(1 day, 8 hours ago)
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Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
It is an honour and a privilege to open this debate as Chair of the Defence Committee, and as a Member of this House who believes profoundly that the first duty of any Government, and indeed of any Parliament, is the safety and security of our nation and our people. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for agreeing to allocate time for this important debate.
I will begin with a simple but unavoidable truth: the world is rearming at pace, and the United Kingdom is not keeping up. We must confront the reality together that national defence requires long-term thinking, stable investment and, as far as possible, cross-party working. Our adversaries do not operate on the basis of electoral cycles, and neither can we. While unity on principles is important, it must never prevent this House from holding any Government to account where delivery falls short.
First, let me turn to the threat picture. Russia is operating a war economy, supported by China. The Defence Committee has heard that 60% of the Russian war effort in Ukraine is being bankrolled by China. Russia may not be winning the war, but it is also not losing—it is slowly gaining territory, and there is no sign that it is genuinely interested in peace. Russia now has experience of attritional combat; it is delivering new technology to the battlefield in weeks, not years; its economy is geared to warfighting; and many think that its next step will be to extend operations, not halt them.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for the work he has been doing on Ukraine. A number of us were in Ukraine last week as part of a cross-party delegation, and the thing that really stood out for me—aside from the horrendous circumstances that people there face on a daily basis, and the injuries and death toll on the frontline—was that the UK and our allies are doing enough to hold off Russian aggression, but nowhere near enough to support Ukraine to win the peace. I would welcome my hon. Friend’s reflections on what the UK needs to do more of to ensure that Ukraine can win.
Mr Dhesi
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. It is very important that we stand in steadfast support of our Ukrainian friends, and his point is similar to the conclusions that our Defence Committee drew after our recent visit to Ukraine. It is important that the Government continue with their support for Ukraine, and we must do so in collaboration with our European allies to ensure that the Ukrainians win that fight. I am sure that the Government have heard that message loud and clear from across the Chamber.
As my hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces has said, we may have as little as three years before we will have no option but to fight a significant confrontation with a major state. Russia is already operating in the grey zone against the UK and our allies, notably in sabotage and cyber-operations against the infrastructure that supports our prosperity. That summarises the threat, both to the east and to the north, because the High North is the focus of the Defence Committee’s latest inquiry. That is another front for both Russia and China, as melting polar ice caps open up new strategic frontiers.
Meanwhile, the middle east is in turmoil, and to the west our once dependable ally, the United States, is withdrawing from its historic role as the protector of democracy in Europe. We have grown to rely—in fact, over-rely—on the US militarily, and the dependencies are many and deep. But it is increasingly unclear how far that is sustainable or how much our interests align. We need to make sure that while we solidify our relationship with the US, we are not in a state of over-reliance.
Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
Does the Chair of the Defence Committee share my concern that our continued reduction in numbers in the armed forces potentially undermines our ability to maintain our NATO commitments? Does he also share my concern about the huge numbers of people interested in joining the armed forces and the significant time lag in their ability to join, which is leading to many of them pulling out?
Mr Dhesi
I thank the hon. Lady for that excellent point. The Defence Committee has raised those concerns—the relationship between force size and expanding commitments—and we are pressing the Government to explain clearly how personnel levels align with strategic ambitions.
I want to move on from the context in which we must judge our defence posture and spending. The United Kingdom remains, by any measure, one of the largest contributors in NATO. We should rightly be proud of that. Historically, we have always achieved the alliance’s core benchmark of spending at least 2% of GDP on defence, but that benchmark no longer meets the threat. Pride must not blind us to reality: 2%, or even 2.5%, is no longer enough. The Prime Minister said last month, and has reiterated, that Britain needs to go faster on defence spending. I agree, and cold, hard reality dictates that we must. Going faster means just that—we do not have the luxury of time. If we need to be ready for a significant confrontation with a peer adversary in as little as three years, we cannot wait until the end of this Parliament to begin moving towards just 3% of GDP. We need a profiled increase.
Lauren Edwards (Rochester and Strood) (Lab)
I thank the Chair of the Defence Committee for securing this debate. There was a lot of focus in the House on the percentage of GDP that we spend on defence, and it is important to meet our NATO obligations. I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement that the Government will reach at least 4.1% of GDP being spent on defence in 2027, on the way to 5% by 2035. That is an indicator of our commitment to defence, but it is not the whole story. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need a more nuanced debate that considers whether we are spending the defence budget on the right things, with the appropriate lead times, for those short, medium and long-term strategic defence challenges that we face? The events of the last week make it even more important that we see the defence investment plan that the Government have promised as soon as possible.
Mr Dhesi
My hon. Friend is right that we need to increase defence spending to the agreed NATO target of 5% in total—3.5% on conventional military spend and 1.5% extra on defence and security-related matters. However, as she rightly points out—and she has made similar points in discussions before—we must ensure that we get full bang for our buck, and we must also ensure that we have sovereign capability, and not just in the medium term, but in the long term.
Everything in deterrence theory tells us that waiting makes conflict more likely, not less. Russia is running a war economy now, and China has indicated that it wants to be ready to seize Taiwan by next year. As the Defence Committee heard last month, it does not make sense to say that we think we will be ready by about 2030. We also need to be honest about how much we should abuse the debt of peacetime to allow our armed forces to become hollowed out. We need to stop pretending that we can still operate as if we were a global power with historic reach. Our Committee has heard repeatedly that the gap between political ambition and real-world capability is widening, and that that gap risks undermining operational readiness, long-term planning and industrial confidence.
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
I hope that the Chairman of the Select Committee, who is making an excellent speech, will forgive me for interrupting him. He has referred to readiness and timings. Is he, like me, concerned about the comment on—from memory—page 43 of the strategic defence review that we must be prepared to fight a peer enemy by 2035, which is nine years from now? We may not have that much time.
Mr Dhesi
I thank the shadow Minister for making that excellent point. In fact, as I said earlier, the Minister for the Armed Forces has said that we need to be ready within three years. Either way, we need to wake up and smell the coffee, and actually start taking defence investment seriously. The issue is not just the need to spend more on defence, but the need to provide confidence and predictability and show that we do what we say we are doing, so that we can achieve the outcomes that we are seeking. However, one of the most pressing issues for defence at present is the continuing uncertainty surrounding future commitments.
Michelle Welsh (Sherwood Forest) (Lab)
In my constituency, defence investment has supported high-skilled jobs since before the first ever vertical flight took off there, and today firms such as ITP Aero in Hucknall continue that proud tradition. Does my hon. Friend agree that increasing defence spending is not only vital for our security but an investment in our economy, and that when contracts are awarded UK defence contracts should support UK jobs, strengthening British industries and communities such as mine?
Mr Dhesi
My hon. Friend, who is a strong champion for her community, has made an excellent point. Defence is about not just security but skilled employment and regional growth. That is precisely why industry needs long-term certainty, so that those jobs can expand and endure.
Let me move on to the defence investment plan, which was promised last autumn. We are still waiting. Industry and trade union leaders say that the delay has created a planning “vacuum”. Companies cannot invest in new facilities, expand supply chains, or recruit or even retain skilled workers when they lack clarity on future procurement pipelines. This uncertainty is not merely an accounting inconvenience; it has real-world consequences. It affects jobs in communities across our country, the resilience of our industrial base and the armed forces themselves, who depend on predictable equipment delivery and long-term sustainability arrangements.
To put it simply, uncertainty costs money and capability. If we are serious about strengthening defence, we must be equally serious about strengthening defence industrial capacity, and that means four things. First, it means long-term certainty in procurement pipelines so that firms can invest confidently. Secondly, it means streamlined acquisition processes to reduce delays, bureaucracy and duplication. Thirdly, it means a sustained focus on skills, workforce development and supply chain resilience, ensuring that we can retain critical sovereign capabilities in areas such as ship and aircraft building, advanced manufacturing, cyber and emerging technologies, and can build additional production capacity so that we are not just competing with our allies to spend more money to achieve the same outputs, and so that we can export at scale and contribute to UK growth. Fourthly, we need improved access to credit so that industry can invest over the required timescales. I hope that my fellow Defence Committee members will elaborate further on that element; I am sure that, in particular, my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Alex Baker) will focus on it. Industrial capacity is not just a secondary concern; it is a strategic asset, and a decisive factor in deterrence and conflict.
On the UK’s position within NATO, we have long prided ourselves on being a leading European contributor, but the international landscape is shifting rapidly. Several allies, particularly in northern and eastern Europe, are now increasing defence spending at a pace that outstrips our own. Some are moving well beyond the 2% of GDP threshold and towards 3% or more. Whereas the UK was, relative to our GDP, the third-highest spender within NATO in 2012, 11 NATO members spent proportionately more than we did in 2025. That matters for two reasons: first, it affects our credibility and leadership within the alliance; and secondly, it shapes perceptions of burden sharing at a time when transatlantic solidarity is under strain.
Peter Lamb (Crawley) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend accept that part of the reason for the difference in defence spending is that those nations’ security is at much more immediate risk than that of the UK? If we are going to maintain a leading role and ensure the security of our people moving forward, we must be honest with our constituents. The reality is that, in order for our current way of life to be maintained, sacrifices will now be needed to secure the funding necessary to guarantee our defence.
Mr Dhesi
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. As I have shown, the uncomfortable truth is that our adversaries are moving faster than our acquisition cycles. We need to bring the public on board, because that reality must serve as a burning platform for reform. Incremental change will not be enough.
It would be remiss of me to discuss defence spending without addressing the issue that often fuels Treasury scepticism: the perception that Defence wastes the money that it spends. There have been too many examples of programmes exceeding budgets, missing timelines and delivering reduced capability. The Army’s Ajax vehicle programme is perhaps the most prominent recent case. Years of delay, spiralling costs and repeated safety concerns have eroded confidence. The repeated failures undermine trust, waste taxpayer resources and, ultimately, weaken our armed forces. It is easy to say that we must never repeat that, but our ability to spend effectively has now become an urgent question of national security.
