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Keir Starmer has said he does not agree with George Robertson’s comments about the government’s “corrosive complacency” on defence funding, as the prime minister faced sustained pressure on the issue.
Questioned in the Commons about the claims by Robertson, the former Labour defence secretary and Nato chief who co-authored a defence review for the government, Starmer insisted that defence spending was increasing rapidly.
Pressed by Kemi Badenoch about whether he agreed with Robertson, now a Labour peer, that social security should be cut to boost defence, Starmer said his government was tackling both areas – and argued that previous Conservative governments neglected them.
Government sources have not denied that Rachel Reeves has proposed increasing the budget by less than £10bn over the next four years amid concerns that any more would be unaffordable.
While the government has committed to reach 2.5% of GDP on defence from April next year, then 3% in the next parliament, military leaders believe there is still a £28bn shortfall after years of the armed forces being hollowed out by successive administrations.
With defence spending discussions due this week, military leaders are understood to have been asked to find £3.5bn in savings this year, even as the armed forces are being readied for conflict.
Asked by Badenoch whether he agreed with Robertson, Starmer said: “I respect Lord Robertson, and I thank him again for carrying out the strategic [defence] review. My responsibility is to keep the British people safe, and that is a duty I take seriously. That is why I do not agree with his comments.”
Questioned about when a promised defence investment plan would materialise, Starmer said it was important to get this right, and that it would be “published as soon as possible”.
He defended Reeves’s record on defence spending, saying that the promised increases to the defence budget were possible “because of the decisions of this chancellor”.
Robertson publicly aired his frustration at the government’s failure to come forward with its 10-year spending plans for defence in a speech on Tuesday night, saying: “We cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget.”
Speaking earlier on Wednesday, James Murray, the chancellor’s deputy, argued that balancing welfare and defence spending “is not a zero-sum game”.
“We’ve decided to have the biggest sustained increase in defence investments since the cold war,” Murray told Times Radio. “At the same time, we’ve begun our work to reform the welfare system, changing universal credit, reducing fraud and error, reforming motability. There’s more work to do.”
He added: “It’s not a zero-sum game because we are increasing the investment in defence as a result of our decisions to record levels … It’s worth also saying that the welfare system isn’t some kind of amorphous blob. It includes things like our decision to remove the two-child benefit cap, which helps hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty.”
John Healey, the defence secretary, is understood to be pushing the Treasury for more money for defence. However, the suggestion that public spending cuts may be necessary to fund defence has prompted an angry reaction on the left of Labour.
John Hutton, a Labour peer who was a defence secretary under Tony Blair, said Starmer needed to “knock heads together here” and ensure the Treasury released more funding without first seeking guarantees on procurement systems.
He told the Guardian: “I think the Treasury rightly feel that the MoD wastes a lot of money at the moment, as they do – the procurement process is notoriously inefficient – and you could really save significant money, which you could then reinvest.
“But I don’t think it’s reasonable for the Treasury to say at the moment that until you come up with a credible plan [for efficiencies] – I think they want six or seven billion from the MoD – until you come up with that plan, we won’t allow you to spend. That is completely wrong. Because that just simply does not take into account the geopolitical situation we’re in.”
