Former military chief urges Government to boost defence spending for UK to remain world power

A former head of the armed forces today warned ministers they must increase spending on defence if Britain is to remain a world military power .

General Lord Houghton said the UK was at a “strategic crossroads” and the Government had to decide what sort of country it wants to be after Brexit.

He said the defence programme set out in 2015 was “wholly unaffordable” on existing resources — and backed a call by the Commons Defence Committee for the Government to raise spending from the Nato minimum of 2 per cent of GDP to 3 per cent.

“The Government finds itself in a very difficult situation … at a time when the world is a more dangerous place… but precisely the time

when a post-Brexit Britain aspires to rebrand and reassert itself as a global player,” he told the BBC.

Lord Houghton, who stood down as the chief of the defence staff in 2016, said the public had been “deluded” into thinking that Britain would gain major military capabilities when the funding was not there to pay for them.