Defence

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I am deeply worried by the threat to our security from a Keir Starmer-led Government, a man who is leading a party who wanted to scrap Trident and withdraw from NATO. Only the Conservatives are investing in our national defence to keep our country safe.

Rebecca Harris

Uncertain times call for a clear plan and bold action to chart a course to a secure future. The Conservative Government has taken the bold action to keep Britain safe in a more insecure world and will implement further reforms to ensure this is always the case. Labour’s plans are a real risk to our national security.

 

We will increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030, the biggest strengthening of our national defence in a generation. We are maintaining our leading position in NATO with defence spending reaching £87 billion a year in 2030, primarily focused on three areas: firing up the UK defence industrial base, modernising our Armed Forces and backing Ukraine’s defence.

We are publishing the Defence Command Paper Refresh, learning from the war in Ukraine to protect the nation and help it prosper. It will deliver a credible warfighting force by investing in people, skills and accommodation, increasing stockpiles and munitions, making defence procurement quicker and harnessing the latest technologies to take on future threats.

We are working together with AUKUS allies to build the world’s most advanced nuclear submarines, putting our commitment to global security into practice and creating thousands of jobs in the UK. A new fleet of AUKUS submarines will be based on UK design – with construction and manufacturing taking place in Barrow-in-Furness and in Raynesway, boosting British jobs whilst increasing our security. The Conservatives have ushered in a new Golden Age of British shipbuilding by building up to 6 new state-of-the-art warships in the UK. We are building or placing in the pipeline 28 ships and submarines.  

We have delivered £7.6 billion of military support to Ukraine since 2022, as we increase the military assistance for 2024-25 to £3 billion to support Ukraine’s campaign against Russian aggression, with the most recent supplies including 20 AS90 self-propelled 155mm battle ready guns and more than 10,800 anti-tank missiles. We are also training more than 35,000 ordinary Ukrainian troops, making it the largest training programme of its kind on British soil since the Second World War, taking the total number of trained Ukrainian soldiers to more than 52,000 since Russia invaded in 2014.

 

 

Labour have no clear plan to keep Britain safe, placing our national security at risk:

  • They have refused to commit to spending 2.5% of GDP on defence by 2030.
  • As a human rights barrister, Sir Keir Starmer backed plans for Britain to adopt a ‘non-nuclear, non-aligned defence policy’ – essentially to scrap Trident and leave NATO.
  • Every Labour MP elected in 2019 wanted to make Jeremy Corbyn the Prime Minister and supported his world view. This included: abolishing the army, scrapping Trident, withdrawing from NATO, replacing our army with a peace corps and calling Hamas his 'friends'.
  • Labour want to shamelessly use our Armed Forces veterans in a desperate attempt to win back the voters they took for granted and ignored for so long by increasing their pretence of caring about British values.
  • Labour left behind a £38 billion black hole in the defence budget. When Labour left office, defence projects were running £35 billion over budget – showing they cannot be trusted with procurement. By 2010, the top 15 defence projects were 339 months overdue.
  • Labour’s number one foreign affairs priority is to hand over control of our defence and security to the EU by pursuing a new UK-EU security pact.

 

Only the actions of the Conservatives will keep our country safe.