Hegseth right to mock Royal Navy, says ex-army chief as he backs claims over military underfunding
Good morning. When Keir Starmer gave evidence to the Commons liaison committee before the Easter recess, and when he made a statement to MPs yesterday on the first day after it was over, he was repeatedly asked when the government will publish its defence investment plan (DIP). On both occasions, he could not give a timetable and would just say it would be published as soon as it was ready.
His critics are furious because the DIP, a 10-year plan explaining how the government will fund its commitment to get defence spending up to 3% of GDP by the end of the next parliament, with total national security spending reaching 5% of GDP by 2035, was due to be published last autumn.
In particular, the DIP will explain how the government will be able to fulfil the goals set out in the strategic defence review it published last year. The review was led by the Labour peer George Robertson, a former defence secretary and former secretary general of Nato. And he seems to have finally lost patience with the government.
He is giving a speech in Salisbury tonight, but Lucy Fisher from the Financial Times has already written up some extracts and in them Robertson is withering about the Treasury. According to Fisher’s report, Robertson will accuse “non-military experts in the Treasury” of “vandalism”, adding: “We cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget.”
He will criticise Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, for devoting just 40 words to defence in her budget speech last year, and saying nothing about the topic at all in her spring statement last month. He will say:
There is a corrosive complacency today in Britain’s political leadership. Lip service is paid to the risks, the threats, the bright red signals of danger — but even a promised national conversation about defence can’t be started.
He will also say Britain is not safe.
We are underprepared. We are underinsured. We are under attack. We are not safe . . . Britain’s national security and safety is in peril.
Robertson is not a defence loudmouth. He is a quintessential establishment figure who for most of his career has avoided being provocative, or rocking the boat. If he feels minded to speak out like this, it must be serious.
Olivia Lee has a full write-up here.
This morning General Sir Richard Barrons, who along with Robertson was one of the three experts who wrote the defence review (the other was the former White House adviser and Russia expert Fiona Hill), gave an interview to the Today programme. Barrons, a former commander of Joint Forces Command, fully supported what Robertson will be saying in his speech. And he said that Britain’s armed forces are so diminished that he had to accept that Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, was right when he mocked the Royal Navy last month.
“Last time I checked, there was supposed to be a big, bad Royal Navy that could be prepared to do things like [clear the strait of Hormuz] as well,” Hegseth said.
Asked how he felt hearing that, Barrons said:
Like many others I hung my head in sorrow. But I couldn’t argue with him because although the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force and the army are, in their bones, outstanding institutions, they are simply too small and too undernourished to deal with the world that we we now live in. And the review says this.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: Keir Starmer chairs cabinet. There will be a political session, as well as the usual government meeting.
10am: South East Water executives give evidence to the environment, food and rural affairs committee, followed by Ofwat chief executive Chris Walters at 11am.
10am: Education experts give evidence to the Commons education committee about the proposed changes to Send (special educational needs and disabilities) provision.
10.30am: Executives from TikTok, Meta, Sky TV and Paramount TV executives give evidence to the culture committee about children’s TV and video content.
Morning: Kemi Badenoch is on a visit in south London.
11am: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, holds a press conference focusing on health.
11.30am: Wes Streeting, the health secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
Noon: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
Afternoon: Starmer meets his Dutch counterpart, Rob Jetten, in Downing Street.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (between 10am and 3pm), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
Key events
The Labour MP Samantha Niblett has said she wants to make 2026 the “summer of sex”. While this sounds like the most enticing of the election offers we’ve heard during the campaign so far, she used the phrase in an interview with PoliticsHome talking about her campaign for better, lifelong sex education. You can read the full interview, which includes Niblett saying she is negotiating with the parliamentary authorities about bringing sex toys into the Commons for an event she is planning to publicise her campaign, here.
Reform activist suspended over racist and antisemitic comments remains election agent
A Reform UK activist in the Gorton and Denton byelection who was suspended over racist and antisemitic comments has been named as the election agent for three of the party’s candidates in Manchester ahead of polls on 7 May, Ben Quinn and Rob Davies report.
