Nick Thomas-Symonds and Sir Nick Carter appeared on the BBC’s Question Time programme this evening (Image: BBC)
A was left squirming during this week’s BBC Question Time.
Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds appeared on the topical debate show on Thursday alongside General Sir Nick Carter, and was pressed on the Government’s spending on the military.
He insisted that Sir would set out a “path” to spending 2.5% of GDP on defence in the spring.
Mr Thomas-Symonds also mentioned a strategic defence review being led by Lord Robertson, a former secretary general of NATO, which is examining threats, the UK’s defence capabilities, and also the overall state of the country’s armed forces.
But host Fiona Bruce interjected, pointing out that Sir Nick was “laughing”.
The former military chief said: “Well, I’ve never seen a defence review succeed if it is out of sync with the comprehensive spending review.”
: [TV]
General Sir Nick Carter is a former military chief (Image: Getty)
To “reassure” Sir Nick, Mr Thomas-Symonds pointed out that the comprehensive spending review, which will set resource or day-to-day departmental budgets across the whole of Whitehall, is coming in June.
Today’s edition of was a special episode focused on ’s ongoing invasion of , and peace talks between the US and .
The panellists in today’s episode also included campaign adviser Jan Halper-Hayes.
Also on the show were Ukrainian politician Lesia Vasylenko and former Conservative Ben Wallace, who spent five years as the UK’s Defence Secretary.
Mr Wallace said Sir Keir must increase the UK’s defence spending, and earlier this week accused Mr Trump of echoing “propaganda lines” from the Kremlin.
: [REPORT] [TV] [SHOWBIZ]
Nick Thomas-Symonds says the Government will set out the ‘path’ to spending 2.5% of GDP on defence (Image: Getty)
He told LBC: “Well, I know Mar-a-Largo is quite close to Disney World, but that was pure Disney in both sort of facts and reality.
“And I think what you were actually hearing is ‘s realisation that if you don’t have skin in the game, you don’t get a say, as much as you think you do.
“I mean, I saw them all sitting around that table in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia.”
He added: “I’m sure they did a lot of interesting things in four hours. But fundamentally, if you want to get a peace deal in , you’re going to need the people who are going to have to put skin in the game to make it happen.”
On today’s show, Mr Wallace said that the UK must listen to warnings issued by multiple US administrations and “take a greater share in our responsibility of keeping ourselves safe and secure and defending our values”.
Sir Keir is “in the hot seat”, Mr Wallace added, and he needs to reassign money from elsewhere in an effort to increase the amount of GDP assigned to defence. “To lead is to choose”.