The Secretary of State for Defence (Grant Shapps)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered defence.
In recent weeks, our armed forces have been required to use force to protect international shipping and to protect our allies. Our armed forces are the best of us; we increasingly need them, and we are increasingly asking more of them as well. When the threat picture changes, the first duty of Government is to respond, which is why this Government have committed to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030, the biggest increase in spending for a generation.
Grant Shapps
I will just make a bit of progress first, keen as the right hon. Gentleman is. That will result in a £75 billion cash boost to our nation’s defences over six years from a flat cash baseline. Although we have had a long-held commitment to hit 2.5% when financial conditions allow, delivering that commitment now involves choices.
Grant Shapps
No, it does not. The outcome from the defence budget, which must be the basis upon which the right hon. Gentleman is judging last year’s, includes supplementaries. In particular, it now includes the additional half a billion, which I can tell the right hon. Gentleman I chose to send to Ukraine as an active decision, rather than it coming into our main budget; I feel that that would have the support of the House. When we include all that, the budget increases. In any case, it already increased by 1.8%.
Grant Shapps
I know that the right hon. Gentleman wants to continue this debate, but the fact is that it does as soon as we include the supplementaries.
Grant Shapps
I will not for the moment, because this point has been discussed ad infinitum. In any case, we are offering another £75 billion in cash terms, which I note that the Labour party has yet to do because the funding requires a determination, in our case, to get the civil service back to pre-covid levels and to help pay for the expansion of our defence. It requires sound economic management and, above all, an understanding that an investment in deterrence today is wiser and less painful than paying to fight a war tomorrow.
John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
Has the Secretary of State not just confirmed that the amount of money in the budget designated for the British armed forces has, in fact, gone down?
Grant Shapps
No, I still have not confirmed that because, before the extra half a billion, if we take the outcome from last year and the amount that was pledged for this year—including supplementaries, to be clear, which is the same basis as last year—it is an increase of 1.8%. However, this is rather beside the point, because since the time we debated this question at the Select Committee on Defence, we have committed to putting in another £75 billion in cash terms from the baseline over the next six years.
Grant Shapps
I think the right hon. Gentleman will want me to complete this section. I would be interested to hear him apply that commitment to his own Front Benchers, because this Conservative £75 billion rise in defence spending is highly significant. It is precisely what our armed forces need to respond to axes of authoritarian states that are trying to reshape the world in their image, and it is the right thing to do.
Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)
Rather than Labour Members trying to poke holes in this commitment, would it not be better if they committed to doing the same thing?
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend has pre-empted a passage a little later in my speech, in which I suggest that those right hon. and hon. Members on the Labour Benches who want to see more money go into defence might first persuade their own Front Benchers to follow our lead and ensure that we get more money into it. I am very concerned about the apparent failure of the Labour party to match our funding commitment. Labour Members are being incredibly evasive about funding. In addition to not confirming whether they will do the 2.5% in the next six years—we look forward to hearing whether they confirm that—they are also promising, or perhaps I should say threatening, a review of defence. Our enemies will waste no time in putting the UK in their sights if they think that the next thing that would happen is a multi-year review—a waste of time and money that should instead be spent on our brave servicemen and women. Labour’s apparent refusal to follow our lead and back our fully funded spending plans would decimate our armed forces by cutting up to £75 billion from defence.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
Why does the Secretary of State think that Paul Johnson, in an article on Monday 29 April, said:
“What annoyed me was not the commitment…”—
to the 2.5%—
“It was all about the misleading and opaque way in which the additional spending was presented. When it wanted to make it look big, the Government claimed it would boost spending by £75 billion; when it wanted to appear fiscally responsible… It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes, or even the head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, to see that there might be something not quite consistent about these claims.”
Grant Shapps
The hon. Gentleman will be interested to know that the way this is presented is entirely the usual way for the Treasury to present increases in spending. If I take him back to the previous cash boost for defence—I think it was £24 billion and it was described, I think, as being over five years—it was presented on exactly the same basis, and I do not remember the hon. Gentleman making the same point then. Regardless of the numbers, surely the point is this: will the Labour party commit to this timeline?
