I’m very proud of our constituency’s critically important armed forces. We’re home to RAF Boulmer, radar station Brizlee Wood, and the Army's Otterburn Training Area – and of course our Northumberland Fusiliers and HMS Northumberland carry our county name across the globe.
We have many serving and retired servicemen and women and their families living across Northumberland, including veterans at the RAF Association’s Rothbury House.
In my work as your MP I have always put defence, military personnel and families at its heart – I founded the Armed Forces Covenant APPG in my first year, because supporting families who support those who serve is both the right thing to do, and critical to enabling military families to thrive.
I regularly visit Longhoughton Primary School, which teaches many service children from RAF Boulmer, for updates on the valuable MoD funded wraparound childcare, and the unique challenges military children face, including around speech and language. I’ve also fought extensively to improve local service accommodation and make Ministers well aware of the views of service families on the direction of the Future Accommodation Model. Longhoughton’s schooling and accommodation is as important to serving personnel as the high-tech equipment they use to defend UK interests.
Local defence spending in North Northumberland is vital to underpinning our national security – physical and economic. Our people need to know they are valued and respected for the incredible work they do, mostly unseen.
Last month’s Budget committed UK defence spending of 2.5% of GDP when economic conditions allow. I wrote an article with the security minister (teamtrevelyan.co.uk/is2percentenough) setting out why the UK needs to lead on this higher defence investment across NATO allies.
If we have to choose how to spend taxpayers’ money, why more on defence? Well the reality is (and I see this starkly on my visits as Foreign Minister), that the risk of conflict in Taiwan is increasing. Why should we care from distant North Northumberland? Because Taiwan produces 60% of the world's semiconductors, crucial for our phones, computers, healthcare and clean energy. Bloomberg has analysed that conflict in Taiwan would cost 10% of global GDP – dwarfing the energy and food cost spikes from the Ukraine war or the pandemic.
So I’ll keep fighting for enough investment in our defence capabilities and people, so we have the credible deterrent needed, both in Europe with NATO allies and globally with the US, Australia and others, to protect UK economic security from catastrophic disruptions. Defence investment isn’t discretionary, its fundamental to our community’s safety and security for the long term.
