Find the funds to fix the UK’S defence budget
Investing all our limited resources in the NHS risks ignoring an even more important national priority
Theresa May has declared the NHS to be her Government’s “number one spending priority”, and to that end aims to add another £20 billion to its coffers. But by making this bold pledge, the Prime Minister should be aware that she is in danger of ignoring an altogether more important national priority – namely the defence of the realm.
You probably have to go back to the 1930s to find the last time our Armed Forces were so pitifully underresourced. Back then, the refusal of the then Chancellor, Neville Chamberlain, to provide adequate funding meant that, at a time when Nazi Germany was busy re-arming, our own Army recruits were reduced to conducting parade drills with broomsticks.
Military technology may have changed immeasurably during the intervening eight decades, but the ability of our Armed Forces to respond effectively to the new range of modern-day threats is similarly being hampered by the woeful underfunding overseen by the current Chancellor, Philip Hammond.
During his tenure as defence secretary, Mr Hammond’s obsession with cutting costs at the MOD meant that, as I reported at the time, he actually managed to underspend the modest budget at his disposal to the tune of some £1.5billion.
And it is as a direct result of his parsimonious management of military funding that today the Army is struggling to maintain its meagre 82,000 manning level, the Royal Air Force has insufficient combat squadrons to fulfil our international obligations and the Royal Navy’s fleet of Type 45 destroyers spent the majority of last year tied up at Portsmouth.
The parlous state of Britain’s defences was driven home to Downing Street this week after the idea was mooted of showing off the new 65,000-tonne Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers to the US President, Donald Trump, when he visits Britain next month. That was until someone pointed out that, as the carriers do not yet have any aircraft on them, the American leader might be distinctly underwhelmed.
Despite the Government’s protests to the contrary, the simple truth is that the drastic cuts made to the defence budget since the Tories came to power in 2010 have severely reduced Britain’s war-fighting capabilities to the point where close allies, such as the United States, are now questioning whether it is worth persevering with the Western alliance at all.
And, with Mrs May determined to make the NHS the principal beneficiary of her Brexit bounty, the Forces’ predicament can only get worse. For as Mr Hammond helpfully (and all-too-readily) pointed out in the immediate aftermath of the NHS funding announcement, the extra £20 billion allocated to health means there is simply no more money available for any other government department – including defence.
No one will be more dismayed by this news than the Defence Secretary, Gavin Williamson, who, after a decidedly shaky start, has grown into the job and is now fully apprised of his department’s funding shortfalls, and their potentially disastrous impact on the future operational effectiveness of the British military. To this end Mr Williamson has been lobbying hard for Downing Street to take more interest in the mini defence review being undertaken by Sir Mark Sedwill, the National Security Advisor, to be published next month, which aims to provide an accurate assessment of the Mod’s funding shortfall.
Moreover, with the Brexit deadline fast approaching, Mr Williamson is among a clutch of ministers and MPS who believe strongly that investing in defence will help to secure Britain’s status as a global power once we have parted company with the EU.
It is an argument that is particularly pertinent in the run-up to next month’s Nato summit in Brussels, at which Mr Trump is expected to renew his criticism of those European members of the alliance who fail to meet the spending target of 2per cent of GDP.
There are those in Whitehall who like to think Britain is immune from such criticism as they claim we do meet the 2per cent target. But any rigorous assessment of the MOD figures would show that this is creative accountancy at its best. Remove the replacement costs of the Trident nuclear deterrent (which used to be funded by the Treasury) plus other costs, such as pensions, that the defence budget has only recently acquired, and you end up with a figure more like 1.7per cent for UK defence spending.
Just as Mr Trump would not be fooled by an aircraft carrier with no aircraft, so the Pentagon is not going to be taken in by the financial sleight of hand that was practised by former Chancellor George Osborne, and now by Mr Hammond, to hit the 2per cent figure.
If Mrs May is serious about Britain maintaining its global standing post-brexit, then she needs to find the funds to fix the defence budget, rather than investing all of our limited resources in the NHS.