Over to you, Sir Keir! Starmer needs to put money where mouth is on UK defence spending

Labour are in and the Tories are out, and so it begins. The Labour party election manifesto contained much and will now be subject to scrutiny over the next few years to see whether they can deliver or whether it will prove once again to be a litany of broken promises, discarded after they served their purpose.

As an ex-military man it was the party’s defence policies and pledges which caught my eye, and I wrote previously about it here. Now that reality has bitten, however, I have a few suggestions of my own as to how Sir Keir and his party should approach the defence conundrum.

The consensus both here and abroad seems to be that the UK’s defence forces have atrophied over the past two decades through chronic underfunding and poor leadership. How can our new government begin to reverse the decline?

First and foremost Labour needs to sort out the defence budget. Yes, I know that they have pledged to raise spending to 2.5% of GDP when circumstances allow but that really isn’t good enough. In the light of Ukraine, the Middle East, and other tensions around the globe we may not have much time to put things right.

Starmer needs to get hold of his Chancellor and the Treasury and tell them to wind their necks in and listen. The budget should be raised to 3% of GDP immediately and to 4% by 2030. No point in pussyfooting around any more. The threats are real and we need to confront them. If Poland can achieve 4% then so should we.

Next, and equally urgent, is the need to fix the personnel problem. Our boys and girls in uniform are brilliant but there just ain’t enough of them to crew the ships, fly and maintain the aircraft, and fill the battalions. All the shiny new equipment in the world is not worth a jot if we haven’t the people to operate them.

Recruiting targets have been missed for years, and the outflow from the services is such that there are more people leaving then there are coming in. The reason is that the services are increasingly not regarded as an attractive career option.

It’s not a pay issue, it’s mainly a conditions of service issue. Much service housing is in poor condition and badly administered by outsourced contractors. Similar outsourcing of army recruitment has been disastrous. And the after-service care of veterans is appallingly handled, palmed off in the main to charities whose remits often overlap and conflict.

A lot of this is relatively easily fixed with the right focus, commitment, and political will. The armed forces need to have their people properly managed and nurtured, before, during, and after their time in uniform. The promise to establish an independent Armed Forces Commissioner will help, as long as he/she is truly independent. Don’t let the military chain of command anywhere near it!

Third, and I was delighted to note that it featured heavily in the Labour party’s election manifesto, is the requirement to reform the MoD’s defence equipment procurement processes and practices.

The record of Britain procuring defence equipments on time and within budget is dire. The UK seems to be still mired in the 1950s when it comes to weapons development to be honest, in the days when it was acceptable to take ten years to bring weapons from inception to being introduced into service.

Take ten years nowadays and the “new” equipment presented is obsolete before the troops get their hands on it, such is the speed of technological advance. I could name many examples, but none is more relevant to this hypothesis than the slow-motion car crash that is Ajax, the British army’s next armoured cavalry vehicle.

Already fifteen years behind schedule, the thick end of the £5.6 billion budget for 589 vehicles has already been spent with nary one in service. It is an example of now not to go about it, and the predictable result of a sclerotic MoD system long past its sell-by date plus short-term appointments of military officers desperate not to be the ones holding the parcel when the music stops.

There are many, many other issues crying out for reform in the UK defence sphere, but if Labour can get its teeth into these three then it will have made a promising start.

If we accept that the first priority of government is protection of the state and its citizenry then the way forward is clear. And to fund it either taxation has to go up or something else has to give.

Over to you, Sir Keir.

Lt Col Stuart Crawford is a political and defence commentator and former army officer. Sign up for his podcasts and newsletters at www.DefenceReview.uk