Budget Resolutions
Debate between Mark Francois and Luke Evans(1 week, 6 days ago)
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Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
It is a pleasure to sum up for His Majesty’s Opposition this afternoon. Perhaps I can begin on a consensual note by pointing out that yet again, as we are debating these important economic matters, including the defence of the realm, there is no Member of Parliament from the Reform party present. They have taken no part in this debate at all. We know that they do not do Thursday afternoons, and they certainly do not do defence either.
Mr Francois
No, I think it is because they are desperately trying to find someone—anyone—to go to one of their press conferences.
Now, according to the Red Book, working-age welfare spending will increase to £221.5 billion in 2031-32. That is almost a quarter of a trillion pounds and an increase of over £57 billion since 2024-25. The Prime Minister famously said at the Dispatch Box just a few weeks ago that
“national security…cannot come at the expense of social security.”—[Official Report, 9 September 2026; Vol. 790, c. 1036.]
That really is a segue to what I principally want to say this afternoon.
What the Chancellor announced yesterday was not a detailed programme for how to spend 3% of GDP on defence, but just a plan to have a plan—which is not really a plan at all. He promised to “begin work”—his words—on how this would be achieved by the time of the spending review next year. The Labour Government have already had two years to answer this question, so why do they need a further year now?
When Labour published the strategic defence review in June 2025, all three authors of the review, led by Lord Robertson, a respected former Secretary-General of NATO, were absolutely adamant that the bill for implementing their recommendations was a minimum of 3% of GDP on defence. Unless and until the Government definitively commit to spending that money, it is very difficult for our armed forces realistically to deter a war with any aggressor, and in particular the Russians—not the Trussians!
At the time of the SDR, we were told that that level of detail would be provided in the subsequent defence investment plan. The House was promised this in the autumn, then by Christmas, then by the new year, then in the spring, and it was finally published only in late June 2026. Nevertheless, when the DIP was eventually published, the Government kicked the can down the road for a second time and still failed to provide a definitive date for when, and crucially how, this country would spend 3% of GDP on defence. Indeed, the then Defence Secretary, now the Chancellor, famously resigned, seemingly on a point of honour, because the Government had failed to give a date for 3%. I have here his resignation letter, dated 11 June, and I quote from it directly:
“After explaining to you that I would not be able to accept a DIP settlement that does not give our Forces the resources they need, I am now left with no other option than to submit my resignation as your Defence Secretary.”
It is also worth recalling that the then Veterans Minister, the hon. and gallant Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns), resigned in company with him, partly over this and also because of his very severe reservations about the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill—a wicked Bill—which he famously described as “unfit for purpose”.
Once the previous Prime Minister then fell, miraculously, having resigned as Defence Secretary, the right hon. Member for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough (John Healey) was immediately reincarnated as the Chancellor of the Exchequer. However, he then found himself with the boot very much on the other foot. Given his understanding of defence, and the solemn terms in which he wrote his letter, it was not unreasonable to assume that, having now seized control of the bridge at the Treasury, he would be ideally placed to meet his own request to name the date for 3% and how to finance it. Otherwise, why did he resign? I am therefore genuinely deeply saddened to see that, yesterday, he failed his own test. All we were given was an offer to produce a plan for 3% in the Government spending review, which will take place next year. In other words, a man who seemingly resigned on a point of honour, when he had the perfect chance to put that problem right, completely ducked it. All that Labour has done is kick the can down the road for a third time.
Our armed forces therefore cannot realistically plan because they do not know how much money they will really have to spend on this nation’s defence, and they are now going to have to wait at least another year before they do. The House need not take it from me; Chris Mason, the political editor of the BBC, in summarising the Budget on the 6 o’clock news last night, said, “The biggest questions this Government still faces, such as the long-term funding of defence, this Budget didn’t answer.”
In fact, it is even worse than that. When the Defence Secretary agreed the SDR, he also signed up with the Treasury for almost £11 billion of efficiency savings. This was a Labour deal—a Faustian pact—between two warring Government Departments, but the effect of those in-year efficiency savings, or “spending cuts” in pub English, is now proving debilitating for our armed forces. The in-year cuts were some £2.5 billion in the previous financial year and £3.5 billion this year, 2026-27.