Q: Do you understand why some people in your party are frustrated because they think you as a party should be doing much better?
Nationally, the Lib Dems are now polling well behind not just Reform UK, Labour, the Tories and the Greens.
Davey said oppostion was difficult. But he said “the fact that we keep winning is somethiing that should reassure people”. He said he thought the party would win “many more seats” at the next general election.
And the party was on course to become the second biggest party in local government because it “keeps winning”, he said. That would happen again in May, he said.
Lib Dems call for housing developers to required to fund extra GP provision for people buying their homes
Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, was holding his press conference this morning to announce a proposal for housing developers to be required to fund new or expanded GP surgeries for the people who buy their new homes.
Explaining the plan in a news release, the Lib Dems say:
The party would require developers to fund or build new, or expand existing, GP surgeries in time for the arrival of new residents, with developer levies used to pay for them to be staffed while new residents are still moving in. This is part of the Liberal Democrats’ infrastructure-first approach to development, and supports their campaign to rescue General Practice and ensure everyone can get an appointment within 7 days, or 24 hours if urgent.
Developers would be required not only to fund new facilities but also to guarantee the GP surgery contract (or the cost of salaried GPs) while new residents are still moving in. This would ensure new residents don’t have to turn to over-stretched existing GPs, and new practices can be viable from the outset.
Delivery of health services has been found to be integral for public trust, with recent LSE research finding that where GP provision has declined and more surgeries have closed, support for the extreme right has risen.
At the press conference Davey was asked about claims by rival parties that, although the Lib Dems nationally back new housing, at a local level their councillors are adept at blocking developments.
Davey said “the reverse” was true. He claimed Lib Dem councils have a very good record building homes.
We’re the ones who actually build homes. I could take you to Eastleigh, who’ve been building homes over a number of years and have got a very good record. I could take you Cambridgeshire. I can take you to my own area, Kingston, where I have to declare a vested interest; my wife is the housing portfolio holder. She’s overseeing the largest council house building programme for 40 years. I could take you the Vale of White Horse in Oxfordshire. I could take you to South Lakeland. Across the country, actually the Liberal Democrats have a very, very proud record of building homes.
Davey renews call for South East Water CEO to resign after company tells MPs it failed in its duty to customers
Q: Do you think the chief executive of South East Water should resign? This morning he and colleagues told a committee that some of the problems that let to a water shortage in Tunbridge Wells last year were foreseeable?
Davey said that he has already called for the resignation of David Hinton, the South East Water CEO. He did so at the time of the Tunbridge Wells shortage, he said. He went on:
If he’s now admitting it was foreseeable and predictable, I’m surprised he is not offering his resignation already.
Here is the Press Association report of the evidence given by Hinton and others to the Commons environment committeee this morning.
The chairman of South East Water has admitted the company failed in its primary duty to supply customers with water after recent outages left thousands without drinking water.
Bosses of the company were grilled by the Commons environment, food and rural affairs committee this morning about their response to the multiple supply interruptions in Kent and Sussex.
Tunbridge Wells suffered a sustained outage in November and December, with around 24,000 properties in and around the Kent town left without drinkable water for almost two weeks.
Then thousands of properties in Kent and Sussex saw their supply disrupted for days in January, with South East Water (SEW) blaming the outage on Storm Goretti causing burst pipes and power cuts.
Customers were left with no tap water, unable to shower or bathe and could not flush their toilets, while a number of schools were forced to close.
Chairman Chris Train told MPs that the company “failed on the basic objective of delivering water to customers and therefore that is a failure and we recognise that failure”.
“We failed our customers,” he continued. “We worked very hard to rectify that situation, and since the events and independent review, we have undertaken a lot of actions to improve the resilience of the operations.”
Committee chairman Alistair Carmichael asked Train to score his team’s performance out of 10, arguing that customers deserve that degree of accountability from a non-executive director.
The chairman refused to do so, saying the situation is “complex” but added: “That degree of accountability is that we accept that we failed in our primary duty and we could have done better with all of the factors.”
Chief executive David Hinton was also asked to give a score out of 10 for the company’s response to the January outages after he previously marked it as eight out of 10 for the November incident.