Labour Members said that they wanted to get to 2.5%, and that they would do it when conditions allow. We have now said that we know conditions will allow because of the management of the economy. Will they follow us, or will they send their Back Benchers out to criticise an increase, even though their own Front Benchers will not match it themselves? Perhaps we should not be surprised, given that the Leader of the Opposition, not once but twice backed Jeremy Corbyn—sorry, the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn)—to be Prime Minister. The Leader of the Opposition proclaims his support for our nuclear deterrent, yet he has stacked his Front Bench with anti-nuclear campaigners—I counted 11 who voted against Trident—while he goes up to Barrow and claims he is all in favour.
Mr Kevan Jones
The Secretary of State is doing, like last time he came out on this debate, his used-car salesman act. The fact of the matter is clear: the only way we get to £75 billion is if we freeze the defence budget for the next six years. Is he going to do that? Given what he announced last week, will he explain first where the money is coming from, and secondly what is the proportion of resource departmental expenditure limits and capital departmental expenditure limits? There is no detail at all. It is just an empty promise and a political slogan that he is batting around as his usual avuncular self.
Grant Shapps
The way the right hon. Gentleman tries to represent it is simply not true. If it were meaningless, why has his own party not taken the difficult decisions to get to the £75 billion which, to be clear, is the amount additional to what is currently programmed in? He is right that defence budgets may have increased over time, but £75 billion is still the additional figure. If it is so straightforward, why doesn’t he encourage those on the Labour Front Bench to do it? I think I know the answer. He asks how it will be paid for, and it will largely be paid for by cutting the civil service back down to pre-covid levels. Labour Members do not want to cut 72,000 from the workforce of the civil service so that it goes back down to pre-covid levels, and because of that they will not follow us in our commitment. That shows where their choices lie.
Labour Members say they want 2.5% and are keen to see that, but they are not willing to put in place the difficult decisions to reach that. By failing to take those decisions, they will be failing to fund our armed forces if they were to come into office. That would leave our nation more vulnerable, and play directly into the hands of our adversaries, including Putin.
In January, I set out a comprehensive case for increasing defence spending in response to what I described as “a more dangerous world”. After all, Putin is on the march, pursuing wars in the east of Europe while backing greater political influence and assassinations in the west. China has certainly become a lot more assertive in recent years. Russian mercenaries, Islamic extremists and military strongmen have overrun democracies and societies in Africa.
As Iran has nourished and manipulated its proxy militia and groups around the middle east, the Islamic republic itself has for the first time carried out an aerial assault on a democratic near-neighbour, Israel. Its Hamas terrorist allies brought mass murder to Israelis on 7 October, and they have brought pain to the Palestinians—both before and since—with the Hamas approach to running that area. Meanwhile, one of Iran’s other key allies—the Houthis—continues to hold global trade hostage in the Red sea. So, from Moscow to Tehran and from Beijing to Pyongyang, a network of authoritarian states is pressuring allies and our interests. Working together, they are more connected than they have ever been before.
Bob Seely
The Secretary of State is making a really important point. Without sounding too academic, do we actually know what war is nowadays? Clearly, there is conventional war, which we recognise, but what he is talking about is proxy war. Earlier, we were discussing cyber-attacks, China’s and Russia’s role in this sort of hybrid war, and the integration of military and non-military means, which is behind military doctrines in an increasing number of countries. Are we joined up enough to be able to fight these modern conflicts, which are part military and part non-military? Do we actually understand what conflict is in this century?
Grant Shapps
It is true—my hon. Friend will know this as well as or better than me—that in each generation the world relearns what it is to have conflict. We have seen that with Russia, we are seeing it at the moment in the middle east, and we have seen it, as discussed, through various cyber-activities, which are in fact entirely continuous; it is just that most of them do not succeed.
The world has changed, the defence reviews and the refresh looked to try to learn those lessons. One of the things, not least because of Britain’s forward-leaning approach to the war in Ukraine, has been that we have been at the forefront of learning some of those new lessons with drones and other technologies; indeed, we have been speeding up the introduction of new technologies such as laser weapons. It is important that we think about this as a whole rather than just through the traditional eyes of three armed services. We now have to think about space and the domain in cyber, and that is what our strategic command does.
