UK defence spending is top priority, says Mordaunt

Defence spending is the UK government's "first priority" arsenic it vows to "double down" connected its enactment for Ukraine, Penny Mordaunt, the person of the House of Commons said connected Sunday.

The erstwhile defence caput said the authorities indispensable springiness Ukraine "the tools to decorativeness the job", portion besides ensuring the UK has the resources to bash that.

"We person ever protected defence spending", she insisted.

Speaking connected Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Ms Mordaunt said during this "critical time" successful the warfare betwixt Russia and Ukraine, defence spending indispensable beryllium protected.

She was challenged connected however the authorities planned to some "double down" connected its enactment of arms and grooming to Ukraine, whilst besides dealing with cuts to its fund arsenic a effect of inflation.

Ms Mordaunt answered that defence spending is "the archetypal precedence of immoderate government" - indicating that that would not alteration now.

"We person made commitments that we are going to summation defence spending," she said.

Ms Mordaunt pointed retired that "in caller history" the authorities wanted to hike defence spending by arsenic overmuch arsenic 3%.

She besides said the existent Defence Secretary Ben Wallace had the task of "not conscionable keeping everything going and evidently supporting Ukraine... he's got to modernise our equipped forces and that means we've astir got to treble run, we've got to rebuild these caller technologies but besides support our existent operations precise strong".