Julian Lewis
Main Page: Julian Lewis (Conservative - New Forest East)Department Debates - View all Julian Lewis's debates with the Cabinet Office
June European Council
Julian Lewis Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
On a different subject, will the Prime Minister accept that, while she has secured the future of the nuclear deterrent submarines, and while she has invested, rightly and heavily, in intelligence, security and cyber, if a black hole is found in the conventional defence budget, we will need to fill it, if we are to fulfil the ambitious programme she set out in her statement?
The Prime Minister
As my right hon. Friend knows, and as I referred to in my statement, we are committed to spending 2% of GDP on defence, but we are also committed to increasing the amount we spend on defence by 0.5% above inflation every year, which I did not refer to in my statement. Then there is the £179 billion we will be spending on equipment. The whole point of the modernising defence programme is to look at the defence of the future and the threats we now face, and to make sure that we have the capabilities to meet those threats.