Defence Spending

Lord Beamish Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I will take the last point first on what the Government are doing now. The noble Lord will know that, in the DIP, there was £11 billion-worth of investment announced, to be invested in six munition sites, to give us the stockpiles that we need. What we cannot do is magic them out of nowhere, but we are investing to deliver the very thing that the noble Lord rightly suggested. He will also see that in the DIP there is a whole range of ways in which we are building ships. To be fair, as I said, everyone wants to defend our country, and the previous Government started to rebuild and to replace the ship capacity that we need; we see examples of that on the Clyde. We are also looking at different ways to do the same thing through an increased use of drones and using a mother ship concept.

[Lord Beamish (Lab)]

My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree with me that, in this debate on the level of defence expenditure, we should look at how we got to where we are today? Between 2010 and 2017, from the Tory-led coalition Government onwards, the then Government cut the defence budget by 16% and made people compulsorily redundant, leading to the smallest standing Army since Napoleonic times. Because of the Liberal Democrat veto, the then Government delayed the replacement of the Trident nuclear deterrent, leading to extra costs today. Does my noble friend agree with me that, in this debate, the Opposition should be a little humbler in their approach by taking some responsibility for why we have got to where we are today?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I accept the points that my noble friend has made. As the Defence Minister, I always lay out what the Government are trying to do to deal with the situation as it currently exists. One or two years on from the last spending review, the Government took really difficult decisions, within a spending review cycle, to increase the defence budget by £15 billion. Some of that has led to very difficult decisions. I will give him one example relevant to anybody who lives in and around the East Midlands, but I could cite examples from other areas. As a result of those decisions, the A38 and A46 road projects, which were about to start, were delayed to fund defence. Those are some of the tough decisions that the Government have taken, and there are other examples from across the UK about how we are seeking to deal with this. At the next spending review, watch how the Government will set out a path to 3.5% by 2035.