Treasury in a panic to find cuts to pay for defence, Tories claim

The delayed publication of government’s defence investment plan has been caused by a “panicked” Treasury trying to find cuts in government spending, according to Shadow Chancellor Sir Mel Stride.

He told GB News: “One of the reasons for the delay here is that the Treasury has suddenly appeared to have panicked, for those looking from the outside, and turned around to departments to say they’ve got to find some fairly significant cuts in their capital budgets to pay for the ideas or the approach that they think they’re about to come forward with the defence investment plan.

“None of this feels like something that’s been properly thought through, which is probably why we’ve had the delay on the defence investment plan since last autumn. The problem, fundamental problem, is that the government has mismanaged our economy, left us in a very vulnerable situation, such that it’s very difficult to afford what is now clear and necessary.

“The biggest thing that they could do is to get a grip of the welfare bill, get people off benefits and into work. We have shown how you could make at least £23 billion worth of savings in that area, and then you can do things like pay for defence, then you can do things like get taxes down on businesses, so that you can grow the economy.”

Asked if the situation was caused by Labour backbenchers blocking cuts to welfare spending, he added: “Yeah, that is the problem. Look, people are speculating feverishly about what’s going to happen to the Prime Minister. Is he going to be replaced by Andy Burnham or somebody else?

“The reality is, the problem that we have with the government is not who’s leading it. It is the fact that the parliamentary party, the Labour parliamentary party, are not prepared to take the kind of bold and sometimes slightly tough decisions to get our country on the right economic footing.

“The first whiff of cordite when it came to gripping the welfare bill, they all turned for the hills and ran away from it, and we are now spending about a billion pounds a day on welfare, DWP’s budget.

“We should be spending much more on defence, much more on getting taxes down, and much more on actually getting our debt down as a country if we’re to have that resilience going forward.”