Defence Minister Gets Basic Facts Wrong on Own Spending Review – Guido Fawkes

Defence Minister Gets Basic Facts Wrong on Own Spending Review

Defence minister Luke Pollard was wheeled out on Politics Live this afternoon to flog Labour’s Strategic Defence Review. Pollard was still unable to come up with a suitable defence for Labour’s failure to guarantee a rise to 3% spending after Monday’s embarrassment for Starmer. What happened to a guaranteed 2034 date?

Pollard insisted the SDR’s 62 recommendations – every one of which was accepted by Starmer – were achievable because “the Strategic Defence Review was based around spending 2.5% of GDP on defence and that is the commitment we’ve made.” One small problem: that’s not what the authors of the review say…

General Sir Richard Barrons, one of the authors of the SDR, made it clear on The Spectator’s Coffee House Shots podcast:

“And that financial profile assumed defence gets 2.5% of GDP in financial year 27-28, and 3% of GDP by no later than 2034 in the next parliament. And we took that financial profile, and we assured ourselves, with a lot of work from the Ministry of Defence, that the 60 plus recommendations that we make and the themes that we describe are affordable within that profile over that time.”

All three authors also wrote:

“The Government’s important decision to raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027/28 and, vitally, to 3% in the next Parliament made an enormous difference. The decision established the affordability of our recommendations across a 10-year programme.” 

Without a costed path to 3% Starmer won’t be able to get much of what’s on his SDR shopping list…