Wallace steps up war of words with fellow minister Mercer over defence funding

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said veterans minister Johnny Mercer ‘doesn’t have to run a budget’.
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace during a visit to Bovington Camp, a British Army military base in Dorset, to view Ukrainian soldiers training on Challenger 2 tanks (PA)
PA Wire
David Hughes23 February 2023
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Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has dismissed criticism from veterans’ minister Johnny Mercer about his efforts to secure more funding for the military.

The public row saw Mr Mercer’s wife accuse the Defence Secretary of treating her husband with “disdain”.

Mr Wallace said Mr Mercer was a “junior minister” who “luckily doesn’t have to run a budget” as he contrasted their level of Government responsibilities.

Mr Mercer has claimed it was “not credible” for Mr Wallace to say Britain’s armed forces had been “hollowed out”.

But the Defence Secretary told LBC: “Johnny is a junior minister, and Johnny luckily doesn’t have to run the budget.

“You know, I have a defence budget that has to deal, like all the other budgets, with inflation, with changes to threat, and I have to just deal with that. And that’s my job.”

Asked if Mr Mercer, whose role as minister of state for veterans’ affairs is within the Cabinet Office rather than the Ministry of Defence, was being naive, Mr Wallace said: “No, no, no. I just think, you know, his experience is not… he’s not the Secretary of State.”

He added that as Defence Secretary “I run a department of 224,000 people”, while “he’s got 12 people in the office”.

Felicity Cornelius-Mercer sprang to her husband’s defence, tweeting: “Wow. The disdain from (Mr Wallace) for (Mr Mercer) and his office for veterans affairs really is something else.

“You may start to realise why care for veterans is such a daily battle.”

During a debate last month in the Commons, Mr Wallace said he was “happy to say that we have been hollowed out and underfunded”.

Only days later, he told a joint UK-Australia press conference in Portsmouth that a “growing proportion” of Government spending would need to go towards keeping the country safe, in a message that was read as being directed at Chancellor Jeremy Hunt ahead of the Budget.

It comes against a backdrop of UK efforts to support Ukraine in pushing back invading Russian troops and rising global tensions with China.

On Wednesday, Mr Mercer told LBC: “Ben is engaged in a lobbying effort for his department, as you would expect him to be.

“The facts are that when I came into politics, defence spending was around £38 billion per year — it is just shy of £50 billion a year now.

“It is obviously not credible to say that the money has been taken out of defence.”

Downing Street said the Prime Minister thinks the Ministry of Defence and Office for Veterans’ Affairs do “vitally important work to support the UK”.

Asked which of the two ministers are best expressing the UK Government’s view on defence spending levels, Rishi Sunak’s official spokesman said: “I think the Defence Secretary has made it clear on a number of occasions that defence spending turned a corner under this Government due to the spending review in 2020.

“It provided an uplift of £24 billion over four years, and of course additional funding has also been provided for Ukraine.”

The spokesman said future defence spending is a “live issue” for Chancellor Jeremy Hunt ahead of the March budget.

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