The Prime Minister was right to increase defence spending. We have neglected to properly fund our armed forces for far too long. It is a matter of deep regret that much of the worst damage occurred under the stewardship of my own political party.
I do not believe that the increase announced is sufficient, but it is an important start, and it is a realistic amount – given the current demands on the public finances.
The Prime Minister has chosen to fund the increase in defence expenditure by a pound for pound reduction in our overseas aid expenditure. As a minister once responsible for that expenditure, I know that this will be a popular choice. Indeed, this choice has been welcomed by my own party leader.
A popular choice does not however, make it the right choice. My preference is for the stance that the Prime Minister took when the then Conservative government under Boris Johnson reduced overseas aid expenditure from 0.7% of GDP to 0.5%. Starmer said then ”this is wrong because investing 0.7% in international aid is in Britain’s national interest…”
Governing is about choices and the Prime Minister has made his choice. I believe it is the wrong choice. My own choice, had I been entitled to make it, would have been to raid the welfare budget. If we could only reduce our addiction to welfare benefits to pre-Covid levels, we would save £40 Billion, dwarfing the current proposals for increased defence. We have an army – particularly of younger people- who believe that their mental health is too fragile to allow them to go out to work. Yet, it is accepted medical wisdom that going out to work is good for your mental health.
We are currently awaiting the Government’s proposals on welfare reform. I hope that they turn out to be suitably ambitious, because the current bill is one that we can no longer afford to shoulder.
The cut in international development aid is even more dramatic than at first sight, because an additional £4 billion annually of that aid budget is being spent on housing asylum seekers in hotels. I know, as the minister once responsible, that one can support so many more displaced people in distress in their own region, than you can by resettling a lucky few here in the UK.
We entered into an agreement with the other rich nations back in the nineteen seventies to spend 0.7% of our national income on overseas development aid. It took us until 2011 to honour that pledge. In doing so, we were almost alone. Since when, we have stepped back again. Had all the nations that made the pledge honoured it -and done so immediately having made it, I believe that there would be far fewer seekers after asylum arriving on our shores from basket-case economies in poorer parts of the world.
I accept that there was too much wasteful aid expenditure. As the minister responsible it used to drive me into a state of apoplexy. I wanted to exclusively focus our aid on economic development to create jobs. For that is why the world’s poor seek to come here. They come here, not to live on benefits (even though we are ready enough to provide them). They come to seek work.
It is our own people who appear to be much more inclined to live on welfare benefits. That’s why we can’t afford to defend ourselves.
Were we to restore our commitment to spend 0.7% of our income on Aid, it would leave us with 99.3 % of our income for our own priorities. I think that is sufficient, even given our defence needs.