Defence Secretary’s face-off with Hammond

PHILIP Hammond will hold talks with the Defence Secretary this week to clear the air over Gavin Williamson’s public campaign for more military spending.

Whitehall sources said the Chancellor would discuss Mr Williamson’s push for a larger MoD budget after he gave the head of the Army, General Sir Nick Carter, permission to spell out the parlous state of the military in an apparent bid to force Mr Hammond’s hand.

His intervention came ahead of a meeting of Theresa May’s National Security Council today at which ministers will decide whether to ‘decouple’ defence from a wider security review.

Downing Street and the Treasury did not show any public irritation at Mr Williamson’s tactics – although one Whitehall source pointed out that the Defence Secretary had not asked for more cash ahead of November’s Budget, which came when he had been in post only a matter of weeks. Mr Hammond, a former defence secretary, is said to be sympathetic to the case but mindful of the need to balance the demands against other priorities.

A defence source yesterday confirmed Sir Nick had been authorised to ‘lay out the threats in a very open way’.

Mr Williamson has been waging a highprofile battle with Mr Hammond over funding – with the MoD even leaking the fact that the Chancellor had been barred from using RAF jets for travel until the Treasury settled his bill. Former Navy chief Lord West said there was ‘no starker illustration of the crisis in defence than that the Secretary of State actually allows a head of service to talk about the fact that it needs more resources’.

He added: ‘I cannot remember that ever happening before, though admittedly I have only been in the Navy for 53 years.’

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman played down the row, pointing out that the UK’s £3 billion defence budget was the biggest in Europe and set to rise to £40billion over the next three years.