Rearmament and Warfighting Readiness

Judith Cummins Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

My right hon. Friend is right to highlight the broader point, which is the lack of detail on reserves, other than to say that it is all being parked until the next Parliament. That is a wasted opportunity. Reservists also need clearer communication from the Government, including on the training days and reserve service days this year. I hope that when the Minister winds up the debate, he will say a bit more about that.

Finally, we know that a Government reshuffle is coming, and if issues such as national resilience are to be addressed, they quite rightly require an all-of-Government response. Yet there is very little detail. As the hon. Member for Dunfermline and Dollar said regarding the answer to his written question, the MOD is often reluctant to answer on national security grounds, and there is very little detail on how other Departments will prioritise their budgets and what the key performance indicators are, particularly when new Ministers are likely to be coming in. Will the Minister clarify whether there will be KPIs relating to the defence investment plan for those Departments, and if so, when will they be set out?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

With an immediate five-minute time limit, I call Kevin Bonavia.

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[Dave Doogan]

It has been around for 50 years; it is not novel.

The hon. Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca) referred to £45 billion for the nuclear enterprise. I think the figure in the DIP is £64 billion. That is an important point, because the Government and the one before it have refused to publish the rolling 10-year nuclear enterprise budget. If the Minister could clarify what the nuclear enterprise budget is over the rolling 10-year period, that would be helpful. I am a supporter of defence—there are a few people in here who will testify to that—but the MOD does have a case to answer. It increasingly looks like if we want £1 million of output, we need to put £2 million into the MOD pot. If we look at any Public Accounts Committee report on defence, we can see what a troubled enterprise it is. It needs root and branch reform.

I have heard people say quite a lot that we have not told the public about the threat we are under. I agree with that. I think that is a true and an honest assessment, but we need to see beyond the transmission of the threat and be prepared for the response that we might get back. I am not making a constitutional point; I am not talking about Scotland. I am talking about housing schemes and communities up and down these islands. If they are asked to put their families and their own lives on the line for the United Kingdom, they might well not be quite as enthusiastic as we might wish. They might think, “What has my country done for me?” If they are 25 years old and have grown up over the last 20 years they might think, “What has the UK done for me, because I see myself and my generation getting poorer than the generations that went before.” I might be wrong—I hope I am wrong—but we do not know it.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[James MacCleary (Lewes) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) on securing this extremely valuable debate.

Much has been said about rearmament and defence in this House in recent months. It is widely accepted that successive Governments have allowed our nation’s defences to decline to a perilous extent. This debate should therefore be an opportunity for the House to come together to address the first duty of any Government, the defence of the realm. It is a conversation that cannot be limited only to this building; it needs to be had in every corner of our great nation.

The Prime Minister and others tell us that the point of maximum threat from Russia is in 2030. That is just over three years away. If that is the case, we must show urgency and clarity. It is for that reason that the long delay in the publication of the defence investment plan was so serious and so damaging. That delay cost us precious time, which our adversaries have spent building their own forces and probing our vulnerabilities. The Public Accounts Committee has already told us what that delay cost us. It called the resulting bureaucratic drift damaging to Britain’s international credibility and warned that it has created deep uncertainty across our defence industrial base while sending a weak signal to allies and adversaries alike.

When the plan finally arrived, what did we find? The Secretary of State told the House that he had secured an extra £1 billion, yet it has come to light since then that most of that money has simply been taken from cancelled transport and energy projects or clawed back from funds that were meant to improve military housing. Worse still, £4.7 billion of the £15 billion promised increase is, in the Government’s own words, still to be “confirmed at the Budget”. That, I am afraid, is not a funding plan.

Defence chiefs have been explicit that anything below £28 billion would leave this country vulnerable and force Ministers into hard choices about capabilities that we simply cannot afford to lose. The figure the Prime Minister has now settled on falls well short of that warning. Nowhere is that more alarming than in air defence. The strategic defence review recommended that we spend at least £1 billion in this area. The people of this country rightly assume that they are safe from missile and drone attack. We must urgently work with our NATO allies to build up our collective integrated air defence. It is folly to spend billions on equipment if it can all just be destroyed in an instant by Russian ballistic missiles.

The SDR was also clear that we needed pace in investing in the capabilities needed to deter Russia. That is why the Liberal Democrats have argued for issuing defence bonds to make £20 billion available in the next two years—before 2030—to spend on plugging those gaps. We have also urged the Government to explore multilateral efforts to fund rearmament, such as the defence, security and resilience bank or leading on the establishment of a European rearmament bank.

