Fiscal Policy: Defence Spending

Jeevun Sandher Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard]

Let me say very clearly to the right hon. Gentleman that we inherited a position where it was not planned that Albion and Bulwark would go to sea for a single day before they were decommissioned—that was the plan we inherited from the Conservative Government. We are looking at new capabilities as part of the strategic defence review, and the Defence Secretary has also committed from this Dispatch Box to the multi-role supply ship project, to provide littoral and landing capabilities for our brilliant Royal Marines, who have a bright future in the strategic defence review.

[Dr Jeevun Sandher (Loughborough) (Lab)]

I think both sides of the House can agree that our peace and security are founded on strong armed forces. Will the Minister therefore welcome the fact that we are spending £3 billion more on defence this year, as well as our firm commitment to get to 2.5% of GDP?

[Luke Pollard]

I agree that it is important that we spend more on defence. That is why the Chancellor laid out from this Dispatch Box that we will spend an additional £2.9 billion on defence in the next financial year. It is also why the Government have laid out our plan to renew the contract between the nation and those who serve. This is about not just kit and equipment but people. Addressing falling morale and poor-quality defence housing matter to our armed forces, and that is why this Labour Government are addressing those issues.

Russian Maritime Activity and UK Response

Jeevun Sandher Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2025 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

The right hon. Gentleman has huge experience in this field, so he will recognise that I simply will not and cannot get into responding to hypotheticals. He urges me not to allow undue constraint of perhaps established practices or rules where there is a good case for flexibility. I hope he will take as a signal of the serious intent that I will bring, with the approach and return of the Yantar to UK waters, my readiness, as I have reported, to alter the permissions that the Royal Navy was using so that, should the captains of the warships that we deployed to watch and track the Yantar require it, they could go closer, see better and determine more carefully what exactly the Yantar was up to. Like the surfacing of the submarine in November, that was a move to deter and discourage the sort of activity that we simply do not want to see in our waters.

[Dr Jeevun Sandher (Loughborough) (Lab)]

Keeping ourselves safer at home means ensuring that Putin loses abroad, because when Putin is finished in Ukraine—whenever that may be—he will come for more. Defeating him means showing him that we have the resolve and the resource to defeat him in the future. Can the Secretary of State assure me that, as part of the SDR, we will have a way to combat, prevent and protect ourselves from Russia?

[John Healey]

I hope the content of my statement—the assertion that the most immediate and concerning threat to the UK comes from Russia—and the action I have taken in response to the Russian spy ship, Yantar, being in our waters again, will reassure my hon. Friend that, exactly as he urges and as the shadow Defence Secretary the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) has recognised, Russia is a serious menace. In Ukraine, it is fighting the first full-scale war in Europe since the second world war, but as the shadow Defence Secretary said, its aggression particularly in the grey zone—warned about by the heads of the CIA and M16—tells us that this is a regime intent on disruption and on disrupting our way of life. My hon. Friend is right to start by saying that the defence of the UK starts in Ukraine. If Putin prevails in Ukraine, he simply will not stop in Ukraine.