Sir John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
The Secretary of State is making a good case. Does he agree that, as this extra money is available, we should ensure that more of it is spent on procuring weapons and military requirements here in the United Kingdom, because we cannot be properly defended unless we can make our own military vehicles, our own steel and our own explosives? We are short of capacity.
Grant Shapps
I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. It is incredibly important that we develop—or, rather, further develop—our own domestic defence industrial base. That is one of the reasons why we have spoken about putting that industrial base on a war footing, and it is one of the reasons why—this is not, as has been suggested, some sort of cheap gibe—it is important that the Government, or indeed the Opposition if they want to be the Government, set out the path in order that that investment can take place. That base will not be able to invest unless it knows what is happening on a multi-year basis.
Grant Shapps
I have been quite generous; I will make a little bit of progress.
That is why this Conservative Government will act now. We are going to deliver the greatest strengthening of our national defence since the cold war. Some will argue that the threats we face are perhaps not imminent or existential. They may claim that increased defence spending is not a good use of money, which perhaps should go on other commitments—there are many to discuss—but I argue that we have seen the consequences up and down the country of the more dangerous world that I described in that Lancaster House speech.
In recent years, we have suffered terror attacks. We have also suffered cyber-attacks on business, on Government, as we were just talking about, and on critical national infrastructure. They were mostly not successful, but the amount that it costs to get around them increases all the time none the less. We have suffered intellectual property theft. We have seen Hong Kong protesters dragged into the Chinese consulate in Manchester and beaten. We have seen Iranian journalists threatened and stabbed in London. We have seen former Russian military officers assassinated in hotels in Mayfair and poisoned in suburban homes in Salisbury and, just last month, British citizens charged with setting fire to Ukrainian-linked business units in east London, apparently on the instructions of Russian intelligence.
Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)
My right hon. Friend has compellingly described the current situation as moving from post-war to pre-war. Does he share my concern that the people of this country, as a whole, are not yet in a place to understand the seriousness of the problem, that there is in some sense, therefore, the beginnings of an issue of consent, and that it is harder than it should be for young people to get excited about joining some of our big contractors and supporting the work we are doing for our armed forces on diverse fronts around the country? If that is true, does he think that there is a specific role for the Ministry of Defence to lead the process of building consent across the UK?
Grant Shapps
My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. One issue we face is that if you are not Iranian or Russian and living in the UK, you may believe that this does not affect you too much. My entire argument—indeed, the argument I made at Lancaster House—is that this is not just something that impacts on foreign nationals in the distance; we are all, in effect, under attack. For evidence of that, we can see up and down the land the direct impact on every single family as Putin drove into Ukraine. Every single household budget in Britain was under attack. Remember, the winter before last we were paying up to half of the average family’s energy bill. This really does matter back home. It is again why I stress that defence is the cheapest version of looking after ourselves, not the most expensive one. That is why it is so important that, with Putin inflicting that inflation on British households and British business, we wake up to that fact and understand it. I actually think the British people do understand. They do want us to do more. It is popular to make sure that we properly defend these isles and defend our interests overseas. That is why this party has been proud to bring forward this big boost to our national defence.
As was mentioned earlier, this year I have—because this battle is so very important for all of us, not least our Ukrainian friends—provided another half a billion pounds of aid to Ukraine. That will take our total 2024 military package to a record £3 billion, which is the most we have provided in any year. Previously, it was £2.3 billion and £2.3 billion. It brings our total support overall to £12.5 billion, in addition to other aid. In addition, to help Ukraine repel Russia’s mounting attacks, we gave, a couple of weeks ago, the largest tranche of military gifting assistance to date.
