Defence Spending

Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

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

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

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

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

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

The Secretary of State keeps referring to page 20 of the Defending Britain policy paper, which was launched yesterday. The annexe on page 20 does not outline where the money is coming from. However, it does state the MoD budget for each year, up to and including 2030-31. Given the additional commitments the Government have rightly made to our allies in Ukraine, which we support, the annexe in the policy paper actually shows a cut in defence spending planned for 2024-25. This was not in the press release.

In various media interviews in the last 48 hours, government representatives have stated that some of this new funding will come from a cut in Civil Service numbers by some 70,000 posts. The last time this Government pledged to increase defence spending by cutting the number of civil servants was in 2015. The number of people in post actually increased by 50%, so please forgive my cynicism, but we have heard this before.

While on the point of civil servants, can the Minister confirm that the MoD will not face cuts in its workforce? As last checked, the staff employed by the MoD do the roles that we would prefer to be done by civilians rather than those in uniform, from R&D to procurement and business services. Any cuts in these areas will undermine our effectiveness and, in places, our national security.

No one in this House disagrees that the strategic environment in which we operate is becoming more challenging every day. While hindsight is a wonderful thing, I genuinely fail to understand why it is only this week that the Government have decided to respond to the assertion of Ben Wallace, the former Defence Secretary, that the defence budget has been hollowed out.

Since 2010, £15 billion has been wasted on failed procurement. Our Army is now at the smallest size since Napoleon, one in five ships has been removed from the Royal Navy fleet, more than 200 planes have been taken out of service since 2019, and morale in our forces has fallen by 20% since the Labour Party left office. There is clearly work to be done to ensure that, with increasing threats and growing tensions, we are fighting fit.

This month marks 75 years since a Labour Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, signed the original NATO treaty. My party helped to found NATO and our ongoing commitment is unshakeable. The Labour Party has the same aspiration as the Government: defence spending at 2.5%—the same level of defence expenditure last achieved under a Labour Government. We will always do what is needed to defend Britain and we will always spend what is necessary to deal with the threats our nation faces—and we will do it with a fully costed plan.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

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

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

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

That is page 20.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

I thank the noble Baroness; I am told that this is indeed page 20.

The percentage of GDP that is being looked at starts at 2.32% for 2024-25 and goes up, according to this, to 2.5%, in line with His Majesty’s Government’s commitment outlined yesterday, 24 April. But I note the words:

“Memo—UK GDP based on OBR’s latest forecasts”.


There is sometimes a little scepticism about OBR forecasts. While far be it from me to raise the sort of concerns and scepticism that a former Prime Minister might have raised about the OBR, can the Minister reassure the House that the forecasts for two, three, four and up to six years out are actually likely to be correct? It matters enormously to these commitments that the OBR predictions should be right, because the commitments being made now are vital.

The noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, asked why the announcement was this week. As something of a cynic, I wonder whether it was not simply part of the Prime Minister working his way up to a general election, because every day this week we seemed to have a new announcement, whether it was flights going to Rwanda or the commitments to defence. While on Rwanda we might disagree, on defending Britain we do not disagree at all that it is vital. In that sense, the Statement is welcome.

I have a few questions for the Minister. Clearly, the commitment is there to defence expenditure—it follows on from the commitment to improving defence procurement—but this is a relatively short timeframe of six years. In the context of global crises, which we see from authoritarian regimes—as His Majesty’s Government have suggested, Iran, Russia, North Korea and China all seem to work in consort in some arenas—do His Majesty’s Government think that this commitment, while in itself welcome, will deliver change sufficiently swiftly? How far are His Majesty’s Government looking not just to closer co-operation with our NATO allies as a collective—obviously, we are also committed to NATO—but to strengthening bilateral relations, for example with France, in addition to the commitments made in Germany two days ago?

Further, to what extent do His Majesty’s Government think that other regional patterns of co-operation, such as AUKUS, will help them to take the leading role in NATO, which has been stated is an ambition?

In the policy document, the Secretary of State reminds us that in his Lancaster House speech he noted that, clearly,

“the era of the peace dividend is over”.

That is obviously right. In terms of procurement and ensuring that we have the right industrial defence base, 2030 is actually very close. Does the Minister feel that this Statement goes far enough? Will he commit to coming regularly to the House to tell us how it can be delivered and, in particular, about the numbers of civil servants who might be still in post in the MoD? Are their numbers vulnerable alongside those of other civil servants to pay for this deal?