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Former Defence Secretary Lord Hutton and LBC’s Natasha Clark join Shelagh Fogarty to make sense of John Healey’s surprise resignation. In a damning letter to the Prime Minister, Mr Healey said he was left with "no option" but to step down from the role. The letter criticised Sir Keir Starmer’s unwillingness to commit enough resources to defence, highlighting the growing resources required amid the Iran war, threats from Russia in the High North, and escalation in the Ukraine conflict. Accusing the PM of failing to properly fund the Defence Investment Plan (DIP), Mr Healey said the current proposal "does not give our Forces the investment they need". As part of the two-page letter, Mr Healey outlined "the scale of the challenge" facing Britain, admitting: "I'm being forced to make decisions that would reduce the readiness of our Forces and increase the risk to personnel on operations, and could make the country less safe." #shelaghfogarty #keirstarmer #ukpolitics #uknews #news #defence #russia #nato #lbc
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0:00
Natasha, the two lines that stood out for me were, you have been, this is directed to the Prime Minister from John Healy
0:06
you've been unable, the Treasury has been unwilling to commit the resources the nation needs to defend itself at this time of rising threats
0:14
And he says, having seen your defence investment plan, it falls well short
0:19
Yes, it's an absolutely scathing letter that John Healy, and let's remind ourselves
0:23
John Healy, an ally of the Prime Minister, a friend of the Prime Minister, a very loyal minister
0:28
and never want to step out of line, whether that's on sort of the airwaves, on the media..
0:32
A very experienced politician. Absolutely. And I even speak to Conservatives who say how much they respect John Healey
0:38
and think that he is a serious guy and probably the right person to be put in as Defence Secretary
0:43
and more than willing to go in and have this battle with the Treasury, which clearly, according to this letter
0:48
and according to allies of John Healey I've been speaking to in the last hour or so
0:52
he has been willing to go in to bat for as much money for his department as possible
0:57
which you would expect as Defence Secretary. You'd expect every Secretary of State to go in to fight for what they thought was needed
1:04
So just a little bit of information that I've got from allies close to John Healy
1:09
He apparently got the full offer on Monday afternoon for the Defence Investment Plan
1:13
which we were expecting the government to reveal as soon as today. And the Defence Investment Plan is essentially a long list of what the government are going to spend
1:22
in order to bolster up our defences. It's going to be a plan for the next 10 years
1:27
It has obviously been long delayed. It's been about nine months since the government have said they were going to publish it
1:33
I'm told that the settlement offer was around £13.5 billion. It's been reported in some newspapers
1:41
Allies of Healy say this was only around £10 billion in real cash
1:44
the rest being Treasury trickery, which would not end the hollowing out of our armed forces
1:50
and would delay key transformations. So they are saying that this money is just nowhere near going to be enough
1:55
And it's less than half what the military voices are saying they need, isn't it? Exactly. And we heard, I think it was the beginning of the year or maybe the end of last year
2:03
those military chiefs had a meeting with the prime minister and they said, we need £28 billion just to meet the capabilities that we've already got planned for the next sort of 10 years already
2:14
Some of that will be the defense investment plans and a list of those projects which have already partly been announced or partly been funded
2:20
And this obviously was way before the war in Iran even kicked off
2:25
And obviously, we've seen things get even more dangerous around the world and in world events in the last sort of few months
2:32
So, you know, allies of John Healy say that he's repeatedly warned that this needs additional investment in this parliament
2:39
He talks in his resignation letter, doesn't he, that he feels that the extra support is backloaded
2:45
So it's not going to come in for another couple of years. And he says, well, that's just not good enough. It needs to come in now if it's going to make an impact
2:50
and obviously this has been a huge cross-government piece of work that's been going on for a very long
2:55
time but that line in the resignation letter that you mentioned you and the treasury have been
3:01
unwilling to commit the resources the nation needs at this time he is fully square fully
3:06
square blaming both the prime minister and rachel weaves and saying guys this is your fault i've
3:11
made these arguments for it it just not good enough and he pays tribute in a sense or certainly shows appreciation for other departments being cross as you said and that because those other departments also batting for their own needs in their own policy areas knew that this would likely be at their expense
3:27