One of the reasons it took nearly a month to get HMS Dragon to sea was that maintenance cuts occurred under the efficiency savings programme. We now see the vast bulk of the Royal Navy tied up alongside the quayside, partly because of maintenance issues but also to save money. For many months, we had a period in which not a single one of our nuclear attack submarines was at sea. The Minister might intervene and chide me for discussing submarine movements on the Floor of the House, but I am not—I am discussing the absence of submarine movements on the Floor of the House.
We have also seen Army exercises cancelled on Salisbury plain and flying hours reduced for some of our RAF pilots. These are exactly the wrong things to be doing if we are trying to send messages to Vladimir Putin, a former KGB colonel, to deter him from further adventurism—for instance, in the Baltic states. Yesterday, the Labour Chair of the Defence Committee—I am afraid I am going to quote him again—excellently summed it up by saying that
“some of the key decisions on defence spending have lamentably been delayed until next year’s spending review. There is a cost to inaction. Investment in our nation’s defence and security cannot be kicked into the long grass. Our adversaries are not bound by fiscal years and spending cycles.”
He should know.
Yesterday we even learned from the depths of the Budget Red Book that the Chancellor has effectively cut the overall MOD budget by £1 billion in each of the next two years by pocketing reduced spending estimates on MOD pensions for the Treasury, rather than allowing the MOD to retain the cash and spend it on bolstering our defences. The Treasury has described these two £1 billion cuts in the defence budget as an “accounting adjustment”. Well, it is Enron accounting. It is smoke and mirrors, and it only helps our adversaries, not our armed forces.
On defence housing, there is a similar story. I served for some five months on the Armed Forces Bill Committee, and we were told repeatedly that the money for housing would not be raided for short-term efficiency savings. In fact, the hon. and gallant Member for Birmingham Selly Oak told us in the Select Committee on the Armed Forces Bill on 18 March:
“The £9 billion has been ringfenced; it has absolutely been secured for defence housing. Nothing in the DIP process will stop us getting on with the job of making these improvements and getting the job done. We have made that commitment to not just the armed forces community but the nation. We have said it in the House, and we will see it through.”
That is completely unambiguous, so imagine our anger when we then saw a letter from the permanent secretary to the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, dated 25 September, which said not only that some £850 million of that money will be deferred to the next Parliament, but that an additional £1 billion of upgrades to single living accommodation for soldiers will be deferred as well. What the Government have done is cut nearly £2 billion of that investment in this Parliament, in a desperate attempt to meet exactly the Treasury-imposed efficiency savings target that, for five months, they swore blind to us they would not do.
The Defence Secretary, who opened this debate, neglected to mention the MOD’s £3.5 billion efficiency savings target for this year. He talks about being ready for war within 1,000 days, while at the same time imposing crippling cuts on the operations and training of our armed forces, who are there to deter war in the first place—si vis pacem, para bellum. The Budget totally failed to answer the question of how the Government will actually spend 3% of GDP on defence, and they are listening in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang. This is a dereliction of duty by a Government who will the ends but do not will the means, who talk tough but act weak, who have let down the people of this country and will not defend them properly, and who must be held to account at the ballot box for their abject failure in defence of the realm.
Iran
Debate between Mark Francois and Luke Evans(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Dr Evans
Au contraire—how could my hon. Friend possibly make that suggestion? The public will see what this looks like. Did Labour Back Benchers not listen to the words of the Leader of the House about how important this debate is? Clearly, other hon. Members are too busy dealing with something even more important.
As I was saying, I am actually very pleased to be debating Iran, because the situation there has an impact on all aspects of our lives. The real question is not why we are debating the situation in Iran, but what decisions will be made by the man who will take charge in four or five days’ time. The Government are effectively asking us to debate a storm without understanding how the captain wants to steer us through it. That is why this debate matters.
Let’s start with energy. We have heard from both sides of the House about the impact that the situation in Iran will have on energy. Will the new Prime Minister think about opening new licences? What is he going to do about the cost of living and fuel prices? We do not know the answer, but that is going to have a big impact. We know that the cost of energy is going up in this country, despite the Government’s promises at the election that it would fall, and we do not have an answer on what the right hon. Member for Makerfield will do. We are not 100% sure what he will do on net zero. We have just had an urgent question on resilience and possible blackouts in this country, but we do not understand what he will do. I am quite keen to understand the thoughts of the person who will be in charge in five days’ time on how to deal with that issue and grow resilience in the country.
