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Sir Keir Starmer faced brutal questions from cross-party MPs over Britain’s defence during a tense grilling today. In an appearance before the Liaison Committee, the Prime Minister was asked why Britain is not on a “war footing” amid the Iran war.

He was also pressed on the time it took to send a warship to protect a UK military base in Cyprus, which was hit by a drone. HMS Dragon arrived in the eastern Mediterranean almost three weeks after its deployment was first announced.

Asked by Tory MP Sir Bernard Jenkin why the UK is not on a “war footing”, the PM said: “Because the strategic review commits us to a war footing, and we now need to put the funding in place in order to get there.

“I have already announced the increase in defence spending to 2.5%, something that didn’t happen under the last government, and where, at the election, a credible proposition wasn’t put forward by your party.

“I’m going to do this, and I’m going to do it properly, and I want to be able to explain to Parliament where the money is coming from.”

Sir Bernard told him that it “sounds as though you are at peace while we are actually at war”.

But Sir Keir insisted he was “clearing up the mess” inherited from the previous Tory government.

Sir Bernard said: “I daresay Winston Churchill had a bit of mess to clear up from the previous government, Margaret Thatcher had a bit of mess to clear up from the previous government. But now we are facing an urgency – why were we so unready to defend Cyprus?”

Sir Keir replied: “We’ve got a lot of defence capability in Cyprus, including the air capability there, and I’ve been constantly talking to the Cypriots about this.”

The Conservative MP then said: “We couldn’t even stop a drone from getting through to hitting a sovereign base in Cyprus. This smacks of a lack of war-fighting mentality that reaches right across the Government.”

The Prime Minister hit back: “Well this smacks of the fact that for years there was under investment by the last government and the ‘hollowing out of our armed forces’, copyright Ben Wallace.”

Conservative former defence secretary Sir Ben Wallace previously claimed that the armed forces had been “hollowed out and underfunded” for decades.

Elsewhere, Labour MP Tan Dhesi asked Sir Keir if he was “embarrassed” following criticism that HMS Dragon did not set sail sooner.

Mr Dhesi, who chairs the Defence Committee, said: “We were seeing reports of the US significantly ramping up its military presence around Iran in preparation for an attack just as they did with Venezuela.

“But when they started the war, it was embarrassing – we couldn’t even muster one single naval asset around the region. Are you embarrassed?”

Sir Keir replied: “No, I don’t think that’s right. During January and February, we obviously could see the build-up, we were working very closely with the US on intelligence and therefore we pre-deployed quite a lot of assets to the region.

“So far as HMS Dragon is concerned, it normally takes six weeks for the loading onto and deployment of the relevant capability onto the Dragon, that was done within six days with 22-hour working days, both with our service and civilian personnel working together.”