Rearmament and Warfighting Readiness
House of Commons · Commons Chamber · 8 Jul 2026 · 102 speeches · Official Report
I beg to move, That this House recognises the danger that Russia’s renewed illegal invasion of Ukraine poses to European and British security; further recognises the threat to the international order and the UK posed by China; also recognises the increasing uncertainty surrounding the reliability of the US as an ally within NATO; acknowledges the current shortfalls in the UK’s ability to deploy a credible fighting force; further acknowledges that this lack of military capability is resulting in the coercion of Britain and its interests in the international sphere; and calls on the Government to begin a programme of rapid rearmament to strengthen the defence of the UK and its allies. The key word of the motion on the Order Paper today is “rapid”-rapid rearmament, not eventual rearmament or rearmament with an asterisk. The reason it is the key word is that the clock is not ours to choose. Three weeks ago, before the defence investment plan came out, the Prime Minister said: “it is our intelligence assessment, and the assessment of other countries in NATO, that there could be an attack by Russia on NATO as soon as 2030.” The deadline is not contested. Intelligence confirms it, NATO proclaims it-they are speaking of this in Ankara today-and our Government accept it. We must be ready by 2030. That is why the defence investment plan is so maddening. I have read it from cover to cover-I am that kind of guy-and I cannot wrap my head around it. It fails the test of its own threat...
The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. The first four years-the near-term investment period-covers the period until the next election. The second half-the longer-term investment period-covers the next five years, all the way up to 2035. However, the DIP is a 10-year plan, so it should in fact go beyond 2035, and beyond two elections’ time, to 2036, which it clearly does not, because the number “2036” does not appear once in the defence investment plan.
This actually speaks to the delay. Had the DIP come out when it was meant to, in 2025, it would have been a 10-year plan, because it would have gone from 2025 to 2035. However, the Government were unable to get their ducks in a row and the DIP was delayed by a year. If we had waited for them to rejig the plan to go up until 2036, I think we might have waited until 2040 for the plan. This is a DIP of two halves, and the really worrying bit is that most of the investment is in the second half, which is unfunded. Let me give the House some examples. In the air domain there is £27.8 billion before 2030, and £70 billion after-unfunded. In the maritime domain there is £18 billion before 2030, and £32 billion after-unfunded. In the land domain there is £19.2 billion before, and £36 billion after-unfunded. For weapons and munitions there is £11.1 billion before, and £20 billion after-unfunded. It beggars belief. Why bother publishing a plan when, by my calculations, almost two thirds of the investments that the Government seek to make are in the second half, which is unfunded? One of the reasons that we have pulled this plan together is to give certainty to industry, so that they know how to invest.
My concern is that the only British company offering to build an advanced jet trainer replacement for the Red Arrows Hawk jet, AERALIS, has gone into receivership because of the delay in the DIP, which means it will not assemble those lovely British jets in my constituency.
I think we have all heard stories of firms such as the one in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, whether in our own constituencies or in the conversations we have as Members of Parliament who are interested in defence. It has been catastrophic for British industry, and rushing out an unfunded DIP, which is effectively what this is, has not helped. It has meant that some small capital investments, one third of the total pot for the next four years, can be made by firms. However, for anything that stretches beyond 2030, nobody can be sure enough to make that investment.
The hon. Gentleman is making a very accurate critique. Is he aware that the Treasury Committee, led by the redoubtable hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), was looking at defence funding at lunch time today, and that in that hearing, barely an hour ago, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury admitted under persistent questioning that the Government have done no work on how to get to 3.5% of GDP on defence?
All I will say is that the defence of the realm is the most serious issue for any Government.
The hon. Gentleman is very kind to give way again, as he is right in the middle of unpicking the DIP thread by thread. Does he agree that we need to look at the manifest, substantial disappointment that we and everyone in uniform see in the DIP now that it has been announced, and try to reconcile that with how delayed it was? What does he think the Government were doing, given that there are so many black holes and missing spaces in the DIP? What does he think they were debating over the 11 months that the DIP was delayed?
The original sin is divorcing the strategic defence review from the DIP-divorcing the vision from the resources. For the past year, the Department has been arguing first with itself about whether it can downgrade some of the things in the strategic defence review-there are a couple of instances where that has happened, which I will come on to-and then with the Treasury to get more money to fill the gap. Effectively, it wrote a vision that was far too grand for the money that was ever going to be available. Let me turn from the money to the metal and have a look at some of the capabilities. I could give a very long speech on military analysis about which capabilities should be in or out, but I will not do that. I think it would test- [ Interruption. ] I know that right hon. and hon. Members would like me to do that; perhaps I will set up a Substack or something. Let us look at the Royal Navy-the senior service. At the turn of this century-as someone born in 1982, I still feel weird saying that-the UK had 20 frigates. By the end of this year, we will have five. Pre-DIP, they were scheduled to go out of service in 2035. In a little-noticed line in the DIP, we are bringing forward that date. All five frigates, which have well exceeded their service date, are going in 2033. Their replacements, the Type 26s and the Type 23s, will come into service-you guessed it-in 2030-35. We therefore have old ships retiring on a fixed schedule and new ships coming in on an unfunded one. My...
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I will give way to the former Minister.
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, from sail to ironclad, ironclad to dreadnought, dreadnought to highly capable frigate, we need to make the next generational leap? If we find ourselves caught in programmes that deliver last year’s capability, we will remove any wriggle room or space to make that jump into autonomy and automation.
I agree with everything that the hon. Member has just said, and I thank him. However, all I am highlighting is that, on past performance, going from PowerPoints to ships at sea in nine years with several classes of ship seems extremely risky. Moreover, the DIP sets aside only £1.3 billion in the first funded period to set up those ships. The remainder of the investment falls beyond 2030. I want to move to autonomy because it is the right thing to do, but that seems like an incredibly risky bet.
Will my hon. Friend give way?
I will make some progress because I am having eyes made at me by Madam Deputy Speaker. The DIP commits £8.6 billion to the global combat air programme, which is the sixth-generation fighter jet that we are building with Italy and Japan. Realistically, we will get the jets in service sometime after 2040. They are manned fighter jets. I ask hon. Members to cast their minds forward to beyond Putin’s death-he will probably be buried by that point-and ask themselves whether, in 2040, humans will be flying fighter jets. I think the answer is no. The Minister is a former pilot, so he will always argue for humans in fighter jets, but I will present my argument. When we dig into GCAP, we find that it is a crewed rather than an uncrewed system because that is what our Japanese partners wanted.
Will the hon. Member give way?