Jim McMahon
Overall, the Government have a pretty poor reputation for spending public money wisely. My hon. Friend mentions Ajax, but I raise him: High Speed 2. Governments of all stripes need to do better. Given that our mayors and local authorities are developing the skill base at a local level, does he agree that it is best to link defence spending to our regional growth strategy, so that we do not have the constant stop-start that we see from central Government?
Mr Dhesi
My hon. Friend speaks with considerable experience, having previously served as the shadow Transport Secretary and in various roles. He is right to say that part of the solution is devolution. We must ensure that we empower local people to make decisions for the benefit of their communities.
We must also recognise a broader truth: although robust scrutiny is essential, persistent institutional scepticism towards defence investment risks becoming self-defeating. If the Treasury’s default position is one of mistrust and funding is withheld due to past failures, the armed forces will be trapped in a cycle in which they cannot modernise effectively. What we need is not permanent suspicion, but a new compact, stronger accountability within defence procurement, greater transparency in programme delivery and, in return, a willingness from the centre of Government to invest at the scale required in today’s strategic environment. Trust must be rebuilt on both sides, and we on the Defence Committee want to give the Treasury the opportunity to show that it is acting as a team with Defence, with the same goals and national interests at heart. Indeed, we have invited a Treasury Minister to appear before us and are waiting eagerly for a positive response to this invitation. I hope the Minister agrees that this is a constructive request to which the only reasonable answer is yes.
I want briefly to address the proposed defence readiness Bill. I hope Ministers will bring that forward from the intended date of 2027, because that delay matters and drift carries very real consequences. Public understanding is another vital component to success, and we must ensure that such a national conversation happens at pace, because at the present point in time we are not taking the public along with us.
I also want to address the issue of personnel reductions—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. The hon. Gentleman will have seen that many Members want to speak in this very important debate, and I am sure he will be bringing his remarks to a close shortly.
Mr Dhesi
I shall, Madam Deputy Speaker. Thank you for your kind reminder.
I would like to get a response from the Minister about the supplementary estimate that includes a request for an additional £9 billion to cover:
“Depreciation and impairment arising from non-routine accounting adjustments”.
The Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, the hon. Member for North Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), and I have been at pains to convey that to the Ministry of Defence, and I hope we can get a response about it.
The world is becoming more dangerous, more contested and more uncertain, and at this point we cannot let complacency and inaction be the driving force. We must match national unity with national urgency. I look forward to hearing hon. Members’ contributions to this urgently needed debate.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (North Cotswolds) (Con)
Madam Deputy Speaker, I am grateful to catch your eye to speak in this very important debate. I congratulate the Chair of the Defence Committee, the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), not only on securing this important estimates day debate, but on his excellent speech. We face a common problem, so I am afraid that some of my speech will repeat what he said, but I can assure the House that we did not collaborate on our speeches.
The job of the PAC, as the House knows, is to look at expenditure right across Government. However, Ministry of Defence procurements and finances have too often been dysfunctional in the past. Indeed, the Comptroller and Auditor General qualified his opinion on this year’s MOD accounts because it could not provide adequate accounting records to support the value of assets under construction of £6.13 billion. It also incurred non-budget expenditure of £2.56 billion, which will result in an excess vote.
This debate could not have come at a more significant time, with the events in Ukraine and the middle east. When the PAC last examined the defence procurement budget, over two years ago, the 10-year programme was £16.9 billion in deficit, which the National Audit Office described at that time as “unaffordable”. In June last year, the Government announced a highly ambitious strategic defence review.
The defence investment plan—and I absolutely echo the remarks of the Chairman of the Defence Committee—has been continuously promised at the Dispatch Box, but we are still without the detail. We know that nuclear is consuming over 25% of the entire budget and growing, which is bound to have a knock-on effect on how much we can afford to spend on the rest of the procurement programme, so it is vital that we have the defence investment plan. I say to the Minister in the most gentle but persuasive way I possibly can that, if we achieve nothing else from this debate, will he confirm in clear terms when the defence investment plan will be published so that the PAC, the Defence Committee and the House can scrutinise it properly?
I note that, during today’s Prime Minister’s questions, the Prime Minister did not answer the question from the Leader of the Opposition about the date of publication.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
It is shocking, as my hon. Friend says from the Front Bench. As the Chair of the Defence Committee said, not only is it terrible for defence companies wanting to be able to plan their manufacturing programmes, but it is not good for MOD personnel, because they do not know how to plan either.
Current events in the middle east have given a serious warning that we need to increase defence expenditure. It is therefore really important that we see the defence investment plan so that Parliament can scrutinise the latest plans. Without this information, the Office for Budget Responsibility has questioned whether the Government will be able to reach their target of 3% in five years’ time. That will also be too late, because we need to get the investment soon. As everybody knows—and the Minister certainly knows—it takes a long time to procure and manufacture some of these important bits of kit, so we need to get on with that now.
Fred Thomas (Plymouth Moor View) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman mentions that, given what has happened in the past few days in the middle east, the country needs to spend more on defence, but does he agree with me that the country needs to spend differently on defence? When drones cost barely tens of thousands of pounds, we need to start buying or making capabilities to take down drones that do not cost the British taxpayer millions and millions of pounds.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
The hon. and gallant Member has great experience in these matters. I think he must have been reading my speech. If he is patient, I think he will get exactly what he wants.
The PAC recommended more than two years ago that the Government should set up a sensitive scrutiny committee to examine confidential military expenditure. I am grateful to the Secretary of State for Defence and the Minister on the Front Bench today, the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, for their careful consideration of that matter. I hope it will now be possible to make real progress, but as the Minister will remember, I raised this matter in the estimates debate in June last year. I hope it will not be necessary to raise it again in another year’s time.
There is a commitment to increase defence expenditure from 2.2% of GDP to 2.5% by 2027, followed by an increase to 3.5% of GDP by 2035. In the Government spending review, the current budget is expected to increase by 18.2%, or £11.3 billion by 2028-29. Minister, we really do need to see those numbers incorporated into the Government’s expenditure plan in the autumn Budget so that we can be absolutely certain about them.
Many Members will know—certainly the Chair of the Defence Committee knows, because I have been a guest on his Committee—that the MOD has been reorganised into the Quad: the permanent secretary Jeremy Pocklington; the Chief of the Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Richard Knighton; the National Armaments Director, Rupert Pearce; and the Chief Of Defence Nuclear, Madeleine McTernan. I sincerely hope, given their new powers, they will radically reform how the MOD functions. We need to take a more strategic view of systems that we procure—going to the point made by the hon. Member for Plymouth Moor View (Fred Thomas)—and consider above all the capability and speed we are able to acquire them.
Why is it, I say to the Minister, that the Japanese can procure their version of the highly sophisticated Type 26 frigate, a Mogami class, in a third of the time that we do? The consequence of that is that the Australians have just struck a deal for £10 billion to purchase those ships from the Japanese. Why is it that the Israelis can procure their military equipment with just 1,000 people, yet our procurement body, Defence Equipment and Support, employs 12,500 people? Our procurement system is far too slow, subject to mission creep, usually late and usually over-budget. As the Chair of the Defence Committee said, Ajax is a classic example of all those problems. We need to learn those lessons, move on and make sure they do not happen in future.
Last week, as the hon. Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton (Jim McMahon) mentioned—he is no longer in his place—I joined a group of 20 MPs who visited Ukraine. We were in air raid shelters several times during our visits to Odessa and Kyiv. On one night the Russians fired 290 drones: 220 were destroyed but 70 got through, causing a significant amount of damage, and a few injuries and fatalities as well. Ukraine’s technology and digital capability in tracking and destroying those drones is some of the most sophisticated in the world. The drone operators’ experiences are directly and rapidly informing their procurement decisions. The Ukrainians are able to change the specification of their drones within a week. I suggest that it would probably take us some months to do the same thing.
One of the top Ukrainian military experts told us that the future of warfare was following three domains: drones, cyber/electronic and space. I think, hearing those words, that some of our capabilities in those areas need bolstering pretty rapidly. We and NATO need to learn the lessons of the war in Ukraine. Without being too specific, there are severe gaps in NATO’s anti-drone technology.
The experts also made the telling point that modern main battle tanks can cost between $4 million to $9 million per unit, but they can be destroyed by a swarm of drones costing less than $20,000 each. They say that tanks are effectively redundant. The Ukrainians inform us that 80% of their kills are as a result of drone strikes. Modern warfare is changing rapidly, and the MOD needs to be sufficiently agile to adapt.
From the recent activity in Cyprus, and other lessons learned from the conflict in Ukraine and ongoing war in the middle east, we need to invest in comprehensive counter-drone systems and training across our armed forces. As an example, we use the Sky Sabre air defence system, which can shoot down drones, but can cost up to £250,000 a shot. We need to invest further in anti-drone technology to ensure we can do this far more rapidly and cheaply.
As I am sure the Minister is aware, last Thursday the PAC visited RAF Marham, which houses two F-35 squadrons. I have four main takeaways from that visit, all of which stem from the lack of urgency to be ready for war according to General Walker’s three-year timescale. First, the accommodation for our servicemen needs urgent upgrading. It is a disgrace that servicemen can be sent on long tours while their families do not have proper accommodation.
My second takeaway was the effect that has on retention. We were told that pilots and training instructors for the F-35 programme are 50% below optimum levels, which is highly unsatisfactory for a project of this importance.
Thirdly, it is difficult to plan the whole operation when the timing and procurement of the additional 27 F-35s are unclear. Hopefully, that will be revealed in the defence investment plan when it is published.
Fourthly, one of the squadrons had recently returned from the highly successful Operation Highmast to deploy around the world, ending up in Japan. Now, in a matter of a week or two, they have had to redeploy to the middle east. This is a good illustration of how some of our servicemen face considerable stretch. This is to be expected in wartime, but more resources must be deployed to support them and their families. Another example of that is that our submarine crew on HMS Vanguard recently served a 204-day deployment.
