Defence Secretary Ben Wallace Speaks to G&T And Indicates Troop Cuts Are Coming

Good morning,

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has indicated to Times Radio that an announcement on troop cuts can be expected tomorrow despite the 2019 pledge to maintain numbers.

Speaking to Gloria De Piero and Tom Newton Dunn he was asked if the government would be sticking to the pledge and he said:

Well the threat changes. We change with it. If we didn't change with it we would have an army like the First World War. The fundamentals are that technology and capabilities change and we have to change to match that. It's very simple. Some reviews over the years have been done based on funding cuts and in fact they have shoe horned changes into a very tight financial envelope. That's not the case, I'm making these decisions based on £24 billion extra of defence spending over the next four years. It's one of the biggest rises in spending since the Cold War. That gives us the freedom to properly assess the threat and get about the problems that we need to and make sure we have the right forces. People forget that if we indulge in Top Trumps type defence planning where it's all about how many ships have you got and how many regiments you end up with soldiers going to war in snatch Land Rovers and ships tied up alongside because we don't have the money to maintain them. It's a pretty sorry sight if you go down to Portsmouth today. And we remember the consequences of things like snatch Land Rovers in the past.

On whether the UK should clear a standing debt Britain owes to Iran for a tank deal in order to secure the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe:

What we've said very clearly is that we comply with law and the rule of law. It is absolutely right, as I said in 2014 in my debate, that we should honour that debt and we should find ways to return it to Iran. Of course, since then Iran has clearly indulged in hostage-taking diplomacy with a number of countries including the United Kingdom which makes life much harder for many people. Also there are sanctions in place. There are rules of law governing the sanctions. You wouldn't expect me to break sanctions in order to deal with that issue. We have to find a way of upholding our obligations, legally, on the debt but also complying with sanctions. I think that is really important.

And on claims Russia is jamming communications for RAF planes taking off from Cyprus:

You can speculate on what the candidates are but there are states that have jammed our aircraft coming in and out of Cyprus, including GPS. We have measures to deal with it but yes, there are foreign states engaged in that.

It is a state actor. It is not a terrorist actor and we should recognise it's not acceptable.

TND: Why won't you just say Russia?

BW: I live in a world where I'm informed by intelligence and it's not necessarily my intelligence to share. I think the key here is we mitigate against it.