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Britain must prioritise defence spending over welfare or risk leaving the country dangerously exposed to Russia and other hostile states, a former defence chief has warned.
General Sir Richard, one of the authors of last year’s Strategic Defence Review, said the government had spent a year struggling to fund its own defence promises and now faced a stark choice between cutting other areas of public spending.
The retired four-star general suggested more money should be spent on defence and less on welfare.
He said: “We spend five times as much on ourselves in welfare as we do on defence.
“We spend, for example, twice as much on supporting the million youngsters who are not in employment, education or training. And we spend more, almost twice as much, on debt interest as we do on defence.
“And so it’s not a question of affordability, it’s a question of choices. And for someone like me, that means we just need to accept, as a society, that we have to reduce the welfare offer we make ourselves.
“I know that’s hard and unpopular, but if we don’t fix our defence, then welfare becomes, frankly, redundant.”
His comments will intensify pressure on Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves as the Treasury attempts to settle the funding needed to deliver the Defence Investment Plan, the document intended to put the Strategic Defence Review into practice.
The review, published on 2 June 2025, was externally led by Lord Robertson, General Sir Richard Barrons and Dr Fiona Hill.
The government said it accepted all 62 of its recommendations and promised they would be implemented.
Sir Richard, a former Commander of Joint Forces Command, now known as Strategic Command, served from 2013 to 2016 in one of the senior military posts leading the Armed Forces.
He was responsible for more than 20,000 personnel and served in Bosnia, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan.
He said the Defence Investment Plan was supposed to provide the funding and priorities needed to make the review a reality.
“In the context of the review that was published a year ago, the reviewers agreed the recommendations with the Prime Minister, and he endorsed all 62 of them and said they would be implemented,” Sir Richard said.
“And the Defence Investment Plan is the vehicle for much of that implementation. So the fact that a year has passed, with what has been a mighty struggle in government about how to afford it, is very disappointing.”
The Defence Investment Plan is intended to supersede the previous Defence Equipment Plan, the Ministry of Defence’s 10-year programme for buying and supporting the Armed Forces’ equipment.
The National Audit Office said the 2023-2033 Equipment Plan covered more than 1,800 projects, including the nuclear deterrent, F-35B Lightning aircraft and communications technology, but warned it was unaffordable, with forecast costs exceeding the budget by £16.9 billion.
Sir Richard said the latest funding problem was even larger. He said that once the cost of the Strategic Defence Review had been examined in detail, along with additional commitments, the gap between the review’s recommendations and the money ministers intended to provide was thought to be around £28 billion over the first four years.
“The choice they have agonised over since certainly last September is, if it challenges finding £28 billion, do you make cuts in the review, which I think most people would think would be astonishing in the world we live in, or have you just got to accept that defence needs more money sooner?” he said.
“That will come either from more borrowing or more taxes, both very unpopular, or from elsewhere in government, and that takes many people’s eyes to the uncapped welfare budget, for example.”
Although major programmes such as new submarines, ships and aircraft have continued, Sir Richard said the absence of new money this year had damaged readiness.
“As the year has unfolded, the armed forces have struggled with not enough money for training, for logistics and definitely no new money to invest, really, in the sort of transformation for war in the 21st century, which is what the SDR is really all about,” he said.
“So it has dented confidence in the review’s outcome in defence because there’s been a loss of momentum. It has dented the confidence allies have in the UK, which I think rose enormously on the back of the review’s narrative that here was the UK doing what it does well, setting out how it will transform defence for its part in NATO in the 21st century.
“And above all, it has dented confidence in industry that thought there would be new money for new things. In the absence of that, clearly our defence industrial base has eroded and we’ve seen good companies fold or go to America or Germany.”
Sir Richard said any additional £18 billion over four years would be welcome but would still leave a shortfall.
“If government were to say, well, to close the £28 billion, here’s another £18 billion over the first four years, I will be amongst the first to say that’s a good thing to do,” he said.
“And I realise it was hard, but then I’m going to say, but it’s not closed the gap, has it? It’s not enough.”
He said ministers should also move faster to bring private capital into defence.
“One way of closing that gap is for the government to move much faster at reaching into the City, into private capital, which is ready to play its part in defence,” he said. “It just needs to know what for and on what arrangements.”
Sir Richard warned that Britain’s safety was already at greater risk because of the delay, arguing that Russia was attacking the UK daily below the threshold of open conflict.
“The risk is much greater because momentum has been lost,” he said.
“We know two things for sure. One is the UK is attacked every day by Russia. The boss of GCHQ reminded us of that this week, and Russia sees itself at war with the UK and other countries, but below the threshold of military conflict.
“And the second thing we know for sure is that, at some point, the war in Ukraine is going to stop. And it might stop because Russia decides that, instead of forging on unsuccessfully in Ukraine, it could apply a mobilised armed forces and a mobilised economy and test NATO somewhere else, knowing the US has said it’s not coming to the rescue anymore and knowing that Europe has not transformed and rearmed in the way the SDR describes.
“And that might just be very tempting. So this delay has meant greater risk.”