I am afraid that I will not because I want to make progress. We are privileging a good diplomatic relationship, which would weather the storm of our pulling out of GCAP, over military capability. We must consider whether we want manned fighter jets in 2040 or a Royal Navy right now. Do we want frigates and destroyers in the next four years? Do we want to transition effectively, in a funded way, to a hybrid Navy, or manned fighter jets in 2040? The same story is repeated wherever we look: deep precision strike missiles are due in the early 2030s; nuclear-enabled F-35As are due in the early 2030s; putting 76,000 soldiers in the British Army to reverse the Tory cuts is an investment through to 2035. [Interruption.] I know that hon. Members were waiting for that-I had to get one little elbow in the ribs. Time and again, the capability that the threat demands by 2030 is scheduled for after 2030, funded by a spending review that has not happened and has been signed off by no one. That leaves one final question: does the current Prime Minister believe his own threat assessment? If he does and he is not funding it-not putting his money, or our money, where his mouth is-that is highly negligent. Perhaps he does not believe his own intelligence chiefs’ assessments and those of his partners. In that case, he should tell us. I fear that future generations will look back at this Labour Government’s approach to defence with their heads in their hands.
I impose an immediate six-minute time limit.
Everyone in this debate will rightly speak about defence spending, procurement and ammunition, and those things all absolutely matter, but I want to ask a broader question: what does warfighting readiness actually mean in 2026? For too long, we have measured military strength by the number of ships afloat, aircraft we fly or tanks we field, and those capabilities will remain essential, but recent conflicts have reminded us that wars are rarely won by militaries alone; wars are won by nations. They are won by industries that can out-produce an adversary, economies that can absorb shocks, and societies resilient enough to sustain conflict over time. I have seen this at first hand in Ukraine. Time and again, I have met individuals whose courage is beyond question, but courage alone is not enough. Success depends on whether ammunition arrives when it is needed, whether new technology can be adapted in weeks rather than years, and whether industry can keep pace with the demands of the battlefield. The side that learns, adapts and regenerates fastest gains the advantage, and that should challenge how we think about readiness. Warfighting readiness is no longer simply the responsibility of the Ministry of Defence. It is an industrial strategy, an energy strategy and a technological strategy. Ultimately, it is a national resilience strategy. If our energy networks are vulnerable, if our communications can be disrupted, if our supply chains depend on hostile states, if our British...
I recently met a number of small and medium-sized enterprises and start-up companies that want to produce drones and autonomous systems and to integrate AI more, but they are concerned about the pace of change in the MOD. Does my hon. and gallant Friend believe that the MOD needs to start pacing up and getting on with the job of working with these companies to provide us with the sort of protection we need?
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. Data is the new gunpowder. AI is absolutely critical in defence, and we should use all of our technological advantage to move faster and further than ever before. We should be bold and jump to the next generation of systems, and not wait for anyone else to lead-we should lead ourselves. The lesson from my perspective is clear: stockpiles matter, but the ability to regenerate them matters even more. That is why I welcome the Government’s commitment to rebuild munition stockpiles, expand domestic production capacity and invest in British defence industry. Those are investments not just in military capability, but in national resilience. The same is true for technology. Ukraine has demonstrated that innovation cycles measured in months can outperform procurement cycles measured in decades. Drones, autonomous systems, software and artificial intelligence are changing warfare at an extraordinary speed, and it will only ever get faster. Readiness, therefore, means building a procurement system that can adapt just as quickly, giving innovative British companies a route into defence and ensuring that our armed forces can evolve as rapidly as the threats they face. We have at present over 10,000 people in Defence Equipment and Support-that is, 10,000 people doing procurement. I am not saying that it is inefficient, but I am saying that bureaucracy sometimes gets in the way of speed.
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that embedding that culture of innovation and iteration in the MOD is critical to ensuring that we can move as quickly as possible?
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. This is about cultural change as much as adopting technology. If we were to adopt even the very simplest AI models now in how we do procurement, and move on to the next generation, we would find that the system speeds up, efficiencies are made and the right kit gets into the right hands far quicker than it does now. Ultimately, rearmament is not about preparing for war because we expect it; it is about ensuring that war never happens in the first place. The purpose of rearmament is deterrence, and deterrence rests on three foundations: capable armed forces, political resolve and the industrial capacity to sustain both. If any one of those is missing, deterrence becomes far less credible when faced with an autocratic nation with huge industrial resilience. As we discuss rearmament today, let us think beyond platforms, procurement and spending lines. The defining lesson of modern conflict is that warfighting readiness is not simply a military condition; it is a national condition.
The hon. and gallant Gentleman is in a unique position to advise the House on his assessment of the DIP as published. Can he give us his view on whether the quantity of funds provided and the certainty of the period over which they will be provided are sufficient to achieve the kind of industrial step change that he is advocating in his excellent speech?
I have been clear, since several weeks ago, that I was not content with the funding for the DIP or the transformational nature of it. I have been really encouraged in the last couple of weeks by the speed at which it is moving. We need to move more, and I think the spending review in due course will round that off. My perspective is that we must not underestimate the level of change that is required. This is systemic within the Department and within the single services, and it has to move a quantum leap forward-no pun intended-if we are going to deliver the change that is required. If Britain wants armed forces that are capable of fighting and winning, we must build a country that can endure, adapt and sustain them. In modern conflict, as Ukraine has taught us, the line between the military and civilian worlds has all but disappeared. That is what true readiness looks like, and that is the challenge before us.
It is an honour to succeed the hon. and gallant Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns) in this debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) who opened the debate-a very timely debate it is, too. I particularly commend the point that the former Minister for the Armed Forces, the hon. and gallant Member for Birmingham Selly Oak, made about this being a whole-of-nation approach, because we are preparing for war. We might actually be at war in some senses, because Russia is knowingly saying that it is conducting a war against NATO, and we are certainly subject to a hybrid war against our national infrastructure-hacking our hospitals, closing down Jaguar Land Rover and harassing our shipping. This is a very low level of war, but we have certainly been under attack from the way that Russia rations gas to western Europe as a weapon. Turning energy into a weapon, turning food into a weapon-Russia is doing the lot, and the writing is on the wall. The Government still have not woken up to the fact that the head of NATO, and even the Prime Minister at Munich, has said that we have to be ready to fight a war-a shooting, kinetic war-against Russia by 2030. There is no sign in the implementation of policy that the Government understand the urgency of that. There are plenty of people in Government who get the urgency of this, and I met some of them with Lord Robertson earlier this week to be briefed on national resilience, but there is a deep reluctance in...
The hon. Member is making a good and strong point. Does he agree that, frankly, it boils down to the fact that the Government must be much blunter with the British people about the nature of the threat we face?
Yes, and I think the Government have plans for that, but they keep pulling back because it is a difficult thing to talk about. The spin doctors and spads will tell their political masters, “Oh no, don’t talk about that-the polling says it is terrible.” I am afraid that we have to confront the polling. We have to confront the population with the ugly truth: this country is at far greater risk than it has ever been since the height of the cold war.
On the point about communicating with the public, there is a way to do it. I visited Norway recently, and it has communicated with its population incredibly well, to the extent that it has this concept of total defence and civil preparedness, where everybody in the entire nation recognises that they have a role to play. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we can learn a lot from some of our friends and allies?
