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During 42 years in journalism (when he was trained to use simple language, avoiding jargon) for our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, being passed hidden internal documents has always been central, and now the spotlight is thrown on this by disturbing information emerging today about an important UK Government policy, when a paper to inform it has gone missing.
It is always a bad idea for the authorities to sit on things.
Details invariably leak out and are published by troublemaking people like me!
This has happened innumerable times (I have often had to ‘mock up’ a document being hidden at the back of a filing cabinet), and the information is important because it can give an idea of real intentions.
This is shown in spades by what is coming out now.
Last Summer, Sir Keir Starmer announced a “root and branch” Strategic Defence Review (SDR), which was supposed to settle the country’s military path for years to come. It already looks a little ragged.
However a ‘Defence Investment Plan’ (DIP), that was meant to underpin it because it laid out the weapons and platforms the Ministry of Defence (MoD) intended to buy over the next decade, has gone AWOL.
The DIP was supposed to be published in the autumn but there is still no sign of it.
That has left many defence firms, particularly smaller ones, exasperated.
“I share the concerns that many companies and investors here have expressed around not yet seeing the money flowing to…a more diverse supplier base of younger, innovative companies”, declared Grace Cassy, a member of the review team.
Many young defence firms looking to pick a European headquarters are choosing between the UK and Germany, according to one insider, saying: “they’re all saying: we’ll do Germany, because they’re actually spending money”.
The lack of this DIP may be significant, although we just don’t know because we haven’t seen it, and could inform major criticism of the SDR itself.
In theory, the UK Government has committed to spending 2.6 per cent of GDP on defence by 2027 and, in line with NATO allies, 3.5 per cent by 2035.
But most of the cash is backloaded, and actually appears only in the 2030s.
Defence inflation is high and spending on nuclear weapons consumes much of the budget.
“In reality, spending on conventional forces is trending down” this year and next, says Ben Barry, a retired brigadier now with the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
His comments emphasise why we should know the truth (after all we’re paying for it!), and it may be in this document which has gone missing.
That’s the trouble with trying to ‘bury’ things – they emerge eventually!
Details of Phil’s astonishing decades-long journalistic career (when accurate stories often came out of hidden documents), as he was gripped by the rare neurological condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in an important book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now.
