Caroline Nokes
Main Page: Caroline Nokes (Conservative - Romsey and Southampton North)Department Debates - View all Caroline Nokes's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)
In February 2025, the now outgoing Prime Minister told this House that Labour defence investment would deliver
“a new approach to defence, a revival of our industrial base, a deepening of our alliances; the instruments of our national power brought together; creating opportunity, assuring our allies and delivering security for our country.” —[Official Report, 25 February 2025; Vol. 762, c. 634.]
In the many months that we have waited for the overdue defence investment plan, all that has been delivered is evidence of a Government lengthy on announcements and short on deliver for the security of our country. This has been at arguably the most globally turbulent time since the cold war and the second world war—a time when our defence industry needed certainty and support from the Government.
The 2025 strategic defence review set out that Labour’s defence investment plan would be completed in autumn 2025. Repeated pushbacks have real impacts on defence acquisition, expenditure and military capability. Labour has weakened our defence industry, leaving our armed forces in need of modernisation and transformation to ensure their readiness for modern warfare. However, as has been rightly highlighted by the Chief of the Defence Staff:
“recent circumstances…suggest the opposite. Further delay to the Defence Investment Plan, long promised ‘in the autumn’, risks sending damaging signals to adversaries.”
Our adversaries will not wait for a Government capable of bolstering our defence, and the Labour party should not be allowed to get away with this.
Even more concerning, when we finally receive the defence investment plan, it will confirm the intention to spend only 2.68% of GDP on defence and intelligence by 2027—an offer to uplift by only 0.08% of GDP to address a £28 billion blackhole in the MOD’s defence budget. To quote the then Labour Defence Secretary, the right hon. Member for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough (John Healey), that
“falls well short of what is required for defence and the country at this dangerous time.”
It will increase the risk to personnel on operations and could make the country less safe.
A plan pushed back five times that does not address the problem it was designed to address is not a plan at all. It shows a corrosive complacency, characteristic of this Government’s failure to make the tough decisions they need to for our country. The Conservatives have always highlighted how serious this is, and we have taken the position that defence spending must increase to 3% by the end of this Parliament—a position recently backed by the former Defence Secretary.
Conservatives called for Labour to repurpose funding from the official development assistance budget for defence, and Labour followed our advice. We are now calling on Labour to go further and commit to spending 3% of GDP on defence by the end of this Parliament—doing this by reducing the welfare bill, not through more taxes and borrowing—growing the regular Army, and creating a sovereign defence fund that would mobilise billions in public and private funding to overhaul the defence industry.
This morning, the Chancellor told the House that the defence investment plan will meet the scale of the challenges facing our country, but we cannot defend against today’s adversaries with inadequate policies from this Government. Like many others in the House, I urge the Government to get on with it. We can no longer defend our nation with soundbites.
Paul Holmes
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wonder if I can seek your guidance. In this Opposition day debate, many of us have spent four and a half hours in this Chamber seeking answers from a Government Minister. When he refuses to give way, how do we ensure that he responds to our questions? Is it in order, Madam Deputy Speaker—[Interruption.] I will still have my say. Is it in order for a Minister not to give way through the whole of his speech?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
As the hon. Gentleman well knows, it is at the Minister’s discretion whether he chooses to give way or not.