In this paper entitled “Understanding the UK’s Transition to Warfighting Readiness” that I am just about to explain briefly to the House, we refer to Norway’s concept. Norway’s total war concept is being embedded in its national life and embedded across Government policy through all branches of Government. For example, we refer in the report to the need to galvanise our universities to be ready for war, so that research and development programmes are directed towards suitable and useful capability, creating sovereign national capability and protecting those research programmes from foreign infiltration. I love having foreign students in our universities-it is good for the economy and for our universities-but we cannot have Chinese nationals at the heart of chip manufacture and design, robotics or AI systems. We have to protect our national technology from being spied on by people sent to this country to go to our universities in order to collect that information, steal it and give it to our enemies. The context of the document, which is almost old hat even though it is only a few months old, is the changing geopolitical situation, the withdrawal of America from European security, the collapse of the rules-based international order, the failure of democratic governance models to rise to the challenge, the unpreparedness of most western democracies to be ready to confront the hybrid warfare that we already face, and our lack of adaptability. I commend the point made by the...
On that point, will the hon. Member give way?
We need resilient financial systems. We need sovereign defence capabilities and sovereign critical national infrastructure. I am glad that we have stopped handing over so much of our CNI to foreign owners, but an immediate, radical transformation is required. This document is 19,000 words drafted for me and for my friend the hon. Member for Widnes and Halewood (Derek Twigg), who serves on the Defence Committee and is a renowned expert on defence in the House, by Chris Donnelly, who used to be a Soviet expert at NATO, worked in the Ministry of Defence and finished up teaching at Shrivenham. He is a wise defence guru. If hon. Members want to know how much really needs to be changed, they should just read through these 19,000 words of analysis and recommendations. There is a huge task, but to carry it through we need to carry the people. The SDR promised a national conversation-where is that national conversation?
On that point, will the hon. Member give way?
There is a national conversation about who will be the next Prime Minister or whether there will be a by-election in Clacton, but there is no such national conversation about the existential threats to our freedom and democracy. It is democracy across the western world that is failing this challenge. The autocracies are winning at the moment. We are facing circumstances where Russia may well be struggling in the Ukraine war, but that makes it more unpredictable. What will Putin do as he feels that his political support is slipping away and Russia’s vulnerability is increasing now that there are petrol queues in Moscow and explosions in Russian cities? There is a growing awareness-it has even been said in the last 24 hours by a serious propagandist for Mr Putin-that this is no longer a special military operation; it is a war. The circumstances are changing as we speak, and I am afraid that a lack of urgency is being shown by the whole House, apart from, say, the Defence Committee and the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy. This is how we get into wars-by being unprepared for them. We need to change our whole concept of deterrence from the old concept that somehow just having a nuclear weapon keeps us safe. No, we must have a much more flexible ability to respond to changing circumstances. What will happen when the Russians move into a Russian-speaking town in one of the Balkan states? What will we do as our soldiers start being killed? Will we start letting off...
I thank the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) for securing the debate. I was proud to join him, the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) and Field Marshal Lord Richards of Herstmonceux in creating the all-party parliamentary group on rearmament. We are discussing a topic that we all agree on: the threat that faces the country and the necessity for us to rearm. I had hoped that the tone of the debate would have been slightly less political. I feel like we have had a little bit of amnesia as to how we have got to where we are. I do not intend to focus on that too much, but I am sure that others will make the point about the decline in the size of the Army over the past 14 years, the decline in the size of the Air Force, and about the frigate fleet-we talk about the frigate gap-and what happened to frigate and destroyer construction. We should remember that the threat has not just arrived. There was not a meaningful increase in defence spending after the annexation of Crimea, and there was not a meaningful increase after Putin violated Minsk I or Minsk II. Indeed, there was not a significant increase in defence spending after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. That context is really important.
The hon. Member is right on the funding-I will mention that later-but one important thing that did happen after 2014 was under what was then called Operation Orbital. We began training Ukrainian soldiers on Salisbury plain, because they knew what was coming-and, I think, perhaps so did we. We will talk about the money in a minute, but the training of Ukrainian troops in Britain did start fairly shortly after 2014.
I agree with the right hon. Member, but I am not sure whether his point is relevant to the one I was making about the broad context of defence procurement. There has been great cross-party consensus on what we are doing with Ukraine, and we should ensure that that continues. I also want to comment on the defence nuclear enterprise. Under the DIP, we will be spending £45 billion over the forthcoming period on the incredibly important nuclear deterrent. It is right that we do that, but that amounts to 25% of the defence budget. The right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) is in his place. The other week, I was reading his arguments at the time of the coalition Government, urging them to press ahead with the renewal of Trident, which they did not do. That cost us many years and has cost us many billions of pounds that we could be spending today on conventional forces. It means that we have tired Trident submarines heading out to sea beyond when they should be doing so, and we have crews on extended patrols of 150, 200 or 250 days. That is the cost of the decisions made at that time. I want to talk a little about ensuring that we do not fall into Russia’s trap. Of course, there is a significant threat from Russia, which is both conventional and hybrid-
Will the hon. Member give way?
The hon. Gentleman did not give many interventions to Labour Members. If it is relevant, I will be happy to take it.
I happen to agree with the hon. Member about the failure of the coalition Government to make progress with the deterrent, but there were many of us complaining about that at the time, including my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis). Indeed, as shadow Defence Secretary in the early 2000s, I was complaining about the cuts in defence spending that were then being made as we went to war in Iraq and as we went to war in Afghanistan. I very much welcome the hon. Member’s bipartisan approach, but rather than pretending to be bipartisan, and making oblique references to what happened under previous Governments, he should be bipartisan, and then we would all get on much better.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his advice. If he gives me time, he may find that comes later in my speech. We should not allow Russia to make us talk ourselves into a place of weakness. As the then Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff put it to the Defence Committee, “If the British Army was asked to fight tonight, it would fight tonight.” Our readiness is not where we would want it to be, but that is not the same as saying that Britain is defenceless. I am not trying to be complacent; I am just making the point that we have excellent armed services and excellent people in uniform, and we should not talk as if those things do not exist. What we are saying is that we need more. In Ukraine, we have watched a country that is considerably smaller than our own, with far fewer resources, resist Russian aggression with extraordinary determination. We have to remember that Russia’s greatest weapon these days tends to be psychological. It wants us to believe that it cannot be beaten, that resistance is useless and that despite four years of attritional warfare and 1.4 million casualties, it somehow remains an unstoppable European military power that could overwhelm Britain and her allies, but it is not.
My hon. Friend is making an excellent, well thought-out speech. He talks about the weapons that Russia is using. Will he also reflect on how we need to be alive to its use of disinformation on social media and the internet as weapons? We need to be alive to that. I look across to the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), who I talk to regularly about the importance of the BBC World Service. Does my hon. Friend appreciate that that service is vital to the defence of this country as well?