Yes, and I was told by people earlier this week that essentially what the Treasury was asking was for every government department to take a small cut
3:38
Now, it's been reported it could be 1% of their capital spending budgets
3:42
I'm not sure if that's 100% correct but essentially that it was going to look for
3:47
a sort of George Osborne style we're all in this together it's going to affect every department sort of thing
3:52
we did see in the last sort of few days different departments pushing back on that
3:56
Ed Miliband's department saying I'm not going to accept this and yes it's been very much a cross departmental project
4:03
that's been going on for a very very long time and John Healy's saying
4:08
that this is essentially the Treasury's fault they're not giving us enough But when I spoke to allies in the Treasury and allies of Rachel Reads, they essentially have been saying to me for a long time that they feel the Ministry of Defence is not good enough with its money
4:21
We know that, you know, multiple reports have looked at the Ministry of Defence's budgets and said that they've wasted billions of pounds on projects that don't work
4:30
Essentially, that projects have spiralled out of control. And they are worried that handing the Ministry of Defence more money on a plate means that there is potentially taxpayers' money at risk
4:40
and it seems like the Treasury might have won that argument, but it just doesn't really tally with what Keir Starmer's been saying on defence
4:47
not least that interview that I spoke to you about last week, where he said defence will be my number one priority
4:53
It doesn't quite feel like that today. And warnings not just from him, but from around government
4:57
and security services as well about the threats that we face. Stay with us, Natasha
5:02
Let me bring in Lord Hutton, John Hutton, Labour peer, former defence secretary as well
5:07
and a former chair of RUSI, the Royal United Services. institute good afternoon to you uh lord hutton thanks for joining us my pleasure hi student how
5:15
does kia starmer respond to this well i think he's in a really difficult place now isn't he
5:20
i mean he's made great speeches about the importance of defense and the need to rearm
5:24
but he hasn't found the the way to deliver that and that is a colossal failure he is the prime
5:32
minister uh he has recently described this as his number one priority but it doesn't really feel
5:37
like that to John Healy. So I'm afraid this is the culmination
5:42
of a long process of failure to get to grips with the fundamentals here
5:47
which is we need a national rearmament program. We need it now, not in two or three years' time
5:53
And the government so far has just found itself unable to deliver that
5:59
And that's a big problem. So right now it looks like we're going backwards
6:03
not forwards on defence. And at a time when the threats we're facing are growing
6:07
not diminishing, this is a terrible place to be in. Should we or anybody else have sympathy for the Prime Minister and the Chancellor
6:14
given the state of the nation's finances more generally? Well, not really. I mean, if this is the national priority, if this is the number one priority
6:26
you've got to look to both those senior ministers and say, OK, find a way to deliver that
6:30
not to water it down to the point where the Secretary of State for Defence has to resign because he believes that the resources on offer just won meet the scale of the task that in front of us I think there has been a failure of the centre to really grip this
6:47
I find it astonishing that we can find money for net zero projects
6:51
but we can't find the money to defend the country against the rising threat from Russia
6:56
That speaks of a failure at the centre, really, to grip this and to lead
7:00
When you say the centre, do you mean number 10 and the Treasury? Yeah, I do, and the Treasury
7:05
I mean, this is something that really I'm at a loss for words as to how we've arrived in this car crash of a place
7:13
Prime Minister's been making great speeches about defence and the threats that we're facing
7:19
but they've just not been matched by any delivery of resources. And that's the fundamental job of government. It's not words, it's actions
7:27
And to find the Secretary of State for Defence with no alternative but to resign
7:30
And John's a decent, honourable man. And he uses those by himself, doesn't he? Well, he doesn't believe the money that he's been offered is enough for the task, the scale of the task we face
7:40
That's a colossal failure. And I don't envy his successor in trying to square the circle here
7:47
But something has got to shift on this. We can't go on with this because if we were to settle for the numbers that have been speculated about
7:55
we'd continue to see defence cuts all the way through this parliament. And that's just simply not acceptable
8:00
You haven't used these exact words, but you're using strong terminology to describe your reaction
8:08
Is it your belief that Keir Starmer, as the Prime Minister, is not actively making decisions to keep this country safe
8:16