The MOD budget is going to grow considerably, but the money is not going to purchase military hardware in the most strategic or cost-effective way. That will happen only if the Quad radically reforms the way the MOD has been run, especially with smarter recruitment of personnel and procurement of equipment.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
It is really interesting to hear the hon. Gentleman speak about personnel. We have spoken a lot about spending in the MOD, in particular on the need for improved technology; I wonder whether he could touch on spending on personnel and the support we give them. What more does he think we could do to support our service personnel, who obviously do a brave job every day?
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. In the reorganisation of the MOD into the Quad that I have talked about, the critical person is the Chief of the Defence Staff, because he has now assumed responsibility for all personnel matters. I am sure that he will be looking at this very carefully.
We need to look at recruiting people with different skills from those we have recruited for in the past. To operate drones, for instance, as the hon. Gentleman knows, we need people with good computer and dexterity skills. That may mean recruiting youngsters, who have the brains to be able to do this work, but who are not necessarily the people we would traditionally have recruited to be running around the battlefield 100% of the time. It might mean different things; it might mean retraining some of our existing personnel to operate these new weapons.
Above all, our armed forces are at the lowest they have been for decades—the Army in particular. We will need to bolster the numbers somewhat because of the reason I have just given: the overstretch of our personnel. We cannot go on doing that to them. We need to have enough people available on rotation so that next time a long deployment comes around, different people—different regiments and different squadrons—are deployed.
There are a lot of things we need to think about when it comes to personnel. One is that we must have a pipeline in the future. The PAC did an inquiry into reserves and cadets, and it seems to me that we need to do a little better in both categories. [Interruption.] I can see that you are urging me to finish, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have overrun, but I did not wish to try your patience. Simply put, we cannot go on doing what we did in the past. We need to do things differently and better in the future.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. After the next speaker, I will be introducing a time limit, starting with four minutes.
Derek Twigg (Widnes and Halewood) (Lab)
I congratulate the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee on his well-thought-out speech. I know the good work that his Committee is doing on defence expenditure. It is a real privilege and pleasure to see so many of my colleagues from the Defence Committee in the Chamber. They all do an excellent job—particularly the new members—in holding the Ministry of Defence to account.
The most important factor in this debate is our people. The defence and security of our country is paramount for any Government and Parliament, but to deliver that, we need to have the people, and our armed forces have some of the finest people in the world. The professionalism, courage and commitment that they show on a daily basis is absolutely unparalleled. I put on the record my appreciation for their work, not least as we enter yet another dangerous period in this world with what is happening in Iran, when, again, they are being asked to do things on behalf of our country.
Given the time available, I do not want to repeat the things said by my hon. Friend the Chair of the Defence Committee, but I will focus on a couple of things before I come to the matter of overall defence expenditure. The defence investment plan has been mentioned, which is important because, apart from it telling us what we are spending money on, the previous Government did not produce an equipment plan after about 2023, so we could not scrutinise the Ministry of Defence or hold it to account. We are in the same position now because of the continued delay in the defence investment plan. I urge the Minister to do whatever he can to bring that plan to fruition very quickly, because the Defence Committee has been denied the ability to scrutinise MOD expenditure for several years now.
We have heard a lot today about capabilities, the changing world, how war is fought, technology, the defence industrial base and how we have to change the way the MOD works and its culture. Clearly, the new ministerial team appointed after the election has made great strides in reforming the Ministry of Defence and has made a number of significant changes. I am sure that that is starting to bear fruit, but there is still a long way to go. I know, too, that other things will need to get done. If we are to spend our money better—that is what we are talking about today—we need to make sure that the system in the MOD addresses the needs of civilians and the military, has the ability to spend money wisely and achieves the greatest efficiency. As my hon. Friend the Chair of the Defence Committee said, Treasury sources often cite those things as reasons not to give more money to the Ministry of Defence. The current ministerial team clearly has that in mind and its work will change that. I shall come back to the actual amount of money that we should be spending.
To put it bluntly, we are in a perilous situation. This country would have difficulty defending itself for any period of time, or sending out and sustaining any sort of sizeable armed force on the European continent given the Department’s current supply of resource. That is what we need to address. We need the ability to produce mass both in terms of service personnel and of equipment. We need to be able to generate drones, armoured vehicles, ships, aircraft and so on. We have lacked that ability to generate mass for some time. We are now in a situation where we may well have to do that, but we do not have the systems in place to be able to deliver it. That is something that I am particularly concerned about.
We live in a perilous and fragile world, and it has just been made even more fragile by the events of the last few days in Iran. When it comes to Britain, we already have great commitments. We are committed to helping Ukraine, and we have our NATO commitments, which we are already failing on. We have been failing for many years when it comes to our ability to deliver the capabilities that we should be providing to NATO, and that is a real worry given that we are putting our NATO policy first. We have just seen the resources that we needed to be able to send naval ships to Cyprus. It is a real worry that we struggle to do that.
Technology is advancing rapidly. That applies not just to drones but to cyber and the grey zone. Again, we need to move forward more quickly, more intelligently and in a more agile way. I believe we are still struggling in that area. A week or so ago I met two Ukrainian officers who told me that they were concerned about the ability of the British armed forces when it comes to how we use and produce drones and how they are managed on the battlefield. That is really important to understand, because we have trained Ukrainian service personnel and we need to utilise their knowledge and depth to ensure that our personnel are also trained to that level. They must have the ability to use and manage drones in the battlefield. We need those skills as widely as possible within the armed forces. I am concerned about that as well.
There are some key messages that we need to give our armed forces. The first is that if we are going to send them in harm’s way, we will make sure that they are fully resourced and have the capabilities, protection and support that they need—not just from the Government and Parliament, but from the country as a whole. That leads me to another point that I would stress: we need a whole-of-society approach to the dangerous situation that we now face in this world, and we need to work out how we can get that message across to society. This is about not just the individual on the street, and the households in this country, but how our financial sector, Government Departments and education system are set up, and how quickly our industry—not just the defence industrial base but our wider industrial base—can be turned to producing the defensive equipment and assets that we need. I have concerns about all those things, and they need to be addressed.
Let me turn to defence spending. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Alex Baker), a fellow member of the Defence Committee, will go into more detail about private finance and defence, as it is not just about the Government putting in public money. The Chair of the Defence Committee mentioned 3% defence spending. I have been saying for some time that we need to start spending 3% now, but that does not mean just saying, “Let’s spend 3%”, as has been outlined by others; it is about spending the money well and intelligently, and doing so in a different way than we have previously.
The right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) knows the Defence Committee’s report on procurement. I think that report was welcomed, and it was on the ball in raising the issues that need to be addressed and the ways in which we can move forward. As to whether lessons have yet been learned, we shall see, but we clearly have to get procurement right and move it forward, and the report sets out a template for us to start doing that; it is another big area that we have got to sort out. When it comes to spending the extra money, we have to get our procurement system right. We have to make sure that we produce the right assets—the ones that will give the most capability to our armed forces—and really take account of the modern battlefield today, as well as the pressures and threats we will face without those assets.
We cannot wait. We face a serious threat to our national security. We see it all the time across Europe in cyber and the grey zone, whether it is Russian drones in Polish airspace, Russian jets flying into Estonian airspace, attacks and sabotage on factories and railway lines, the use of criminal gangs by states to destabilise other countries, or disinformation and so forth. We really have to wake up to the fact that these threats are real, and that Russia considers itself—certainly, Putin considers himself—already at war with the west. I urge that we get a move on. We cannot waste any more time if we are to secure the protection and security of this country.
Whether in industry or finance, and obviously in the military, we have amazing people, who, working together, can take this country forward and deliver the defence needed for its protection. We need to utilise that ability, but time is running out. I recently co-authored a paper produced by Civitas called “Understanding the UK’s Transition to Warfighting Readiness” with the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) and the renowned defence expert Chris Donnelly. I hope that hon. Members get a chance to read it. It is not perfect or an absolute blueprint for moving to war-readiness, but it is a start. That is the debate that we have got to have today; and we have to move on today.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. There will be a four-minute time limit.
Ian Roome (North Devon) (LD)
I thank the Chair of the Defence Committee for securing this estimates debate on defence. Of all the demands on public finances, none are more serious than paying for this country’s defence. Recent years—even the last few days—have brought that into sharp relief. This time last year, at the spring statement, the Government said they would go further and faster on defence, announcing a £2.2 billion uplift to the Ministry of Defence budget, helping the UK to reach a defence spending target of 2.5% of GDP under the NATO definition.
It remains the Government’s stated ambition for the UK to reach 3% during the next Parliament. The Liberal Democrats want to see that delivered this side of 2030, but the sooner it can be achieved, the better. The numbers must be weighed against what we expect from our armed forces, but we must guard against Russian aggression despite the cost.
We can still do more. The Prime Minister’s assertion that the Government would spend an additional £13.4 billion on defence every year from 2027 is an increase in cash terms, but not in real terms. As a percentage of GDP, we are simply returning to the early 1990s levels of defence spending, not the far higher levels we saw during the cold war. However, we must not be too hard on ourselves: in real terms, defence spending will soon approach the heights of the 1980s—but protecting a much bigger economy.
The UK provides an immensely powerful nuclear deterrent to the NATO nuclear mission—a highly specialised capability, even among our allies—and many of Europe’s leading defence companies are based here in the UK. The great south-west has a particularly strong defence sector, and the Government are recognising the massive economic value of investing in a world-leading defence industry.
Defence spending supports over 430,000 jobs across the UK, with a giant supply chain that stretches across every region. We are one of only four European allies with aircraft carrier capability. The radar array at RAF Fylingdales and signals intelligence at GCHQ provide indispensable data gathering to our Five Eyes partners.