My hon. Friend makes the point well. Indeed, in a recent interview my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns) talked about how the recent attacks on Iran had destroyed a huge propaganda apparatus, which had contributed to 3% of total nationalist propaganda for Scottish separation from the United Kingdom. It is an important point. Following on from that, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Selly Oak made the important point about strength being a foundation of deterrence. We are trying to deter war, not just by having capable armed forces but by having industrial capacity, well-stocked armouries, cutting-edge technology and a properly funded plan-because the stronger we are, the less likely conflict becomes. Every capability we field, every production line we expand and every drone we manufacture add to our deterrence, and that is incredibly important. At the beginning of the debate we talked about the credibility of getting to where we need to be. To be straightforward, it is my belief that we need to reach 3% of GDP by 2030. That is the minimum needed for us to show that we are committed to our plans and to our NATO allies in having the capabilities that we need. In fairness to the Government, they have made significant progress and we will be at 2.7% in 2027-28, which is the highest defence spend in three decades. The defence budget will also be 27% higher in real terms than it was at the start of the Parliament. Those are significant commitments...
The hon. Member is making a very important speech. I agree that there should be a life extension plan for the Type 45, but we know that there is not one. It is not costed, it is not in the DIP, and the plan is to take them out of service over several years from 2035. Does he agree that the common combat vessel would be better suited, in terms of putting that capability within the Type 31s that are being built, and that, indeed, that is what will likely happen?
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point and, eventually, we will have to look at the Type 31 hull as a possibility. Maybe the Minister will comment on contingency plans if continuous capability sustainment does not develop as it should. On the lack of commitments around ballistic missile defence, we are now an outlier in Europe in terms of air defences. Many countries in Europe-Spain, Germany, France, and so on-have Patriot or SAMP/T-
Order. I call Ian Roome.
I thank my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) for securing this debate. There are moments in politics when delay is not just a mistake, but a danger. This is one of those moments. The truth is that the world has become more dangerous much faster than Britain has become ready. The strategic defence review mattered because it stripped away comforting illusions. From the end of the cold war, we enjoyed a peace dividend that offered more security and more money for public services, but war has returned to Europe. Hostile states challenge us daily with cyber-attacks and sabotage, flouting international law and the liberal rules-based order. The absolute supremacy of the western alliance is no longer absolute. The SDR set out the right ambition: a more integrated force, a more digital force and a more resilient Britain, ready to learn lessons from Ukraine and the middle east. The defence investment plan accepts that analysis, but next comes the hard part: not only recognising the problem but solving it. Does the plan move quickly enough to make Britain safer? I fear it does not. We lost nearly a year waiting for the defence investment plan to be published. Months of hesitation when industry held its breath, investments stalled, contracts went unsigned and momentum was lost. The SDR talks of mobilising “rapidly in the event of a crisis”. If only that sense of urgency were reflected in government. Capability delayed is capability denied. The pace...
My hon. Friend highlights the dangers that threaten us with Putin on our continent, and the desperate need for us to rearm, and to rearm quickly, so we have the right warfighting equipment. The recent example of Ajax, and the 16 years it has taken to try to procure it, is a demonstration of how difficult and challenging MOD procurement is, and of how we need to improve on that. We could not wait 16 years if a sudden threat arrived on our doorstep tomorrow. Does my hon. Friend agree that we urgently need to work more with our European allies to ensure that we can develop joint capabilities together?
I certainly do, and I will come that later in my speech. There are areas where the Government seem to have cut corners: munitions reserves, medical support, industrial resilience-all essential for enduring a longer crisis. Professionals talk logistics. In 1940, Sir Winston Churchill appointed Lord Beaverbrook to rapidly streamline aircraft production. Lord Beaverbrook responded by throwing out all the old rules and doubling production output inside 12 months. His sayings have become famous, describing the factories as the frontlines of the war. He said: “Organisation is the enemy of improvisation”, “Committees take the punch out of war,” and “The need is great, the time is short, urgency must be the watchword.” He sounds like a nightmare to work for, but he helped rescue this country in an hour of great crisis.
What the hon. Member says brings a huge historical relevance to today. Throughout history, whenever we have been moving towards crisis, we have got rid of almost all of our procurement rules and regulations to streamline capability and get it into the hands of warfighters. Does he agree that the procurement system and those 10,000 people in DE&S could use AI and some of the incoming quantum capabilities to streamline our whole procurement process?
I agree with the hon. and gallant Gentleman, and I thank him for his distinguished service too. We are seeing that in how we are learning lessons from Ukraine. I have been out there and seen the systems, so I totally agree. Defence reform is a very important element that the MOD should look at, and I am sure the Minister will have something to say about that. I cannot find that spirit of urgency that Lord Beaverbrook showed in 1940 in the defence investment plan. The purpose of rearmament is not to prepare for war; it is to prevent that disaster, to deter aggression and to bolster our allies. As Liberal Democrats, and I am sure across the House, we believe Britain’s security depends on our alliances. A stronger Britain means a stronger NATO. A safer Europe means a safer United Kingdom. We must preserve the peace previous generations sacrificed so much to secure. Let this House be remembered not as the House that scrambled in an emergency, but that saw the danger coming and acted.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) on helping to secure this debate. Others have already spoken about rearmament and the focus on budgets, procurement and force structures, and while those things definitely matter, there is another question that I believe we must confront as well. As touched on briefly by the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), it is the question of whether we are honest enough with the British public about the nature of the threat that we face. I have repeatedly argued in this place that the United Kingdom should regard itself as already being in a sustained confrontation with the Russian state-not a conventional shooting war, but a prolonged campaign of hostile activity directed against our people, our infrastructure, our economy and our democratic institutions-and that raises a fundamental question. We often hear the term “sub-threshold”, but what exactly is the threshold, and when are we going to give an indication to the British people of where that threshold is? The answer to that question matters, because it is the hard line in deterrence and absolutely key when we are considering rearmament. I would not expect the Government ever to provide a precise answer to the question, but in a written answer this week, the Minister for the Armed Forces, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Louise Sandher-Jones), said: “We cannot provide detail on how the MOD would respond to certain...
My hon. Friend is giving a superb speech, and it is an honour to listen to it. I was at Bournemouth War Memorial Homes on Friday helping to open the new bungalows for our veterans, which my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns) had toured when he was in post as a Minister. I was speaking with the veterans there, and they are under no illusions. They are aware of the threat posed by Russia. In talking with constituents, however, I understand their concern that we have been on a rollercoaster as a country since 2008 at a minimum. There is a feeling that because our psyche is somewhat low and that, spiritually, we feel somewhat deflated, to talk about the threat from Russia is to add to that feeling, but actually, as a constituent said to me on the doorstep, “It is fine to talk about the fear and talk about the plan. Talk about how you will meet the fear, and then we will come with you.”