I think that's pretty well what I am saying, yes. You know, George Robertson spelt the dangers out very clearly a few months ago
8:24
We haven't found the resources to equip the armed forces with the new capabilities, new technologies they need to meet the threat
8:32
We haven't set out a plan to re-equip the Army, Navy and the Air Force in line with the Strategic Defence Review last year
8:39
And we just haven't been able to find the money. Now, that's simply not good enough on any level, given the scale of the threat to the UK that we're facing, which has been very clearly catalogued by senior ministers and the government
8:53
But as John Healy has said out in his letter today, that's not being matched by producing the resources needed to meet the scale of the challenge
9:03
Defence is a complex picture, isn't it? And in this modern era, it's a changed and changing picture as well, because it's easy to think of warships and guns and soldiers and armaments
9:12
But it is much complicated and deeper than that, isn't it? a great deal of the work that it seems to me that the country needs to be doing is actually about
9:20
prevention and deterrence because of the numbers of threats that are bearing down on us and the
9:25
different nature of those threats. Do you think the government understands that? I mean, John
9:32
Healy seems to, but do you think that the Chancellor and the Prime Minister understand
9:36
that variety of threats? Well, Sheila, I don't know, is the answer to that question. I mean
9:41
you really got to hope and pray that they do. But you're absolutely right
9:45
This is all about deterrence. This is not about war fighting. This is about stopping a potential war in Europe in the next few years
9:53
which I think is a is a very real possibility given everything that we can see happening all around us So this is not a profligacy This is not just finding an excuse to spend lots of money on something that we don
10:08
need. This is something we vitally need to keep Europe safe and to keep our friends and allies
10:13
safe, keep ourselves safe. And we are just simply failing that fundamental test at the moment. And
10:19
we've got to put this right. We've got to put it right quickly. The money on offer is not enough
10:25
to meet both the SDR commitments and also the commitments we've made to our NATO partners
10:31
So we've just got to address this fairly. And if there are problems for other government departments, which there might well be
10:38
I'm not naive about that, we need leadership on this issue. It is fundamental to the security of the country
10:44
And at the moment, we're just fluffing it. We were hearing the head of the terrorism watchdog, Jonathan Hall
10:51
giving his thoughts on immigration and national security. But this takes us deep into questions of national security
11:01
doesn't it, way beyond the question of immigration. What is missing in the Prime Minister's performance
11:07
and the Chancellor's performance on this? Why don't they appear to see it as urgently as others do
11:15
Well, Sheila, again, I'm not sure I can really answer that question. Your best guess? You've been in government
11:20
you've been in that department, what's your best guess? Have they frozen in the face of the costs
11:27
Well, I think we probably have all got used to the Treasury really fighting its corner about
11:32
providing additional resources, particularly to the government department, where it probably rightly feels that it doesn't have a great track record on spending that money effectively. And I
11:41
think we'd all recognise that description of the MOD. It has wasted significant amounts of money
11:46
and I really want that problem to be fixed and to be put right
11:51
But look, if we really wait for that problem to be fixed
11:55
it's going to be too late to do the one thing that we need to do, which is to ensure that we deter any further Russian aggression in Europe
12:03
that might bring us close to the brink of some horrendous catastrophe
12:08
So that should be at the forefront of everyone's mind. And I think that the biggest failure of all here is the failure from number 10
12:16
to actually mandate a solution to this and to override other ministers who seem intent on blocking
12:24
giving the MOD the resources that it needs. That is what you have a centre of government. That's what number 10 is there to do
12:31
And right now, it just seems incapable of doing that function properly
12:38
And that has got to be addressed because it's the national security that's on the line here
12:43
This is not some party political game. This is not some sort of row internally between ministers about budgets
12:49
This is fundamental to the security and freedom of the nation. And we are failing to get that problem addressed
12:58
This should have been sorted out a year ago. It hasn't been. And that's a year that we've lost and wasted in terms of re-equipping the armed forces
13:06
And we don't have much time. I mean, Sheila, this is really a national situation where we need an urgent rearmament program
13:13
And we still seem to be absolutely a million miles away from getting that sorted out
13:18
And it's just not good enough
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