We have 2 weeks to save Britain’s defence budget
THE new Secretary of State for Defence, Gavin Williamson, has an awesome task ahead of him. He will be responsible for the first duty of any Government, the protection of our nation and people worldwide, and yet there is a general consensus among military experts and more widely that UK defence is in crisis. The planned defence programme is unaffordable and all three services are suffering from a hollowing out of their force structures. Yet we have been told again and again that far from being in difficulty, the defence budget is growing and all in the garden is rosy. Clearly it is not. We urgently need more spending on defence. The Government should be as robust about this as they are about foreign aid, which now equals 38 per cent of the defence budget. The decline in military capability is a choice and not one our nation should make in today’s chaotic, unpredictable and dangerous world. The Secretary of State has two weeks before the Budget on November 22 to convince the Treasury and Cabinet colleagues of the need for an uplift in defence spending or he could take the replacement programme of the Vanguard class submarines out of the defence programme and cover the costs from central contingency. Should he achieve this, the military will judge his appointment a success. ADMIRAL LORD WEST OF SPITHEAD,
London SW1.