Who is protected?

‘THE first duty of government is the protection of the nation.” Those were words of the former chief of the defence staff Nick Houghton as he added his voice to the call to vastly increase defence spending. Does the UK really need to increase its defence spending?

Houghton may have a point, but it’s worth asking what “protection of the nation” looks like in 2018. The MP report warns of “serious deficiencies in the quantities of armour, armoured vehicles and artillery”. In other words, more tanks and guns are needed. But what role do these expensive pieces of kit really play? There is no threat to the UK that requires land forces. They are much more likely to be used in foreign adventures of – to say the least – dubious benefit to the UK and the wider world. A reminder of this comes in an expected announcement of 440 more British troops for Afghanistan.

The timing of that pledge offers an insight into the thinking behind the clamour for cash – and it’s not really about keeping citizens safe.

The defence committee believes “diminished capacity reduces the UK’s usefulness to the US and its influence within Nato”. So, it’s about influence and standing. The prospect of currying favour with the US and a president who moans about how it’s “not fair” that European allies don’t spend as much on defence.

This need for self-aggrandisement is made all the more acute by Brexit. Instead of outdated ideas about the “protection of the nation” with costly hardware perhaps people should think about the government’s duty to keep its citizens safe in the broadest sense: to look after their welfare and enable them to flourish. Defence has a role to play.

In the future, war among developed nations is less likely to be conducted on the battlefield than in cyberspace, and this is one area where spending on technology and expertise must increase.

But it’s very hard to swallow the argument that the Ministry of Defence has as justified a claim on the public purse as the Department of Health, particularly at a time when the ill, and especially the mentally ill, are the new poor. They are ones most left behind, most likely to be out of work long term, most likely to be deprived. The protection of the sick ought to be any decent government’s highest priority.