Conservative Shadow Defence Minister David Reed has warned that Labour’s delay in publishing the Defence Investment Plan is putting British firms at the “back of the queue”.
Speaking to GB News, he said that the “crucial” document was “still nowhere to be seen” nine months after it was promised.
Explaining the importance of the plan, Mr Reed said: “The blueprint for how we’re going to spend taxpayers’ money on our defence industry and our armed forces for the years to come.
“This is so they can do the job of keeping us all safe, and we all know how volatile the world is becoming,” he stressed.
“We’ve waited for nine months for this defence investment plan to come out.
“The Government said that they were going to release it back in October last year, and it’s still nowhere to be seen.”
The Tory Shadow Defence Minister suggested the absence of the report was now hitting British firms.
“When you speak to defence companies, you realise that these companies are being starved of work”, he said.
Conservative Shadow Defence Minister David Reed has warned over Labour’s delay in publishing the Defence Investment Plan
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GB NEWS
“European markets and the American market are all investing in defence, because the world is becoming more volatile.
“Our companies are becoming squeezed to a point where they’re either closing down or coming to the conclusion that if you want to grow in defence, you have to go, and they are going to where the contracts are.
“We are placing ourselves at the back of the queue for defence orders at precisely the moment when the queue has not mattered so much before,” Mr Reed insisted.
Advising the Labour Government, he said: “We need to be making sure that that plan is there for defence, that we know what we’re doing.
The top Tory said that the lack of plan was putting British defence firms at the ‘back of the queue’
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GB NEWS
“We need to have the conversation with the country on how we fund it.
“That should be around welfare, and it should be around the size of the state, issues that I don’t think the Government are grappling with,” Mr Reed said.
Defence Secretary John Healey acknowledged frustration over the delay, promising the DIP was “coming soon” but arguing it had to be “properly budgeted for”.
He added that “Countries that cannot pay their way, cannot defend themselves.”
Defending the delay, Labour Defence Minister Al Carns told MPs the Government would publish the plan “as soon as is feasible”.
He said that ministers were urgently working through “serious decisions” on defence spending.