Former defence secretary Ben Wallace has branded Labour’s nuclear deterrent triple lock pledge as “triple c**k”, as he called for a defence spending hike to 3% of GDP.
It comes after Sir Keir Starmer on the General Election campaign trail reaffirmed his commitment to Britain’s nuclear deterrent.
The Labour leader’s “triple lock” includes delivering four new ballistic submarines, maintaining the continuous-at-sea deterrent and providing all the necessary upgrades for the boats to continue their patrols.
“It’s all made up.”
He also accused Labour of being “fundamentally dishonest”, saying: “Both Labour and Conservative governments over the last two, three, decades hollowed out defence.
“I think there’s a lot of dishonesty going on in Labour’s pitch. Half the shadow cabinet voted against Trident.”
Sir Keir, speaking at the Fusilier Museum in Bury, Greater Manchester, on Monday, insisted he had the whole shadow cabinet behind him on nuclear weapons when challenged over previous opposition from some on his front bench.
His deputy Angela Rayner and shadow foreign secretary David Lammy voted against renewing the Trident deterrent eight years ago under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
Mr Wallace said: “Labour keep using this funny little phrase ‘when economic conditions allow’. We don’t say that about the health service. We should say ‘when threat demands it’.”
With Rishi Sunak recently making clear he wants to meet the 2.5% target by 2030, Mr Wallace said the Prime Minister “has seen” the threat “is rising”.
But he suggested this did not go far enough as he called for an uplift to 3%.
Mr Wallace told BBC Radio 4’s World At One programme: “The threat is rising towards the end of the decade, I would suggest, as others have, that towards the end of the decade we should be spending 3% of GDP.
“However, to get there you have to follow a progressive line, you can’t just dollop billions of dollars or pounds to a department who won’t be able to spend it.”
Labour last week criticised the Government for allowing British Army numbers to fall below its target figure for the first time, as Ministry of Defence personnel statistics showed soldier numbers dropping below 73,000.
The Government’s defence plans include reducing the size of the regular army from a commitment of 82,000 troops to 73,000 by 2025 – down from 97,000 a decade ago.
Mr Wallace said he did not regret reducing the numbers, adding: “We weren’t able to fund defence for the size of the army, and we have been like that since I served in the army in 1991.”
