Ben Obese-Jecty

Ben Obese-Jecty

Conservative — Huntingdon

Speaking in the House of Commons on 24 January 2025

Debate

Unity Contract

Contribution

I welcome the Unity contract and the work done by the previous Government to initiate it. It is a critical step in maintaining our submarine fleet and facilitating our continuous at-sea nuclear deterrence. The Minister recently confirmed to me that, excluding Trident, our defence spending as a percentage of GDP is actually only 1.9%. That puts the UK 23rd of 32 NATO countries, below North Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania and others. Our non-nuclear NATO partners currently spend proportionally more than we do on conventional forces, while Trident is a measure of last resort. To ensure that we are properly resourced for high-intensity, multi-domain collective defence, should our NATO spending commitment not be to meet that target on conventional forces, with our nuclear capability in addition to that?

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