Defence Investment Plan

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

I am grateful to the Chair of the Select Committee for the scrutiny that I know he will apply to this important piece of work. He reeled off a number of different capabilities, and I am very happy to discuss those with him in more detail.

The essence of my hon. Friend’s question was to seek an assurance that I will commit to fight for the funding that defence needs, and I will, of course, give him that commitment. It is my job now to ensure that we have the resources we need to field the kind of capabilities required to keep our country safe at a point of great challenge. That does involve working very closely with our NATO allies and providing them with the certainty of our long-term commitment towards defence funding, and it will require us to show a trajectory to our commitment to 3.5%.

He is also right to raise the point about backing Britain. The Prime Minister, the Chancellor and other ministerial colleagues have been absolutely clear that, while we require additional resource to provide the capabilities we need, we must do that in a way that ensures we are best able to grow our economy, and create and sustain good, well-paid defence jobs right around the United Kingdom. That is an absolute priority for me, and I give him an assurance that we will work closely with him on it.

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

At last, we have agreement on a defence expenditure statistic. When the Secretary of State says that what the settlement means is that the proportion of GDP spent on defence by the end of this decade will now be higher than at any time in the past 30 years, he is quite right. The trouble is that if we go back 30 years to 1995, what we were spending then under the new accounting rules was 3% of GDP, and that was six years after the fall of the Berlin wall. Given that we are now in a more dangerous situation today than at any time since at least the height of the cold war in the 1980s, should we not be looking at the sort of percentages we spent then? Under the new accounting rules, that was between 4.1% and 5.5%. Haven’t we still got a long way to go?

[Dan Jarvis]

The right hon. Gentleman knows that I always listen very carefully to what he has to say, not least because he talks a lot of good sense on these matters. Over the many years of him being sat on the Government Benches and me sat on the Opposition Benches, I remember listening to the case he made for investment in defence, including investment in nuclear. I know, therefore, that he will welcome the £63 billion over the next four years to strengthen the UK’s nuclear deterrent. He has spoken with great consistency on these matters over many, many years.

The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that there is still work to do to point the trajectory to 3.5%. I think today is a very significant step forward in terms of providing additional resource and additional capability. The £298 billion is a very significant commitment by this Government. When we came into office two years ago, the percentage of GDP was at 2.3%. We have increased that. We are on a trajectory to increase it over the next few years, and we must ensure that, through the next spending review process, we have the resource that I think most right hon. and hon. Members agree we now need to chart that course to 3.5%. That is an absolute commitment that we will honour, and we will work closely with our NATO allies in order to do so.