John Healey: ‘Russia is attacking the UK daily’
Defence Secretary John Healey was interviewed today ahead of the government’s publication of the Strategic Defence Review, which will warn that new technology is significantly changing the nature of war. On the BBC, Laura Kuenssberg asked Healey if there is a risk that Russia would attack the UK. Healey said the UK defence system already deals with thousands of cyberattacks, many of which come from Russia, which is why the government is putting in ‘an extra £1bn to create a new cyber command’. Healey warned we are in ‘a world of growing threats’, and that the Strategic Defence Review will set out how UK forces must respond.
Healey admits army size target will not be reached until the next parliament
Healey was also asked about the size of the British Army, which has been in decline. The current target is 73,000 troops, but Healey admitted to Laura Kuenssberg that he did not expect to meet that target until the next parliament. He said there had been ‘15 years of a recruitment and retention crisis in our armed forces’, and that he had to reverse the trend of ‘more people leaving than joining’. Healey said he had given an above inflation pay rise to the armed forces, and had committed £1.5bn to upgrade armed forces housing, saying the families of army personnel and their families are currently living in conditions that ‘you or I would not tolerate’.
Healey: ‘Britain lost control of its borders five or six years ago’
On GB News, Camilla Tominey asked John Healey about boat crossings, after Saturday saw a near-record number of migrants cross the channel. Healey said that the Tories had left the asylum system ‘in chaos’, and that the UK’s new agreement with France was part of the government’s strategy for dealing with the smuggling gangs. Tominey pointed out that although the UK is paying the France £480m, interceptions by the French have gone down this year. Healey said that once the new operation with French police is in place, ‘it will start to help’, and argued that the Rwanda scheme had cost £700m with no results. Tominey suggested that if the scheme hadn’t been scrapped it might have worked as a deterrent, but Healey said it had ‘failed’, and that the government had been able to reinvest that money to deport more people who have ‘no right to be in this country’.
Robert Jenrick’s plan to ‘crack down on Islamist terrorists in jail’
On Sky News, Trevor Phillips interviewed Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick about his proposals to arm prison officers and deport foreign criminals. Phillips asked what would happen if the criminals’ home countries didn’t ‘want them back’. Jenrick said he would ‘use every lever of the British state’, to get prisoner transfer agreements, such as withholding foreign aid, and would ‘disapply the human rights act’ to allow for deportations. Jenrick claimed we are ‘losing control’ of our maximum security prisons, in which dangerous criminals are ‘running riot’. Phillips asked why Jenrick’s press release mentions ‘Islamist terrorists in jail’ and not just maximum security prisons in general. Jenrick said the proposals did apply to all maximum security prisons, and argued that prison officers should have ‘access to lethal weapons in extreme situations’.
Reform Chairman Zia Yusuf: All of Reform’s cuts would ‘improve the lives of British people’
Speaking to Reform Chairman Zia Yusuf, Trevor Phillips asked him to elucidate on his party’s claim that they could cut £350bn from public spending, saying that getting rid of DEI initiatives would only save ‘£10m’. Yusuf disagreed, describing the cost of DEI as ‘pernicious’. He told Phillips that £5bn was being spent on asylum seekers a year, net zero costs £45bn, and Reform would also cut 5% from the £265bn spent on quangos. Phillips pointed out that the Chancellor is only putting £7bn into the Green Prosperity Plan, and asked where Yusuf was finding the other £38bn. Yusuf said Reform would get rid of the state subsidies that go towards the ‘electrification’ of the car industry, which is a ‘very significant amount’.
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