Sunak and Hunt face growing Cabinet revolt over defence spending
Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt are facing a growing Cabinet rebellion about the lack of spending on defence, i understands.
The Prime Minister and Chancellor have been warned by a number of ministers that the UK armed forces are under serious strain due to years of under-funding and shortages of equipment and personnel amid growing fears about conflict in Europe spreading beyond Ukraine and other global threats.
Two ministers broke cover at the weekend to call for “much greater pace” of investment in defence after the Chancellor failed to announce more spending in last week’s Budget.
Security minister Tom Tugendhat, who attends Cabinet, and foreign office minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan said the UK needs to “lead the way” in reaching the government’s target of 2.5 per cent of GDP.
Their concerns have been echoed in private by other Cabinet ministers, i has been told, who have warned of the fragility of the UK’s defence capabilities.
Separately Grant Shapps, the Defence Secretary, wrote to Mr Hunt in the run-up to the Budget calling for spending on the military to rise to 2.5 per cent of GDP next year, up from its current rate of around 2.2 per cent.
This was rebuffed by the Chancellor, who used his statement to repeat the government’s ambition to reach 2.5 per cent “as soon as economic conditions allow”.
A source close to Mr Shapps said on Sunday he still wanted more defence spending but was not going to “shout from the sidelines” as he also believed in cabinet responsibility.
But other ministers have raised their concerns in private.
No 10 insisted the joint article by Ms Trevelyan and Mr Tugendhat, which was posted on the former’s LinkedIn page on Friday, was in line with government policy to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent as soon as possible.
The article was not cleared in advance with Downing Street, i understands, but this was because social media posts do not need prior approval.
A government source insisted that the Tories were united in believing defence spending is crucial and that it was at its highest ever in real terms, at £50bn a year. The UK is the second-highest spender in Nato after the US, and the highest in Europe.
However, a devastating report by the Public Accounts Committee last week revealed that, despite these figures, the UK armed forces’ equipment is still under-funded.
The Commons’ spending watchdog warned that the Ministry of Defence has no “credible plan” to fund the armed forces the Government wants, leaving the UK increasingly forced to rely on its allies.
In their article, Ms Trevelyan and Mr Tugendhat said: “The sad truth is that the world is no longer benign.
“Protecting ourselves requires investment. And effective investment means that our industrial complex must grow and strengthen at much greater pace than at present.
“We cannot turn on the complex platforms and weapons which ensure military advantage overnight. We must start that growth now, invest at pace to support our allies and stay ahead of our adversaries.”
Ms Trevelyan, the Indo-Pacific minister, and Mr Tugendhat said they were both concerned about the level of defence spending needed to respond to China’s increasingly assertive global role.
“China announced this week that it was increasing its defence spending by another 7.2 per cent this year, taking it to $230bn. That’s more than twice what it was a decade ago.
“Russia is committed to spending 40 per cent of its expenditure on defence and security this year. Vast sums by any standard to fight its illegal war in Ukraine,” they said.
“By contrast, the US defence budget is $842bn this year, up less than 50 per cent over the same period. And the UK’s defence budget has risen from £43bn to £55bn – an increase of only 28 per cent.”
They added: “It’s clear to us that the UK needs to lead the way in increasing our own domestic defence and security spending commitments to 2.5 per cent and beyond.
“Former defence secretary Ben Wallace and prime minister Boris Johnson made inroads into growing our defence budgets, which had been shrinking in real terms for years, but that only filled the hole. Now we need growth.”
In an interview with the Sunday Times, Mr Sunak said: “I would just point to our record here as chancellor when I oversaw the largest increase in the defence budget since the end of the Cold War with a £24 billion uplift.
“The whole point is, we recognised that the world that we’re living in was becoming more dangerous, and we had to invest more to protect the country against that.”
