A gaggle of MPs warned this morning that the UK has no “credible” plan to purchase all of the weapons it wants after an enormous rise in the price of nuclear deterrence led to a report funding shortfall.
Inflation and a weak pound additionally contributed to at the least £16.9 billion being misplaced in a rolling 10-year plan to acquire tools for the military, Royal Navy and Royal Air Power, the Public Accounts Committee stated in a damning report (extra right here). ).
We requested Finance Minister Gareth Davies for his response to the report and replied: “Now we have report funding for our protection.”
Identified by presenter Anna Jones concerning the obvious funding black gap, he stated: “Nicely, I don’t see that. As I stated, now we have report funding for protection.”
He stated the quantity was elevated by £11 billion final 12 months and the funding could be reviewed once more within the spending evaluate anticipated to happen after the final election.
We then instructed Mr Davies that no new protection funding had been introduced within the finances, regardless that we had been in a interval of nice international instability.
He responded that the UK is “one of many few international locations assembly NATO’s goal” of spending 2% of GDP on protection.
“By the way, we’re the one political social gathering that has a goal of spending 2.5% of GDP on protection spending if we’re chargeable for it,” he added.
Requested when the UK will attain the goal of spending 2.5% of GDP on protection, he replied that this was a “long-term objective” that wanted to be applied “responsibly and sustainably”.