We have rightly heard from Members on the Government Benches about defence. There has been a lot of turmoil in defence under the Labour Government. We have lost a Defence Secretary. We have had a defence investment plan and, as I rightly pointed out earlier, it was expected to need £28 billion, but it has hit £15 billion. That is the funding that has been committed, but there is a gap there, isn’t there? We are £4.7 billion short. The right hon. Member for Makerfield will have to fill that gap in the handover, so how is he going to do it?
Mr Francois
My hon. Friend is making a very good speech, but he should not undersell this point. On top of the £4.7 billion that has not been approved by the Treasury, there is £10.7 billion that has to be generated from cuts to the Ministry of Defence budget and recycled. If we put them together, that is £15 billion, which is more than all the new money put together.
Dr Evans
My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I would love to put that question to the right hon. Member for Makerfield, if he was here, although I expect that it would have come more eruditely from my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) on the Front Bench. This is precisely my point: we do not know how that issue will be resolved.
The hon. Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman), who spoke before me, spoke about the humanitarian situation, which is hugely important. We have no idea what the decisions of the right hon. Member for Makerfield will be when it comes to dealing with international aid. After all, the current Prime Minister castigated the previous Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, for making cuts to international aid, then went and made cuts himself. The question is: will the new Prime Minister make the same decision? Will he hold to it or reverse it? I do not know—this Chamber does not know, and that is the point.
The DIP hits our domestic policies too. The funding needed to defend our nation and ensure that we are protected from the likes of Iran must mean a capital expenditure cut, which will be 1% in health and 1% in education. Which frontline services in health are going? Which hospitals in the hospital programme will not be built? There was a negotiation between the US and the UK on pharmaceuticals in our trade deal. That was signed off with the US, which has a tendency to use leverage on us when it comes to international issues such as Iran and tariffs. We still do not know from this Government where that funding will come from, but it has to come from the frontline when it comes to the NHS. I would love to ask the new Prime Minister what that looks like and how he will fund the new drugs that we need, but, alas, we will sadly not get that opportunity.
What does the 1% off education look like for school budgets? When it comes to education, especially when we have the likes of VAT on private schools, which has meant that 100 schools have closed and we have less teachers than when this Government came in—
British Indian Ocean Territory
Debate between Mark Francois and Luke Evans(9 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)
I have actually enjoyed seeing what the Foreign Office has been doing over the past few weeks. I was trying to determine why I have been getting so much more enjoyment out of it, and I think it is because it has been taking advice from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”. Every time we have a Foreign Office question, the Black Knight comes in front of us. They are honourable, brave and doughty; they will not answer a question; they are torn limb from limb, and their arguments are struck down one by one; but they still want to have the fight.
Dr Evans
It is indeed. I applaud the Government and their Ministers for doing that.
We hear time and again from Government Members that we have had ample time to debate these issues. I entirely agree, but that is exactly the problem. These debates have been going on for so long because we are not getting the answers that we need to do our job and scrutinise this deal. Anyone making a good argument should be able to justify their point and evidence it. I will summarise some of the key questions that I want answered, and will say why we seem stuck. I will then explain why that matters, and, finally, will give the context of this debate.
First, we ask about the legal position. The Government say that there is legal jeopardy, but the Conservatives contend that what the International Court of Justice says is non-binding, that there is no court that could pass judgment, and that there is a Commonwealth opt-out. The Government say that the cost is £3.4 billion; the Government Actuary says that the figure is £34 billion, and the Conservatives contend that the Government are using the wrong tool to make a judgment on cost, because net present value does not count. When it comes to the environment, the Government say that safeguards are in place, but the Conservatives contend that Mauritius does not have a navy that would enable it to hold up its side of the bargain and prevent damage to fishing.
Turning to the nuclear aspect, we Conservatives recognise that the Pelindaba treaty creates a conflict, and the Government have not explained why it does not. As for the US’s involvement and whether it has a veto, we believe that the 1966 agreement would need to be taken into account. Finally, although it has not been mentioned today or over the past few weeks, there is the long-term security of this base. At the end of 99 years, there is only an option for us to buy and continue, so what happens at that point? We have not secured the long-term security of the base at all.