Welfare budget is ballooning and some should be spent on defence, says Cartlidge
Shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge has suggested the Government may need to reallocate funds from the Civil Service and welfare budget to help boost defence spending.
Speaking to Sky News, the Conservative MP said: "I think that the cornerstone of our defence policy and the cornerstone of Nato has been deterrence, which is if you want to deter war from happening you have to be ready for it. You have to be strong.
"The issue here is that the amount we need to spend to deliver that strength to ensure peace is going to go up."
He said the Ministry of Defence needed to know it would have the funding if it ordered military equipment.
Mr Cartlidge said: "We gave them that confidence we were going to reduce the size of the Civil Service back to pre-pandemic sizes and use that money for an urgent increase.
"Do we still need that size of Civil Service? Or to put it another way, should we be maintaining a large Civil Service or switching that money to a stronger Armed Forces?
"I think we all know what we need at the moment."
He also backed Sir Keir Starmer ahead of his meeting with Donald Trump to discuss the conflict in Ukraine.
Mr Cartlidge said of Ukraine: "It's a European nation invaded by an aggressive dictatorship.
"We have to stand by them, so I think it is time to focus on the actions at home.
"That means higher defence spending, urgently and internationally – and we do stand by the Prime Minister.
"We want to see him go to President Trump and emphasising how it's in all of our interests to stand up to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin."
Speaking earlier with the BBC, the shadow defence secretary also called into question Britain's "ballooning" welfare budget.
When asked if he was willing to take a bigger axe to the welfare budget, he responded by saying: "As a country facing the threats that we do, we have got to be more resilient.
"We've got to wise up to the fact that we cannot have a welfare budget that keeps ballooning, whilst needing to increase spending on defence.
"I know that is a difficult thing to talk about, but we are going to have to get real about this."
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