Defence secretary John Healey quit on Thursday in a row over funding – and within days, the government was scrambling to insist the conversation was far from over.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told the BBC that discussions on defence spending were “not finished” and that negotiations were “happening as we speak”. Speaking on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, she rejected the suggestion that Sir Keir Starmer had been forced to re-examine the defence investment plan’s funding only after Healey’s resignation.
“John Healey resigned as defence secretary over funding; Lisa Nandy says negotiations ongoing.”
“We are looking very carefully at how we achieve it,” Nandy said. “These conversations are not finished, this negotiation is happening as we speak.” She added that she was talking to officials in her own department about making funding available for defence.
Healey, once one of Labour’s most consistently loyal ministers, resigned alongside junior minister Al Carns over concerns that not enough money had been assigned to the government’s long-awaited defence investment plan. In his resignation letter, Healey accused Starmer of failing to provide the money required to “defend the country at a time of rising threats”.
Allies of Healey told the BBC that “more money is coming, but only as a result of Healey resigning… this is another unbelievable U-turn”.
The new Defence Secretary, Dan Jarvis, is now examining the plan “in current draft form”, Nandy said, and holding discussions with the chancellor and the prime minister. Speaking to the Sunday Telegraph, Jarvis said he had a responsibility to ensure the armed forces got the equipment and funding they needed.
“That is the challenge that we have at a point of constrained fiscal resource,” Jarvis said, “and I will be working with my colleagues across government to make sure that we’re in a position to do that.”
The former armed forces minister Al Carns, who also resigned, told the same BBC programme that the country needed “a really honest, open and courageous debate about where the money is going now”.
The defence investment plan – which sets out how new military equipment and infrastructure will be paid for over the next decade – was due last autumn but has been repeatedly delayed. Downing Street has said it will still be published before the Nato summit next month, but it is not expected in the coming week.
Conservative shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge said his party was willing to work with the government to find the money, proposing cuts to the welfare budget, restoring the two-child benefit cap and reducing spending on net zero energy policies.
With the resignations intensifying conversations on defence spending, the government faces the challenge of balancing fiscal constraint with rising threats – a negotiation, as Nandy put it, that is still very much alive.