It is worth reiterating the size and scale of that, because I fear that with the announcement of the 2.5% and the trajectory—I think all Members believe that Ukraine’s win is absolutely existential and important—the scale of the gifting was perhaps not noticed. It included 4 million rounds of ammunition, 1,600 key munitions, including air defence and precision long-range missiles, all our remaining AS-90 artillery platforms, 60 combat boats, 400 armour-protected and all-terrain vehicles, and hundreds of bombs for Ukraine’s new fleet of F-16 combat aircraft. Just as we initially provided our Ukrainian friends with trained troops, anti-tank missiles, main battle tanks, missiles and so many other firsts, we will now ensure that the aircraft we cannot provide for them—we do not fly F-16s—are properly provided with munitions.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I know that the Secretary of State’s personal commitment to Ukraine is second to none. Does he agree with me that if Putin is seen to fail in Ukraine, the threat to western Europe, the United Kingdom and NATO countries will recede for a generation? If Putin is seen to gain any sort of victory in Ukraine, the opposite will happen.
Grant Shapps
My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct. That is precisely the point, and that is exactly why it is right to invest in Ukraine. I do not want to make this a political speech—
Grant Shapps
This is a serious issue, and I am surprised by that sort of attitude. I want to ask, because it is a serious point, whether the Opposition are now ready to commit to that extra £500 billion if they were elected, because I have yet to hear that confirmed, and that is an important issue for our Ukrainian friends. I accept that the Ukrainians have the Opposition’s support, but they also need the pledge of money and the certainty that this House will provide it, come what may.
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
If I heard the Secretary of State correctly, a few minutes ago he said that we have now gifted all our AS-90 howitzers to Ukraine. We are buying 14 new Archers. We are then buying a completely different system based on Boxer, which will take some years to come into service, and our multiple-launch rocket systems are being refurbished. What is he doing to ensure that the British Army is not left without heavy artillery for the next few years, because what he is talking about is a dangerous risk?
Grant Shapps
As my right hon. Friend will realise, it is not a move I have taken easily. There is a balance to be struck between where the weapons can do the most good and the extraordinarily difficult fight that our Ukrainian friends are in right now. I thought, believe and think that that warrants the provision of further AS-90s. The new equipment, as I do not need to tell him, is vastly superior and will be in our hands quickly, not least because of the excellent work of the Minister for Defence Procurement, who has sped up the acquisition of new equipment through his brilliant integrated plan.
I want to be entirely clear with the House: there are choices to make when we do this gifting, and we have to make the choices as to where we think the equipment will be most useful and how quickly we can replenish it. One of the very good things about this significant boost in defence spending, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) will appreciate, is that it will enable us to replenish not only equipment but, crucially, munitions, which have been a real concern of his and many others.
Grant Shapps
I will make a little progress, if I may.
We have pledged this half a billion pounds extra, so we are at £3 billion a year. The crucial point—it has perhaps been lost, or perhaps I have not said it from this Dispatch Box—is that over the course of the next Parliament, this party in government would provide £15 billion of guaranteed aid to Ukraine. When I speak to President Zelensky or my opposite number, Minister Umerov, they make it clear that the certainty of that funding is the most important thing we can do right now. I implore and invite other parties to suggest that they would follow that pledge, in order to provide that certainty to the Ukrainians right now. It matters now that the Ukrainians have certainty that that aid will be there, come what may and regardless of electoral cycles elsewhere, even though we will still be here.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I very much welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment to defence and the extra money for the budget. I know that he is very committed to the defence sector in Northern Ireland, and we want to encourage that. The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee is doing an inquiry on defence procurement for Northern Ireland and is suggesting that there should be a regional hub, because that will encourage more companies from Northern Ireland to be involved and be part of that spend for defence over the next couple of years. First, is the Minister aware of what the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee is doing on procurement? Secondly, other firms such as Nitronica, an electronics manufacturing firm in Ballynahinch, wish to be part of defence procurement but have not had the opportunity. It is important that we all play our part. I think the Secretary of State will agree with me, but I am curious to hear whether there is a plan.
