James Cartlidge is Shadow Defence Secretary, and MP for South Suffolk.
Sitting alongside Kemi at PMQs last Wednesday, as she took Keir Starmer to task over his supposedly strong suit of foreign affairs and national security, I couldn’t help concluding that I was looking at a Prime Minister lacking many things – but above all, a plan.
From Venezuela to Iran, via Greenland and Starmer’s proposal for a ‘coalition of the willing’ in Ukraine, the common link is clear for all to see: the world is becoming more unstable, and Britain needs a plan to spend more on Defence.
In fact, the urgency of that challenge has become even starker with the revelation that the MOD faces a £28bn funding shortfall. Meanwhile, the Sunday Telegraph has discovered that barely 3 per cent of Labour’s 1,000 Defence contracts signed since the election have been for weapons and armour, confirming my constant refrain as Shadow Defence Secretary that – far from rapid rearmament – Labour is presiding over an effective procurement freeze.
The stock response from Labour is, as ever, “fourteen years”. I could respond with the economic mess we inherited in 2010 and, more positively, the way we showed extraordinary leadership – and made a real difference to the defence of our nation and continent – by backing Ukraine from the outset of Putin’s all-out invasion. I’m not sure any other Government would have had the guts to ignore lawyerly advice and arm Ukraine even before Putin’s tanks poured over the border.
But the point is – we all know defence spending needs to go up now, irrespective of the past.
Everyone knows the threat has changed, and that the world has changed too, with huge doubt over the ‘rules based order’; and Trump’s entirely justified demands for NATO members to spend more. Much of the west spent the post-1989 peace dividend complacently, but the problem is that the threat has completely transformed. The heads of NATO, MI6 and our own armed forces have all issued stern warnings in recent weeks.
Yet, we almost never hear where the money is going to come from. That is where political leadership comes in – the willingness to make tough choices.
After all, Labour’s SDR recognised the threat.
Starmer is theoretically committed to 3 per cent on Defence – though it’s an “ambition” to reach that figure in the next Parliament. As such, we were hoping for more detail when the Budget was announced. Alas, when push came to shove, the Budget Red Book contained a table detailing how much Labour would spend up to 2031 to abolish the two child benefit cap, but no similar clarity on how much will be allocated for Defence in that year. Thus, when Kemi asked Starmer at last week’s PMQs in which year he would hit 3 per cent, answer came there none.
As a result, the Government’s ‘Defence Investment Plan’ – setting out the detail on where the MOD capability budget will be spent in the years ahead – is months overdue. How on earth are the Chiefs meant to plan procurement in that context?
When I asked the leadership candidates about Defence spending at the first MP hustings in the summer of 2024, Kemi said that we needed to get to 3 per cent – but with the big caveat that we also needed a ‘plan for the economy’ to actually deliver the money. And at last year’s party conference we were given some big planks of that economic plan: a Golden Economic rule to get debt down, and deliver economic stability; a fully funded £47bn programme of reductions in public spending, in order to fund major tax cuts and stimulate growth; above all, emphasising through policy and passionate oratory that prosperity comes from enterprise, not an ever expanding state.
But if restoring our economic mojo is the non-negotiable precursor to affording the kind of Defence budget we require, we would be betraying our own commitment to prudence – the ultimate dividing line between ourselves and pro-welfare Labour and Reform – if we deluded ourselves that this was enough.
Whilst we had a fully funded plan to get to 2.5 per cent on Defence at the last election, I wrote almost a year ago today on this website that “given the mounting threats we face, it’s likely that we will need to go further”. Sure enough, in February 2025, before the PM made his own commitment to higher Defence spending, Kemi and I wrote that we needed to go further and faster than 2.5 per cent, and use the Aid budget to find the extra cash – a position Starmer himself would adopt a little later.
Having been the previous Conservative Defence Procurement Minister, on becoming Shadow Defence Secretary in July 2024 I was open about the fact that 2.5 per cent would – at best – see us standing still, helping to protect current commitments, but no more than that. In part, this is because of the inevitable bow wave of inflation that followed Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, forcing up broader procurement costs.
