A former head of the British Army has called for the Government to increase defence spending to address a lack of investment in the Army in recent years.
Lord Richard Dannatt told GB News: “He said: “We’re reaping what we’ve sown and we didn’t sow very much. This is as a result of years of underinvestment in the Army.
“Big decisions have been taken into defence, for example, the things like the two aircraft carriers which have absorbed a huge amount of resources.
“We knew as soon as that programme was funded, that a lot of the Army’s future recruitment programmes were not going to be funded.
“Now, at the time, it didn’t matter that much because we were very much involved in the two campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan and the government was absolutely obliged to provide us with additional equipment we needed for those campaigns. That’s fine.
“But a number of the protected vehicles that were produced there, which were essential, particularly in Afghanistan, actually have no place on a modern battlefield, for example, such as the battlefield that’s going on in Ukraine at the present moment. So we’ve seen a pattern of under-investment in the army over really five, ten, fifteen years.”
In an interview during Breakfast with Eamonn Holmes and Isabel Webster, he said: “I take nothing away from the case that whether it’s health workers, firefighters, all the people that are clamouring for additional pay rises at a present moment, looking for double digit pay rises, bear in mind the armed forces, they got 3.75%. So that puts it in perspective.
“So it’s not what the Army wants. It’s what the nation needs from the Army. The first duty of Government is to protect our territorial integrity, and protect our people overseas, when there is a threat.
“We can wish away the Ukrainian war and say, well, it’s quite a long way away and we’re not directly involved but we are directly involved.
“What Ukraine is fighting for is very much in our interests, in our Western interests, their way of life is much the same as our way of life. So they’re fighting for a lot of principles that we think are important.
He said: “This land war in Ukraine should be teaching us a lot of lessons. What the Ukrainians are needing now are tanks and armoured infantry fighting vehicles, self propelled artillery, and all the panoply that goes together to making effective modern land manoeuvre capability.
“We hardly got that, and a lot of what we have got, we’re actually giving them at the present moment.”
He added: “So I’m afraid there are only two ways around this. One is the Ministry of Defence has got to change its internal priorities and raise the priority of the Army, which actually means spending less on the air force on the Navy on cyber on space and that sort of thing
“Or, and this is the unpleasant bit for the Chancellor, in the next spending round he’s got to significantly increase the overall defence budget, it’s 2% of GDP at the present moment.
“Boris started to talk about it going to two and a half, Liz Truss put it at three, but Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt have pegged it back to two and that is not enough.
“And that is why we are having to react to the criticism and the American general telling our Defence Secretary, your Army is not tier one. It’s really hurtful.
“There’s nothing wrong with our people. There’s nothing wrong with our leadership. There’s nothing wrong with our motivation, there’s a lot wrong with our equipment.”
