Penny Mordaunt says the government has committed to increasing its defence spending to support Ukraine.
Image source, PA MediaDefence spending is the UK government’s “first priority” as it vows to “double down” on its support for Ukraine, Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the House of Commons said on Sunday.
The former defence secretary said the government must give Ukraine “the tools to finish the job”, while also ensuring the UK has the resources to do that.
“We have always protected defence spending”, she insisted.
Speaking on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Ms Mordaunt said during this “critical time” in the war between Russia and Ukraine, defence spending must be protected.
She was challenged on how the government planned to both “double down” on its support of arms and training to Ukraine, whilst also dealing with cuts to its budget as a result of inflation.
Ms Mordaunt answered that defence spending is “the first priority of any government” – indicating that that would not change now.
“We have made commitments that we are going to increase defence spending,” she said.
Ms Mordaunt pointed out that “in recent history” the government wanted to hike defence spending by as much as 3%.
She also said the current Defence Secretary Ben Wallace had the task of “not just keeping everything going and obviously supporting Ukraine… he’s got to modernise our armed forces and that means we’ve almost got to double run, we’ve got to rebuild these new technologies but also keep our current operations very strong”.