UK needs to ‘update equipment’ and be ‘ready for threats we face’, says Tom Tugendhat

We asked the Ministry of Defence for an interview.

Nobody was available, but we spoke to the Conservative MP and former army officer Tom Tugendhat, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He was Security Minister under Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.

Cathy Newman: What are your colleagues saying about Britain’s readiness now to fight a war?

Tom Tugendhat: It depends who you ask, because there are many who are already engaged in operations and keeping us safe all the time. That’s our ships at sea, our submarines, of course, and our aircraft providing the defence over our islands. And there’s many troops who are training other armed forces, or indeed acting as protections for our own interests overseas. So in many ways, we are already engaged in those services. But the real lesson that we’ve had is, just look at what’s happened in Israel and Ukraine over the last few years. You’ve seen a rapid change in technology from manned aircraft to unmanned aircraft. You’ve seen it from strikes being targeted at military installations, to when you see what the Russians and the Iranians have done, targeting civilian areas. We’ve got a real change in warfare. We’ve got a really urgent need to update our equipment and make sure we’re ready for the threats that we really face.

Cathy Newman: Rishi Sunak had pledged to get to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2030. Keir Starmer hasn’t set a date yet, there are reports that perhaps the Treasury is trying to push back to 2034.

Tom Tugendhat: He put it in his manifesto. I think we all kind of assume that if it was in his manifesto, it might be something he’d deliver in this parliament.

Cathy Newman: So by 2029, you’d like to see it?

Tom Tugendhat: I’d like to see it now. But the reality is, if you put it in your manifesto, then you’ve got to assume it’s delivered in this parliament, don’t you?

Cathy Newman: So that would be ahead of where Rishi Sunak was, and you think that’s the right decision?

Tom Tugendhat: I think it is the right decision, actually I was pushing Rishi to introduce it earlier than that. As you may remember, I’ve argued for 3 per cent, and I’ve argued for increased spending on intelligence as well. Because the truth is, we’re now in a Cold War 2. We’re now in a different form of engagement with rivals and enemies around the world. You just need to see what Russia has done to us here in the UK, whether you talk about Litvinenko or the attacks in Salisbury. Whether you talk about the cyber attacks that are ongoing every single day by China. Whether you look at the targeting of journalists, as you know, by the Iranian regime here in the United Kingdom, we know that we are being targeted and we need to make sure we’re defending ourselves and ready for our own protection.

Cathy Newman: Is that message getting through, though, to the public, to the political leaders? Kemi Badenoch, for example, newly installed as Conservative leader, what would you say to her about which public services she should advocate cutting to put more money into defence? How do you win that argument?

Tom Tugendhat: This is a conversation I’ve had with Kemi, and she understands it absolutely, and it’s something that she takes very seriously. The truth is, what we need to be doing is making sure that we are preparing ourselves for the conflicts we’re facing. And you say it’s about cutting, it’s also actually about investing. The truth is, when you look at what is being stolen off us right now, today, we know that cyber attacks are costing British business millions and millions. We know that intellectual property is being stolen, being developed overseas. We know that the threats against us are costing British businesses, individuals across this country, millions and millions of pounds. We need to be protecting them, and that’s about protecting our future as well.

Cathy Newman: Given what we’ve seen in America, Donald Trump coming in, making it very clear that Europe, the UK, is going to have to do more to protect themselves. The Tories cut day to day spending, defence spending, since coming to power in 2010. Was that a mistake, looking now at the threat and having to do more in Trump’s America?

Tom Tugendhat: You’re right, it went down at the beginning and went up. But I always thought it was a mistake and I thought it was a mistake because the truth is, the defence budget is one of the very few budgets you don’t get to choose. Your enemy gets a vote. You don’t just get to choose it on your own. You have to listen to what’s going on around you. Now, the reality is what we’re seeing, what we’ve seen in the last few years, has made that completely clear. Now, for those of us who, as you remember when I was chairing the Foreign Affairs Committee, I was writing and arguing about this very clearly, who’ve been arguing that Russia is a clear, present threat. China is a clear, present threat. Iran is a present threat. And indeed there are others around the world who are also threatening us. We need to be absolutely serious about defending our interests. When we don’t, when we take our eye off the ball, when we see incidents like the collapse of Afghanistan, which led to events like Ukraine. That’s not just about a foreign country a few thousand miles away, you’ll remember only a few years ago the spike in energy prices that meant that every home in the United Kingdom got a bill double what it had been the year before and when you saw food prices going up. All of that is the real cost of failing to invest in defence.

Cathy Newman: Come back to Trump, though, because a lot of people see him as a threat, albeit of a different order, that he’s going to force us to do more and force the EU to go it alone to a greater extent. What is the best way to stop him pushing Ukraine into a humiliating surrender? Do you appeal to his vanity and say to cut a bad deal with Putin isn’t going to look good for him?

Tom Tugendhat: Cathy, forgive me, I’m going to be slightly challenging on that. I don’t know. You’ve made some statements there that I’m afraid I don’t think even you know, because nobody knows what Trump’s going to do. The one thing that we can predict about him is that he is unpredictable. And so neither of us know, but we do know…

Cathy Newman: So he might be better for the EU and for defence spending, we just don’t know?

Tom Tugendhat: I’m not making a prediction, Cathy. I just don’t know. And I don’t think anybody else does either. The one thing I will say is we’ve known about Trump and his statements about Nato and his statements about different forms of relationship with people like Putin way before 2016. And it’s been very clear, if you don’t like having your defence priorities decided by voters in the United States, well spend on defence yourself. That’s the choice.

Cathy Newman: And we left it too late?

Tom Tugendhat: And I’m afraid, you look around Europe, there are very few countries that have taken defence seriously. We did, actually, much more so than many other countries. Poland did, a few others did. Many, many countries have not and that’s what we’re facing today.