Poll of the week: Should Rishi Sunak increase defence spending?

Air engineers check the safety of the F-35B from the Royal Air Force 207 Squadron – Royal Navy

As the threat of war across the world continues to increase, senior Tories and leading defence chiefs have called for the Government to ramp up military spending.

Grant Shapps, the Defence Secretary, has called for the Prime Minister to raise defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP, up from 2.2 per cent. Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, has also called for a boost to Britain’s defence budget.

A Savanta poll for The Telegraph found that 59 per cent of people who backed the Tories in 2019 say the Government should increase levels of funding for defence, even if that means reducing its scope for tax cuts.

So far, over 19,000 readers have voted in the poll conducted by this newspaper, of which 93 per cent support an increase to Britain’s defence budget. Now it’s your turn – have your say below.

Most readers think defence readiness should be a national priority given the increased threat, with some suggesting making cuts elsewhere.

David Nichol, for example, argues: “We need more defence spending and if taxes must go up then so be it. It will hurt less than failing to deter our enemies. I would prefer to fund this by cutting swathes out of civil servant numbers and bonkers local council waste.”

Reader Joseph McFarland agrees and instead urges the Government to “stop wasting our money supporting migrants, foreign aid and on unworkable projects that benefit nobody”.

Whereas John Bolwell argues that a rise to military spending benefits all and “is the first and only non-negotiable of government”.

Steve Oldfield says: “Real Tories deliver tax cuts and robust defence budgets – they used to do it by reducing wasteful public sector spending elsewhere.”

However, there is still a small percentage of readers who oppose the increase.

Ray Sargent, for example, says he “would be perfectly happy to cut defence spending if more, much more, was spent on prisons and properly defending our own borders.”

He continues: “Let’s solve our own security problems before trying to police the rest of the world.”

Meanwhile, Simon Jones is of the belief that “if politicians can’t tell us where this ‘war threat’ is coming from, then we should meet our Nato requirements and no more”.

Others argue that an increase in defence spending would make no meaningful difference.

Simon Bell, for example, says: “Throwing more money will just end up making defence contractors even richer and giving us white elephants like Gordon Brown’s pair of useless carriers.”

Sharing a similar sentiment, reader James Peck thinks “it will just be squandered on management consultants and overpriced weaponry. The Ministry of Defence, like any other section of the Civil Service, is a money pit”.

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