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Kemi Badenoch attacked Andy Burnham on defence spending again for the second Prime Minister’s Questions where the pair faced each other. This time, she had the new PM on the ropes. Burnham struggled with her repeated questions on how he would fund defence spending so that it will reach 3.5 per cent of GDP by 2035 – or indeed whether it will reach 3 per cent by 2030. He ended up spending more time explaining why her proposals for welfare cuts wouldn’t work than he did answering the question of how he would fund defence, leading Badenoch and those watching to conclude that he didn’t really know.
Badenoch opened by saying that after last week’s session, it wasn’t clear if Burnham would or would not raise defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP by 2030. She asked whether John Healey was right to have resigned as defence secretary from Keir Starmer’s government over the matter. Burnham gave a similar answer to the one he offered last week: he’d appointed Healey because of his commitment, and that the government was serious about reaching its commitment for 2035 – thus dodging the point about the 2030 target.
The Tory leader then reminded the chamber that Burnham had served in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, and she would therefore not be taking lectures from him on defence. She brought up her plan to fund the armed forces using welfare cuts, and asked Burnham was he unable or unwilling to raise defence spending to 3 per cent? He went on the attack in response, saying he wanted an ‘honest conversation across this despatch box’, and said he had looked at Badenoch’s plan. He said that taking £4 billion out of housing benefit ‘would create levels of homelessness in this country that we haven’t seen before’. He added: ‘We will do everything to support our national security, but it can’t come at the expense of social security. Having strong national security also depends on having resilience in our communities.’ It’s worth pointing out that despite this new slogan about national security not coming at the expense of social security, Burnham himself was mooting welfare cuts to fund defence shortly before he became prime minister: he just believes that he can cut the bill in a way that doesn’t cause any hardship.
