“The Prime Minister knows what defence the nation needs”, Defence Secretary John Healey insisted this afternoon.
Mr Healey, a loyal ally of Sir Keir Starmer, is now at the heart of a row over the long-delayed but still unpublished Defence Investment Plan.
Speaking alongside Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper and their Australian counterparts at the annual AUKMIN summit at Lancaster House, Healey stressed: “When we publish really significant reports from defence, we respect Parliament."
The comment comes after a furious Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, slammed rumours that the plan would finally be published this Friday.
He said: "That would be an utter disgrace and an utter kick in the face to members of this House.”
The House of Commons does not sit on Fridays, meaning any announcement would bypass parliamentary scrutiny.
Mr Healey’s insistence about "respecting" Parliament suggests that Monday is the first date we may see the plan.
However, the Prime Minister may still make some remarks about his defence plans this week.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch used Prime Minister’s Questions to berate Sir Keir Starmer over the delay.
And it sounds like defence could receive as little as an extra £13.5billion over the next four years, less than half the £28billion defence chiefs say is necessary to just meet current defence commitments.
Such a boost would fall short of the changes asked for by last year’s Strategic Defence Review.
John Healey and Yvette Cooper attended a summit earlier today
|PA
Why does it matter?
Well, because, as the Government never tires of telling us, the “peace dividend” we have enjoyed since the end of the Cold War is over.
Healey said today: “The world is more dangerous and more uncertain."
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told the European Political Community in Copenhagen last October: “It’s war!”
Disinformation by Russia, interference with vital undersea cables under the sea, drone incursions are all impacting Europe.
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That is on top of the continuing war in Europe between Ukraine and Russia, the war in the Middle East and the huge economic impact of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Plus an increasingly assertive China in the Indo-Pacific and an America led by a changeable President, who just months ago was insisting the US “has to have” Greenland, a territory owned by Denmark, another Nato ally.
Despite the rhetoric from the Prime Minister at the Munich Security Conference in February about the need to “go further and faster” on defence spending, the reality is foot-dragging, dither and delay.
Healey repeated today: “The UK has always met its Nato commitments and it will continue to do so. We will meet that commitment."
The commitment he is talking about is almost ten years away.
At the Nato summit last summer in the Hague, Britain and other allies pledged to spend five per cent of GDP on defence by 2035.
This consists of 3.5 per cent directly on defence and 1.5 per cent on defence-adjacent spending.
All to satisfy US President Donald Trump’s demand that the NATO allies spend five per cent; a demand he first made just weeks after taking office again in early 2024.
Given the world we now inhabit, that level of spending looks necessary in any case, but that level of funding has been kicked into the long grass, at least until after the next general election. Labour may not even be in power at that point.
Current spending on defence is 2.4 per cent of GDP and Labour has only committed to getting to three per cent in the next parliament, which could mean as late as 2034.
Among Nato allies, having once been one of the alliance’s big spenders, Britain is now lagging behind, while Germany, for so long asleep at the wheel on defence, is rearming at pace, and Poland spends 4.8 per cent already.
The reason for the delay is, of course, money. Or rather, the lack of it. Tax rises may be coming.
And the Treasury has dug its heels in. Cuts or tax rises. Possibly both.
The world is more dangerous. But the Government has yet to level with the public about the painful choices which will have to be made if it is to keep us safe.