Penny Mordaunt confident defence spending will remain strong

Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt has said she is "confident" the Government will keep defence spending "strong" after Army generals called for more money for the UK to defend itself.

General Sir Richard Barrons, former commander of Joint Forces Command, called in the Sunday Express for Jeremy Hunt to approve an annual boost of £3bn and stop "deliberately keeping defence broken".

Ms Mordaunt told the BBC's Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme: "I am confident we will keep defence spending strong and it will be the priority for this Government."

• 'UK will be the first country to provide Ukraine with longer-range weapons,' says Sunak
• True size of Russia's military firepower revealed in latest analyst data
• The Goldfish Club: The exclusive military society that you cannot buy your way into

She added: "We'll have to see what Jeremy Hunt says in the Budget.

"But we have made commitments that we are going to increase defence spending, and there's the operational budget which will come from the Treasury, but we also have to keep the core defence budget strong.

"The task that (Defence Secretary) Ben Wallace has is not just keeping everything going and obviously supporting Ukraine.

"He's got to modernise our Armed Forces. And that means we've got to almost double run. We've got to rebuild these new technologies, but also keep our current operations very strong."

It comes after Mr Wallace last week warned that the war in Ukraine has exposed the vulnerability of Europe's defences.

He said forces across the continent were paying the price for years of "hollowing out" that has seen ammunition stocks depleted, readiness levels reduced and essential maintenance neglected.

Mr Wallace said that at a time when the world was becoming "much more dangerous and unstable", it underlined the need for a long-term increase in the defence budget.