Two former Labour defence secretaries have urged ministers to slash welfare to boost spending on Britain’s security.
In an excoriating speech, former Nato chief Lord Robertson said Britain’s national security had been left ‘in peril’ by Labour’s failure to live up to promises to increase defence spending.
The Labour grandee, who wrote the Government’s strategic defence review last year, accused Rachel Reeves of blocking funding for the armed forces and urged ministers to free up cash by slashing the bloated benefits budget.
‘The cold reality of today’s dangerous world is that we cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget,’ he told an audience in Salisbury.
‘Britain’s welfare budget is now five times the amount we spend on defence. So I ask, are we certain that this is the right priority – jeopardising people’s future safety and security, while maintaining an increasingly unsustainable welfare bill?’
Asked how defence secretary John Healey had taken his criticisms, Lord Robertson said: ‘[He was] extremely, extremely angry with me, but sometimes you just have to say something.
‘My country is in danger, so I felt that I had to speak out. That will be uncomfortable in the short term, but in the longer term, they know what they need to do.’
He added that ‘many soldiers died as a result of the failure of the Labour government to act upon defence procurement’ during the war in Afghanistan.
He was backed by fellow Labour peer Lord Hutton, who served as both defence and work and pensions secretary in the last Labour government.
Lord Hutton urged Sir Keir to grip the issue as the ‘defining moment in his premiership’, saying he has ‘a very, very short period of time to start putting this right and sending out the signals to Putin’ that Britain is serious about defending itself.
He told Times Radio the Government has ‘got to get a grip on the rising welfare budget’. But he warned that, almost two years in, ‘there’s no real sign that it’s got any agenda for correcting the very steep rise in welfare payments’.
On Tuesday night, Labour’s former deputy leader Harriet Harman suggested means-testing the pension triple lock, telling the BBC: ‘If you’re strapped for cash and need to divert some money to defence, that is one place to be looking.’
Despite the warnings, it has emerged that the Treasury is pushing the Ministry of Defence to find £3.5billion in cuts this year – almost the exact cost of the Chancellor’s recent decision to scrap the two-child benefits cap.
Kemi Badenoch warned that Labour’s dithering on the issue was now an ‘existential’ problem for the country, saying: ‘We have got to spend more on defence.’
The Conservative leader added: ‘The Government does not have a defence investment plan. There is a welfare plan that runs to 2031 but no defence plan.’
Mrs Badenoch repeated her offer to work with Labour to push through welfare cuts to free up resources for defence.
‘We used to spend one in every seven pounds on welfare,’ she said. ‘Now it’s one in every three pounds and a lot of that money has basically been swapped for defence.’
Shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge said it was ‘extraordinary’ that the Treasury was effectively demanding cuts to defence to fund the lifting of the two-child cap, which will hand thousands of pounds in extra benefits to some of Britain’s biggest jobless families.
‘The fact you are seeing cuts at the Ministry of Defence at a time when we have got two wars on shows the Treasury is running defence policy,’ Mr Cartlidge told the Daily Mail.
‘Defence is paralysed,’ he said. ‘They need to get a grip. That means making tough decisions on spending so that the MoD can finally start ordering at scale and at pace, the munitions we need without which this country is at greater risk than it needs to be.
‘We’ve got a former Labour defence secretary saying cut welfare to fund defence. We need the current defence secretary to thump on the door of the Treasury and say, enough is enough. Let’s take some tough decisions and cut welfare to fund defence.’
Last year, defence secretary John Healey told MPs that he would publish the ten-year Defence Investment Plan by the autumn.
But the deadline came and went amid bitter Whitehall infighting over how to pay for it. Downing Street was unable to say yesterday when it would be published, despite it having sat on the Prime Minister’s desk for months.
Ministers are grappling with how to fill a £28billion black hole in defence funding over the next four years.
Ms Reeves has warned she will not risk breaking her fiscal rules by borrowing the money. The Chancellor has also signalled she is unwilling to look again at future defence spending until a planned comprehensive spending review in the summer of 2027.
Work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden is working on a package of welfare reform but has warned against trying to find significant savings this year, after a botched attempt to trim £5billion from the budget led to a humiliating U-turn at the hands of Labour backbenchers last year.
Lord Robertson on Tuesday warned that the Government could not afford to delay a decision on defence spending any longer.
In his speech, he said a ‘corrosive complacency’ at the top of government is putting Britain ‘in peril’ at a time when it is ‘under attack’.
Pointing the finger at the Chancellor, he accused ‘non-military experts in the Treasury’ of ‘vandalism’.
The peer warned: ‘We three reviewers, a former defence secretary, a former general and a current foreign policy guru, were hired by Keir Starmer and John Healey to look at every aspect of UK defence, which we did with the aid of more than 150 experts and an unprecedented public consultation.
‘If our recommendations were implemented, then we might be prepared for an opponent like Russia or a China in ten years’ time. What is happening in the world today does not give us anything like ten years.’
The Daily Mail has kept the pressure on the Government to raise spending through our ‘Don’t Leave Britain Defenceless’ campaign.
Downing Street denied the suggestion that government dithering was putting Britain at risk.
But Lord Robertson’s analysis was backed by other senior defence figures.
General Sir Richard Barrons – who co-authored the Government’s strategic defence review said there was ‘an enormous gap between where we have to be to keep the country safe in the world we now live in and where we actually are’.
Tan Dhesi, Labour chairman of the Commons defence committee, which has been trying to persuade Ms Reeves to give evidence on the funding crisis, said it was ‘damning that a man of (Lord Robertson’s) stature and experience has to speak out publicly to get his message heard’.
But General Sir Gwyn Jenkins, the current First Sea Lord, insisted there was no complacency at the top of government, telling MPs: ‘This could not be taken more seriously at the moment. I see no sign of complacency among anybody that I work with or provide advice to.’