That’s why it’s so important that last February Kemi also committed to 3 per cent this Parliament, not Labour’s vague ‘ambition’ of 3 per cent by the next one – which could be as late as 2034. Most importantly, we’ve now started to flesh out significant steps on how the Government could actually get there, sooner rather than later.
Just before Christmas Kemi and I announced our plan for a Sovereign Defence Fund, a significant step towards 3 per cent. Where Labour have surrendered our fishing rights to access the EU defence fund – for not a penny in return – I wanted to draw on our recent record of acting boldly as a sovereign nation, to transform procurement and support Ukraine.
And so, our Sovereign Defence Fund would see £6bn of other Government R&D redirected to procuring drones and counter-drone tech for the military. This would act like the ‘Operation Kindred’ funding provided to Ukraine – a ‘UK Kindred’ if you like, driving the uncrewed revolution throughout our armed forces at far greater scale and pace than Labour’s plans. From long range attack drones for the artillery; to undersea drones to protect our cables; to loyal wingmen to fly with our existing crewed Typhoons and jam enemy radar; to anti-drone lasers; this is about boosting the lethality of our existing capabilities, but also ensuring the money is well spent – by also requiring service Chiefs to embrace in their training and tactics the culture of constant evolution of capabilities, ‘spiral development’, that has been key to Ukraine’s success.
We also committed to transforming the National Wealth Fund into the ‘Defence and Resilience Bank’, ringfencing £11bn of its funding for Defence resilience, rather than the current priority of Net Zero. In particular, this cash would be used to lever in private finance and transform the British defence industrial base, to enable production of drone tech and other capabilities at the scale required – without relying on China.
This is what ‘making tough choices’ looks like. The fact is, whilst in office we became the first major economy to halve our CO2 emissions. Surely now, no one can claim that Ed Miliband’s Net Zero vanity projects are more important than the defence of the realm.
The military threats we face need an answer today. That means robustly prioritising our national interest – and being prepared to properly fund Defence.
James Cartlidge is Shadow Defence Secretary, and MP for South Suffolk.
Sitting alongside Kemi at PMQs last Wednesday, as she took Keir Starmer to task over his supposedly strong suit of foreign affairs and national security, I couldn’t help concluding that I was looking at a Prime Minister lacking many things – but above all, a plan.
From Venezuela to Iran, via Greenland and Starmer’s proposal for a ‘coalition of the willing’ in Ukraine, the common link is clear for all to see: the world is becoming more unstable, and Britain needs a plan to spend more on Defence.
In fact, the urgency of that challenge has become even starker with the revelation that the MOD faces a £28bn funding shortfall. Meanwhile, the Sunday Telegraph has discovered that barely 3 per cent of Labour’s 1,000 Defence contracts signed since the election have been for weapons and armour, confirming my constant refrain as Shadow Defence Secretary that – far from rapid rearmament – Labour is presiding over an effective procurement freeze.
The stock response from Labour is, as ever, “fourteen years”. I could respond with the economic mess we inherited in 2010 and, more positively, the way we showed extraordinary leadership – and made a real difference to the defence of our nation and continent – by backing Ukraine from the outset of Putin’s all-out invasion. I’m not sure any other Government would have had the guts to ignore lawyerly advice and arm Ukraine even before Putin’s tanks poured over the border.
But the point is – we all know defence spending needs to go up now, irrespective of the past.
Everyone knows the threat has changed, and that the world has changed too, with huge doubt over the ‘rules based order’; and Trump’s entirely justified demands for NATO members to spend more. Much of the west spent the post-1989 peace dividend complacently, but the problem is that the threat has completely transformed. The heads of NATO, MI6 and our own armed forces have all issued stern warnings in recent weeks.
Yet, we almost never hear where the money is going to come from. That is where political leadership comes in – the willingness to make tough choices.
After all, Labour’s SDR recognised the threat.
