Labour does not want to fund defence and uses all of the usual cheap responses. There is so much waste and unnecessary spending which would save huge sums of money to improve defence. Buying more systems without a sufficiency of trained manpower, with an attractive career path is a real challenge - so many laws work against the use of military force.
Waste exists throughout all departments. The Chagos nonsense would find a huge saving. Net Zero should be deeply limited to focus on base-load energy for the long term - from UK sources whereever possible. The NHS wastes so much and the bureaucracy is bad, over-populated and has proven incapable of integrity, discipline and effective strong management. Quangos are not all needed and they remove ministerial responsibility to over-paid individuals. Charities need to be limited and made non-political. Rebuilding the houses of parliament could save tens of billions over the coming years - relocation would be far more cost effective. Welfare must be reduced to real needs, rather than preferences or vagueness. Money could be found but the political characters and civil service are agin hard work and real change.
Both John Healey and the Chief of the Defence Staff have suggested that that there are other ways of funding defence. The DSRB is one, the Multilateral Defence Mechanism is another and of course there are additional options such as finally implementing the Government's committment to use the £24BN of Russian State assets currently frozen in UK banks to support Ukraine. The legal risks of repurposing those assets (i.e. returning them to Russia once reparations have been paid to Ukraine for the illegal attacks) are arguably minimal. There's a more detailed discussion here https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-10034/CBP-10034.pdf
Adopting an effective Buy British policy for defence procurement that includes reasonable and appropriate changes to how social value criteria are used to assess security of supply would have a positive impact (perhaps a substantial impact?) on UK economic growth. What is quite depressing is that even with the recent significant amendments to Treasury guidance some officials and Ministers refuse to use them to change priorities. Perhaps they should pay more attention to the remarks of the new MP for Makerfield in which he pointed out that an ambitious DIP could be justified by applying "very strong social value weighting"?
Labour does not want to fund defence and uses all of the usual cheap responses. There is so much waste and unnecessary spending which would save huge sums of money to improve defence. Buying more systems without a sufficiency of trained manpower, with an attractive career path is a real challenge - so many laws work against the use of military force.
Waste exists throughout all departments. The Chagos nonsense would find a huge saving. Net Zero should be deeply limited to focus on base-load energy for the long term - from UK sources whereever possible. The NHS wastes so much and the bureaucracy is bad, over-populated and has proven incapable of integrity, discipline and effective strong management. Quangos are not all needed and they remove ministerial responsibility to over-paid individuals. Charities need to be limited and made non-political. Rebuilding the houses of parliament could save tens of billions over the coming years - relocation would be far more cost effective. Welfare must be reduced to real needs, rather than preferences or vagueness. Money could be found but the political characters and civil service are agin hard work and real change.
Nhs funding model is from 1870s prussia. Only cuba copies it. It has tobe replaced. Look at how euro fund theirs? Or aussie.
Both John Healey and the Chief of the Defence Staff have suggested that that there are other ways of funding defence. The DSRB is one, the Multilateral Defence Mechanism is another and of course there are additional options such as finally implementing the Government's committment to use the £24BN of Russian State assets currently frozen in UK banks to support Ukraine. The legal risks of repurposing those assets (i.e. returning them to Russia once reparations have been paid to Ukraine for the illegal attacks) are arguably minimal. There's a more detailed discussion here https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-10034/CBP-10034.pdf
Adopting an effective Buy British policy for defence procurement that includes reasonable and appropriate changes to how social value criteria are used to assess security of supply would have a positive impact (perhaps a substantial impact?) on UK economic growth. What is quite depressing is that even with the recent significant amendments to Treasury guidance some officials and Ministers refuse to use them to change priorities. Perhaps they should pay more attention to the remarks of the new MP for Makerfield in which he pointed out that an ambitious DIP could be justified by applying "very strong social value weighting"?