Defence Spending and Readiness

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Andrew Lewin

Tuesday 23rd June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Lewin]

I am pleased that we were on the same side in 2016, and maybe we will be at some point again in the future. Let me fast-forward to 2024, because that was an important moment for the country.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

The hon. Member talks about 2014 and the invasion, and he is quite right. I was in Cabinet at the time, and one of the points that I and some others raised was what our position was over this. But the EU got this badly wrong because the President of France and Mrs Merkel headed over, on their own decision, to set up a negotiation that left Russia in control of Crimea, forgetting all the original support and our promises to Ukraine. They were reducing spending and did not want to go to war, and so they sacrificed Ukraine in the process.

[Andrew Lewin]

I am not sure that I would agree with the characterisation of sacrificing Ukraine, but I am also not saying that the European Union is blameless. I am saying that we had a period of history after Crimea where much of the west was not investing sufficiently in defence, and it is also the case that the Conservative party was in government at that point in time.

The point about 2024 is an important one—we had an important general election for the country. We hear now about the Conservatives prioritising defence, so I looked back at their record and their manifesto. What was their offer to the country on the eve of the general election? It was a big cut in national insurance—a cut that would have cost £10 billion a year. Again, when faced with the decision, two years into the Ukraine war, “Are you going to prioritise defence spending?”, that was not the choice they made, was it?