The government’s Defence Investment Plan is a “damp squib” that will result in cuts to the Royal Navy, according to former Chancellor Sir Jeremy Hunt.
He told GB News: “I agree these are extraordinary times and I, on one level, I understand why he wants to unveil something before the NATO summit in Turkey, which is next week and basically is always a moment of high peril, because you never know what Donald Trump’s going to do next, and so he wants to get something out there that shows the UK is spending more, but it is a damp squib, isn’t it, really?
“We know the Ministry of Defence wanted as a minimum £28 billion over four years, this is £15 billion, it’s going to involve some big cuts to plans to expand the navy, and it’s really not going to please anyone. So, I do question the logic of it, and the fundamental reason, and I can speak as an ex-Chancellor, as well as an ex-Foreign Secretary, on this matter, is because the government won’t bite the bullet on welfare reform.
“if they got the welfare bill down to 2019 levels, that would save £56 billion a year within five years, more than enough to get defence up to 3% of GDP, but they just won’t bite the bullet, and that’s why we’re stuck in this limbo with this with this defence plan, which has got good bits to it. I think we all know we’ve got to spend more money on drones, but it isn’t doing the job.”
On the previous administration’s record on defence, he said: “Well, we went through a period where the deficit was 10% of GDP. We had to make very painful cuts. We were borrowing, when George Osborne became Chancellor in 2010, nearly one pound in every four that the state spends. It was incredibly dangerous and markets wouldn’t have tolerated it, but then after the invasion of Ukraine, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, our thinking changed, and that was why Rishi Sunak and I, when you were in Parliament that we needed to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, we started to put in place some welfare reforms.
“We wanted to go much further, actually, but then the election came along, so we clearly were making the choice that is defence over welfare. And by the way, something else that would have made a big difference is something that you were talking about earlier, which is if we kept the Rwanda scheme in place – the asylum bill is tens of billions of pounds.
“That we know was working because we were getting migrants arriving in Ireland saying they didn’t want to go to the UK anymore because they thought they might get sent to Rwanda, and that was actually happening before the first flights took off. So I really do think Shabana Mahmood, who I think is one of the most capable Labour ministers in her heart of hearts, must rue the day that that Rwanda scheme was canceled.”
