The Prime Minister has vowed that the UK will meet their target of 5% of gross domestic product (GDP) within a decade.
The Prime Minister said this allow the UK to “navigate this era of radical uncertainty with agility, speed and a clear-eyed sense of the national interest.”
Dame Penny Mordaunt who is the former Defence Secretary described Labour’s defence plans as a “mess” saying it is all “smoke and mirrors.”
Mordaunt told GB News, “I would love it, but as you know, it’s not funded. If Puff the Magic Dragon held a cigar party in the Palace of Versailles, you couldn’t have any more smoke and mirrors than the Treasury has deployed today.
Leave aside the 1.5 per cent, which is spent on things which aren’t really defence but support our security, which could include road infrastructure, for example. What we’re talking about is trying to meet the Nato new floor of 3.5 per cent in the next Parliament.
She added: “That’s what Nato says we need to do as a minimum, and unless you’ve got a plan to fund that, it doesn’t matter what your ambitions are.
Mordaunt told GB News, “And it’s important, not just because you need that credibility, you also need to send a signal to industry that you’re going to make that investment so it can gear up.
“You need to also send a signal which will enable nations to be smarter about their procurement and make the efficiency savings that are already baked into the MoD’s budget. And I’m afraid at the Spending Review, there was no uplift to defence spending at all.
She added: “We’ve still got big questions about how this disastrous Chagos Islands deal is going to be funded, and even which department the budget is going to come from.
“And there’s all sorts of questions around the ambition on savings that the department will make, so it’s a mess.”
Mordaunt concluded: “The Treasury has not factored this into its budgeting.
“It doesn’t matter what is said at Nato, it might give the Americans some hope that we really are stepping up. But the sad thing is we’re not and we need to.
This is a real moment for our nation, and if we don’t pay the bills now on defence, which are considerable, the price we are going to pay in the years to come in in blood and treasure are going to be unbearable.