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of the ways we can go about building trust in the Government and in how they respond to a crisis is by trusting the people with the information. The people will be the ones who can press us to take the action that they know requires to be taken, if we give them the information. We must use our secrets more effectively and bring the British people along with us. The central question cannot just be whether we spend 3%, 3.5% or some other percentage of GDP. The real question must be: what capability are we creating? This is where I believe the Government deserve a lot of credit. Although the DIP was delayed, what we are seeing in it is a commitment to fighting the next war and not the last one. That includes the improvements in pay and support for serving personnel and their families and in housing, which is leading to increases in recruitment, retention and morale. That is all a vital part of rearmament and deterrence, showing our adversaries that our armed forces are ready to fight tonight, as was mentioned earlier. Alongside the human infrastructure, the Government have also invested in physical infrastructure. I know that it is attracting some scepticism and questioning from across the House, but the leap to hybrid warfare is the right thing to do. That is why I welcome the decision to build six common combat vessels and ensure that we are building ships more quickly, to give us flexibility on the capabilities that we need. I hope we...
Order. The time limit will be reduced to five minutes after the next speaker.
The hon. Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie) has highlighted a number of pertinent questions that collectively pointed to the increased threat that we face. I also very much agree with the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca). There is a lot of common ground in the Chamber today. One example of that is that I agree fundamentally with the comment from the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns) that we “must not underestimate the level of change that is required.” None of that detracts from the point that the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) highlighted in his opening remarks on the structural flaws in the funding allocated through the defence investment plan. The hon. Gentleman elaborated in more depth but, for example, less than half the headline figure announced is new money. Of the £15 billion announced, £6.9 billion over four years is new money, with £4.7 billion for the next budget, and £3.4 billion from asset sales and moving liabilities around. As he said, that is in addition to £10.7 billion of efficiencies. In addition to the hon. Gentleman’s remarks, I want to illustrate how the Government’s narrative contradicts itself with regard to the efficiencies; three Government documents, which the Government agree with, actually contradict each other. For example, on page 79 of the DIP we see the total resource departmental expenditure limit of £7 billion, from savings on staffing, and a capital departmental expenditure limit of £3.4...
My right hon. Friend mentioned reserves. During the debate on the Armed Forces Bill, we talked a lot about enhancing the reserves. Is he aware that while there is some funding for the so-called active reserve, in the DIP there is hardly any funding at all for the strategic reserve, which the Government made a very big thing of for five months while we were debating the Bill? There is hardly any money for it.
My right hon. Friend is right to highlight the broader point, which is the lack of detail on reserves, other than to say that it is all being parked until the next Parliament. That is a wasted opportunity. Reservists also need clearer communication from the Government, including on the training days and reserve service days this year. I hope that when the Minister winds up the debate, he will say a bit more about that. Finally, we know that a Government reshuffle is coming, and if issues such as national resilience are to be addressed, they quite rightly require an all-of-Government response. Yet there is very little detail. As the hon. Member for Dunfermline and Dollar said regarding the answer to his written question, the MOD is often reluctant to answer on national security grounds, and there is very little detail on how other Departments will prioritise their budgets and what the key performance indicators are, particularly when new Ministers are likely to be coming in. Will the Minister clarify whether there will be KPIs relating to the defence investment plan for those Departments, and if so, when will they be set out?
With an immediate five-minute time limit, I call Kevin Bonavia.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) on securing this important debate. We live at a time when our country is being targeted-not just threatened or tested, but actively targeted. We have already heard from many hon. Members that the reality is that hostile states are seeking to harm us every single day. Cyber-attacks batter our systems, malign actors push relentlessly at the seams of our national security and disinformation campaigns seek to warp our public debates, including in Clacton in the weeks ahead, where Russian bots will have to decide whether it is going to be the current outgoing Member for Clacton or Count Binface-that is the choice they face. More seriously, we know these threats in our day-to-day work as Members. They happen to us and to anybody who wants to speak out in public debate. And why is that? It is to undermine our common security. We have had discussion today about whose fault it is that our defences have been run down in recent years. Let me be bipartisan: we all lived off the peace dividend from the end of the cold war-that is understandable and we get that-but in that time, we came together as a country and as a House to defend countries in need, not least Ukraine. We have done that, but now we need to look to our home defence, which is under threat in a way that it has never been since at least the second world war.
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is incredibly important that the Prime Minister is at NATO right now, working to calmly and strongly ensure that we are right at the heart of that alliance? Will he join me in congratulating the Prime Minister and the rest of the EU on our agreement to invest £37 billion over the next 10 years with 11 other countries on a new long-range missile to protect Europe?
That is fantastic news for the future of NATO. I pay tribute to our Prime Minister for speaking up for NATO. This country has a NATO-first policy, and rightly so. We put our nuclear deterrent and our own taxpayers’ money to the service of NATO. We must come together as an alliance and we must recognise that our country’s contribution has been great, no matter what the debate about how we get to 3.5% of GDP in the years ahead. I thank my own Government-as a Labour MP, I should-for what they have done to support our armed forces by increasing pay and taking housing back into public ownership, so that the armed forces can have the morale that they deserve. But we need to keep doing more. I thank our defence industry in this country too. I want to mention two defence firms in my constituency of Stevenage. Airbus helps to produce between a quarter and a third of all satellites in space, but the company cannot manufacture the satellites in my town alone; it collaborates with companies in sites across the country, including in Portsmouth-I see my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) is in her place. We need to come together and support our SMEs. Last week, I visited Astute, a defence logistics firm in my constituency that needs our support. This Government are and must do more to support such companies in the armed forces industries, but that is not enough if we are going to truly make our country safe. My hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and Dollar...
I refer Members to my entries in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, in particular my participation in a parliamentary delegation to Ukraine in February with the UK friends of the armed forces. [ Official Report , 14 July 2026; Vol. 789, c. 12WC.] (Correction) I want to build on some of the arguments made by the hon. Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie). As I sat here listening to this thoughtful and valuable debate, the issue that really struck me above anything else was that, in many ways, we are preaching to the converted in this Chamber. Those of us who are here recognise the seriousness of the moment-we understand that defence is not an optional extra and that it cannot wait for a more convenient fiscal moment-but our responsibility goes much further than this Chamber, of course. Our responsibility is to the British public, and that means telling them the truth. As we have heard repeatedly during the course of today, the truth is that the world has changed and the threats are very real. For far too long, we have risked treating defence as something done by someone else-something done by sailors under the waves, soldiers on distant deployments and pilots in the skies. However, modern deterrence asks us to do much more individually. It also requires government to be honest, and the public to understand what is really at stake. As we have heard, the Government have clearly set out that Russia could be in a position to attack a NATO ally by as early...
