Today marks a year since the government published its Strategic Defence Review (SDR). From the outset, it was clear that the review was hampered by its terms of reference, and the government’s heavy and shameless leaking of its contents to generate positive publicity was disgraceful. But it was a useful statement of intent, a framework on which to build Britain’s future defence capabilities. None of it, however, was going to have much impact without considering expenditure.
The Defence Secretary, John Healey, in his foreword to the review stated that ‘we will develop a new defence investment plan (DIP) to deliver the SDR’s vision’. That was critical: the DIP would contain the facts and figures, the calculations of hard cash, and was to be completed ‘in Autumn 2025’.
A year on from the SDR, the DIP has still not been published. Pat McFadden, the Work and Pensions Secretary, has admitted it will be ‘more like weeks than months’ until the document appears. A hard deadline of 7 July has supposedly been set within Whitehall, the first day of the annual Nato Summit in Ankara, but I cannot count the number of ‘hard deadlines’ set by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) which have rushed past, unmet, over the years. The House of Commons is due to adjourn for the summer on 16 July – I would put the chances of the DIP having appeared by then as no more than 50/50.
