Dear Sir Keir,
Today’s world is more dangerous and threatening than we have known in our lifetimes. Britain and our allies are confronted by authoritarian states who want to destabilise and divide us. Yet in the space of 12 hours your Defence Secretary, Armed Forces Minister and two key Defence Department aides resigned from your Government. They raised extremely serious concerns about our national defence readiness, and the funding of our military. The former Defence Secretary repeated the warning that “it is our intelligence assessment, and the assessment of other countries in NATO, that there could be an attack by Russia on NATO as soon as 2030”.
The first duty of every Government must be to protect our security – but the man who was until Thursday your Defence Secretary, John Healey, has laid out your failure to do so properly. This failure is even more concerning in the light of the Russian threat that he describes.
In an interview on Friday, you claimed you had made “hard-edged decisions” on defence spending. However, John Healey has said that the funding level you have decided on for our military falls “well short of what is required for defence and the country at this dangerous time”. Healey warned that your Government’s decisions were reducing “the readiness of our Forces” and increasing “the risk to personnel on operations”. These are very serious criticisms, perhaps the most serious that could be made of any prime minister, especially in the context of the risk of a Russian attack on NATO.
On Wednesday at Prime Minister’s Questions, I repeatedly asked you about the publication of the delayed Defence Investment Plan. You assured Parliament it would be published in “just a few weeks time” and that your ministers “have been working through the details to make sure that we get this right”. Despite these assurances of ministers working together, the former Armed Forces Minister, Al Carns, wrote to you on Friday to say he “had no hand in the Defence Investment Plan”. He went on to say that that Plan is “not built for the threat we face” and is not “transformative enough”.
I also asked you on Wednesday about the funding for that plan, and specifically about the £15 billion shortfall between what your Treasury were reportedly offering to provide, and what our military leaders argue is the minimum required for our national security. You told Parliament that your Government was “investing in this great nation” and had “increased defence spending”. However, Al Carns has argued that the level of investment on offer is “inadequate to the task” and “commanders…will be asked to do more with less”, because the plan is “not sufficiently funded”.
It is time to get serious. We cannot have our military inadequately funded at a time of growing threats. The funding must also not be backloaded, when the pressures are urgent.
I have made several offers to work with you in the national interest to reduce benefit spending so we can invest more in our defence. Sir Tony Blair, the longest serving Labour Prime Minister, has urged you to accept them.
In the light of the warnings from John Healey and Al Carns I repeat my offer again today, and ask you to meet with me to discuss defence funding. I am also making the same offer of support to reduce welfare spending to the contenders in the ongoing Labour leadership race. Since the Parliamentary defeat of your modest attempt at welfare reform in the summer of last year, it is obvious that your left-wing MPs will not support any real attempt to cut the welfare bills. Therefore the support of the Conservatives will be critical to delivering substantive reforms that will reduce the benefits bill.
The Defence Investment Plan must be published as soon as possible. It has been repeatedly promised since the autumn of last year, and without it our military lacks the blueprint required to rearm and invest in new defence equipment and infrastructure. It must be given the right level of funding which is why it is so important we work together to find those savings from the benefits bill.
It must also be sufficiently transformative to meet the needs of a more dangerous world. The warnings by Al Carns suggest the Defence Investment Plan is currently insufficient to the task. I therefore request that my shadow Defence Secretary works with your new Defence Secretary to address it shortcomings. Finally, I ask that my shadow Defence Secretary and shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office are briefed urgently on Privy Council terms both about the Defence Investment Plan’s contents and about the risks of a Russian attack on NATO within the next four years.
I look forward to your rapid reply, and I hope we can work together in the national interest given the overwhelming imperative of defending our country.
Yours,
Kemi Badenoch
