Healey: Defence investment is Starmer’s ‘highest priority’
Defence secretary John Healey has said defence investment is the Prime Minister’s “highest priority” as military officials wait for a long-awaited strategy paper on procurement and spending.
At the London Defence Conference, Healey said Sir Keir Starmer has taken a “personal interest” in drafting the Defence Investment Plan, which was due to be published last autumn.
“I know it’s a highest priority for him as it is for me,” Healey told an audience of security officials and investors.
“This is a 10-year investment plan. It’s got to put right a program that the last government had not committed and funded, and one that’s suited to the threats that we face.
“I think the important thing for me is it’s not stopping us getting on with the job.”
Healey has had a busy week as the Iran war moved into a two-week ceasefire. On Thursday, the defence secretary revealed details of a Russian espionage operation over undersea cables that connect the UK to other countries.
Military officials identified a Russian submarine entering international waters in the High North several weeks ago and made it clear that the vessels were being monitored.
A Russian warship was also spotted by journalists crossing the English Channel to accompany a shadow oil ship. Starmer gave the military special powers last month to seize shadow fleet ships.
Former ambo calls for more defence spending
Starmer has also come under intense scrutiny to provide further details on defence from President Trump.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is also set to call on Starmer to stop providing “blank cheques” of support for defence and “find the money” in a speech on the weekend.
The divides on defence investment and military readiness has prompted UK officials to also speak out on the need for urgency.
Dame Karen Pierce, the former UK ambassador to the US who appeared on a panel event at the conference, said the US’s demands for European countries to focus on defence was a “trend that has been a long-time coming”.
“President Trump was right to challenge people to spend more,” Pierce said.
She added that relations between Starmer and Trump were “rockier… than would be ideal” but said the two countries still had a “steady bedrock” of ties on areas such as intelligence-sharing.
Pierce also said Europeans had been “all too slow” in upgrading military capabilities and called on economies to copy the US in providing the right tax and subsidy incentives in order to become more “agile”.