Grant Shapps
I certainly do agree: all parts of the United Kingdom have a very important role to play, especially Northern Ireland, where missile production, ships and electronics are particular skills. It is important for people there to have a level of certainty that we intend to invest and will carry on investing. Today we can outline exactly how much we would spend each year in the future. By doing so, it is worth them investing. It is cheaper for them to invest. The cost of capital to build and maintain factories falls when we provide that certainty. I therefore hope that the Labour party will match our long-term pledge to Ukraine and to defence spending, because there is no way that warm words about defence spending make a difference to the frontline; the difficult choices have to be made. We have made our choices and we will reduce the size of the civil service back to pre-covid levels. Labour can make its own choices, but I encourage it to join us in the defence boost pledge.
There is no more important element of defence than our nuclear deterrent. Again, it is good to hear that both sides of the House now seem to back the nuclear deterrent, but that cannot be done without backing the money to support it.
Sir Julian Lewis
It is true that both sides of the House strongly back the nuclear deterrent at the moment, if my right hon. Friend is talking about the Labour Opposition. However, with recent talk of the prospect of a hung Parliament, one could find oneself in the same situation as the Cameron Government in 2010, when the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar) and I were begging for a vote to be held to renew the nuclear deterrent, but because of the coalition deal with the Liberal Democrats, that vote was postponed, at great expense, for four years until 2016. We would like to hear assurances from both Front Benches that no such situation will ever be allowed to arise again.
Grant Shapps
I am pleased to reassure my right hon. Friend from this Front Bench that no such delay would be countenanced. Just in the last few weeks we have issued the defence nuclear enterprise Command Paper—[Interruption.] I thought the Opposition Front Bench knew that there was a coalition Government, but perhaps they missed it. Perhaps they also missed the point that my right hon. Friend was making.
Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way, and I can offer him the assurance that the Liberal Democrats embrace the continuous at-sea deterrent with four submarines. What is more, the strategic environment in which we were operating in 2010 was very different from that which we see today: the Liberal Democrats made the right call then, and we have made the right call now.
Grant Shapps
You heard it here first, Madam Deputy Speaker. I warmly welcome that commitment, which was not available under the then coalition Government. It is an important moment, and I welcome that commitment from the hon. Gentleman, as I welcome it from Labour.
I gently remind the House that 11 Opposition Front Benchers have voted against the deterrent in their time here, including three members of the current shadow Cabinet, including the shadow Foreign Secretary, the shadow Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Secretary, and the shadow Deputy Prime Minister. The House is right to ask, and the country will want to know, whether that commitment is as firm as we now hear it is from the Liberal Democrats. It will also want to know, even if the commitment is said to be firm, whether Labour is prepared to fund it. Again, it comes back to the 2.5%.
John Spellar
Can we be clear that, as was kindly referenced by the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), that situation was the result of a failure of political judgment and will by David Cameron? He could have said to the Liberal Democrats, “This is a matter of strategic national interest. If you don’t like it, you can give up your jobs and walk out of the Government.” They would have bottled it. The fact was that we lost six years and a huge amount of money, and we are putting CASD at real risk with enormously elongated tours of duty for our tremendous submariners.
Grant Shapps
The right hon. Gentleman wants to relitigate the past, but I think we all agree that we cannot do anything about it. I want to talk about the future, and the future is that those on his own side have yet to commit to the 2.5% that is required to ensure that our nuclear deterrent can deliver on time. In March the Prime Minister and I published the defence nuclear enterprise Command Paper, setting out our long-held and unshakeable commitment to our own independent nuclear deterrent.
Mr Francois
I appreciate my right hon. Friend’s desire to look forward rather than back but, just for the record, does he remember, as I do, that at one point the Liberal Democrat policy on Trident was to maintain the submarines but to send them to sea without any missiles?
Grant Shapps
I will be as diplomatic as possible: the Liberal Democrats asked us to investigate a range of options, and I am very pleased that the one we ended up with was the four-submarine continuous at-sea deterrent.
We are investing £41 billion in our next generation of the Dreadnought fleet, and investing in our replacement UK sovereign nuclear warhead as well.
Derek Twigg
The Secretary of State mentioned the Command Paper. Page 89, in paragraph 10, refers to
“protecting ourselves…against attack from the skies”.
We know from what has happened in Ukraine, and more recently in Israel, how important our air defence missile system is. The Command Paper continues:
“To counter these threats, we will step up our efforts to deliver an Integrated Air and Missile Defence approach.”
