James Cleverly blames Ukraine war on Britain's diminished Armed Forces as he urges immediate spending hikes
Sir James Cleverly has blamed the Ukraine war for the diminished state of the British Armed Forces while taking calls with LBC callers.
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After being asked about whether defence spending hikes were necessary, Sir James told LBC's Iain Dale that the conflict in Ukraine is to blame for the diminished state of Britain's Armed Forces.
Responding to a question from Matthew in Burnley, the Shadow Housing Secretary said: "I absolutely agree with you that military spending needs to increase and increase immediately.
"You've got Keir Starmer saying it needs to go up, and we'll do that at some point in the future. That's no good for the military leadership in terms of recruitment, in terms of equipment purchasing, in terms of repairing the accommodation estate across the Armed Forces."
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"It's no good because the threat is in the here and now. So I totally agree. We need to do it, and we need to do it now."
Sir James suggested that the Conservatives would reverse the decision to scrap the two-child benefit cap to fund defence spending, which he suggested would raise £3 billion.
He said: "It's an important down payment, and it can be done quickly. That's money that can be deployed pretty quickly."
When pressed by Iain about the impact of the Tory Government in which he served on defence capabilities, the former Foreign Secretary said: "I think we could and should have gone further and faster with regard to our spending domestically.
"I think we made a lot of really, really good decisions. We denuded our own military capability in the short term to give the Ukrainian armed forces the stuff that they needed, whether it was from those NLAW missiles, artillery systems, or weapons."
"So we stripped the cupboard bare because they needed it in the here and now.
"I felt at the time, and I feel still, that we should have been much more energetic at replenishing our own stocks and giving a very unambiguous signal to the defence industry that we wanted them to really get working on replacing our equipment, our ammunition, as well as building the next generation of military capabilities."