There is also firm political agreement about national defence across the House. Our freedom, democratic values and an open society must be defended—by force of arms if necessary. Our allies also face similar budget choices, so we should co-ordinate getting more bang for our buck. We must maximise our resources and defence capabilities by working as a team.
Even as eastern European nations plan against a scenario of a land war, we should lean into Britain’s position in the Atlantic and our historic strength in naval operations, in shipbuilding and in aviation. We must be honest with the public: the peace dividend that we have all enjoyed since the end of the cold war must now be retained and reinvested in these more difficult times in order to keep us all safe.
Last year, the Defence Committee and I visited Estonia, where defence spending is already over 5% of GDP. It is projected to rise to an astonishing 5.4% by the end of the decade. The Estonians recognise the threat to their way of life and consider this their duty. Our defence spending might be the price we pay to avoid something far worse. A pound invested today could be more important than 10 times that sum spent too late.
Michelle Scrogham (Barrow and Furness) (Lab)
Thank you for the opportunity to speak in this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. In Barrow, defence spending means everything to apprentices starting out at the shipyard, to engineers perfecting their craft and to families who have worked for generations in support of our national security. It means pride in building and sustaining the submarines that underpin our continuous at-sea deterrent and keep this country safe. When I talk about the Ministry of Defence budget today, I speak not only as a member of the Defence Committee but as a representative of a town that quite literally builds Britain’s security.
I want to begin by acknowledging the Government’s commitment to increasing defence spending in response to a more dangerous world. This reflects the reality we face, from the war in Ukraine to escalating tensions in the middle east. In Barrow, we understand that investment in defence is essential, and I urge the Government to move quickly to ensure that we can reverse the damage caused by the under-investment of previous years before it is too late.
The Government’s continued support for the nuclear enterprise, and the long-term programmes that sustain it, provide crucial stability for my constituency. The Team Barrow project recognises something important: if a town carries the responsibility for building the nation’s most sensitive capabilities, it must also share the benefits of the responsibility between the peaks and troughs of contracts. As a member of the Defence Committee, I know that we have a duty to ensure that increased spending delivers what it promises on time, on budget and with a clear strategic purpose. Over a number of years, concerns have been raised about the affordability of equipment plans and the clarity of long-term investment assumptions. Large, complex programmes, particularly in submarine enterprises, require stability and transparency. Industry needs certainty, the workforce needs certainty and Parliament needs a clear understanding of how today’s commitments are funded over the decade ahead.
That is why the forthcoming defence investment plan is so important. For constituencies like mine, it is not an abstract document. It will shape the pipeline of work at the yard, the confidence of local suppliers and the decisions of young people when they make their decision to pursue careers in advanced manufacturing and nuclear engineering. I look forward to its publication and hope to see a level of detail that allows this House, and particularly the Defence Committee, to scrutinise it properly. We need clarity about cost assumptions and risk management, and about how capability decisions align with the resources allocated. Transparency builds confidence. It strengthens public trust and ultimately strengthens our armed forces.
Barrow and Furness stands firmly with the men and women of our armed forces, and we are ready to deliver the industrial capability that this nation requires. We know from experience that long-term projects succeed when there is honest accounting and realistic planning. When expectations are clear and when funding profiles are credible, industry can invest with confidence and communities can plan for the future. I support the Government’s commitment to strengthening our defences in a more uncertain world. At the same time, I will continue, as a member of the Defence Committee, to be a critical friend to the Government, pushing to ensure that commitment translates into capability. Barrow and Furness will continue to play its part at the very heart of Britain’s defence. We simply ask that the long-term plan for defence is as strong and resilient as the submarines we build.
Mr Lee Dillon (Newbury) (LD)
I congratulate the Chair of the Defence Committee on securing the debate; I also thank the Backbench Business Committee, of which I am a member. As the Chair of the Select Committee said, the first duty of any Government is to ensure the safety and security of their citizens, but as we speak, smoke continues to rise in the middle east, leaving destruction across at least nine countries in the region. In this volatile era, we must work in lockstep with our European partners, restart talks to join the EU’s Security Action for Europe—SAFE—fund and take greater responsibility for our continent’s security. We require bold action, and I welcome the Government’s decision to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, but we need urgent cross-party talks on how we can get this to 3% as soon as possible and keep pace with NATO spending, on which we are falling behind. At this critical juncture, we must ensure that those figures translate into steely capacity both at home and abroad.
In June last year, the strategic defence review set out a compelling vision: the establishment of a new cyber-command, cutting-edge warships and a landmark shift to warfighting readiness, but the defence investment plan, which should turn that strategy into fully costed delivery, is yet to be seen. We must see the DIP published as soon as possible. Without it, industry lacks certainty, long-term procurement decisions are delayed and jobs remain in jeopardy.
Our small and medium-sized enterprise defence sector is ready and willing to step up to the challenge of supporting the SDR and the 20-40-40 strategy. In my constituency, Airborne UK plays an active role in strengthening the UK’s sovereign capabilities in the unmanned aerial vehicle and defence sector as a trusted composite scaling partner. While based just over the border in Berkshire, it is obviously keen to work with the Swindon cluster. Companies like this will benefit from the additional £1.1 billion investment in R&D, but I have also heard from SME companies that changes made under the previous Government—tax credit uplifts were cut from 130% to 65%—have led to SMEs working with more foreign Governments rather than our own. Of course, we deeply want them to work with us, so I urge the Government to look at these rates to supplement the increases in spending in R&D. To create overmatch, we need to work faster and more flexibly. We need to have better procurement and rebuild trust with the Treasury so that, with accountability, funding is scaled up.
Just two months ago, the head of the armed forces said that the UK was
“not as ready as we need to be for the kind of full-scale conflict we might face”.
That warning should focus minds in this House. If the UK is to lead within Europe, we need pace and clarity, but we also need the personnel to deliver it. The Army’s training strength now stands at around 73,000—its smallest size in generations. Because of the operational demands and lack of resources, we have seen service personnel joining the field Army with formal training deficits recorded against them because they have not been able to fire all types of ammunition in training. I welcome the Government’s £9 billion investment in the defence housing strategy. For our brave men and women who serve the country, decent accommodation is the very least they deserve, and it is a stain on the previous Government’s record that military family homes were left in such a mess.
We are in a fragmented and predatory era. We cannot afford to dither. We must move faster, strengthen our European partnerships, rebuild our armed forces and ensure that every pound approved by this House bolsters our security at home and abroad. We need to do that so that we can create a whole-society approach to defence, one that can become a reality, including improving public engagement on the threats we face, where we have gaps and what trade-offs will be needed to ensure that we are safe at home and strong when we go abroad.
Alex Baker (Aldershot) (Lab)
It is a huge privilege to speak in this debate. I want to use my time to highlight why the UK must join the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank as a critical part of our defence strategy. I have been campaigning for this for over a year, and I feel that this is a moment for us to think about how we support and finance our growing defence capabilities.
This Government are making record investments in defence in the years ahead, responding to increasing global threats, but we must recognise that defence spending and defence financing are two distinct matters. That is where the issue lies: our current financing structures do not support the defence sector adequately. In my constituency, we have a strong defence industrial base, and I have heard directly from businesses about the barriers they face. This is not about the big defence contractors, but rather the tier 2 and tier 3 suppliers and the SMEs. There is a misconception that these businesses are doing well and thriving because of increased defence spending, but in reality they are struggling to get access to the capital they need. British banks are heavily restricted in lending to defence companies due to international regulations, and our businesses often stay silent about these challenges, but they do affect them.
One business leader who has had the courage to speak out is Rob Taylor from 4GD. His company has been able to access the capital it needs to grow despite being based in the UK. The extreme barriers faced include being asked by banks to provide 160% security on loans—an unsustainable expectation for any business. Rob is now considering relocating his business to the United States, where there is a much more supportive environment for defence companies.
Rob is clear that the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank would provide a solution for 4GD and other businesses like it. It would offer sovereign-backed credit guarantees to UK banks, allowing them to lend much more freely to our defence sector. Economists estimate that, with such credit guarantees in place, UK banks could lend £30 for every £1—over 50% more than they can lend today. Furthermore, through its yield curve, the DSRB could enable us to achieve the 3% GDP defence spending target by 2030, which is crucial for our national security. The bank would help us to ensure that every £1 we invest in defence works harder for our country.
If we fail to expand our supply chains and support SMEs, increased spending will lead only to more expensive capabilities and defence inflation. We have already seen the impact of that in the price of 155 mm artillery shells, which has risen over 300% since Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. Without a solid financial mechanism, those costs will continue to rise.
The DSRB may not fix everything, but it is an essential tool for ensuring the growth and of our defence industry. It is about supporting businesses that are essential to our national security, which are located in every community across the UK. Canada is already paving the way. Prime Minister Carney, a former financier, is backing the DSRB and urging our allies to join as charter negotiations begin. The Defence Committee welcomed a delegation from the Parliament of Canada yesterday, through the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, and they urged the UK to join the talks.
If we want the UK to lead, this is our moment. This is as significant as when a Labour Government founded NATO 77 years ago. Joining the DSRB will allow us to shape the future of defence finance. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity; let us act now so that we do not miss it.
Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)
Other Members have articulated the threat we face, so I will not repeat those points. Suffice it to say, we are in jeopardy. Global threats are on the rise, but at the same time, UK capability is decreasing. The only way that we can close that gap is to re-arm. Rearming is the only credible way to deter war—that is the point of it. It is not just strategically sound; it is economically sensible. I would much rather we spend 3.5% of GDP on defence than 35%. That is not a hypothesis: 35% is what Ukraine currently spends on defence.
Our military limitations are laid bare every day. Just last week, senior defence figures told The Times that the UK would be unable to send 5,000 troops to Ukraine without taking forces from Estonia or Cyprus. We currently have 900 troops in Estonia as part of Operation Cabrit, protecting NATO’s eastern front and deterring Russian aggression. Weakening or removing that deterrent would send exactly the wrong message to Putin. Where he sees strength, he retreats; where he sees weakness, he advances.