Can the Secretary of State tell us where we are with that?
Grant Shapps
I should point out that there are a wide number of differences for us, because within Nato—this relates to article 5 of the North Atlantic treaty—we are in a different region from, for example, Israel, which was recently attacked. We have a number of layered approaches to defending our skies, including the quick reaction alert. However, the hon. Gentleman will be interested to hear that we are working with our European friends and allies on a European sky shield to do something along the lines of what he has described. It should be understood, however, that there are considerations regardless of which direction we take, because, again, the money can only be spent once, and we would have to consider what else we were or were not going to achieve in defence. So we use a layered approach, but we are actively working on exactly what the Command Paper describes.
Grant Shapps
I am a little concerned about not giving others an opportunity to contribute, but I will allow the right hon. Gentleman one last intervention.
John Spellar
Was the Secretary of State not a member of the Government, and indeed chairman of the Conservative party, during the period we are discussing when the Government did not renew Trident?
Grant Shapps
I think the right hon. Gentleman will now understand why I was so pleased to trounce the Liberal Democrats when it came to that election—to squeeze them out of government and ensure that we could get on with Trident as we always wanted to. I encourage his party to join us in that commitment, backed up with money—not just photo-opportunities in Barrow, but money to deliver the nuclear deterrent.
I now want to make some progress. I want to talk about Putin’s war, and the way in which it has underlined the vital role of conventional forces. From the Red sea to the skies over Iraq, our armed forces are already doing incredible work globally in protecting and advancing our interests every day. In the ongoing Exercise Steadfast Defender, they are currently making up 20% of this year’s NATO exercise, itself the largest since the cold war. I have been to visit some of them in Poland.
We are investing £8.6 billion in Army equipment during this decade to make our ground forces more integrated, agile and lethal. That includes the new Boxer and the long-awaited Ajax armoured fighting vehicles, as well as the new Challenger 3 tanks, of which I saw the second prototype come off the production line in Telford just last month—the first British-made tank for 22 years.
Our United Kingdom is at its strongest when we stand shoulder to shoulder with our allies, and therefore our commitment to NATO will only ever increase. That is why it is so important that we have been prepared to set out how to get to 2.5%. At the 2014 NATO summit at Newport in Wales, we set a target of 2% to be reached by this year; we are now extending that to 2.5%, and we invite other countries to join us.
NATO has become stronger because of Putin’s actions in Ukraine. It has added members: two new members have joined us, and we therefore outgun Putin on every single metric. We have three times as many submarines and fighter jets, four times as many tanks, helicopters and artillery pieces, four and a half times as many warships, six times as many armed vehicles, eight times as many transport carriers and 16 times as many aircraft carriers. But it is important that NATO works together and sticks together. It is also important that we send a signal to NATO that the second biggest spender in absolute terms intends to increase that expenditure—that has been widely welcomed by other NATO members that I have spoken to in the past couple of weeks.
The importance of that iron-clad alliance is the third lesson of Putin’s war. Since 2022, we have worked hard with our NATO partners to enlarge the alliance and bolster its eastern flank. We have also worked hard with our closest partners on a range of top-end procurement programmes, from sixth-generation combat jets with Italy and Japan to cutting-edge nuclear-powered submarines with Australia and the United States.
The fourth lesson of Putin’s war is that the battle in Ukraine has needed ever more innovation—new tech, new drones. As we ramp up our defence spending to 2.5%, we will put high-tech innovation right at the heart of our plans. I recently visited the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, and we agreed to ringfence 5% of the defence budget for research and development over the next year, and to improve our strategic defence research.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Before the Secretary of State comes in, I am slightly conscious that 13 Back Benchers have indicated that they wish to make speeches, so there will be an impact on the length of those speeches if we are not careful.
Grant Shapps
I will be less generous with interventions and will rattle through the remaining important content for our military services.
We are building on the recent defence drone strategy and our £4.6 billion investment in uncrewed technologies over the next decade. As we discussed earlier, AI and other tech advances are transforming the way warfare is fought, and our pan-defence procurement reforms have enabled a speeding up of our ability to deliver new technology. I have mentioned DragonFire several times at the Dispatch Box, and it will be delivered five years early.
