UK defence secretary Ben Wallace has said he is braced for an “uphill battle” with the Treasury over increasing military spending, as he warned that global threats had made the world “much more dangerous and unstable”.
The UK spends about 2.1 per cent of gross domestic product on defence, but Wallace is one of a number of Conservative MPs to warn that increased threats from Russia and China, and domestic inflationary pressures, justify additional expenditure.
“I’ve been in this game long enough. I have been a minister for God knows how many years, but it’s always an uphill battle with the Treasury, no matter what department you’re in,” he told Sky News on Wednesday.
“It’s the right thing that the secretary of state will argue for an increase to meet their priorities. And of course, between now and the Budget, I’ve got lots of time and lots of meetings with the chancellor to make sure that we try and come to a deal on it.”
In his Autumn Statement in November, Jeremy Hunt said that both he and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recognised the “need” to boost defence spending.
But the chancellor added that the government would update the integrated review into the UK’s foreign policy strategy before making any budgetary decision.
The Sunday Times reported last week that Wallace was seeking an increase of roughly £10bn for the Ministry of Defence.
Wallace on Wednesday rejected suggestions that he would resign if he failed to secure extra funding, insisting: “This is not about resigning or anything else: it’s about delivering defence to meet the threat.”
He added that the MoD was particularly vulnerable to “inflation pressures”, owing to the need to spend on hardware and infrastructure.
The Office for National Statistics on Wednesday said consumer price inflation stood at 10.1 per cent in January, down from 10.5 per cent the previous month and a high of 11.1 per cent in October last year.
“I am not going to conduct the negotiations in public, but obviously we’re going to try and make our way through this so that between now and the next spending review, which is in two years’ time, we can insulate defence from many of those pressures.”
Speaking as Nato defence ministers began a second day of talks in Brussels on military support for Ukraine, Wallace said the war had exposed “vulnerabilities” in many European countries’ defence capabilities.
“The world itself is much more dangerous and unstable,” Wallace told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, citing China and the growth of al-Qaeda and other radical groups in Africa.
He added that it had been “well known for decades” that, at times of cost cutting, “the places that got unfunded were the unsexy parts of defence”.