Hinton also refused to do so but admitted that the performance was “disappointing” after many vulnerable customers were left without an alternative supply of water.
“My expectation is that we deliver to all priority service customers and that the bottled water stations are completely resourced the whole time, and customers can get access to alternative water at all times.
“So whenever we do not meet that particular yardstick, then I’m disappointed.”
Q: Do you think the Treasury should be looking for savings in other departments to fund higher defence spending?
Davey said of course the Treasury should be trying to find savings. But he claimed that his plan for defence bonds (see 11.36am) was the best idea put forward by any party to find the money for defence.
Davey claims Lib Dems will be ‘one of two biggest parties in local government’ by time of next general election
Q: Are you concerned that the Liberal Democrats are losing support given the rising popularity of the Green party?
Davey did not accept that. He replied:
We got, the best result for over a hundred years at the general election. But we’ve kept on winning since.
At the last May elections a year ago we beat the Conservatives and Labour for the first time ever. And it was our seventh year in a row of wins.
If you look at council by elections across the country, which party won the most in 2025? It was the Liberal Democrats.
And I make this prediction as we look at the council elections between now and the next election … By the time the next election will be one of the two biggest parties in local government. And with politics changing, that will be a massive change across our country.
According to Open Council Data UK, the Lib Dems are currently in third place, in total councillor numbers, in the UK.
Davey seems to be saying the Lib Dems will overtake the Tories, who are on course to lose around 1,000 seat in the local elections, according to at least one forecast. Labour are expected to lose even more, but they are starting from a higher base.
Davey says MPs should be banned from promoting financial services or products, after Farage backs crypto firm
Q: Why are you calling for an inquiry into Nigel Farage’s investment in a bitcoin firm?
Davey said that, in investing in crypto, Farage, the Reform UK leader, seemed to be copying Donald Trump. He said he thought MPs should be banned from promoting financial services or products.
He said:
[Farage is] now promoting this business. The question is, is he persuading people to put money into a risky business?
And the conclusion I draw from this example is that we need to change the rules for MPs. MPs should not be allowed to promote specific financial services or products in the way we’re seeing Nigel Farage doing.
Let’s remember, we saw in America Donald Trump doing exactly the same thing and far, far worse. Donald Trump … is enriching himself, enriching his friends and, frankly, making other people poor. And I don’t think we want that type of leadership here.
Nigel Farage seems to want to copy Donald Trump. and I think we should move as a parliament to outlaw that type of behaviour that Nigel Farage seems happy to copy.
Yesterday Stack, a crypto firm chaired by Kwasi Kwarteng, the former Tory chancellor, publicised the fact that Farage, an investor in the company, had “purchased” £2m of bitcoin. Reform UK later clarified that Farage had not bought the bitcoin, but had put through the transaction for the company.
As Rowena Mason has reported in the past, Farage also has a £400,000-a-year promoting a firm that encourages people to invest in gold.
Ed Davey claims Lib Dems leading way on defence spending with plan to raise £20bn from bonds
Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, is holding a press conference.
During his Q&A, he was asked about defence spending, and the claim by George Robertson that he declined an invitation to a briefing on the strategic defence review.
Davey said the party had searched through emails, and been unable to find the invitation. But he would be happy to take up the offer, he said.
On defence spending generally, he claimed the Lib Dems were leading the way with their proposal for defence bonds (ie, borrowing) to be used to fund a £20bn increase in spending.
He went on:
We need to get together as a country. The defence challenges for our country are so serious, with war on our continent for the first time for a long time, with Russia invading Ukraine, surely that’s been the wake up call that we needed. The government hasn’t gone as fast as it should have given those circumstances.
Almost £130m funding to be shared across 130 cultural venues in England
A funding boost of almost £130m is set to be distributed across cultural venues, museums and libraries in England, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has announced. In a news release, it says:
Venues ranging from The Lowry Centre in Salford, The Hexagon in Reading and the Royal Shakespeare Company in Warwickshire will receive a much needed cash boost to help open up access to facilities, complete much needed building projects and upgrade technology on site.