I took the underground to Westminster this morning, and at the bottom of the steps at the entrance into Parliament there was a homeless man sleeping against the wall, lying on the cold, dirty floor of the tube station. He was the last thing I saw before coming into this grand palace where we sit as legislators, taking decisions and making political choices that impact that man and everyone else in the country. Last week, £15 billion was found for weapons that will get us ready for a conflict that many politicians, much of the media, and various think-tanks and lobbyists say is imminent. That hawkish rhetoric is ramping up-of the 22 questions asked at Defence questions on Monday, three contained mention of Russia, and two were about defending the High North. A consistent theme ran throughout, pushing the narrative that we must spend on defence above all else. Of course, I appreciate that the first duty of Government is to keep our citizens safe and to defend the realm, but what about that man at the bottom of the tube station steps? Who is keeping him safe? What about the children who are going to school with no food in their bellies-do they feel safe? Over 3 million people need a food bank to survive-people who, when the winter comes, will have to decide whether to eat a meal or put their heating on. How safe do they feel because of political choices that have seen other departmental budgets cut? I do not think it needs to be this way. Tony Benn used to say regularly in this...
Given the important armed forces community in Taunton and Wellington, which includes 40 Commando Royal Marines, 675 Squadron Army Air Corps, our sea and air cadets and our army cadet force, I start by thanking all those who are serving and all the veterans in my community who have served. At the weekend, I was pleased to have the opportunity to thank Ed Cullen and all the veterans who organised our superb Somerset Armed Forces Day event, drawing 49,000 people, which was a record attendance. I hope that the Minister will join me in congratulating them, as well as Terry Williams, who is fundraising to establish the “poppy of honour”, with 1.1 million named paper poppies for every individual lost in world war one. Indeed, I call on the Government to support that fundraising effort in a meaningful way. Speaking of those who have been on active service, I also congratulate my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) on his service. He brings to these Benches the sharpest of insights on defence and rearmament, and great experience too. How we treat our veterans is a vital component of how we will attract the men and women to serve in the forces and deliver the warfighting readiness that this debate is about. That is why the superb work of the NHS Somerset armed forces link team must not be cut back as a result of cuts to integrated care boards by the Department of Health and Social Care. Former Royal Marine Steven Summers has said to me that “the...
We live in an increasingly unstable world. From Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine to the conflict in the middle east, the threats to our national security have grown, and families across the country have felt the consequences through higher bills and rising prices. We cannot afford to ignore the reality of the world we face, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns) so eloquently put it, the question we need to address is this: “What does warfighting readiness actually mean to this Government, to our forces and to our country?” It is worth reminding the House and our constituents-as it would not have been thought from the opening speeches today-that this Government inherited armed forces that had been hollowed out by years of under-investment, overstretch and a failure to keep pace with modern warfare. Let me point out to the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) that this destruction was a result of initiatives such as the coalition Government’s 2011 defence basing review, which reduced the number of times our Type 45s were serviced, thus giving us this challenge. Ships, aircraft and tanks, and indeed personnel, are not built overnight, so I am proud that this Labour Government are beginning to put that right-and to put it right across Government, because this is not just the role of the Ministry of Defence. This Government deserve credit for changing course. Over the next four years, we will invest £298 billion in defence. The defence...
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) for making this debate happen. I have been to see his bookshelves and, trust me, the books on strategy and military affairs in his library are well thumbed. He knows what he is talking about, and he has done well to corral us all into talking about it today. Let me begin by talking about defence spending. It is fair to say that others have covered it, but I will repeat the fact that we are not spending sufficiently on defence. I want to challenge the hon. Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman). He did a bold thing in challenging the prevailing consensus, the mood of the House, and views that are now quite mainstream in the House, but while it is compelling to think about all the welfare need that exists in this country-and I acknowledge that there is a great deal-he has a crude oil refinery in his constituency.
No, I do not.
Forgive me, but I understood that Grangemouth was a crude oil refinery. We need only look to Eurasia-we need only look at what has been happening in Ukraine and Russia-to see that war comes to those who do not really want it to come to them at all. Yes, that is a failure of diplomacy, but it is also a failure of preparedness. Today, I will focus my remarks on the business of readiness. We are currently spending 2.5% of GDP on defence, and the target is 3.5% by 2035. We really ought to be getting midway between those two by 2030, yet we are projected to be at only 2.68% by then. Of course, the Prime Minister is currently at the NATO summit in Ankara. Nye Bevan said to the Labour conference in 1957 that his party members should not send him “naked into the conference chamber”, and I fear that the Prime Minister has been sent naked into the Ankara conference chamber. The defence investment plan is indeed a skinny dip. The hon. Member for Stevenage (Kevin Bonavia) talked about the famous “King and country” debate at the Oxford Union in 1933. I completely agree with him that people who thought that they would not fight for King and country in 1933 found that, by 1939, they had no choice but to do so because of the circumstances. He knows a great deal about that from his time on the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.
The university’s records do not show how every individual student voted, but we know that many of the students who were present at that famous debate in 1933 subsequently signed up in 1939 and 1940.
The shadow Minister is exactly right. Of course, those people’s parents fought in the first world war. They were a generation who really did not want to meet war, but war came to them none the less. Clausewitz, the philosopher of war, talked about government, military and people being the remarkable trinity concerned with war. A lot of today’s debate has centred on the military, on defence, on procurement, and perhaps a little on government as it pertains to policy. We have talked a bit less about people, although the hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) did talk about our servicepeople. I want to add to that by talking about people in the country more broadly-the people we represent. We need to think about defence as a national endeavour that builds on everyone’s understanding of the threat and the need to defend the nation. When we discuss warfighting readiness, we are talking about not just platforms, ships, tanks and aircraft, but information. The Foreign Affairs Committee published a report on disinformation. We talked about the use of military and non-military-overt and covert-methods to blur the lines between war and peace, to sow doubt in the minds of target populations, and to destabilise and undermine societies. Last year’s strategic defence review covers sub-threshold attacks, and it talks about how such attacks are difficult to attribute to a perpetrator with certainty due to the methods used and the frequent reliance on proxy actors. The focus has to...
I thank the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) for bringing such a prescient and timely debate to the House. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough (John Healey) and the hon. and gallant Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns) for the step they took against what, in their view, was clearly insufficient investment, resulting in insufficient protection for these islands and the people who live here. The DIP manifestly writes cheques that the Treasury is ill-equipped or ill-prepared to cash. As many Members have said, there is no clear spending plan for how we get to 2030, much less for how we get to 2035. The projected expenditure on defence in the UK is not going to be incremental over those years. We are supposed to believe that, magically, in 2029 we will get to where we need to be in 2030, and the same again in 2034. A lot of us are long enough in the tooth to know that is a load of unbelievable rhetoric. Efficiency savings of £10.7 billion have never happened before, and there is a good reason: it does not happen. That is not how we fund any budget, whether CDEL or RDEL. We do not fund budgets with efficiency savings of that size. This is serious: we have lost a Secretary of State for Defence and one of his Ministers. If we speak to men and women in uniform, as I and many other Members are privileged to do on a regular basis, we sense the palpable fog of dismay as they try-in vain, largely-to figure out what they are expected to...
Did the hon. Member just refer to the nuclear deterrent as “ordinary”?
