Labour's further defence investment plan delay torn apart by Mel Stride: 'They are panicking!'

The delayed publication of Labour's defence investment plan has been caused by a "panicked" Treasury trying to find cuts in Government spending, Sir Mel Stride has argued.

Speaking to GB News, the Shadow Chancellor criticised the Government for delaying the plan's publication, declaring "nothing has been properly thought through".

Sir Mel said: "One of the reasons for the delay here is that the Treasury has suddenly appeared to have panicked, for those looking from the outside.

"They've turned around to departments to say they've got to find some fairly significant cuts in their capital budgets to pay for the ideas or the approach that they think they're about to come forward with the defence investment plan."

Stressing the plan has been delayed since "last autumn", the top Tory added: "None of this feels like something that's been properly thought through, which is probably why we've had the delay on the defence investment plan since last autumn.

"The fundamental problem, is that the Government has mismanaged our economy, left us in a very vulnerable situation, such that it's very difficult to afford what is now clear and necessary."

Sir Mel argued to get the economy back on track, one must "get a grip" on the ballooning welfare bill.

He told Britain's News Channel: "The biggest thing that they could do is to get a grip of the welfare bill, get people off benefits and into work.

"We have shown how you could make at least £23billion worth of savings in that area, and then you can do things like pay for defence, then you can do things like get taxes down on businesses, so that you can grow the economy."

Asked by host Mark White if the situation was caused by Labour backbenchers blocking cuts to welfare spending, Sir Mel agreed.

The Shadow Chancellor said: "Yes, and that is the problem. People are speculating feverishly about what's going to happen to the Prime Minister.

"Is he going to be replaced by Andy Burnham or somebody else?"

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Criticising the Government further, Sir Mel told the People's Channel: "The reality is, the problem that we have with the Government is not who's leading it.

"It is the fact that the parliamentary party, the Labour parliamentary party, are not prepared to take the kind of bold and sometimes slightly tough decisions to get our country on the right economic footing."

Sir Mel made clear the Government should be "spending more on defence" and not spending "a billion pounds a day on welfare".

He said: "The first whiff of cordite when it came to gripping the welfare bill, they all turned for the hills and ran away from it, and we are now spending about a billion pounds a day on welfare, DWP’s budget.

"We should be spending much more on defence, much more on getting taxes down, and much more on actually getting our debt down as a country if we're to have that resilience going forward."

Asked for his verdict on the latest economic data, which revealed the UK's national debt is rising faster than any other country in the world except Botswana, Sir Mel said that the Tories are the "only party" that is serious about getting debt down.

He concluded: "The question really should be now, what do we do about that? We are the only party that is talking seriously about getting debt down, and that's through our golden rule.

"At least half of all that we save through savings across the public sector will go into paying down the deficit and therefore paying down the debt as a proportion of the size of our economy. And that is the only responsible thing to do with the only party talking about how we will achieve that."

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