Britain set the tone for greater defence spending across Nato yesterday with an announcement that the second of two multi-billion-pound aircraft carriers would be brought into service.
Clearing up long-running uncertainty over the fate of HMS Prince of Wales, which is under construction in Scotland, David Cameron said the warship would join HMS Queen Elizabeth, which was named by the Queen in July and is being fitted with weapons.
“This will ensure that we will always have one carrier available, 100 per cent of the time,” the Prime Minister said at the conclusion of the two-day Nato summit in Wales.
“They are an investment in British security, British prosperity and our place in the world, transforming our ability to project power globally whether independently or with our allies.”
The £6 billion aircraft carrier programme has been plagued by delays and escalating cost. In 2010, the government said it would be more expensive to scrap the programme than continue to build the two warships. However, there has always been a question mark over whether the Ministry of Defence had the money to operate both ships.
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Analysts have speculated that the second warship would have to be sold or mothballed. Mr Cameron’s announcement appeared to indicate that the ship would be put to use, though it could simply be placed in reserve rather than manned with a full crew and weapons.
The development came as Britain and its 27 Nato allies finally managed to agree on a carefully worded statement about defence spending — by far the most contentious issue to be discussed at the summit, even given the discussions on Islamic State and Russia.
Many in the alliance have allowed their defence budgets to erode dramatically in recent years and have not viewed spending on the armed forces as a priority.
Months of tense back and forth negotiations leading up to the summit and a meeting of all heads of state and government yesterday afternoon, however, managed to produce a pledge to buck the trend of shrinking defence budgets in the face of a renewed need to focus on the military because of the new threats posed to their countries.
The declaration released at the end of the biennial summit at Celtic Manor, just outside Newport, fell short of the expectations of some member states which would have preferred a more cast-iron commitment to allocate at least two per cent of gross domestic product on defence — a threshold that is only met by four countries at present, including Britain.
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Instead, Nato members said they would “aim” to increase defence spending in real terms as their economies grew.
There was also a rather vague signal that each country would hit the two per cent mark “within a decade”. There was no mention of whether penalties would follow if this did not happen.
Britain’s spending on the military is set to dip below the marker next year unless the next government commits to a larger than currently planned increase in the defence budget.
Upbeat after two days of negotiations, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Nato secretary general, sounded a positive note about the pledge.
“This is really a change. We have turned a corner,” he said.
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Russia’s aggression in Ukraine had been a wakeup call to Nato states that they should not take their security for granted. “I think this new security environment will be the driving force for implementing this pledge,” Mr Rasmussen said.