Spending Review

Debate between Lord Deighton and Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe

Wednesday 26th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, the Chancellor said in his Statement:

“The first line of national defence is sound public finances”.

Following the theme of the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, why can the Chancellor then go on to boast that we have one of the largest defence budgets in the world? Here, I do not speak on behalf of my party but as an individual member of the community in this country. However, I suspect that I represent a fair point of view when we hear about the possible incursions into Syria and read of the Prime Minister saying that he is not prepared to see a reduction in Britain’s military capabilities. If we are to take truly tough decisions, is it not time that we really faced up to our position in the world—what we can do, what we cannot do and what we can afford?

[Lord Deighton]

That is a very broad question. In terms of the spending review, over time we have already taken some very difficult decisions with the Ministry of Defence. The focus of this particular spending round was to ensure that we put in place some economies in the support areas, but kept our front-line capability and made absolutely sure we had an equipment budget that could support our troops and the work that they were called on to do. That was the policy decision behind which the spending decisions fell into line.