The threat is real and the money is needed now, not years down the line, and we need to spend not only more, but better. Around 5% of the defence procurement budget currently reaches SMEs and 42% of contracts remain concentrated among the same 10 suppliers. These smaller firms are the source of much of the flexibility and innovation the sector needs, and they support skilled jobs in every part of the United Kingdom. The long delay to the DIP left them in limbo for over a year. Some went out of business in that time or even moved overseas, and with the £4.7 billion gap still to be resolved at the Budget, uncertainty has not been lifted from their shoulders. To make their funding numbers add up, the Government have also started chipping away at their previous commitment to fix mouldy military homes and crumbling barracks. The Liberal Democrats have supported the Government’s efforts to sort out that mess, so to hear that hundreds of millions have been trimmed is bitterly disappointing.

The Liberal Democrats changed the law so that service family accommodation must now be assessed against the decent homes standard—we forced the Government to concede that principle in the House of Lords. We went further still, and sought to extend that same standard to single living accommodation, so that no member of our armed forces is left living in substandard conditions, but the Government voted that down in Committee. If Ministers are serious about retention and persuading talented people to stay in uniform, they must reverse that decision and bring all military housing under a single, decent standard. They must also stop backsliding on their commitment to fully fund the recovery of our military housing stock.

We cannot meet this moment alone. Our security is bound up with that of our European neighbours, because geography has not changed, even if American commitment is growing less certain. The Liberal Democrats want the Government to show real ambition to restart negotiations for Britain to join the Security Action for Europe programme, to work with partners towards a European rearmament bank, and to help build a European security council that can co-ordinate our allies’ efforts to meet NATO’s requirements, even as Washington draws back.

Our alliances are one of our greatest strengths, and should the worst ever happen, we are far stronger standing with our friends than on our own. That is why squandering soft power through cuts to international development aid and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office are an entirely false economy. Those cuts diminish our standing in the world and create issues for which we will have to pay far more down the line. It is always cheaper to prevent a war than to fight one, which is why our hard and soft power must go hand in hand.

I will end where I started: it is time that the Government and the new Prime Minister, when he takes office, lead a serious national conversation with the public. We hear endless rhetoric about tough choices, and those will not get any easier without public support. The parties represented in this Chamber will come up with different answers to the question—we can debate that here—but every party will find it harder to justify those choices unless they are part of a real national conversation on defence, and that conversation is simply not happening right now.

Just this week, the United States warned of a possible imminent attack by Russian forces on Poland to test NATO defences. The threat is not abstract; the threat is real, and it is to the safety of our children and our nation’s future. I urge Ministers and the incoming Prime Minister to be decisive, issue defence bonds, take the conversation on defence out into the real world, and show the urgency that the moment deserves before it is too late.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the shadow Minister.

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[The Minister for Veterans and People (Mr Calvin Bailey)]

I am pleased to have been a signatory to the application for this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) on securing it. [Laughter.] Therein is a lesson.

The subject of the debate—rearmament and readiness—could hardly be of greater importance to our constituents, our military and the future security of our nation. I thank Members of all parties who have contributed to a compelling discussion, and I welcome the opportunity to respond to some of the points that have been raised. You can enjoy the confusion of my moving between my speech and the notes I have taken.

I will attempt to explain how the Ministry of Defence is working to get our armed forces warfighting ready as an urgent priority. However, I will start by responding to the principal criticism of the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) that there is no new money. I emphasise that £300 billion is new money; £15 billion is new money. I will never, ever let you forget the cold water that I endured in the messes of the bases on which I served—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

Order. Please can I remind you that saying “you” is not acceptable in this Chamber, because it refers to me?

[Mr Bailey]

The removal of funding specifically in 2010 resulted in the removal of Nimrod and the reduction of our shipyards and boatyards, which has led to the risks that are manifesting today. The Opposition cannot deny that is the reason that we are in the position we are in now.

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[Mr Bailey]

I thank the right hon. Member for his question. Perhaps we should have a discussion about it outside, because of its ambiguity—[Interruption.] The right hon. Member and I will speak afterwards.

The programme of rapid rearmament mentioned in the motion of this debate has not only begun; we are well on our way to delivering it, with significant and further increases in funding to come. That means an unprecedented investment in new technologies, new munitions, new factories and new jobs. It means creating a path to 3% and then 3.5% of GDP, and having honest public conversations about the very serious threats we face. As a fellow veteran, I know how committed the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells is to strengthening UK defence. I hope we get behind this national endeavour, which represents an historic upturn in support for our military and for our brilliant service personnel who keep Britain safe in an increasingly uncertain world.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call Mike Martin to wind up very quickly.