The 130 organisations receiving funding today mark the first projects receiving cash from the government’s Arts Everywhere Fund. As the cost of living continues to affect families across Britain, funding for these venues will help provide welcoming, affordable spaces for communities to visit, come together and celebrate what makes their local area special.
Starmer and Macron to co-chair summit in Paris on Friday about keeping strait of Hormuz open
Downing Street has announced that Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, the French president, will co-chair the next meeting of the group of 40-odd countries exploring options for keeping the strait of Hormuz open after the Iran war ends. The meeting will take place in Paris on Friday.
Starmer to chair new cabinet committee dealing with fallout from Iran war
Keir Starmer will lead a new cabinet committee to deal with the fallout from the Iran conflict, the Press Association reports. PA says:
The group – the Middle East response committee – has its first meeting today focused on efforts to reopen the strait of Hormuz, the shipping route vital for global oil and gas supplies.
The PM established the committee to deal with the domestic and international impacts of the war, which has driven up energy prices, caused stock market turmoil and exposed deep divisions between the US and its traditional European allies.
No 10 insiders compared the new panel to the committees set up under Tory prime ministers to deal with Brexit preparations and the Covid pandemic.
A source said the “new central structure” would focus on “medium-term scenario planning to respond to developments in the region over the coming weeks and months”.
Alongside the ministerial committee – whose full membership has not yet been disclosed – senior officials will meet under the chairmanship of cabinet secretary Dame Antonia Romeo.
The new structure is seen as an acknowledgement that the situation will continue to have an impact on the UK for some time, but meetings of the emergency Cobra committee will still be held to respond to immediate crises.
This is from Patrick Wintour, the Guardian’s diplomatic editor (and former political editor), on George Robertson’s intervention. (See 8.58am.)
Lord Robertson is a good man that has been passionate about defence spending and Nato all through his political career. He struck with the Labour right wing when it was neither fashionable nor a good career move. Naturally Labour right wingers have gravitated towards the defence portfolios down the years, and Robertson is a premier example. So when he says “We cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget,” he is bringing his politics, as well as his expertise, to the debate. He is not beyond challenge. Nor would he expect to be.
Badenoch says Trump’s picture of himself as Jesus ‘preposterous’ and some of his remarks ‘childish’
In her Radio 5 Live interview, Kemi Badenoch also criticised Donald Trump for making “childish” remarks.
The Conservatives regard the US Republicans as a sister party and, for most of her time as Tory leader, Badenoch mostly supportive of Trump. But today she said that the image of Trump as Jesus that he posted on Truth Social was “preposterous”, and she said his decision to share it was “very bizarre”.
She went on:
If [Trump is] saying something that makes sense, we should agree. If he says something that doesn’t make sense, we should disagree. I think he’s right to say we need to do more spending on defence … He’s wrong to make childish remarks. He’s wrong to [make] these empty threats on Greenland and so on. All of that’s wrong. What he said about Iran [the threat to wipe out its civilisation], that’s wrong as well.
This is not the first time Badenoch has used the word “childish” to describe some of Trump’s comments.
Badenoch says she ‘100% agrees’ with Robertson about ‘ever-expanding welfare budget’ putting defence at risk
Kemi Badenoch has told Radio 5 Live that she “100% agrees” with what George Robertson is saying, as quoted in the FT, about Britain being unable to defend itself properly with an “ever-expanding wefare budget”. (See 8.58am.) Asked about his speech in an interview this morning, she said:
We used to spend one in every seven pounds on welfare. Now it’s one in every three pounds and a lot of that money has basically been swapped for defence.
The world is not as peaceful as it used to be. The peace dividend that existed after the fall of the Berlin Wall is gone, we need to spend more money on defence.
This is a former Labour defence secretary, former [Nato] secretary general, saying what I’ve been saying for the past few weeks.
According to the FT, Robertson will also say in his speech tonight that “depressingly” the leaders of the Liberal Democrat and Reform UK turned down his invitation to a briefing on what the strategic defence review says. Badenoch said this was proof other parties were not taking defence seriously.