It has been around for 50 years; it is not novel. The hon. Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca) referred to £45 billion for the nuclear enterprise. I think the figure in the DIP is £64 billion. That is an important point, because the Government and the one before it have refused to publish the rolling 10-year nuclear enterprise budget. If the Minister could clarify what the nuclear enterprise budget is over the rolling 10-year period, that would be helpful. I am a supporter of defence-there are a few people in here who will testify to that-but the MOD does have a case to answer. It increasingly looks like if we want £1 million of output, we need to put £2 million into the MOD pot. If we look at any Public Accounts Committee report on defence, we can see what a troubled enterprise it is. It needs root and branch reform. I have heard people say quite a lot that we have not told the public about the threat we are under. I agree with that. I think that is a true and an honest assessment, but we need to see beyond the transmission of the threat and be prepared for the response that we might get back. I am not making a constitutional point; I am not talking about Scotland. I am talking about housing schemes and communities up and down these islands. If they are asked to put their families and their own lives on the line for the United Kingdom, they might well not be quite as enthusiastic as we might wish. They might think, “What has my country done for me?” If they are 25 years old...
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
I congratulate my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) on securing this extremely valuable debate. Much has been said about rearmament and defence in this House in recent months. It is widely accepted that successive Governments have allowed our nation’s defences to decline to a perilous extent. This debate should therefore be an opportunity for the House to come together to address the first duty of any Government, the defence of the realm. It is a conversation that cannot be limited only to this building; it needs to be had in every corner of our great nation. The Prime Minister and others tell us that the point of maximum threat from Russia is in 2030. That is just over three years away. If that is the case, we must show urgency and clarity. It is for that reason that the long delay in the publication of the defence investment plan was so serious and so damaging. That delay cost us precious time, which our adversaries have spent building their own forces and probing our vulnerabilities. The Public Accounts Committee has already told us what that delay cost us. It called the resulting bureaucratic drift damaging to Britain’s international credibility and warned that it has created deep uncertainty across our defence industrial base while sending a weak signal to allies and adversaries alike. When the plan finally arrived, what did we find? The Secretary of State told the House that he had secured an extra £1 billion, yet it has come to light...
I call the shadow Minister.
I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) and the Backbench Business Committee for scheduling this important and timely debate, which coincides with the NATO summit. I will make what is perhaps a point of consensus: yet again, when we debate the defence of the realm-the first duty of Government-the Reform Bench is empty; yet again, the plastic patriots have gone AWOL when we discuss the defence of this country. Count Binface clearly has them worried in Clacton. As I am a historian by training, perhaps I can offer some historical context. Arguments about military readiness are not new. The Roman military theorist, Vegetius, some two millennia ago, coined the now-famous phrase, “Si vis pacem, para bellum”-he who desires peace should prepare for war, in order to deter it. There have been times in British history where we have disregarded Vegetius’s sage advice. For instance, in 1919, following the first world war, when Britain had fought at great cost-both human and financial-a Liberal-led Government introduced the concept of a 10-year rule: a pan-Whitehall edict that no major war was likely for at least a decade. That continued on a rolling basis into the 1930s. On 9 February 1933, just 10 days after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, in the now famous Oxford Union debate, referred to several times already, the students resolved by more than two to one that: “This House would, under no circumstances, fight for King and country.” And yet, a...
Having spoken on this very subject the week before last, I thought that I would, for once, sit and listen to what others have to say. Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the reasons for the failure of deterrence at the beginning of both the second world war and the first world war was that the United States was detached from the future of security in Europe? The success of NATO has hinged on the knowledge that an attack on any NATO country would mean war with the United States from the outset. Does he share my concern that the United States is at present led by someone with insufficient regard for that history?
NATO is the most successful defensive alliance in history, and article 5 is its absolute fulcrum. We must maintain our commitment to article 5 to keep all NATO nations safe. In 1946 in Fulton, Missouri, Churchill said that an iron curtain had descended, leading us into the cold war. In the mid-1980s, under Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, defence spending was gusting about 5% of gross domestic product. When the Berlin wall came down in 1989, countries across the west took a peace dividend. Francis Fukuyama wrote his famous book “The End of History” in 1992, and many in the west believed that the threat of world war had finally receded. When the Conservatives left office in 1997, we were spending around 3% of GDP on defence, and that downward trend continued under Tony Blair’s Government-although, in fairness, he was only doing what many other western democracies were also doing. Today, we face a revanchist Russia led by Putin-
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
In a moment. We face a revanchist Russian led by Putin, who launched an invasion of Crimea and the Donbas in 2014, and then an even more brutal, full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. As someone who visited Ukraine in February of this year, I remind the House that the Ukrainians would argue that they have therefore been at war with Russia not for four years, but for 12 years-longer than the first and second world wars combined. Against that rising threat, Labour produced its much-vaunted strategic defence review, and there was much good in it. However, it still contained echoes of the 10-year rule, declaring the Government’s intention, on page 43, “to deter, fight and win-with allies-against states with advanced military forces by 2035.” That is nine years away. The Chief of the General Staff has warned that we might have to fight Russia by 2027, the First Sea Lord said 2029, and even the outgoing Prime Minister said that this might happen by 2030. How are we supposed to deter Putin without a single attack submarine currently at sea, with no new AWACS aircraft in service in the Royal Air Force, still, and with Ajax almost a decade late and still not in operational service, despite Ministers previously promising us that it was fine? That really is corrosive complacency, is not it? The threat is now, and we need to rearm accordingly, including by spending 3% of GDP on defence by 2029 at the very latest, if not earlier. The three co-authors of the SDR were adamant that the...
Will the right hon. Member give way?
No, I am summing up. Lord Robertson, the lead author of the SDR, told the Defence Committee only yesterday that “we are running out of years… the challenge is now bigger, more serious and earlier than we had anticipated, yet the defence investment plan does not come up to it.” General Barrons, his co-author, told the same Committee that “the Prime Minister is saying that Russia could attack NATO by 2030, and we essentially lost a year of mobilising for that.” Incredibly, even the DIP says on page 78: “The figures presented are indicative rather than precise cost estimates. They do not constitute binding commitments and are subject to the Government’s approval processes, affordability considerations and contracting procedures. Figures have been rounded and, therefore, may not sum.” You can say that again. In other words, the document isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. The plan relies on extra money that does not exist. We will not deter the likes of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping with such unfunded proposals. If Trotsky was right, and war is interested in us, we must rearm now to deter it. I reluctantly find that the Labour Government are failing the people of this country in the first duty of Government: the defence of the realm. If the incoming Prime Minister cannot plug the £5 billion black hole that he is about to inherit, he should make way for people who can.
I am pleased to have been a signatory to the application for this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) on securing it. [ Laughter. ] Therein is a lesson. The subject of the debate-rearmament and readiness-could hardly be of greater importance to our constituents, our military and the future security of our nation. I thank Members of all parties who have contributed to a compelling discussion, and I welcome the opportunity to respond to some of the points that have been raised. You can enjoy the confusion of my moving between my speech and the notes I have taken. I will attempt to explain how the Ministry of Defence is working to get our armed forces warfighting ready as an urgent priority. However, I will start by responding to the principal criticism of the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) that there is no new money. I emphasise that £300 billion is new money; £15 billion is new money. I will never, ever let you forget the cold water that I endured in the messes of the bases on which I served-
Order. Please can I remind you that saying “you” is not acceptable in this Chamber, because it refers to me?
