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Defence in the UK

It might be. However, although they say that, they have thus far refused to say how much money they would spend on that. They have announced on at least three occasions that they will have a forces families manifesto, yet they have failed to explain the detail of it, and I noted that there was no mention of that in the introductory remarks of the hon. Member for Woodspring. They have also failed to explain how much money they will invest. The comments of the Leader of the Opposition in a recent webcam interview served to expose the emptiness of their promises:"““Well, the first thing to say I have to be frank, there is no magic pot of money we can dip into to spend a lot more on our armed services, much as we would like to?" —would not we all?"““There just isn’t and we have to show to people that we’d be careful and prudent in terms of the money that we’re going to spend going ahead.?" In contrast, the Government are getting on with the job of improving the welfare of our forces and their families. We have increased the defence budget by, on average, £1 billion a year over the past five years. We are increasing pay, improving equipment, investing in constantly updating medical care, implementing a military-managed ward and spending £5 billion on accommodation over the next decade. The Tories must start spelling out in which of those areas they would cut spending in order to increase spending elsewhere. Would they spend more money overall? If not, what would they spend more and less on? The defence budget has risen by £1 billion a year over the past five years, in contrast to the past five years under the Tories when it was cut by £500 million per year. They say that at the current level of 2.5 per cent. of GDP, defence spending is at an historic low, but 2.5 per cent. is the same level as in 1997. Who cut defence spending as a percentage of GDP?