Politics latest news: Ben Wallace faces ‘uphill battle’ with Jeremy Hunt over defence budget
Ben Wallace #BenWallace
Ben Wallace said he is facing an “uphill battle” with Jeremy Hunt as he tries to secure extra funding at the Budget next month to “insulate” the Ministry of Defence from soaring inflation.
The Defence Secretary said he will have “lots of meetings with the Chancellor” between now and March 15 and that he has not “hidden the fact that we suffer from inflation pressures” at a time of rising global threat.
Asked how much money the MOD needs to “standstill”, Mr Wallace told Sky News: “I have been in this game long enough, I think I have been a minister for god knows how many years, but it is always an uphill battle with the Treasury no matter what department you’re in.
“It’s the right thing that a secretary of state will argue for an increase to meet their priorities and of course between now and the Budget I have lots of time and lots of meetings with the Chancellor to make sure that we try and come to a deal on it.
“I haven’t hidden the fact that we suffer from inflation pressures, as does departments with big capital spending, that’s that spending on hardware and infrastructure because of course that is where inflation goes to.
“But we’ll see. I am not going to conduct the negotiations in public but obviously we are 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.”
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08:05 AM’Raiding’ of UK’s defence budget went on for ‘far too many decades’
The “raiding” of the UK’s defence budget after the Cold War to pay for other things went on for “far too many decades” and the funding situation has only recently “turned the corner”, Ben Wallace said this morning.
Speaking from a Nato summit in Brussels, the Defence Secretary told Sky News: “What we have seen since 1991, since the end of the Cold War, is a consistent effectively raiding of the defence budget over time and maybe a peace dividend was appropriate straight after the Cold War.
“We had huge armies in Europe, the Cold War finished and it was right that the taxpayer who had invested in defence got a return on that.
“The problem is that continued and has continued for far too many decades as the threat has increased and I have been very open here that the threat has increased and just like other parts of government when demand, threat increases we should reconsider how much we fund it which is why Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak when he was chancellor gave us £16billion extra back in 2020, it was the first real turning of the corner with real money rather than fantasy efficiency savings which were supposedly the way they used to fund that increase and that has allowed us to start modernising our armed forces which has been desperately needed, but genuinely start to modernise our armed forces.”
08:02 AMBen Wallace facing ‘uphill battle’ with Jeremy Hunt over extra MOD funding
Ben Wallace said he is facing an “uphill battle” with Jeremy Hunt as he tries to secure more funding for the Ministry of Defence at next month’s Budget.
The Defence Secretary is seeking extra cash on March 15 in a bid to “insulate” his department from the impact of soaring inflation.
Asked how much money the MOD needs in order to “standstill”, Mr Wallace told Sky News: “I have been in this game long enough, I think I have been a minister for god knows how many years, but it is always an uphill battle with the Treasury no matter what department you’re in.
“It’s the right thing that a secretary of state will argue for an increase to meet their priorities and of course between now and the Budget I have lots of time and lots of meetings with the Chancellor to make sure that we try and come to a deal on it.
“I haven’t hidden the fact that we suffer from inflation pressures, as does departments with big capital spending, that’s that spending on hardware and infrastructure because of course that is where inflation goes to.
“But we’ll see. I am not going to conduct the negotiations in public but obviously we are 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.”