Starmer is theoretically committed to 3 per cent on Defence – though it’s an “ambition” to reach that figure in the next Parliament. As such, we were hoping for more detail when the Budget was announced. Alas, when push came to shove, the Budget Red Book contained a table detailing how much Labour would spend up to 2031 to abolish the two child benefit cap, but no similar clarity on how much will be allocated for Defence in that year. Thus, when Kemi asked Starmer at last week’s PMQs in which year he would hit 3 per cent, answer came there none.
As a result, the Government’s ‘Defence Investment Plan’ – setting out the detail on where the MOD capability budget will be spent in the years ahead – is months overdue. How on earth are the Chiefs meant to plan procurement in that context?
When I asked the leadership candidates about Defence spending at the first MP hustings in the summer of 2024, Kemi said that we needed to get to 3 per cent – but with the big caveat that we also needed a ‘plan for the economy’ to actually deliver the money. And at last year’s party conference we were given some big planks of that economic plan: a Golden Economic rule to get debt down, and deliver economic stability; a fully funded £47bn programme of reductions in public spending, in order to fund major tax cuts and stimulate growth; above all, emphasising through policy and passionate oratory that prosperity comes from enterprise, not an ever expanding state.
But if restoring our economic mojo is the non-negotiable precursor to affording the kind of Defence budget we require, we would be betraying our own commitment to prudence – the ultimate dividing line between ourselves and pro-welfare Labour and Reform – if we deluded ourselves that this was enough.
Whilst we had a fully funded plan to get to 2.5 per cent on Defence at the last election, I wrote almost a year ago today on this website that “given the mounting threats we face, it’s likely that we will need to go further”. Sure enough, in February 2025, before the PM made his own commitment to higher Defence spending, Kemi and I wrote that we needed to go further and faster than 2.5 per cent, and use the Aid budget to find the extra cash – a position Starmer himself would adopt a little later.
Having been the previous Conservative Defence Procurement Minister, on becoming Shadow Defence Secretary in July 2024 I was open about the fact that 2.5 per cent would – at best – see us standing still, helping to protect current commitments, but no more than that. In part, this is because of the inevitable bow wave of inflation that followed Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, forcing up broader procurement costs.
That’s why it’s so important that last February Kemi also committed to 3 per cent this Parliament, not Labour’s vague ‘ambition’ of 3 per cent by the next one – which could be as late as 2034. Most importantly, we’ve now started to flesh out significant steps on how the Government could actually get there, sooner rather than later.
Just before Christmas Kemi and I announced our plan for a Sovereign Defence Fund, a significant step towards 3 per cent. Where Labour have surrendered our fishing rights to access the EU defence fund – for not a penny in return – I wanted to draw on our recent record of acting boldly as a sovereign nation, to transform procurement and support Ukraine.
And so, our Sovereign Defence Fund would see £6bn of other Government R&D redirected to procuring drones and counter-drone tech for the military. This would act like the ‘Operation Kindred’ funding provided to Ukraine – a ‘UK Kindred’ if you like, driving the uncrewed revolution throughout our armed forces at far greater scale and pace than Labour’s plans. From long range attack drones for the artillery; to undersea drones to protect our cables; to loyal wingmen to fly with our existing crewed Typhoons and jam enemy radar; to anti-drone lasers; this is about boosting the lethality of our existing capabilities, but also ensuring the money is well spent – by also requiring service Chiefs to embrace in their training and tactics the culture of constant evolution of capabilities, ‘spiral development’, that has been key to Ukraine’s success.
We also committed to transforming the National Wealth Fund into the ‘Defence and Resilience Bank’, ringfencing £11bn of its funding for Defence resilience, rather than the current priority of Net Zero. In particular, this cash would be used to lever in private finance and transform the British defence industrial base, to enable production of drone tech and other capabilities at the scale required – without relying on China.
This is what ‘making tough choices’ looks like. The fact is, whilst in office we became the first major economy to halve our CO2 emissions. Surely now, no one can claim that Ed Miliband’s Net Zero vanity projects are more important than the defence of the realm.
The military threats we face need an answer today. That means robustly prioritising our national interest – and being prepared to properly fund Defence.