'Dismayed' Nato allies 'disturbed' by Royal Navy reform delays amid 'frosty' Trump and Starmer relationship
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The Defence Investment Plan was held back for nearly a year due to financial arguments
“Dismayed” British allies will be shocked by the delays of the Defence Investment Plan - with the relationship between the prime minister and US President being ‘frosty’.
Former Labour defence secretary and author of the Strategic Defence Review (SDR), Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, said Nato countries will be “disturbed” by how long it took for the reforms to be finalised. Originally scheduled for the autumn of this year, it was published this months under a smaller financial remit which left out billions of pounds - £15bn compared to the recommended £28bn.
Prospective prime minister Andy Burnham is also facing a £4.7bn gap in defence funding. Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer and US President Donald Trump are both at the Nato summit in Ankara, Turkey, today (July 7).
Asked how he thought the delays had affected UK relations with its partners, Lord Robertson told the defence select committee: “I think our allies are dismayed at how long it has taken to go from the SDR, which they thought was brilliantly, brilliantly done and an ideal model designed to inspire them as well as to intimidate our enemies, and therefore the delay in putting the flesh on the bones of that, I think, would have confused them as well.
“So, the Prime Minister is in Ankara today at the Nato summit and he’ll be sitting tomorrow morning beside President Trump in alphabetical order around the North Atlantic Council table, and I think relations may well be quite frosty, and the allies round the table, who are all stepping up to the mark, and who are all now spending more on defence, and of course some of the bigger countries, like Germany and Poland, are spending considerably more than we are spending. I think the delay and the reality will have disturbed more of the United Kingdom, given that we have always claimed to have a leading role in Nato.”
The former Nato secretary general said he believed the delay “caused a degree of confusion inside the Ministry of Defence and considerable disturbance in the industry as well”. He said disturbance in the industry would be “compounded by their disappointment at the actual plan itself when it came out, and its inability to project forward the commitment to the three-and-a-half per cent that the government has already said is its objective”. Defence select committee members heard various reports of smaller businesses going bust or cutting staff while waiting for prospective orders.
He told the Commons Defence Committee: “So, industry will undoubtedly have been affected, slowed down, and in fact some companies will have gone bust in the process as they waited for the degree of certainty that was required in our view. We built this strategic defence review based on an assessment of 10 years.
“That was our assessment at the time for when a peer opponent might challenge the United Kingdom. That clearly has now been accelerated, and quite simply we’re running out of years, and the reality is that the challenge is now bigger, more serious, and earlier than we had anticipated, and yet the defence investment plan itself doesn’t come up to it.
“I would say, however, that what is encouraging is that our strategic defence review remains the model, it remains the outlined plan for the future, and therefore doesn’t need to be revised or redone, it’s still there, and it’s still serious, and it is transformational, and if it’s carried out properly then both industry and people in the ministry itself will be given heart.”