The removal of funding specifically in 2010 resulted in the removal of Nimrod and the reduction of our shipyards and boatyards, which has led to the risks that are manifesting today. The Opposition cannot deny that is the reason that we are in the position we are in now.
Will the Minister give way?
In time. Two years ago, this Government inherited a defence programme that was overcommitted, underfunded and fundamentally unsuited to countering the very real threats we now face. Since then, we have published a strategic defence review, the defence industrial strategy and, most recently, the defence investment plan. We are building a far more modern and lethal military, through massive increases in defence spending, radical reform of the armed forces and close collaboration with our NATO partners to protect Europe’s and Britain’s borders, showing Putin that the alliance remains as strong as ever. As technology reshapes warfare at the fastest pace in history, and as the world becomes increasingly dangerous, our overwhelming focus at the Ministry of Defence is to get warfighting ready as fast as possible, and that was the critical tilt in the change between the two Defence Secretary’s DIPs. This DIP is a defining moment in that journey, committing, as I said, £298 billion for our armed forces over the next four years, ensuring that they have the kit and weapons they need. That is £15 billion more-more than significant-and £1.5 billion more than was announced just a few weeks ago. The DIP means that UK defence spending will rise in real terms by 27% between 2023-24 and 2029-30-the largest sustained increase since the cold war. Indeed, the Ministry of Defence budget will grow faster over this Parliament than the budget of any other major Department. The £74 billion allocated...
I congratulate the Minister on acceding to office, but he needs to appreciate that the cost of all Departments goes up in absolute financial numerical terms year on year, but the way in which we measure the investment in defence is by looking at it as a proportion of GDP. During the cold war, when the risk was almost as high as it is now, we were spending 4.5% to 5% of GDP. Vladimir Putin does not have nine years for us to spend 3.5% of GDP. Those are the measurements the Minister has to look at; we are nowhere near spending enough.
Twenty four years of serving this great nation means that I am acutely aware of the risks that the Opposition presented me and manifested during my time in service. That is why I am resolute in addressing these challenges and why I am backing the defence investment plan. Let me make one point crystal clear: Britain has always met its NATO spending obligations in the past, and under this Government we always will. That begins with the early delivery of our first commitment to raise defence investment to 2.7% of GDP next year, compared with just 2.3%, which was missing from the Opposition’s analysis of the decline in our defence spending.
The debate about percentages of GDP is slightly irrelevant, because even if defence spending were raised to 3%, we have no ability to spend that money within the industrial base, as we do not have the capacity. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to look at a much more innovative approach to some of these things, with multilateral options? I have been campaigning for the UK to join the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank for over a year.
My hon. Friend has advocated for the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank and alternative finance methods for the past two years. It was pleasing to see the DSR Bank announcement from Canada over the last couple of days alongside the multilateral defence mechanism announcement from our Government, which, significantly, was joined by Poland. I hope that we will see the DSR and the MDM aligned as we go forward.
Will the Minister give way?
Not at the moment. Let us jump forward to tech. It is not about how much we spend but about how we spend it, as we heard repeatedly in the debate. It is about how we rearm and get to warfighting readiness. The DIP will energise the transformation of our armed forces and target resources to reflect how war is waged today. We will sequence the delivery of a NATO-first transformed and integrated force powered by modern technology. Through the DIP, AI autonomy and uncrewed systems will receive the sustained increase in support that reflects their strategic importance. I will pivot to the remarks made by the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells about the hybrid Navy. The DIP speeds up the transition to the hybrid Navy. I have a great deal of respect for him, but it is incoherent to talk about future manned flight but talk down an autonomous fleet. On my visit to Portsmouth only last week, a member of our Royal Navy said “Never again” as we walked past a Type 45, and made it clear that the work on the Type 83 had stopped a significant time ago-it is an incoherent conversation. For the Type 23, every refurbishment takes two to three years and costs us £100 million, while £115 million has given our nation the autonomous capability that we are rolling out in the middle east. That is how incoherent the hon. Member’s argument is.
I specifically said that I am fully in favour of moving to autonomy as fast as we can. All I questioned was whether we could go from a PowerPoint concept for multiple vessels to their being at sea on operations within nine years. That is all I questioned-not the idea that we need to move to autonomy.
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I agree that this will be testing, but we must take up the challenge, and we need people like him on the Defence Committee to ensure that we are held to account while we proceed with delivery. The DIP also speeds up the transition to: a digitally enabled Army that is 10 times more lethal; the next generation of combat air, including a potent mix of crewed and uncrewed air power; a new uncrewed systems taskforce to rapidly develop and deliver field autonomous capabilities; and Europe’s biggest drone testing site in Swindon. I remind those who do down our nation and say, “We aren’t building enough” that at the moment we are providing 150,000 drones a year to Ukraine.
Could the Minister clarify why the efficiency target has gone up over 73% in a year compared with the strategic defence review? Was the SDR just too unambitious?
I thank the right hon. Member for his question. Perhaps we should have a discussion about it outside, because of its ambiguity- [ Interruption. ] The right hon. Member and I will speak afterwards. The programme of rapid rearmament mentioned in the motion of this debate has not only begun; we are well on our way to delivering it, with significant and further increases in funding to come. That means an unprecedented investment in new technologies, new munitions, new factories and new jobs. It means creating a path to 3% and then 3.5% of GDP, and having honest public conversations about the very serious threats we face. As a fellow veteran, I know how committed the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells is to strengthening UK defence. I hope we get behind this national endeavour, which represents an historic upturn in support for our military and for our brilliant service personnel who keep Britain safe in an increasingly uncertain world.
I call Mike Martin to wind up very quickly.
I will not list the constituencies of all the hon. and right hon. Members who have contributed; they know who they are and I thank them very much. Three themes came out of this debate that were interesting and bear repeating. First, we are already in a war and it is happening in different ways and it is happening below the threshold, but the threshold is moving about and we need to think about that. Secondly, there is the point about national resilience, the economy and the industrial base. In an age of drones that get depleted, with a cycle in which the drone model changes every six weeks, it is about how quickly we can build stuff. Nations win wars, and we need our economy to reflect that. Thirdly, we need to trust the public and tell them not just about the threat that we face but about the current state of our armed forces and where they need to get to. Question put and agreed to . Resolved, That this House recognises the danger that Russia’s renewed illegal invasion of Ukraine poses to European and British security; further recognises the threat to the international order and the UK posed by China; also recognises the increasing uncertainty surrounding the reliability of the US as an ally within NATO; acknowledges the current shortfalls in the UK’s ability to deploy a credible fighting force; further acknowledges that this lack of military capability is resulting in the coercion of Britain and its interests in the international sphere; and calls on the Government to...