John Healey has delivered a stinging criticism of Rachel Reeves’ handling of defence spending, warning that the UK’s enemies “do not follow timetables set by the Treasury”. 

In his resignation speech in parliament, the former defence secretary took aim at Sir Keir Starmer and Reeves for failing to fully fund the Defence Investment Plan (DIP), with the draft not containing a commitment to the date for raising defence spending from 2.6 per cent of GDP to 3 per cent. 

Healey said that the UK risked falling behind Nato allies in funding the armed forces, as the current draft only factored in an eight-percentage-point rise in defence spending as a share of GDP by 2030. 

“When Nato needs European nations to step up, we must not fall short. Our adversaries do not follow timetables set by the Treasury,” Healey said. 

“I appreciate how hard this is for Cabinet colleagues and I am very grateful to those who support what is required, but not all needs to be done by cutbacks elsewhere.”

A truth bomb

His comment appeared to back a break from the fiscal rules to fund defence, plus joining up with other countries through shared defence banks. 

Starmer criticised Healey’s plans in a letter last week, as he said “irresponsible borrowing” could leave UK public finances more exposed. Reeves has held that the government should avoid adding to the UK’s public debt pile by increasing borrowing. 

The Chancellor also told a conference on Tuesday that she “very much hope[s]” extra defence spending will not be funded by tax rises. 

“In the end, this has got to be a decision by the whole cabinet to reduce spending elsewhere and redirect it into defence,” she said.

Healey’s speech in the House of Commons was followed by former armed forces minister Al Carns, who also resigned over the £13bn offer in the DIP and later said he had only met Starmer twice. 

Carns, a former Special Operations officer and potential Labour leadership candidate, said the government was “preparing for last year’s war, not tomorrow’s”, in an apparent criticism of the DIP draft’s focus on large warships rather than uncrewed systems or data. 

Healey’s coordinated attack

The government has set itself a hard deadline of 7 July for the publication of the DIP, which is the date of the next Nato summit. 

The new defence secretary, Dan Jarvis, was joined by Reeves when he told MPs about the seizure of a Russian oil tanker on Sunday. 

Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence are now locked into further negotiations over the funding settlement for the DIP after the government’s defence reshuffle. The Treasury will not give the defence secretary further funding to work with, according to reports. 

Appearing before a Lords committee, Chief of Defence Staff Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton indicated that the armed forces would cut back on training and operations if it did not receive a larger cash injection. 

“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,” he said. 

“We will have to dial back our activities and our exercise and operational activity if the level of resource funding that’s available to us does not increase. Now that’s still to be debated and decided.”

He also warned that the impact of higher inflation, particularly the rise in jet fuel prices, has eroded budgets in recent weeks.