The UK’s footprint in Estonia has already been stripped back to bare bones. We have fewer than 10 tanks operating there, and troop numbers are down by 650 since 2022. As far as I am concerned, we are breaking a promise to our Estonian allies. In Afghanistan, I fought alongside Estonian soldiers. We ate the same food, we went on the same patrols, and we got in the same firefights. They have been exceptional allies to us, not just in Afghanistan but elsewhere. We are not doing the same for them now.
Our shortcomings go well beyond Estonia. Rob Johnson, who used to run the red teaming think-tank inside the MOD, recently told the Defence Committee that we could deploy just 2,000 troops, five ships and 30 aircraft if a crisis broke out. The Royal United Services Institute estimates that we would run out of ammunition within a week. That is not a credible defence posture for the United Kingdom.
When I joined the Army 19 years ago, I was one of more than 100,000 regular soldiers. We now have just about 70,000 on the establishment, and we can deploy only 50,000 of those at any one time due to medical deployments and all the rest of it. Over the same period, our fleet has halved in size. I will say it again: that is not a credible defence posture for the United Kingdom. Change is desperately needed. We need a military that is able to lead in the defence of the Euro-Atlantic area, and we must be able to do that without the US—that is clear from what is happening at the moment.
Because of our history, the UK also needs to be able to retake the Falkland Islands as a sovereign endeavour, so without allies, but that is a big ask. If we want to do such things, I have a vision for what our military should look like, which is an Army of 100,000 soldiers, a fleet of 50 ships, and 250 combat aircraft.
Mike Martin
If we want to do that now, it would cost 3.5% of GDP—it is basically a 50% increase on our current defence budget. When we talk about £2 billion here or £5 billion there, that is peanuts. If we want to lead in the defence of the Euro-Atlantic area, we need an extra £30 billion for our defence budget now. The Government recognise the scale because they talk about 3.5%, but by 2035. If we are honest with ourselves, we think that is nonsense, because we need to be able to do it right now.
I was in Munich recently and I spoke to a lot of our allies. They all tell us that they want the UK to lead in the defence of the Euro-Atlantic area. Absent the US, we are the only country that can do that. We have the nuclear deterrent, the strategic culture, the willingness to use force, and the willingness to take casualties. The one thing we do not have is enough military capability to take that leadership position, and this estimate falls far short of what we need to spend—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. I call Amanda Martin, with a three-minute time limit.
Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)
It is a privilege to speak in this debate on defence. In Portsmouth North, defence is not abstract; it is jobs, apprenticeships, families and an essential part of my city’s future. My constituency is home to the Royal Navy, and I welcome the Government’s record investment in defence, which is the largest sustained investment since the cold war. That investment is not just in the hard stuff, but in families, personnel, housing, and all the necessary things for our armed services personnel.
We need to see leadership, and we have shown that in our support for Ukraine. This year’s £4.5 billion in military aid, including advanced air defence systems and lightweight multi-role missiles, shows that the UK stands firm against aggression. The war in Ukraine has taught us that warfare is changing fast, with drones, autonomous systems and uncrewed capabilities reshaping the battlefield. Agility and innovation is key, which is why the £4 billion investment in autonomous and high-tech systems matters.
Along with my small and medium-sized enterprises, I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Alex Baker) about the need for us to be involved in the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank, and to bring in long-term support and investment, opportunities and British jobs.
We are also watching escalating tensions in the middle east with concern. Recent developments highlight the importance of maintaining a credible forward presence, and I would be grateful if the Minister could provide further information on the deployment of HMS Dragon in her current role—I would be happy to take an intervention on that point or at the end.
In Portsmouth North this investment is real. The UK defence sector supports thousands of jobs, many connected to the Royal Navy. Defence growth deals and the £250 million fund have given us a chance to enhance local expertise, strengthen supply chains, and attract private investment into maritime technologies. SMEs are key. Many in my constituency struggle to cut through the red tape and infiltrate the MOD. The defence office for small business growth and the SME commercial pathway are vital, but they must take into account the nuances of working with the defence sector.
Skills are also crucial, and the £182 million defence skills package and the defence technical excellence colleges are really important. Today I was proud to launch, at the Space-Comm Expo here in London, a partnership between Airbus and the Solent growth partnership, to create the UK’s first ever space and defence apprenticeship matching programme, and to provide local jobs and opportunities for young people.
However, we must be candid: the previous Government left procurement over-committed and underfunded, but this Government understand that growth must go hand in hand with security. I echo the calls for a national conversation about the ever-changing world in which we live and what extended defence spending might mean for our public services and our priorities, because to be war-ready is not just the task of Government and our armed forces, but a task for the whole country. To conclude, I thank all who work in and with our British armed forces.
Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)
The world has rarely been as delicately balanced as it is now. We have entered the era where hard power is the only currency, and we are well into our overdraft. Moving to defence spending of 3% of GDP still remains only an ambition for the next Parliament, not a guarantee or even a firm commitment, and there was nothing in the spring forecast yesterday about the achievability of that target. This morning, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury was on the media round, and in a bravura performance of sticking to the party line, when Kate McCann asked the Minister on Times Radio whether the Treasury was holding up the defence investment plan, he did not deny it.
In January, it was widely reported that there is a £28 billion funding gap between the scope of the defence investment plan and the available budget over the next four years. That was discussed in a meeting between the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the Defence Secretary and the Chief of the Defence Staff before Christmas. It is now March. The defence investment plan was due in the autumn, but we still have not seen it, despite repeated assurances that the Ministry of Defence is working “at pace” to deliver it. When the delivery window has been missed by over six months, talking of working “at pace” rings somewhat hollow.
Last week, Bloomberg reported that the Treasury is exploring a multinational defence mechanism, allowing it to borrow off-books for both procurement and stockpiling. In his winding up, will the Minister clarify whether that is something that the Government have explored?
Yesterday, the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister said that he hoped that the defence investment plan would be published
“no later than the next couple of months”,
so it may not be published this financial year. There are local elections in May and purdah will start in around a fortnight. The defence investment plan will contain a huge number of geographically sensitive announcements around the awarding of contracts and the construction of factories and new facilities, so it simply cannot be announced after purdah has started. Will the Government confirm whether the DIP will be published before or after the period of purdah?
My contacts in the Ministry of Defence believed that the defence investment plan would be published in March, although it remains unclear whether that will be the DIP in its entirety or just part one of a double DIP that will announce only the headline items, burying the bad news in a later second instalment.
Back in September, the Government’s defence industrial strategy laid out a number of elements, including the pledge to deliver a defence finance and investment strategy by early 2026. How is the Minister doing with that? The defence investors advisory group is supposed to be providing the expertise to formulate the strategy. Will we see it before the defence investment plan or simultaneously? Will it at least be published this financial year?
Recommendation 59 of the strategic defence review states:
“The MOD must deliver an overarching infrastructure Recapitalisation Plan to the Secretary of State by February 2026.”
It is now March, and we would like to see that as well,
Only last week, I spoke in the Chamber to explain that we are potentially facing a crisis of overstretch in our armed forces. I said that
“our armed forces are on the cusp of looking overstretched, and doubly so in the event that anything else comes into scope or goes hot.”—[Official Report, 25 February 2026; Vol. 781, c. 414.]
Now we are committing resources to the middle east that there appears to be no coherent plan for.
If the last few days in Iran have taught us anything, it is that we are barely justifying our seat at the top table when it comes to defence. Overtaken by our European rivals, now less experienced than our Ukrainian allies, and smaller and more reticent than our American allies, there are questions about our place in this new era. The Government run the risk of somehow making us a militarily irrelevant nuclear power.
Dr Allison Gardner (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
Within the allocations of defence spending and investment, and in light of current geopolitical volatility, I am sure that the Government will be looking to secure a strategic, robust and sovereign defence supply chain. In north Staffordshire, our advanced ceramics industry is a key creator of the unique advanced ceramic materials that are required for our fighting capability, including armour materials, ultra-high speed munitions, and protection and security for our defence communications. I have spoken previously to the Minister about the strategic importance of north Staffordshire in creating an advanced manufacturing cluster.
An example of such a business in my Stoke-on-Trent South constituency is Mantec, a technical ceramics company that produces ceramic molten metal filters that remove impurities from molten turbine blades used for civil aviation and defence. Investment in that technology is cost-saving because it is said that using those materials creates a £1 million fuel saving per year, which is £40 million over the lifecycle of a plane, so short-term investment now can lead to long-term savings.
I must emphasise the strategic importance of securing sovereign capability in advanced defence materials, particularly ceramic matrix composites. To quote the National Composites Centre,
“the future of British defence will depend on sovereign access to ceramic matrix composites”.
To bolster national security, strengthen our industrial expertise and position the UK as a leader in advanced defence technologies, we must invest in our sovereign CMC and fibre manufacturing capacity.
When I recently met the UK Atomic Energy Authority, it highlighted—again with great frustration—the importance of having this sovereign capability to manufacture CMCs and fibres. The manufacturing currently happens in a few factories overseas, including in a Rolls-Royce factory in America, which produces the CMCs we need for our defence and civil aviation. Fibre manufacturing also takes place in only a few factories globally, including in Japan and Germany. It is crazy that we actually hold much of the intellectual property, and we have the skilled workers and technology, yet we are dependent on those overseas supply chains. In a volatile world, that is increasingly putting our sovereign capability for defence manufacturing at risk.
As the Minister will know, I have met Lucideon, which is based in the constituency of the right hon. Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson). It is working very hard, in a wide partnership, to create a sovereign CMC manufacturing facility in north Staffordshire, hopefully based near the Applied Materials Research, Innovation and Commercialisation Company at Keele University. I once again ask the Minister whether he will meet me to see how we can move that forward and understand the vital strategic importance of north Staffordshire’s advanced ceramics capability to our country and our defence.
Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)
I note that the House rose three hours early yesterday, yet we each get three minutes to speak about the defence estimate. Radically, I want to talk about the estimate itself; much as I would love to do some soaring Churchillian rhetoric, I will instead limit myself to the MOD’s supplementary estimate memorandum, which was reported to the House on 10 February, and I want to highlight two elements.
Paragraph 1.1 lists the departmental expenditure limits for resource, capital and annually managed expenditure. Despite all the rhetoric about leaving black holes and this, that and the other, resource was actually £39 billion in 2022, £42 billion in the next year, and £45 billion in the year after. We then have the supplementary estimate, where the resource departmental expenditure limit goes up to a whopping £58 billion, and I thought, “Happy days!” This must be the new Labour Government that we have heard about, who have come along and put loads of new money in. This will be the ammunition we have been wanting, or the pay bump for personnel that will increase morale so effectively. However, I then looked at the footnote—forgive me, it is in very small print, for obvious reasons—which states:
“2025-26 one-off increase in Resource is mainly driven by the Ringfenced RDEL increase to cover depreciation and impairments due to non-routine accounting adjustments.”
I am just a simple soldier, but that does not sound a lot like ammunition to me. If the Minister could address that point when he sums up, I would be grateful.
Equally, paragraph 2.1.3 covers annual managed expenditure. In the main estimate, which was published only a few months ago, the figure for this period was £1.7 billion. However, in the supplementary estimate, that figure has gone up to £7 billion—a 309% increase. Again, when I look at the small print, it says that these changes,
“reflect the latest in-year forecast and reflect the application of updated discount rates to provisions”.
When the Minister sums up, would he like to reassure the House that he has not been taken captive by the accountants in the Ministry of Defence, and that he is actually spending some new money on some new capability? From the estimate I have read today, that does not appear to be the case.
Andy MacNae (Rossendale and Darwen) (Lab)
Current events are once again showing the vital importance of an agile and independent fast jet defence capability, and the UK is one of the few countries with a sovereign ability to manufacture these world-leading fast jets. The UK’s Typhoons are made in Lancashire, where over 20,000 jobs are reliant on maintaining that production. However, right now, assembly facilities lie empty. Last year, the Government secured a very important £8 billion deal with Turkey, which gives temporary protection for those jobs and will restart assembly, but the job is absolutely not done.
We now need to look at how we take the next step and secure our production base and competitive position for the next decade and more. This is all about the UK committing to its own order of Typhoon jets, which is what we need to ensure our world-leading position and keep the skills and experience that were so crucial in securing the Turkey deal and will be crucial for other, future deals. A UK order means that the maximum value is retained here, with sections made at Samlesbury and full assembly at Warton. The UK ordering the latest Typhoon also indicates full confidence in the jet and allows us to stockpile, making further sales to other countries more likely.
In any case, we need more fast jets. We had 137 Typhoons, but the 30 original tranche 1s are already being withdrawn from service and will be retired by 2027. This will leave 107 tranche 2 and 3 fighters, which are also ageing and are due for retirement in 2040, and lack the range of capabilities that can be delivered in the latest tranche 5 version. We can all get excited about the long-term potential of the global combat air programme, but it will be the late 2030s before those jets ever enter into service, leaving a capability gap. Part of that gap is being addressed by the purchase of the F-35s. These are exceptional aircraft, but they are a very different beast from the Typhoon. The F-35 is primarily a stealthy, ground-attack, precision-strike aircraft able to penetrate heavily defended airspace; the Typhoon is an air dominance fighter, with higher top speed, faster acceleration, better climb rate and superior sustained turn performance. It is also compatible with the full range of British-made missiles, such as the Meteor and the Spear 3, whereas the F-35 currently is not.
Ben Obese-Jecty
Does the hon. Member agree that the very best advert for the Typhoon is its ability to engage in air-to-air combat, and that this week’s confirmed kills by the Qatari air force of two Iranian Sukhoi Su-24s is a fantastic advert for just how lethal the Typhoon remains in this day and age, despite only being a gen 4 fighter?
Andy MacNae
Precisely, and of course the upgrade in the radar systems gives it the very latest capability to suppress at a distance. The Typhoon is a powerful beast and works so well within a blended capability, alongside F-35s and other craft. Other European countries have voted for their domestic production bases by ordering their own Typhoons. Spain, Italy and Germany have all done so; only the UK is left out.
Of course, there is a wider perspective. Lancashire is home to world-class defence industries, which every growth plan in Lancashire has at its heart. The fact that I can go into schools in places such as Bacup, Whitworth and Darwen and talk about some of the best engineering and technical jobs in the world being just down the road is so vital for aspiration. The apprenticeships and career opportunities at not just BAE, but the many innovative companies in the supply chain, show that the north-west is the best place for anyone who wants to be at the cutting edge of the manufacturing industries of the future. We should not be happy with merely sustaining this jewel in the crown; rather, we should be seeking to strengthen and continually build skills, scale and competitive advantage. Turkey chose to order Typhoons from us because the experience and skills of workers at Samlesbury and Warton cannot be matched. We now have the opportunity to build on this and give the ultimate vote of confidence by ordering UK fighters that will maintain our balanced and multi-functional fast jet capability for this decade and beyond. Frankly, it feels like a no-brainer, and I hope the defence investment plan will reflect this.
Luke Akehurst (North Durham) (Lab)
I congratulate the Chair of the Defence Committee on securing this important debate. I find it disappointing that parties have been missing and have not contributed to it—Reform, which has an ambiguous position on the threat from Russia; the SNP, which does not support our nuclear deterrent; and the Greens, who do not support our nuclear deterrent and have an ambiguous position on NATO.
How did we end up in this frankly terrifying situation? Well, 14 years of austerity did not just wreck every other public service; it wrecked the fundamental public service that protects everything else we do as a society. It has put us in a very risky situation where we do not have enough air and naval platforms to be in every place that we need to be in, as we can see from a ship not already being in position in the eastern Mediterranean. We do not have enough mass in our Army. We do not have enough reserves. We do not have enough air and missile defence assets—we know the impact of that; we can see what it does to civilian targets, both in Dubai and in Ukraine—and we do not have deep enough magazines of missiles and munitions. Depth of magazines is causing problems for the United States, let alone us.
However, I do not think anyone should be in doubt about the political commitment of this Government to increasing defence spending, because we already took the very difficult decision to slash our overseas aid budget in order to increase spending on the MOD. That was a painful decision, but we will need to take other painful political decisions in the future. I welcome the Prime Minister making all the right noises in Munich about moving the 3% target forwards from his original deadline.
My primary plea in the minute I have left is to move forward with the defence investment plan. The strategic defence review contains excellent proposals about capabilities we need, but every month that we drag on with this is a month in which industry does not have certainty about their order books and businesses are perhaps laying off people with skills when they should be recruiting people. More to the point, it is a month where, three years down the line, we might not have the kit in the hands of our troops that they will need in the event of a hot war with a potent opponent that can rearm to the levels of February 2022 if it has a three-year gap after the combat in Ukraine. My message to the Minister is to take back into the Whitehall system the support on both sides of the House for seeing the defence investment plan sooner rather than later and the message that further delay is not acceptable to Members across the House.
James MacCleary (Lewes) (LD)
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for selecting this topic and the Chair of the Defence Committee for securing this debate.
The UK spent £62.2 billion on defence this year. The Government plan to raise that to £73.5 billion by 2028-29. It is a significant sum. But let us be honest about what that actually shows because some of the detail deserves a great deal more explanation than the Government have so far provided. Take the day-to-day spending figures. Investment spending has increased by £10.8 billion, a rise of nearly 23%. That sounds like a lot, but the single largest driver of that increase is a £9 billion jump in depreciation and impairment costs, described only as a “non-routine accounting adjustment.” That £9 billion is the largest single movement in the MOD budget, and the Government have provided no detail whatever on what that really is. I am afraid that is not good enough. When the Minister responds, I hope that he will shed some light on what that adjustment actually represents, because the public, and this House, deserve to know.
On capital spending, the increase is a more modest 0.3%, just £63.7 million. Yet within that is a reduction in funding for single-use military equipment. At a time when Ukraine has taught us the vital importance of munitions stockpiles and consumable kit, cutting that line is a curious choice, so I would again welcome a clarification from the Minister.
We also keep hearing, as we have several times today, about the defence investment plan—the document that was meant to be published last autumn. Autumn came and went. We are now in March 2026, and it is still nowhere to be seen. The Government have made the plan the centrepiece of their defence modernisation narrative, and every time we ask hard questions about procurement, capability gaps or industrial strategy, we are told to wait for the DIP. But the DIP never arrives. I sometimes wonder if the DIP was part of some mass hallucination that we all had last year.
Ian Roome (North Devon) (LD)
I am getting frustrated about the defence investment plan. Could the Minister, when he sums up, confirm whether it is stuck in the Treasury, and the two Departments are arguing about what it can and cannot include? What is the hold-up between the MOD and the Treasury?
James MacCleary
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention; it is important that that question is answered. It is starting to look less like a plan and more like a convenient excuse for delay. The Liberal Democrats call on the Government today to commit to a firm publication date, not a vague promise but an actual date. Parliament and industry cannot plan without it.
My party has put forward concrete proposals to accelerate defence investment, in particular through defence bonds. We have called on the Government to issue publicly available defence bonds, raising up to £20 billion for capital investment over two years, giving members of the public the direct opportunity to invest in Britain’s security, fixed- term, legally ringfenced to capital defence spending and capped at £20 billion. It is a tried and tested mechanism for mobilising public capital behind a national purpose. We keep hearing how urgent it is to invest, but there is no action.
James Cartlidge
The hon. Gentleman is always generous in giving way on this point. I hope he has done his homework because I pointed out the last time I asked him that he would have to repay those bonds to the bondholders two years later. Where would that £20 billion come from?
