Labour accused the government of failing to reverse cuts in armed forces as the government unveiled a £5bn increase in defence spending over the next two years to bolster ammunition supplies and investment in new nuclear submarines as part of its Integrated Review Refresh.
The opposition highlighted that no money had been found to reverse a reduction of 10,000 service people in the size of the army, replace Hercules planes used to rescue desperate people from Kabul or increase the number of modernised British tanks to replace those sent to Ukraine.
David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, told MPs that he believed the government’s renewed defence and foreign policy statement, recast after the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the start of the war in Ukraine, was incomplete.
“It does not answer growing questions concerning capability gaps that weaken our national defences and undermine the UK’s Nato contribution,” Lammy said, arguing that the government’s long term pledge to lift defence spending from 2.1% to 2.5% of GDP was not credible.
The Labour MP accused the government of making “another hollow promise” because there was “no plan, no timetable” to underline the spending commitment, which would imply an extra £10bn to £13bn real terms increase in military budgets.
Overnight, Downing Street had announced the key points of the refreshed Integrated Review, a revision of defence and foreign policy first announced by Boris Johnson as prime minister in 2021. But the extra £5bn was less than the £8bn to £11bn that Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, had sought.
Rishi Sunak, visiting San Diego, where he was poised to announce a deal to design and build new nuclear-powered submarines with Australia and the US, told the BBC that the latest review was a response to the fact that “the world has become more volatile, the threats to our security have increased”.
The prime minister said the review, and the extra £5bn promised, was part of a “record amount of investments since the end of the cold war” including a previously announced £16.5bn in 2020. Lifting defence spending to 2.5% of GDP was “an ambition over time” he added.
James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, presenting the full review to the Commons, said that Lammy’s remarks represented a dramatic change of position for Labour when compared to the party’s previous leader Jeremy Corbyn. Cleverly said he was “very glad to hear Labour frontbench support for the nuclear deterrent and Nato”.
Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative chair of the defence select committee, also called for rearmament in response to Russian aggression and the rise of China. “We are sliding towards a new cold war. Threats are increasing but here we are staying on a peacetime budget,” he said, calling for a rapid move to 2.5% of GDP.
There also remains frustration in military circles that more was not done to reverse decades of cuts to the army. Of the extra £5bn, £3bn is pledged to help fund the joint Aukus nuclear-powered submarines, not expected until the early 2040s and nearly £2bn to replenish stockpiles of munitions sent to Ukraine.
Ed Arnold, a land warfare analyst with the Rusi thinktank and a former infantry officer, said the UK was increasingly unable to meet its commitments to Nato, with its promise to provide a war-fighting division in an emergency.
“Nato’s defence planning process heavily favours land forces and what the military alliance wants from the UK is a heavy division. At the moment that won’t be ready until 2030. Already the UK has had to pull out a battle group from Estonia because it couldn’t be sustained,” Arnold said.
Several European countries have promised to lift defence spending in response to the Russian invasion. Germany expected to announce a €10bn increase for 2024 while Poland plans to increase its military budget to above 4% of GDP this year.
As expected, the published document also sought to calibrate a careful line on China, describing the country as posing “an epoch-defining and systemic challenge” with implications for all of the UK. But it fell short of describing Beijing as a threat, a demand made by many backbench Conservative MPs.
