𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Britain’s military is “tearing its hair out” as delays and dithering at the heart of the Labour Government are blamed for weakening the UK’s national security in an hour of international danger. A day after surviving veterans paid tribute to the heroes of D-Day, a damning report lays bare the failure of ministers to ensure Britain is ready to fight another war despite the conflict raging in Ukraine and the turmoil in the Middle East.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said it is a “mark of shame” that Sir Keir Starmer’s Government has failed to come forward with a plan to invest in upgrading the nation’s Armed Forces which was expected in the autumn. She added it is “even worse that reports say it won’t be funded properly”.

Mrs Badenoch tod the Express: “The military is tearing its hair out waiting for Keir Starmer to make a decision. British jobs are on the line. Our national security is being undermined.”

The outcry comes as Britain has suffered another defence embarrassment, with the £3.5billion aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales forced to dock in Norway for repairs.

Today’s report from Westminster’s powerful public accounts committee warns the delay in producing the Defence Investment Plan (DIP) has undermined Britain’s credibility with its allies and stopped the UK providing a “stronger deterrent to our adversaries”.

This comes just days after the head of the British military, Chief of the Defence Staff Sir Richard Knighton, warned the country is now in “the most dangerous period that I have known”.

The investment plan is expected imminently but on Wednesday it was reported the Prime Minister is considering reducing the spending boost from £18billion to £15billion because of concerns about affordability.

The cross-party committee blames the delay to the plan on a failure to secure agreement across Government and the “lack of a decision” by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) about what is needed to “transform the armed forces to be warfighting-ready”. It warns the credibility of the MoD with the defence sector has been undermined, with the industry in Britain potentially weakened.

In the meantime, the report states, “suppliers are increasing their prices because the continued deterioration of the international situation is disrupting international supple chains” with equipment sold to the highest bidder.

It also highlights the latest fiasco with the Ajax armoured vehicle, which is notorious for noise and vibration issues.

The report describes how the MoD “now expects soldiers to do maintenance checks every time they stop the vehicle”. It argues this “seems unreasonable, particularly as soldiers may need to use vehicles for long periods in combat”.

The MoD is further blasted for the “completely unacceptable failure” to maintain accounting records for more than £6billion of assets. The committee warns the accounts “do not provide a true and fair representation of the MoD’s financial position”.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, who chairs the cross-party spending watchdog, said: “The nation has now in fact gone years without a credible plan for UK military capability.”

Pressing for ministers to take responsibility for the damaging debacle, he said: “Any Government minister attempting to explain away this delay to the DIP should instead ask themselves what message the bureaucratic drift of the past months has given to the public, as well as the UK’s allies and its adversaries, and simply apologise.”

Sir Geoffrey said the advice to perform maintenance checks on the Ajax each time it is stopped is “frankly an insult to intelligence”.

Former Defence Secretary Dame Penny Mordaunt warned that nothing less than the “entire reinvention of our industrial base” is needed to keep up with the pace of change.

She said: “We know from Russia’s war in Ukraine that the shelf life of technology, such as drone and anti-drone measures, is about six months. After that the capability is of no use as the enemy has developed a way of overcoming it… That every few months you need tech innovators to have invented the next iteration of that piece of kit.”

Dame Penny said a “wartime mentality” is required which goes beyond Britain’s Armed Forces, agencies and Whitehall.

She said: “Our own national resilience needs to be strengthened too – our communications, our energy security, the public services and utilities we depend upon. Without such security you cannot grow the economy, nor protect our citizens, nor deter aggressors. This needs to be a national effort and the whole of society needs to contribute.”

Fellow former Defence Secretary Sir Gavin Williamson warned: “The Government has been ducking the tough choices but it can’t do so any longer. The threats from Russia and China mean that we have to re-arm and we have to re-arm quickly if we are to be in any way prepared to deal with these future threats… The simple reality is we have to prepare for war not in the next 20 years but in the next few years, which means that you’ve got to bring on new technologies incredibly quickly in a way that hasn’t been done before.”

Alan Mendoza, of the Henry Jackson Society think-tank, said: “With threats both near and far, we must prioritise Euro-Atlantic defence and homeland security, ensuring the UK can deter and, if necessary, fight and sustain operations in a high-intensity European conflict, whose most likely protagonist would be Russia.”

A MOD spokesperson defended Labour’s record, saying: “The Government is providing a generational increase in defence spending, with an extra £270billion across this Parliament, ensuring no return to the hollowed out Armed Forces of the past and the Strategic Defence Review sets out our path to increasing war-fighting readiness.

“We are getting on with the job – since July 2024 we have signed over 1,400 major contracts, with nine in 10 contracts going to British-based companies and we have successfully reversed the four-year decline in Armed Forces recruitment, meaning more personnel are now joining the military than leaving, for the first time since 2020.

“The Defence Investment Plan will fix the outdated, overcommitted and underfunded programme we inherited. We are working hard to finalise it. As the Defence Secretary told Parliament this week, the Prime Minister is determined to publish it before the NATO Summit (in July).”