Oral Answers to Questions

Aphra Brandreth Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)]

3. In which financial year he plans to spend 2.5% of GDP on defence.

[Aphra Brandreth (Chester South and Eddisbury) (Con)]

12. In which financial year he plans to spend 2.5% of GDP on defence.

[The Secretary of State for Defence (John Healey)]

The Government were elected on a firm commitment to set a path to increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP. The Prime Minister has said that we will do so in the spring.

--- Later in debate ---

[Aphra Brandreth]

It is clear that we face increasingly volatile and dangerous global security challenges, which is why the previous Government set a path to 2.5% of GDP being spent on defence by 2030. What conversations have the Minister and officials at the Ministry of Defence had with NATO counterparts, particularly from the United States, on increasing defence spending? What implications does he think his party’s lack of timeline for reaching 2.5% will have on the special relationship, given the new US Administration?

[John Healey]

This country is at the forefront of defence spending in NATO, and we are ready to increase it to 2.5% of GDP. The hon. Lady talked about the previous Government’s plan for 2.5% of GDP. I have to tell her that that was an election gimmick, announced four weeks before the Prime Minister called the election; the Institute for Fiscal Studies described it as “misleading”, and the Institute for Government described it as “a work of fiction.”