UK Defence Capability

Lord Harper Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I thank the noble and gallant Lord for the question. In any investment plan going forward, obviously the emphasis tends to be on capital as the noble and gallant Lord says—how many planes will we have, what we will do with munitions, and those sorts of things. However, he is quite right to point out the resource element of the budget—the day-to-day expenditure that pays for wages, training and all those things—is equally important, otherwise we run into trouble, particularly mid-year if there is a need to rebalance and look how to resource the particulars. The noble and gallant Lord often points out that if we do not get the resource allocation right, it impacts on the morale of the very people who serve our country. He is quite right to point that out. Discussions about the correct split between CDEL and RDEL is also going on.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister drew attention to recent reports in the media about funding the defence investment plan. Given that we are only a few weeks away from its publication, assuming it does hit the pre-NATO summit deadline, does he think that what can only be described as a Cabinet whip-round to pay for the defence investment plan sends the right message to the adversaries that the Chief of the Defence Staff highlighted?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

The Government are looking at how they can increase defence spending, which we all want to see, and how we increase the defence budget. There is a variety of ways of doing that. He will know from experience that Governments often set budgets and then reorder priorities within them as circumstances change. That is a perfectly legitimate, perfectly reasonable thing for any Government to do. I say to the noble Lord that if the Government were not looking at how they are raising the money, if they were not looking at how to reorder priorities to find the money the noble Lord expects—as I do—he would not have asked that question. He would have reversed it and asked why the Government are not reordering priorities to meet the demands of the country and to fund the defence plan properly. Let me answer him: we are doing that and we will do it.