having to make do with very little.

The threat level has dramatically changed in the two years that the Prime Minister has been in office. Since he took office, Poland has increased its funding to 4.8% and Germany has increased its funding to 3.7%. This year, Russia will spend 10% of GDP on defence. Meanwhile, Britain is spending it all on welfare. Even the limited plan that the Prime Minister has announced has completely unravelled, because he has not found the money to pay for it. It is £5 billion short. We all know that he is leaving this mess to his successor. Can he confirm that the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) has agreed to fund the shortfall?

What the Conservatives did was cut defence spending. When they came to power, defence spending was 2.5%. What did they do? They cut it to 2.3%—a cut! On welfare, what did they do? They put it up by £88 billion. So we will take no lectures from them about either welfare or defence.

This is £15 billion of new investment for defence, delivered outside a Budget and outside a spending review. That is about £1 billion a year over four years. Because of the decisions at the last Budget, we have had headroom of £22 billion. That is precisely so that we can take decisions like this. We delivered it outside a Budget and outside a spending review, just as we did with special educational needs, outside a Budget and outside a spending review, and just as the last Government did when they announced their five-year NHS plan in 2018, outside a Budget and outside a spending review. And what did they say when they were challenged about it?

“We will be able to explain exactly where every penny is coming from but we will do that in the Budget.”

That was the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt), then the Health Secretary and later the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

When the Conservatives published their integrated defence review in 2020, what did they do? They set out the funding at the next spending review. So let us drop the faux outrage and focus on what matters: the biggest sustained increase for 40 years and the biggest increase for 45 years, providing what is needed to keep the country safe.

The Prime Minister says that he is delivering this outside the Budget. That is right: it should have been in the last Budget. The strategic defence review was published last year. It should have been in the last Budget, not the next Budget. According to the intelligence assessment that the Prime Minister himself has said we have, there could be an attack on NATO by 2030, but this plan does not deliver until after that. Not only is £5 billion missing from his plan, but it relies on £11 billion of unidentified savings.

The plan has unravelled. It is a total dereliction of duty, and I am not the only one who thinks so. The Times said today that the Prime Minister’s “legacy”—[Interruption.] Well, why don’t we wait and see what The Times said? It said that the Prime Minister’s

“legacy is betrayal, failure and vulnerability”

—and that is one of the nicer headlines.

I will ask again, because the Prime Minister did not answer the question. Did the right hon. Member for Makerfield know that he was going to have to find £5 billion for the Prime Minister’s plan?

When I became Prime Minister two years ago, this country spent £54 billion a year on defence. Because of the decisions we have taken, that will rise to £80 billion a year by 2029. That is a real-terms increase of 27%, transforming our armed forces. We are not going to take any lectures from the Conservatives. They cut defence spending. They hollowed out the armed forces. That is what their Defence Secretary admitted they did. [Interruption.] They do not like it. They will not defend their record, because they cannot. They will not apologise for it, because that would be to admit what we all know: it is a total failure. They just try to pretend that the 14 years during which they were in power never really happened. We are in power. We have record investment in defence and security. I am proud of this Labour Government, and any Labour Prime Minister would stand behind this plan.

It does not sound as if the Prime Minister has told the right hon. Member for Makerfield to find £5 billion. He says that any Labour Prime Minister would stand behind this plan. Let me tell him what Lord Dannatt, the former head of the Army, said yesterday. He said that the Prime Minister had chosen the “cheap option”, and he called the plan “woefully inadequate”. Let me tell him what General Sir Richard Barrons, one of the authors of his own strategic defence review, said yesterday:

“we are simply not going to be ready to defend this country properly.”

That is what they are saying.

The reason the Prime Minister is in this mess is that he was too weak to cut welfare when he had the chance. There are only three ways to find the missing £5 billion: increase borrowing, increase taxes, or cut welfare. Which one will the Prime Minister recommend to the right hon. Member for Makerfield?

We are talking about £1 billion a year over four years. The decisions at the last Budget gave us more than £22 billion in headroom, so we can take the decisions the country—[Interruption.] The Conservatives do not understand this, because they crashed the economy. We built a headroom of £22 billion. The very reason for the headroom is so that we have the credibility to take decisions outside the Budget and outside the spending review. The Conservatives do not understand it because they lost control of the public finances. In addition to doing more for defence and security, we have taken control of the public finances. That is why we have headroom to take credible decisions like this. We have £1 billion a year over four years and headroom of £22 billion because of the decisions that we took in the last Budget, which allow us to take these decisions.

We understand it perfectly, and that is why—[Interruption.] Yes, we do. That is why the Prime Minister is leaving and so is his Chancellor. Labour Members are laughing and pretending, but if he was doing such a fabulous job, why did he resign?

Defence of the realm is the first duty of Government. [Interruption.] Yes, it is the first duty of Government. I do not need to read again what General Sir Richard Barrons or Lord Richard Dannatt said. Maybe Labour Members did not hear it the first time—they can rewatch the clips—but defence of the realm is the first duty of Government. Britain is facing a moment of danger unlike anything in our lifetimes and unlike anything that we saw in government. We need a plan to fund our armed forces that meets this moment. They are the Government for now, not for 10 years ago, and the fact is that Labour’s plan is too weak, it is too little and it is too late. If the Prime Minister’s successor does not want to be complicit in this failure, he should come out and condemn this plan. The money must be found, and that money should come from cutting welfare—something that these Labour MPs will not do. If Labour cannot defend our country, what is the point of them?