Labour’s funding for defence is moving at “half the speed” needed to keep Britain ready for war, a retired army general has warned.
Sir Richard Barrons, who co-authored a flagship defence review last year, said the Government was moving too slowly on defence spending and that private investment from the City of London would be required to fill the gap.
War in the Middle East has fuelled fears over Britain’s readiness for war, with Sir Richard saying the Government’s sluggish response to the funding crisis was hindering efforts to keep the UK safe.
“All this work we’re doing to try and get private capital into defence is about matching the nature and the urgency of the current situation,” Sir Richard, who served one of the six chiefs of staff leading the UK Armed Forces between 2013 and 2016, said.
“The public sector response right now is funding a defence outcome [that is] moving at half the speed of the risk. That’s a failure of deterrence.”
Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to increase defence spending from 2.4pc to 2.5pc of GDP from April 2027, while the Government is reportedly considering a commitment to 3pc by the end of the parliament in 2029.
Sir Richard co-authored the strategic defence review last year, a government-backed study into military funding which laid out a roadmap for future spending.
Despite pushing for higher spending, the review’s recommendations have so far stalled within Whitehall, with Labour conducting another review, the defence investment plan, which is still to be published.
Tensions have grown between the Ministry of Defence and Whitehall over spending levels, with suggestions that ministers are holding up vital procurement programmes by failing to commit to funding increases.
Sir Richard said he was spearheading an initiative to get pension funds to sink more cash into the military because of Labour’s sluggish approach.
Along with accountants KPMG and lobby group CityUK, he has called on pension funds to step up their commitments to defence spending, warning that without them Britain’s military will suffer.
Armed Forces ‘hollowed out’
“We’ve arrived in this new era with the Armed Forces that we gifted ourselves in the post-Cold War era,” he said.
“They’re hollowed out, they don’t have the stocks, the training, the supplies, the disconnection from industry and civil society. There is clearly an enormous gap between where we are now and where we need to be.”
Sir Richard Barrons is trying to persuade City funds to help close the military’s ‘enormous’ funding gap – Leon Neal/Getty Images
The war in Iran as well as the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine have fuelled fears that Britain’s defence sector is not properly funded.
Sir Richard said last month that Britain’s Armed Forces were so depleted they could only “seize a small market town on a good day”.
Alongside CityUK, he is looking at a number of ways in which more private sector cash could be funnelled into the defence sector.
This includes providing more capital for start-ups in the sector so they can grow, and addressing government red tape.
In particular, the group is looking at ways that government procurement rules could be changed to make lending to defence companies easier.
Bank bosses have in the past criticised the opaque nature of the procurement process, which makes it difficult for lenders to obtain basic information on defence companies to which they hope to lend.
The organisation is also looking at how the Government could kick-start private equity and innovation interest in the defence industry, as it has successfully done in the finance sector.
Sir Richard said: “One [of the core ideas of the strategic defence review] is to recognise we live in this completely new era of a much more turbulent, dangerous and uncertain world of state-led confrontation.
“The difference for the UK is our approach to defence and that sense of war being an abstract thing – in the world we live in today, that no longer applies … We’re dealing with existential risk. The review makes that clear, and honestly, no one in Whitehall disputes that.”