Lord Craig of Radley
Main Page: Lord Craig of Radley (Crossbench - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Craig of Radley's debates with the Leader of the House
(5 years, 11 months ago)
Lords ChamberThere was general agreement that there was an urgent need to step up defence spending. All allies agreed to it. The 2% is by 2024.
My Lords, the 2% for NATO is well understood, but the United Kingdom aspires to much more than just operating in the NATO context. There is now talk of a global Britain post Brexit, with deployments to the Far East of maritime and air forces, and we have already seen some of that. Surely 2% is not enough to cover such commitments and more should be made available to defence.
Our modernising defence programme is obviously critical. We want to play a global role and we will continue to fund defence as we see fit to meet our global obligations.