24 Jun DEFENCE SPENDING INCREASE IS AN UNFUNDED ILLUSION, SAYS PENNY MORDAUNT
THE government’s announcement on increased defence spending is illusory and unfunded, according to the former Defence Secretary Penny Mordaunt.
Speaking to GB News, she said: “If Puff the Magic Dragon held a cigar party in the Palace of Versailles, you couldn’t have any more smoke and mirrors than the Treasury has deployed today.
“Leave aside the 1.5% which is spent on things which aren’t really defence but support our security, which could include road infrastructure, for example, what we’re talking about is trying to meet the NATO new floor of 3.5% in the next parliament.
“That’s what NATO says we need to do as a minimum. And unless you’ve got a plan to fund that, it doesn’t matter what your ambitions are, and that’s important, not just because you need that credibility. You also need to send a signal to industry you’re going to make that investment so it can gear up.
“You need to also send a signal which will enable nations to be smarter about their procurement and make the efficiency savings that are already baked into the MoD’s budget. And I’m afraid at the spending review, there was no uplift to defence spending at all.
“We’ve still got big questions about how this disastrous Chagos islands deal is going to be funded, and even which department it’s going to, the budget is going to come from, and there’s all sorts of questions around the ambition on savings that the department will make.
“So it’s a mess. This is what Labour always does. When we came in 2010, the black hole in the defence budget was twice the size of the defence budget, £71 billion on RUSI’s figures. It’s because it talks the talk, but it does not put its money where its mouth is.”
She added: “if you do not have strong defences, your NHS is open to cyber attack. If you can’t keep your sea lanes open, you can kiss the growth agenda goodbye. So we have got to recognise the importance of this.
“The Prime Minister himself has said this is important. He had the defence review a week prior to the Spending Review, I was very optimistic about what he was saying, and then the money wasn’t there.
‘But there are two further things as well. You have got to send a signal to industry that you are going to invest in these capabilities. If you do that, then defence becomes cheaper, then you get the efficiency savings, then people are able to make the investment.
‘If you also reform at the same time, you make your procurement better, faster, more joined up with other nations. Then you get the private sector also investing, because the return to them is likely to be greater.
‘So all the things you want to be doing to get this to go in the right way and find additional resources elsewhere, all those avenues are currently being blocked off because the Treasury has not factored this into its budgeting.
“It doesn’t matter what is said at NATO, it might give the Americans some hope that we really are stepping up. But the sad thing is, we’re not, and we need to.
‘This is a real moment for our nation, and if we don’t pay the bills now on defence, which are considerable, the price we are going to pay in the years to come in blood and treasure are going to be unbearable. This really is a wake up moment for the nation.’
