Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi
Main Page: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)Department Debates - View all Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi's debates with the Ministry of Defence
UK Armed Forces
Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts(9 months, 1 week ago)
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James Cartlidge
As I said, it is important that we engage in the key capability questions. It is one thing to talk about spending more, but what capabilities would we purchase, and where are our shortcomings? It must be a new development at the heart of defence to have a constant feedback loop of data on integrated warfighting and what is happening in Ukraine, with the armed services and with industry, so that we know what capabilities will make the difference. To give one example, we have seen the extraordinary impact of uncrewed weapons in Ukraine. We have made assumptions about technologies in our equipment plan, which are probably far more expensive than those options. We need to look at this from a warfighting point of view. To support deterrence, the important thing is to back our armed forces. That is why we have our spending commitment, but it has to be balanced against the ability of the economy to support it and sustain it in the long term.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
The Times recently illustrated that the British Army will shrink in size to 67,000 within the next two years due to the current recruitment and retention crisis. Our senior and close allies, including the US, have expressed their grave concerns, and even senior Conservatives have conceded that our armed forces have been hollowed out since 2010. As threats to the UK increase, why have the Government shrunk our Army to its smallest size since Napoleon?
James Cartlidge
The hon. Gentleman talks about a crisis in recruitment but, as I said, January saw the highest number of applications to join the Army for six years. That is an important and positive development. On the size of the armed forces, we should talk about not just the number of soldiers, but the amount of accommodation to support them, and the platforms, the weapons and the capabilities. That is an extremely expensive undertaking. If the hon. Gentleman thinks that that is the right thing to do, he needs to lobby his colleagues on his own Front Bench, because they have not committed to spending 2% of GDP on defence, let alone 2.5%.