Wes Streeting has become the first senior cabinet minister to appear to suggest that increased defence spending could be found from welfare savings.
The health secretary said that “the money has to come from somewhere” in a move interpreted as backing Labour’s former defence secretary and ex-Nato secretary general George Robertson earlier this week.
The health secretary has since issued a clarification denying that he specifically wants to slash benefits to fund defence.
But there is growing alarm at Sir Keir Starmer’s failure to decide on the UK’s defence spending, with the Defence Improvement Plan (DIP) still stuck on his desk after months of rowing between the Treasury and Ministry of Defence (MoD).
In a stark warning, Lord Jock Stirrup, the former chief of the defence staff, told The Independent the UK needs a decade to rebuild its defence capabilities and urged Sir Keir to show leadership and start the reinvestment now, in the latest intervention over the parlous state of the defence estate.
Mr Streeting, who is understood to still be hoping to replace Sir Keir as Labour leader and prime minister, is the first cabinet minister to appear to argue in favour of cutting the £334bn benefits budget to fund Britain’s military.
In so doing he risks reopening the dividing lines which saw Sir Keir forced into a humiliating U-turn by furious Labour backbenchers last year when he tried to trim the burgeoning welfare budget.
Mr Streeting has previously made it clear that money cannot be diverted from health spending following Labour’s manifesto commitment to increase it.
But asked if he would support switching funds from the welfare budget, Mr Streeting told LBC: “Well, yeah. We want to reduce the welfare budget.”
Mr Streeting was asked by LBC’s Nick Ferrari about claims of “corrosive complacency” made against Sir Keir by Lord Robertson and other military leaders last week.
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, the lead of Labour’s strategic defence review, warned the military could not be properly funded with an “ever-expanding welfare budget”.
Mr Streeting said: “Yes, and we do need to put money into defence.
“We have been putting more money into defence as a government, but we will need more. That is the reality of the challenge of the world that we face.”
But with Treasury said to be blocking increases to defence spending, including a deal for UK troops to be peacekeepers in Ukraine, the health secretary said it was up to Rachel Reeves to set out in future Budgets, adding: “I want to make sure I stay in my lane.”
A source close to Mr Streeting later clarified: “The government’s position is to increase defence spending and reform welfare. Wes didn’t link those two positions, and he robustly defended the abolition of the two-child limit, for which he was a strong advocate. Wes is a product of the welfare system, so knows the value of it, and the need to reform it, better than most.”
There was a furious backlash from charities and Labour MPs to the health secretary’s intervention.
Evan John, policy adviser at Sense, said: “It’s extremely concerning that the government seems to be laying the groundwork for further cuts to disability benefits, fuelling anxiety among disabled people already struggling as the cost of living rises.”
Labour MP Rachael Maskell, who led the welfare rebellion last year, warned: “I am clear that we have to provide household security and national security. It is a false choice to play one off against another. People supported by the Department for Work and Pensions are already struggling to make ends meet. The government must not contemplate such moves.”
Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell said: “Having lost the argument on the two child limit, the winter fuel allowance and cuts to disability benefits, now playing the poor off against the defence of the country to secure cuts in welfare benefits comes across as intellectually pretty desperate.”
Another rebel, Norwich South MP Clive Lewis added: “The usual siren voices are giving us Maginot Line thinking for a blitzkrieg world.”
Comparing the UK’s situation to 1930s France before Hitler’s invasion, he said: “The French state almost bankrupted itself building a fortification based on the lessons of the First World War. As the generals congratulated themselves behind their new defences, Germany developed the tank and drove around them. These calls to gut welfare in the name of security deserve to be seen in exactly that light - as the work of people fighting the last war, at the expense of our ability to fight the one that may or may not actually be coming.”
The leading union, Unite, one of Labour’s biggest backers, demanded that more money be ploughed into defence, but resisted calls to find the cash in welfare savings.
General secretary Sharon Graham said: “The government’s failure to produce the DIP is a threat to national security as well as to jobs and skills.
“It is becoming more apparent by the day that our armed forces are overstretched and under-equipped to deal with the global challenges we face.
“Our defence workers should be treated as a strategic national asset and, when the much-delayed defence investment plan is finally agreed, the money must be spent in the UK.
“Failing to preserve and protect the skills and experience of these workers would mean throwing away vital know-how for defence projects.
“The government must now ensure that contracts for a new tranche of Typhoon fast jets, the Skynet satellite and the A400M transport plane are signed off and production lines in Britain get rolling as soon as possible.”
But Ms Graham rejected the suggestion by Lord Robertson and others that increased defence spending should be raised by cutting the welfare bill, adding: “It is completely wrong to suggest that caring for the most vulnerable is risking national security.
“We are the sixth richest country in the world. If the government needs to raise funds, it should introduce a wealth tax rather than attack the most vulnerable in society yet again.”
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