James MacCleary
As the hon. Member says, he has asked me that question before. I have done my homework, and we have published the full background. This sits within the Government’s fiscal rules, and is actually a relatively small cost to the Government. Let me now ask the hon. Member—he may wish to answer during his own speech—how his party would invest quickly in defence spending. This is a credible proposal, and I should like to hear credible proposals from others too. We should like the Minister to announce defence bonds, with no further delay.
With conflict in the middle east, it is easy to lose focus on the war much closer to home, in Ukraine. The United Kingdom has so far committed £10.8 billion in military support between February 2022 and March 2026, drawn from the Treasury reserve. The £3 billion annual pledge and the G7 loan facility are welcome commitments, but we can and should go further. The UK holds an estimated £25 billion in frozen Russian assets. My party has tabled the Russian Frozen Assets (Seizure and Aid to Ukraine) Bill to direct those funds to Ukraine’s military, reconstruction, and humanitarian defence, and we are calling for that today.
National security is the first duty of any Government. The spring statement contains real increases in defence spending, and I do not dismiss that, but it also contains a £9 billion accounting adjustment with no explanation, a defence investment plan that remains unpublished, and a 3% target that is still under vague consideration.
British forces are currently engaged in defensive combat operations to protect our bases and citizens in the middle east and eastern Mediterranean. We must focus on not just new kit but existing kit, and it is conspicuous that so many of our vessels are not currently available to the Navy.
The Liberal Democrats have been clear about what is needed. We have proposed pragmatic, realistic steps to make our nation safer now and in the future.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)
It is an absolute pleasure to respond to the debate. I would have loved to go through all the speeches, but given a shorter time limit than I had expected and the consequent cuts in my speech—let alone the defence budget!—I cannot do that. What I will say, genuinely, is that it is always inspiring to hear constituency Members, such as the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae), talk about the defence industry and defence assets in their constituencies.
Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
James Cartlidge
As the hon. Gentleman is my constituency neighbour, I will.
Peter Prinsley
I am grateful to the shadow Secretary of State, who is, as he says, my Suffolk neighbour. Suffolk is home to the United States air force base at Lakenheath. The American air force has been our enduring friend since at least the second world war. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we must do all that we can to support these brave United States air force personnel at this dangerous time in the world?
James Cartlidge
When I was a Minister, I was privileged to meet General Campo, then the officer commanding two bases, and to go around them with him. I would just say gently to the hon. Gentleman that, in my view, we should have provided the use of American bases as part of the mission to attack Iran from the outset, not least because the nuclear programme in Iran is a threat to us. That is still the most important point in the debate about the current action.
Many Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for North Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown)—the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee—mentioned the need to learn lessons from Ukraine. I want to make one very important point about Ukraine. If we had not stepped up in providing weapons even before Russia’s invasion when we were in government, it is conceivable that Putin’s tanks could have reached Kyiv and Ukraine could have fallen. We were able to provide anti-tank weapons to prevent that column from reaching Kyiv because weeks before the invasion, Boris Johnson and Ben Wallace had the courage to ignore the advice of the Foreign Office and instead be bold to defend freedom. To put it another way, we did not wait for Putin to invade Ukraine before assisting so that we had a perfect case in international law. Thank God we acted pre-emptively. There is a lesson here.
The Chair of the Defence Committee, the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), made an excellent and eloquent speech, giving all the reasons why we need to increase defence spending. To be fair, I think we all know what they are, so I will not go through the details of the threat, but I have to say that it was shocking, with war raging on multiple fronts, that the Chancellor did not provide a single extra penny for defence in her spring statement yesterday.
There are five huge consequences of not setting a path to 3% and instead adopting Labour’s decision to prioritise welfare over the defence budget. The first consequence is that the priorities of the Department are now wrong. The MOD has no choice, with its current financial settlement, but to prioritise penny-pinching and in-year savings over rearmament. The fact is that instead of increasing the budget for rearmament, it is initiating £2.6 billion of in-year savings this year, which leads us to the second consequence: the operational impact. We all know that, shamefully, not a single Royal Navy ship was in the middle east when war broke out. That is because the Department has had to prioritise in-year savings and retrench its activity.
Last December, the Minister for the Armed Forces, the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns), confirmed to me in a written answer that
“over the next four years, the Royal Navy will scale back its participation in overseas training outside the Europe, Atlantic, and Arctic theatres.”
That was a premeditated decision to pull our activity out of the middle east, and what have we seen this week? Drone attacks on the RAF Akrotiri base in Cyprus. As a direct consequence of the in-year savings, the Government are having to scramble to deploy HMS Dragon to Cyprus, when it should have been there weeks ago. As a Type 45 air defence destroyer, HMS Dragon will provide invaluable air cover around Cyprus against incoming missiles, but we know from BBC Verify that US Arleigh Burke air defence destroyers in the vicinity are providing cover for the time being. The shocking implication of this is that, until the Prime Minister’s U-turn on Sunday, he was preventing the US from using our bases while relying on it to defend them. It is an incredible situation.
The third consequence of Labour’s lack of defence spending relates to procurement, which has effectively been on hold since the general election as a result of the Government’s clampdown on in-year spending at the MOD. At the election, we had a fully funded plan to provide £10 billion extra for munitions. [Interruption.] Labour Members always chunter about that. The plan was to be fully funded by cutting the size of the civil service, and they do not like doing that. They did not like the way that it was funded, but that funding would have delivered the munitions strategy, which I was working on as the Minister for Defence Procurement. I want to be clear: it was a comprehensive plan to replenish our arsenal and, in particular, would have seen additional significant investment in air defence missiles, including for ground-based air defence and maritime defence, which are so critical for our country right now.
The problem is that the incoming Government had a better idea: cancel the munitions strategy and put any orders on hold while conducting a strategic defence review that would give all the answers but which, as I warned, would in the meantime put procurement on hold. Having told us that the SDR would have all the answers, the Government did not make any specific capability choices, which were punted into the defence investment plan. As my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) and many others have said, the strategic defence review was months late and the defence investment plan, promised for autumn 2025, is still nowhere to be seen. When the Prime Minister was asked at Prime Minister’s questions when it will be published, he did not even attempt to answer the question. To paraphrase the Leader of the Opposition, there is no money for defence because the Government have spent it on welfare. Because there is no money, there is no DIP. And because there is no DIP, there is no procurement.
The fourth consequence of Labour’s penny-pinching approach relates to the lethality of our armed forces. The Defence Secretary and his Ministers like to mock the defence drone strategy that I produced in government in February 2024—the first ever from a major military player, as far as I am aware—but I gently remind them that, they confirmed in a written answer last April that it is Government policy to implement the defence drone strategy. The aim of the strategy is to procure drones
“at scale for both the Ukrainian and UK armed forces”.
The problem is that, since the election, the Labour Government have rightly continued providing drones for Ukraine, which we support, but they have not implemented the other side of the bargain: building a comprehensive UK military drone industrial base and procuring at scale for our military. Because the Treasury has agreed funding for Ukraine but not for our armed forces, the MOD has been buying brilliant drone and counter-drone technology made by British SMEs and sending it to Ukraine, while buying almost none of it in parallel for our own troops. That is why last December we announced the Conservative policy of a sovereign defence fund, which would deliver drones at scale for the armed forces and, crucially, take stakes in British SMEs to establish a strong UK defence industrial base, instead of losing the intellectual property abroad.
The hon. Member for Lewes (James MacCleary) asked where we would find the money, and I will tell the House one way that we would find it. Some £17 billion of public money would be transferred to defence, including £6 billion for drones from other research and development, and £11 billion from the National Wealth Fund to create a new national defence and resilience bank—a UK bank that would support the supply chain. We would also lever in public finance, as the hon. Members for Widnes and Halewood (Derek Twigg) and for Aldershot (Alex Baker) argued for. I agree with them that we need to increase traditional defence spending, but we massively need to lever in private money and fire up the private sector for defence. Most importantly, our policy would put the world-leading technology that we have given to Ukraine into the hands of our armed forces, immediately boosting their lethality.
The fifth big consequence of Labour’s prioritisation of penny-pinching is on the defence industry, risking jobs in every constituency. In January, it was reported that there is the worst sentiment among UK defence SMEs for 20 years. For an industry already hit by a £600 million increase in employer national insurance, this is not good enough.
Of course, our constituents do not just want more money spent on defence; they want it spent well. That is why, in February 2024, I introduced the integrated procurement model in Parliament. Its main focus was to learn the lessons of our extraordinary effort to deliver capability to Ukraine at pace. In particular, a key element was the use of minimum deployable capability. That went live in April 2024, so it is fair to say we did not get a huge amount of time to put it into practice, but we did in one important case study.
A number of commentators have made the important point that, in the latest exchanges in Iran, our RAF is having to use expensive missiles to take down cheap drones, and I think that observation was made by the hon. Member for Plymouth Moor View (Fred Thomas). In April 2024, another of our Type 45 destroyers, HMS Diamond, was deployed in the Red sea when the Houthis, like Hezbollah, were receiving ballistic missiles from Iran. These were also used against HMS Diamond, and while her brave and brilliant crew defeated the threat at the time, I decided that we had to have a way of defeating those drones. I therefore not only procured the DragonFire anti-drone laser, but used the new procurement system to ensure it could be in service in 2027 rather than 2032, which means it will be with our ships from next year.
Given that you are making those usual familiar signals, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will just say finally that when I visited Leonardo—the factory in Edinburgh that makes DragonFire—I was very chuffed to be told that the minimum deployable capability approach had removed hurdles and red tape, so this cutting-edge capability is going to be in service much faster and is genuinely making a difference.
To conclude, all of this points to the crucial need for the Government to follow the lead of our party, and accelerate their plans by going to 3% in this Parliament, not in the next.
The Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry (Luke Pollard)
Before thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), let me place on record my thanks to the brave men and women of the UK armed forces, who are at this very moment defending not only UK interests in the middle east and the Mediterranean, but those of our allies. I know that the whole House will send our support for them in the job they are doing.
I thank my hon. Friend the Chair of the Defence Committee for introducing this debate and for securing it. It is an opportunity to talk about how we can improve our procurement, value our people more and make sure we are bringing to our armed forces the capabilities that they need in this more difficult time.
We know that the world is increasingly volatile and dangerous. Having just returned from Ukraine this morning, I know that when the eyes of the world are rightly on the middle east, it is important that we as a House clearly and unitedly send a message that we still stand with Ukraine and will do so for as long as it takes. That was the message I gave to the Ukrainian Ministers I met yesterday, and it is one that I know will be echoed by those from every party present for this debate.
The Prime Minister has said recently that
“hard power…is the currency of the age”,
and he is right. What we have seen since the last general election is a Government making the necessary decisions to transform our hard power and increase our warfighting readiness. The spending commitments we have made—2.5% of GDP from April 2027, 3% in the next Parliament and 5% on national security by 2035—represent the largest rise in defence investment since the end of the cold war.
Alongside these historic increases, we have published the strategic defence review and the defence industrial strategy, and we are fundamentally reforming defence to finally put it on a sustainable footing. We are leading support on Ukraine, leading in NATO by bringing our allies together, and working flat out to complete the defence investment plan. The DIP will strengthen, modernise and equip our armed forces to meet the threats we face. The decisions we are taking are worth hundreds of billions of pounds, and nothing is more important than getting them right. That is our singular focus right now.
James Cartlidge
I am very grateful to the Minister for giving way, given the time pressures. Given that the Prime Minister did not even attempt to answer the very explicit question of when the DIP will be published, will he tell us: when will the DIP be published?
Luke Pollard
Well, I had to sit through the hon. Member’s drivel, so he can sit through mine until he finds out the answer to that one. I want to respond to the main points raised in today’s debate by a number of speakers; it is important that I use the time I have to respond to them.
I welcome the clarion call from the Defence Committee to go faster and further on defence spending. It is right that we have increased defence spending, with an extra £5 billion in our Budget this year and more coming next year, but the argument made by my hon. Friend the Member for Slough is a strong one, and it is one I know he will continue to make. We were, as I believe he said, the third largest percentage spender in NATO in 2021, and we remain the third largest spender in cash terms in NATO, but I recognise the argument he makes. Let me say to him clearly on Ajax that it remains one of my priorities as Minister to make sure that we can fully field equipment that is safe for our people and to make decisions based on safety. I want our industry and our forces to innovate and be bold, but they must not compromise on the safety of our people. I cannot be clearer about that.
My hon. Friend also asked about the supplementary estimates, and I am happy to provide some clarity. A large part of the increase relates to the technical accounting updates to ensure the Department’s asset values are accurately recorded. These adjustments do not provide additional spending power and have no impact on the Department’s cash budgets, so they are technical, non-cash accounting adjustments. As programmes mature and asset information improves, it is standard practice to update these valuations. This ensures that the Department’s accounts reflect the most accurate value of its equipment and estate. The adjustments do not indicate a loss of capability and have no in-year cash impact. I was asked about that by a Conservative Member, but I hope that is helpful to him, too.
The Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, the hon. Member for North Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) was right to raise a number of important issues. He is certainly right when he says that defence programmes are usually late and usually over-budget. When we inherited the defence programmes from the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), 47 of 49 major defence programmes were delayed and over-budget; that is a record for which he should have stood at the Dispatch Box and apologised, but the Opposition do not want to claim any responsibility for what they handed over—they only want to throw stones and blame for the future. To be a constructive Opposition, it is necessary for the shadow Secretary of State to be helpful and constructive with advice, not just to seek to forget about his responsibility for the mess he caused.
The hon. Member for North Cotswolds is also right about accommodation. It was unacceptable that our service personnel and their families were living in accommodation with black mould, leaky roofs and broken boilers. It is for that reason that this Government announced £9 billion to refit, refurbish or rebuild nine in 10 defence homes over the next decade. That will directly support our defence personnel and their families, on top of the largest pay rise in 20 years. I believe the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) described that as a cash bung. The largest pay rise in 20 years for our people, accompanied by a second above-inflation pay rise, has seen morale not fall under this Government, unlike when his party was in power, when it fell in every single service in every single year. The hon. Member for North Cotswolds is also right to make the case for reforming the MOD. That is exactly what we are doing with the process of defence reform.
My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) is proud to represent the home of the Royal Navy. As MP for Devonport, I am also proud to represent the heart of the Royal Navy; she and I have much in common. She is right to ask about HMS Dragon. I am pleased to give her an update about the ship and the ship’s company. The Royal Navy is working at pace to prepare HMS Dragon for deployment to the eastern Mediterranean. HMS Dragon has begun re-supplying her air defence missiles at the ammunition facility at the naval base in Portsmouth. She will then return for a logistics re-supply before sailing. For security reasons—as she will know, as a Portsmouth MP—we do not comment on precise departure dates of our Royal Navy assets. She will also know that we have two Royal Navy Wildcat helicopters armed with drone-busting missiles already deploying to the region. They will reinforce the additional RAF Typhoons, F-35B jets, ground-based counter-drone teams, radar systems and Voyager refuelling aircraft which we have already deployed to the region. Our jets are now flying continuous sorties to take out Iranian drones and missiles threatening UK people, interests and bases, and threatening our allies.
Ben Obese-Jecty
Obviously, the whole House appreciates the deployment of HMS Dragon, but it has had to be withdrawn from its NATO Maritime Group 1 commitment in order to fulfil the trip to Cyprus. Do we have another Type 45 that can replace it, given that HMS Duncan could not be sent because it is already committed to preparing for Operation Firecrest?
Luke Pollard
I will not be announcing deployments from the Dispatch Box, but I recognise the hon. Gentleman’s point. It is one of the reasons that we are seeking to invest more in our Royal Navy: to provide not only crewed but uncrewed capabilities.
The hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) spoke about his desire for a larger Royal Navy. In 2017, when I had brown hair and sat broadly where the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) is sitting now, I made the case in my maiden speech for more surface combatants for the Royal Navy. That is what our hybrid Navy will deliver—and not only crewed platforms, which are being built in Scotland at this very moment. Last week, I saw the steel cut on HMS Bulldog and the roll-out of HMS Active—two of our new Type 31 frigates—which will be sailing alongside uncrewed and autonomous systems as part of that hybrid Navy concept. This is something that the Prime Minister announced in his speech at the Munich security conference and which we are keen to extend to many of our European partners, increasing the mass and lethality of our Royal Navy and, importantly, improving the survivability for our crewed platforms.
I will quickly rattle through some of the questions that have been asked. Are we looking at novel financing methods? Yes, we are. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner) spoke about advanced ceramics; she is right to do so. I was happy meeting her before and I am happy continuing that discussion. I know the progress she is making. The hon. Member for Spelthorne will know that we have increased pay for our armed forces and are increasing the supply of ammunition and missiles through the munitions and energetics factories that we have already announced; I hope to provide further updates about the rapid procurement process that is under way in due course.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) spoke passionately about the importance of Typhoon for his area. I was very pleased that the Government were able to secure the Typhoon deal with Türkiye, and I can assure him that we continue to have conversations with a number of our other allies, further promoting the Typhoon as an essential platform for air defence. He is right to praise the work they are doing. I really liked the phrase he used about the best jobs being just down the road—that is echoed by colleagues right across the House. Indeed, my fellow south-west MP, the hon. Member for North Devon (Ian Roome), gave a good shout-out to regional jobs, which I enjoyed. It is right that we increase defence spending so that it can be felt in every single nation and region, and that is exactly what we are doing.
My hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Michelle Scrogham) made a passionate case for submarines. Her constituents build them, and mine refit them in Devonport—teams working together, with Team Plymouth and Team Barrow, as well as the work that takes place in Derby. It is an important part of bringing together our nuclear enterprise.
I welcome the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr Dillon) speaking about the compelling vision in the SDR; he is right to do so. I am happy having a conversation with him about the tax credits issue, especially if he could bring small business examples.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Alex Baker) was right to talk about the DSRB. I know she is passionate about this, as are a number of other Members. I am happy to meet her to talk further about it.
Finally, perhaps the most important part of this is our people. I was pleased that the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Vikki Slade) raised recruitment in an intervention. Let me say clearly that since September 2024, we have seen an 8% decrease in outflow from our armed forces and a 13% increase in inflow into our armed forces. As the hon. Member for North Cotswolds mentioned, we do need to do recruitment differently, which is why we have a new direct entry scheme for cyber, and we will go further on that.
Let the message go out clearly to our troops in combat operations around the world: they have our support and they have a Government who are increasing defence spending, putting their welfare at the centre of our future defence plans, ensuring that we move towards warfighting readiness with new equipment and new capabilities, and putting our people at the very heart of our defence plans.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi to wind up very briefly.
Mr Dhesi
Along with extending my gratitude to the Backbench Business Committee, I thank hon. Members across the Chamber for the range and quality of the speeches they have made. They have underlined why these estimates day debates are so important; we have not just scrutinised the numbers, but explained the kind of defence posture that our armed forces should be adopting.
Given the increased security threats, I hope the Minister will take away why the House feels the urgency with which we must act. I thank him for addressing some of my concerns, but there are certain things on which I think the House still needs an answer, predominantly the defence investment plan—we need a publication date to give a clear demand signal to industry, our allies and our adversaries—and a clear, hopefully incremental, path to chart towards 3% of GDP spending. We also need better vehicles to attract private investment. There is also the need to fix the perennial procurement problems that the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee and I have been trying to outline with respect to the MOD. Of course, we also need to rebuild trust with Treasury.
Thank you for your forbearance, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank all hon. Members for enabling such an excellent debate.
Question deferred (Standing Order No. 54).