Dan Jarvis has been the new Secretary of State for Defence for nearly a week now, but the decision of No. 10 and the Treasury is unchanged: there will be no more money for defence. Just a 0.08 per cent increase to 2.68 per cent of GDP between now and 2030 – not the 3 per cent that John Healey had been working to, and no plan for 3.5 per cent by 2035.
Yesterday, the Chief of the Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshall Sir Richard Knighton, laid out what that will mean in practice: cuts to the day-to-day funding that enables operations and training:
The thing that I’m most concerned about is the level of day-to-day activity funding, the resource departmental expenditure limit, because that funds operational activity and drives exercises and training. Those are the things that make sure the men and women of our Armed Forces are as ready as they can be with the equipment that they have got today, and without changes to the settlement… then those areas will come under pressure.
In other words, the Defence Investment Plan doesn’t transform or modernise the military; it makes it less ready and less capable.
Reservists have often been an easy target for bean-counters