Fifthly and finally, Putin’s war in Ukraine has underlined the need for all NATO allies to rebuild their stockpiles and grow their defence industrial base. To keep our defence production lines running, we have reformed the procurement process to prioritise exportability from day one. That is now an accredited part of UK production when we make procurement decisions. Our £75 billion boost for defence includes an additional £10 billion to produce even larger stockpiles of munitions over the next decade. That gives certainty to industry and boosts our regions.
Defence supports hundreds of thousands of jobs across the UK, and the boost for defence will provide even more opportunities—opportunities for apprentices and for seasoned engineers. Those jobs would be at risk if the path to 2.5% were not followed, so it is very important that we give that commitment to our defence personnel. We undertake to do that, but we will go further: we will also invest £4 billion in military accommodation, because we recognise that retention, as well as recruitment, is so important. That £4 billion would not exist without the increase to 2.5%. We are also ensuring that there are wraparound childcare services for service families and the service pupil premium.
I thank—as I know the whole House will—the committed, professional and courageous members of our armed forces for everything they do for us in more difficult times. They keep us safe. We are backing them with more money and, in a more dangerous world, I think that is the right thing to do. As I go to Washington with the Prime Minister for the NATO summit in July, we will be saying to other NATO countries, “Follow our example. Follow us because it is the right thing to do and because it is cheaper and more effective than waiting for wars and conflicts to break out.” I encourage other Members of this House to follow us.
The Minister for Defence People and Families (Dr Andrew Murrison)
First, I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
This has been a typically excellent debate. Across the House I think there is an understanding that, after two or three decades of relative tranquillity, we are living with the threat of proximate warfare. The price of freedom is of course eternal vigilance, and that is generally agreed across this House, as evidenced by the contributions made, such as that of my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis). I think my right hon. Friend was arguing, slightly cheekily, for defence spending of 44% of GDP, although that was probably in the event of total war, which of course we all want to avoid. His proposition was that we should never have taken a peace dividend post the cold war, but I think that is a little harsh on our predecessors. However, plainly the situation has changed, and we must change with it. I hope very much that Europe will follow our 2.5% commitment, meaning £140 billion more for our collective defence against the primary aggressor. I would have been very disappointed had my right hon. Friend not rehearsed the arguments for a continuous at-sea deterrent, which of course is 16,000 tonnes of eternal vigilance.
The right hon. Members for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) and for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), who speak for the Opposition, I think gave us the commitment we were seeking, which is to match the Government’s cash spend. However, the right hon. Gentleman was a bit flaky, if I may say so, on the 2.5%, or at least on when it would be achieved and how they would pay for it. That became clear from the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray), for which I am grateful.
The right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne is indeed an honourable man and I like him very much, but I am bound to point out that his assurances that Labour is the party of defence run contrary to its management until very recently by a right hon. Member who had very different ideas indeed. The right hon. Gentleman was very keen to recommend the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) to the British public in 2019 as the Prime Minister of this great country and to serve under his leadership for nearly five years, but heaven loves a sinner brought to repentance. I am also bound to point out that defence is not short of reviews, and another review would mean obfuscation. I suggest that is the very last thing our armed forces need right now. At best, it would introduce a huge measure of uncertainty when we simply cannot afford it.
The Chair of the Select Committee on Defence, my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Sir Jeremy Quin), rightly reflected on what 2.5% across the NATO alliance would mean. Where Britain leads, our European allies must follow: we are not in this on our own. He gave a magisterial romp around the geopolitical, societal and economic contribution of the whole defence enterprise.
The hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) got tied up with nomenclature. There are other ranks in the Army and the RAF and ordinary seamen in the Navy, and I think that was the essence of his confusion. Either way there is nothing ordinary about the men and women of our armed forces, and either way he was rightly concerned about the junior ranks. I recall a previous conversation we had in this place during which he confused a pay award this year for them, which is 9.7%, with the 5.5% for senior officers; I assume he is happy with that. He wanted more Europe in defence, which I think means more European Union. He may have missed, for example, the Lancaster House treaties, the attendant A400M programme and unmanned aerial vehicles, and he may also have missed the joint expeditionary force. We are indeed co-operating wherever we can with our European friends and neighbours.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) gave a very detailed and authoritative account of kit, majoring on air defence. He catalogued some of the procurement issues that have historically bedevilled the defence enterprise, but he resisted reference to his favourite defence contractor, for which we are very grateful. I know that he supports the integrated procurement model announced in February.
The right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar), to whom I always listen with a great deal of interest, rightly highlighted industrial skills. I have said it before but I will say it again: the Ministry of Defence is this country’s No. 1 employer of apprentices, and we are exceptionally proud of that. He rightly implied that the men and women of our armed forces—both civilians and people in uniform—have a choice. Of course they do, and they very often exercise it; our economy is the better for it. I make no apology for injecting trades and skills into our armed forces and our defence enterprise; it benefits us all. The trick is retaining those people and then perhaps pulling them back in at some future date. He will be familiar with that, because he has read the Haythornthwaite report.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) rightly highlighted the perils of coalition, but to be fair we have got the Liberal Democrats to commit to CASD, and maybe even CASD with missiles—for that, the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord) has done us a great service today. The points that my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex made about leadership were extremely well made.
The hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) spoke about the recruitment and retention issues that the armed forces certainly have, in common with just about all our allies. Meanwhile, we deal with all our defence commitments. We are rightly proud of the men and women who serve.
The right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) was fighting a bit of a rearguard action on defence spending, which the Opposition Front Benchers now say they support. If he wants to disregard the costs for Ukraine, he needs to have a word with his colleagues. Given that I need to face down Putin’s naked aggression, he might as well carve out other parts of the defence budget and say that they do not count either. I am sure he would not want to do that.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire spoke about votes in Parliament and about warfighting, and I agree with his analysis. We forget—do we not?—what a grave mistake the Iraq war was. Having been heavily involved with the effort and the process, I entirely agree with his remarks about LGBT people and I salute the role that the all-party parliamentary group for the armed forces played early on in that process.
The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton spoke about a variety of subjects. Interestingly, at the end of his remarks he committed his party to, I think, a regular Army of 82,000. I am not quite sure where that figure came from, but I assume we will hear about the attendant spending pledge in due course—or maybe not.
My hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) talked about apprentices, defence-related jobs and R&D. That is not surprising given that Abbey Wood in Filton puts his constituency at the beating heart of the defence enterprise; he is a constant advocate for both.
The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is a strong advocate for the defence enterprise in Northern Ireland, and his part in particular. He rightly highlighted the further opportunities in Northern Ireland, which I know about full well as a former Northern Ireland Office Minister and Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland) spoke of enablement and logistics—of interoperability, modularity and plug and play—from a position of real expertise as a former senior logistics officer. My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) rightly highlighted the changing nature of warfare. Mass matters, but so does tech, as we can see with potential game changers such as DragonFire. I am not sure I agree with him about A400M, but we can perhaps have a debate later over a cuppa or some such.
In our more dangerous world, the Government believe that spending 2.5% of GDP on defence must become the minimum NATO benchmark as Putin ramps up his wartime economy as part of a network of authoritarian states that are attacking our allies and interests. NATO must respond, and I am proud that the UK is leading among European allies through our defence reforms and our 2.5% commitment, verifiable against NATO rules, our £75 billion cash boost for defence from a flat cash baseline, and our additional package of support for Ukraine.
As Putin lays waste to his military and recklessly exposes his strengths and weaknesses to general view, we watch, we learn and we act. Our defence reforms are making our industrial base stronger. Our investment in our conventional forces, stockpiles and innovation makes us more capable and more lethal. Our investment in our alliances is making us and our friends more secure. Our investment in our independent nuclear capability will always make adversaries back off.
I finish by paying tribute to the men and women of our armed forces. They are the best of us, and as we enter a new age of high-tech warfare we need to remember that, day in, day out. It is our people and those who support them who put the great in Great Britain. On that at least I hope we can all agree.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered defence.