Two Tory ministers were locked in a bitter defence spending row today as pressure mounted on the Government to pump more cash into the military.
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace slapped down Veterans Minister Johnny Mercer in the latest twist in the pair’s troubled relationship.
Mr Mercer, 41, a former Captain in the Royal Horse Artillery who fought in Afghanistan, blasted Mr Wallace’s claims the armed forces had been “hollowed out” by successive governments’ failure to inject enough funds.
Mr Mercer, a Cabinet Office Minister, claimed: "Ben is engaged in a lobbying effort for his department, as you would expect him to be.
“The facts are that when I came into politics, defence spending was around £38billion per year; it is just shy of £50bn a year now.
“It is obviously not credible to say that the money has been taken out of defence."
But Mr Wallace, 52, an ex-Captain in the Scots Guards who was Mentioned in Dispatches during a tour of Northern Ireland, scolded his party colleague.
“Johnny is a junior minister and Johnny, luckily, doesn’t have to run the budget,” he told LBC.
“I run a department of 224,000 people.”
He said Mr Mercer has "got 12 people in the office", adding: "His experience is not… he's not the Secretary of State."
Mr Mercer said he did not "buy into the narrative of running down defence" as he praised the size of defence settlements in recent years.
Asked about the clash, the Prime Minister’s spokesman said: “Both the Ministry of Defence and the Office for Veterans' Affairs do vitally important work to support the UK. The Prime Minister is grateful to both departments.”
He added: ‘The Defence Secretary has made it clear on a number of occasions that defence spending turned a corner under this government due to the spending review in 2020, which will provide an uplift of £24billion pounds over four years.”
The spokesman said future defence spending was a “live issue”.
During a Commons debate last month, Mr Wallace said he was "happy to say that we have been hollowed out and underfunded".
The spat comes as the Government prepares to publish its latest update to Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy.
Officials believe the plan will be released in the run-up to the Budget on March 15.
Calls to boost the defence budget have grown since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The UK will hold a minute’s silence at 11am tomorrow to mark the first anniversary of the full-scale invasion.
Western nations have faced rising demands to send Kyiv fighter jets to help Ukraine’s armed forces repel Kremlin tyrant Vladimir Putin’s troops.
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