Defence: 2.5% GDP Spending Commitment

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

I welcome the fact that 23 NATO nations will hit the 2% spend this year. I regard that as a floor, not a ceiling. The UK, under Governments of both parties, has always spent well above and set the pace for other European countries. We will continue to do that, because European countries in NATO must take on more of the NATO leadership. We are determined that the UK will do that, which is why we have said that our approach to defence will be a NATO-first policy. We will, wherever we can, look to be first in NATO, so that we set the pace on the sort of transformation to the better equipped, better able and more lethal forces that our nations need to deter adversaries and to defend ourselves if required.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

The Secretary of State is right that we used to spend a lot more than 2%: in the 1980s we spent between 4.5% and 5.1% of GDP on defence. Does he share my concern at what I heard on the radio this morning, when a Labour politician in another place was saying that he could see an outcome in Ukraine whereby Russia gets to keep the territory it has occupied, while Ukraine does not get any guarantee of joining NATO but merely some more security assurances? We know what happened last time with the security assurances previously given. Does the Secretary of State agree that, whether we spend 2.5% on defence now or in the near future, it is important that whoever we send to Washington does not capitulate in advance?

[John Healey]

The right hon. Gentleman made the important point, implicitly in his question, that it is the Ukrainians who are fighting and the Ukrainians who will make the call about whether to talk and on what terms. Our task, as one of the leading supporters of Ukraine and its fight for sovereignty, freedom and its own future, is to support it and to step up our support for its fight, and then to step up our support, if necessary and whenever required, in any negotiations, as well as to play our part, as we have made the commitment to do, in providing any security guarantees for the longer term.