Lord George Robertson will use a speech in Salisbury on 14 April 2026 to warn that Britain is “underprepared” and that national security is “in peril”. The former NATO secretary general, who co‑led the Government’s 2025 Strategic Defence Review (SDR), accuses ministers of “corrosive complacency” over defence.
In prepared remarks, Robertson is expected to criticise what he calls Treasury “non‑military experts” for policy “vandalism”, and to argue that “we cannot defend Britain with an ever‑expanding welfare budget”. The intervention is designed to force urgency on delivery of the SDR’s programme rather than its headline ambitions.
Ministers say they are delivering the SDR and point to what the Prime Minister and Ministry of Defence describe as the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War. Government lines in Parliament state that more than £270bn will be invested in defence during this Parliament, with capability priorities to be sequenced through a new Defence Investment Plan.
That 10‑year Defence Investment Plan (DIP) is the missing component. First promised for autumn 2025, it has slipped several times and remains unpublished. The Defence Secretary and officials say the document is being finalised across government to ensure it is affordable and fully funds the SDR’s choices, but have avoided giving a firm date.
The spending trajectory is set out in government statements: defence is due to reach 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, with an ambition to rise to 3% during the next Parliament, subject to fiscal conditions. Ministers have also cited a combined figure of around 2.6% by 2027 when broader security budgets are counted alongside the core MOD total.
NATO context underpins the argument. Since Russia’s full‑scale invasion of Ukraine and, more recently, the re‑election of US President Donald Trump, allies have faced intensified pressure to increase outlays and replenish stocks. The UK is above the Alliance’s 2% floor, but Robertson’s critique focuses on speed and credibility of delivery rather than the headline percentage.
Operational events have sharpened scrutiny. After US‑Israeli strikes on Iran on 28 February 2026, a drone hit the UK’s RAF Akrotiri base in Cyprus. The Government announced the deployment of a Royal Navy destroyer to bolster air defence, while Chief of the Defence Staff Sir Richard Knighton told the BBC last month he rejected claims the UK had been ill‑prepared, calling this “probably the most dangerous time of the last 30 years”.
For industry, the delay to the DIP is material. The SDR sets direction-munitions resupply, integrated air and missile defence, submarine and shipbuilding pipelines, and digital enablers-but the DIP is the mechanism that translates this into contract timing, workforce planning, and factory investment. Without that pipeline, primes and SMEs cannot scale with confidence or lock in multi‑year orders.
The Government’s position is that clarity is coming and that immediate measures are already under way, including additional munitions funding and commitments linked to AUKUS and the Global Combat Air Programme. Robertson’s warning, however, is about the credibility gap: a strategy endorsed at the top of government requires a dated, costed plan to sustain it over a decade, or the UK risks falling short of its NATO commitments and its own warfighting readiness.
What happens next rests on the publication of the DIP and accompanying affordability decisions. Parliament has already taken evidence on the impact of delay; defence firms are waiting for a definitive sequencing of programmes. The Salisbury speech is intended to raise the political cost of further drift and to force a timetable for implementation.