Ben Chu

It's something that was briefed out to, I think it was the Times initially, but it's been bouncing around ever since.

And it seems to be the cumulative over four years gap between what the government has given the military and what it's been asked to deliver.

So it's not really comparable to the figures that we've been talking about.

And of course, to get to the 3%, that would be on top of anything that would be done to fill these gaps that have been identified by the forces.

But I think it is worth making the point about defence procurement because the Treasury also has to think about value for money if it is going to spend more on the military rather than just meeting these targets which have been chosen for perhaps good reasons.

And we were looking today at Verify into the National Audit Office, which is the government's official independent spending watchdog, into the MOD, the Ministry of Defence, last year.

And actually, it was quite concerning on that value-for-money front.

It said that, obviously, the MOD has...

lots of big spending, capital infrastructure spending projects.

Obviously, it has to spend a lot on new military equipment all the time.

But it said that of 47 big spending projects that the Ministry of Defence had in 2024-25,

12 of them were rated red, and that meant appears to be unachievable.

And the National Audit Office specifically said that the MOD has traditionally struggled to deliver projects on time and on budget.

So I think the Treasury is probably right to think about, is this money going to be well spent?

How can we get these controls in place to ensure that it is?

Because simply spending money

for the sake of it, to say you've spent the money isn't really what the country needs, isn't what the country's national defence needs.

So I think we should talk about that in this debate rather than just talking about the big spending numbers.

So there is, Adam, there is one three-lettered acronymed organisation which says...

this is pretty serious and we should really worry, which is the International Energy Agency.