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Rishi Sunak should commit to spending more on defence in the Conservative Party general election manifesto, Defence Secretary Grant Shapps has said, amid warnings that the UK is not ready for an all-out war with Russia.
Shapps made clear he wanted to see the 2.5 per cent GDP target in the manifesto, hours after the Prime Minister refused to say whether it would be included.
The Cabinet clash came as a senior army chief admitted to the defence select committee that while the UK armed forces can “get out the door tonight” for an urgent military operation, they are not ready for an “enduring” ground war with Russia due to equipment and personnel shortages.
Giving evidence to the Liaison Committee earlier, Sunak was asked whether the 2.5 per cent target would be in the offer to voters in the general election, expected this autumn.
The Prime Minister said the Government was committed to 2.5 per cent “when economic conditions allow” but added: “We will try not to write too much of the manifesto in the here and now.”
Sunak also admitted that more money needed to be spent on equipment, saying: “We need to collectively up our game when it comes to defence industrial production.”
Defence spending is set to be around 2.3 per cent of GDP in 2024-25.
But Shapps, giving evidence to the Defence Select Committee later, said: “I am very pleased we’re committed to doing it [2.5 per cent target]. Of course I urge us to do that as quickly as possible, there’s a general election coming up.”
In January, the Defence Secretary began pressing the Chancellor for more money in the Budget when he warned that the world was moving from “post-war to pre-war phase”.
But Jeremy Hunt did not increase funds for the armed forces in March, and the small print of the Budget showed core defence spending is actually set to fall in real terms next year.
Armed forces minister James Heappey, who resigned from the Government on Tuesday, had previously made clear he was also unhappy with the levels of defence spending.
The Defence Secretary added: “The Government is committed to 2.5 per cent… I am in complete agreement that you have to pay for that defence.
“So the exact timing, as we have said all along, is a matter for the Chancellor and the government has described it as being as conditions allow.
“I am the Secretary of State for Defence and of course I urged for us to move to that position as quickly as possible. There will be other opportunities, including an election coming.”
Lieutenant General Sir Rob Magowan, deputy Chief of the Defence Staff, was asked by Conservative committee member Mark Francois whether the UK armed forces were ready for war.
Lt Gen Magowan replied: “I think the message that this country is not ready for war is the wrong message, on a whole range of fronts.
“We have very high readiness forces, many in the colour of my uniform that can go out the door tonight, and have then a rota war, we would fight as an alliance and it’s as we discussed before it’s about the balance of operational risk, that’s the answer – not we’re not ready for war, we are ready for war.”
But Francois said: “We’re not ready for an enduring war, you accept that?”
The senior army chief said: “Absolutely, absolutely.”
Francois added: “We couldn’t fight an enduring war for more than a couple of months against Russia, dropping the euphemisms about peer adversaries, we couldn’t fight Putin for more than a couple of months, in a full on shooting war, because we don’t have the ammunition and the reserves of equipment, that’s true isn’t it?”
Lt Gen Magowan said: “True.”
But Shapps insisted this scenario would not arise because the UK is a member of Nato, meaning that any attack by Russia would invoke the military might of the entire alliance.
The Defence Secretary told the committee: “For people watching and hearing the UK isn’t ready for war exclusively with Russia, it’s important to understand that because we’re in Nato and Article 5 exists, that we would never be in that situation.
“In fact if we were in a ‘war against Russia’ … we would be in a very strong position, the UK is very improbable, very unlikely that we would pick a war with Russia and not have Nato.”
Earlier, Francois accused Mr Shapps and the Ministry of Defence of “cheating” with the official figures on defence spending.
The Budget Red Book makes clear that the core spending on defence – stripping out supplemental spending on things like assistance for Ukraine and the Dreadnought nuclear submarine replacement programme – will drop by £2.5bn from this financial year to the next.
Francois said: “Everyone can see what you’ve done, you’ve been defeated by the Treasury, you are slap bang guilty of Enron accounting.
“You’re trying to blow smoke in everybody’s eyes by using Ukrainian money and pretending it’s part of the UK defence budget, it’s not, it’s part of the Ukrainian budget.”
Tom Wipperman, strategic finance director for the MoD, said: “Those nominal numbers probably are a real cut.”
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