Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt has criticised the underfunding of the Royal Navy amid the ongoing Red Sea crisis, exposing Cabinet splits over the state of defence spending.
She made the comments in response to a report in The Sunday Times which highlighted a recruitment crisis in the Royal Navy and that its fleet has been reduced from around 164 vessels in 1960 to just 18 today.
Writing on X, formerly Twitter, she said: “The Royal Navy and its partners must keep pace with the growing capabilities of other nations. If not Britain’s interests cannot be secured.”
Ms Mordaunt’s intervention echoes comments by Defence Secretary Grant Shapps last month, who called on the Treasury to ramp up military spending to 3 per cent of GDP from its current level of just over 2 per cent.
“There are plenty of countries, even G7 countries, which spend 1 or 2 per cent of GDP on defence. We can’t secure our prosperity and way of life by skimping on our basic defence”, he told The Sunday Times in December.
“And that’s why we said, we will spend 2.5 per cent as soon we can. I’ve spoken previously about the need to go to 3 per cent and I don’t resile from that at all. I think we need to go to 3 per cent and possibly higher… and I think the rest of the West is going to have to do the same.”
Last week, i analysis found that compared to the aftermath of the Falklands War, the number of services personnel has shrunk by about 60 per cent from more than 320,000 to its current level of some 134,000 full-time, fully-trained staff in the Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force.
Britain currently has significantly fewer military personnel than France (304,000), or even Spain with 199,000. The one-time imperial superpower now lags far behind nations such as the United States (1.4m military personnel), China (2.5m) and the sort of military that a dictatorship such as North Korea chooses to muster (1.5m).
But despite growing pressure for the UK’s defence budget to be boosted to meet the scale of any threat, i understands there is little prospect of more funding for the military in the upcoming Budget.
Mr Shapps also used a speech earlier this month to warn that the West is facing a new Cold War with multiple adversaries at once in the wake of the ongoing clashes in the Red Sea.
The UK and US naval forces have launched numerous air strikes in recent weeks against Houthi rebel targets in Yemen to deter the group from targeting international shipping lanes in the Red Sea.
There are fears that the crisis in the Red Sea could lead to a rise in supermarket prices as the attacks could have knock-on effects in the global supply chain.
Foreign Secretary Lord David Cameron has denied the UK’s strikes on the Houthis were an escalation and said “not acting […] was not working” despite repeated warnings to the Iran-backed rebel groups.
He argued the air strikes would “degrade” the Houthi ability to carry out attacks on ships and showed the “alliance of countries including Britain” will “back our words with action”.
Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show last week Lord Cameron said ministers would “look at all of these things very carefully” when asked if there was no limit to what the UK would sign off to protect shipping freedom in the Red Sea.
He said it was wrong to suggest the UK and US had escalated the situation, adding: “The escalation has been caused by the Houthis.
“Since November 19, you have had these 26 attacks. They have been getting worse, and you know, not acting is also a policy, it is a policy that doesn’t work.”