Nigel Farage’s spokesperson told the FT that the Reform UK leader was not aware of the invitation. Ed Davey’s spokesperson did not respond to the FT’s request for a comment.
Government defends its record on defence spending in response to George Robertson saying ‘UK not safe’
The government has defended its record on defence spending in response to the criticisms made by George Robertson. (See 8.58am.) In response to the FT story, a government spokesperson said:
We are delivering on the strategic defence review to meet the threats we face.
It is backed by the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War, with a total of over £270bn being invested across this parliament.
We are finalising our defence investment plan that we will publish as soon as possible, putting the best kit and technology into the hands of our forces, rebuilding British industry to make defence an engine for growth and doubling down on our own commitment to Nato.
Hegseth right to mock Royal Navy, says ex-army chief as he backs claims over military underfunding
Good morning. When Keir Starmer gave evidence to the Commons liaison committee before the Easter recess, and when he made a statement to MPs yesterday on the first day after it was over, he was repeatedly asked when the government will publish its defence investment plan (DIP). On both occasions, he could not give a timetable and would just say it would be published as soon as it was ready.
His critics are furious because the DIP, a 10-year plan explaining how the government will fund its commitment to get defence spending up to 3% of GDP by the end of the next parliament, with total national security spending reaching 5% of GDP by 2035, was due to be published last autumn.
In particular, the DIP will explain how the government will be able to fulfil the goals set out in the strategic defence review it published last year. The review was led by the Labour peer George Robertson, a former defence secretary and former secretary general of Nato. And he seems to have finally lost patience with the government.
He is giving a speech in Salisbury tonight, but Lucy Fisher from the Financial Times has already written up some extracts and in them Robertson is withering about the Treasury. According to Fisher’s report, Robertson will accuse “non-military experts in the Treasury” of “vandalism”, adding: “We cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget.”
He will criticise Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, for devoting just 40 words to defence in her budget speech last year, and saying nothing about the topic at all in her spring statement last month. He will say:
There is a corrosive complacency today in Britain’s political leadership. Lip service is paid to the risks, the threats, the bright red signals of danger — but even a promised national conversation about defence can’t be started.
He will also say Britain is not safe.
We are underprepared. We are underinsured. We are under attack. We are not safe . . . Britain’s national security and safety is in peril.
Robertson is not a defence loudmouth. He is a quintessential establishment figure who for most of his career has avoided being provocative, or rocking the boat. If he feels minded to speak out like this, it must be serious.
Olivia Lee has a full write-up here.
This morning General Sir Richard Barrons, who along with Robertson was one of the three experts who wrote the defence review (the other was the former White House adviser and Russia expert Fiona Hill), gave an interview to the Today programme. Barrons, a former commander of Joint Forces Command, fully supported what Robertson will be saying in his speech. And he said that Britain’s armed forces are so diminished that he had to accept that Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, was right when he mocked the Royal Navy last month.
“Last time I checked, there was supposed to be a big, bad Royal Navy that could be prepared to do things like [clear the strait of Hormuz] as well,” Hegseth said.
Asked how he felt hearing that, Barrons said:
Like many others I hung my head in sorrow. But I couldn’t argue with him because although the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force and the army are, in their bones, outstanding institutions, they are simply too small and too undernourished to deal with the world that we we now live in. And the review says this.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: Keir Starmer chairs cabinet. There will be a political session, as well as the usual government meeting.
10am: South East Water executives give evidence to the environment, food and rural affairs committee, followed by Ofwat chief executive Chris Walters at 11am.
10am: Education experts give evidence to the Commons education committee about the proposed changes to Send (special educational needs and disabilities) provision.
10.30am: Executives from TikTok, Meta, Sky TV and Paramount TV executives give evidence to the culture committee about children’s TV and video content.
Morning: Kemi Badenoch is on a visit in south London.
11am: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, holds a press conference focusing on health.
11.30am: Wes Streeting, the health secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
Noon: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
Afternoon: Starmer meets his Dutch counterpart, Rob Jetten, in Downing Street.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (between 10am and 3pm), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
