Labour minister grilled on defence spending black hole as she tells GB News we are 'not at risk of attack'

Baroness Jacqui Smith has been grilled by GB News host Ellie Costello on the major spending black hole in Labour's defence spending.

Speaking to the People's Channel, the Skills Minister assured that the Government "will find the money" to plug the multi-billion pound gap in defence funding.

Pressed by Ellie on how it will be funded, Ms Smith told GB News: "This is largely funded the Defence Investment Plan, and it builds on the fact that when we came into Government, there was £54billion a year being spent on defence. Now there's £80billion a year being spent.

"The plan brings us from 2.3 per cent of our GDP to 2.7 per cent, and then onwards in the next parliament to meeting our responsibilities to spend three per cent of our GDP on defence."

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The Labour minister argued that having a fiscal black hole is "not unusual" in the running of Government.

She said: "Frustrating though I can understand people find it, it's not unusual to say this is the trajectory, these are the plans, this is the significant amount of money already found.

"And for the about £1billion a year over the next four or five years, we'll outline where that is coming from when we get to the Budget for that year."

Ms Smith made clear: "We've got the sort of fiscal headroom that will enable us to make those decisions because of the tough decisions that we made at the beginning of this parliament that Rachel Reeves are stuck to in terms of building up that fiscal headroom again.

"So we've got a £1.2trillion Government budget in this country, and we will find the money necessary to fund the defence investment."

Pushing back on Ms Smith's argument, Ellie then stressed: "Well, you're going to have to find the money aren't you? Because currently Britain is exposed to Russian threats and we're nowhere near our three per cent target, as you just outlined for us."

Ms Smith responded: "Well, first of all, our we are not at risk from attack. We are certainly in a world where we are seeing growing threats and the need to take action to protect our national security.

"That's exactly why we have increased, with record breaking increases, the defence budget since we came into Government.

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"And it's why we've now set out this plan to meet the new threats, to rebuild the capacity of our armed forces over the coming years in order to live up to our responsibilities alongside our Nato partners to be able to deliver on that."

Ms Smith assured that the Government will "continue to find ways" to meet the required defence spending for the country.

She told GB News: "It's already required some shifting of money around some movement of capital funding from some departments into the Defence Department, difficult decisions that we previously made about how we reduced the money we spent on overseas aid and devote it to the defence budget.

"We will continue to find ways in order to meet our responsibilities to defend this country, because that's the number one priority of any Government."

Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis said of the spending black hole: "It's a commitment to spend £15 billion through the Defence Investment Plan. It's entirely routine that in major committees of resource that some of the money will be allocated in the context of the next budget or the next spending review.

"It is a £15billion commitment, that is new money that I've secured over the past two weeks. It means that we are now spending historically high levels on defence."

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said: "Our Defence Investment Plan commits more to investment on our armed forces.

"It delivers the modern keep and capabilities our personnel need to keep us safe, meaning we buy British to create jobs here at home and strengthen our international leadership."

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