Sally Nugent left Grant Shapps squirming amid claims the amount of extra money being spent on defence is actually £55 billion less than Rishi Sunak claimed.
The prime minister yesterday said the government would plough an extra £75 billion into the military between now and the end of the decade.
But an economist at the highly-respected Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), Ben Zaranko, has said the real figure is only £20 billion.
He posted on X (formerly Twitter): “To get the £75 billion number, the government has assumed a baseline with spending frozen in cash terms and then added up all of the differences.
“If you instead assume a baseline of spending frozen as a % GDP, it’s an extra £20 billion over 6 years.”
On BBC Breakfast this morning, Nugent told the defence secretary that the government was misleading the public.
She said: “I’m particularly interested in information from an economist at the IFS this morning, who has said ‘to get to the £75 billion number, the government is assuming spending is frozen in cash terms and then added up all those differences’.
“If you instead assume a baseline of spending frozen as a percentage of GDP it’s not actually £75 billion extra, it’s £20 billion because you would have been spending that £55 billion already.”
Shapps insisted the amount of the extra money had been calculated “in the highly standard way”.
But Nugent told him: “It’s a little bit confusing though, isn’t it? That headline of the £75 billion is a little bit confusing to people who might just be quickly listening to a headline this morning or looking at the front page of a newspaper because it’s not absolutely completely straightforward about the actual number? I guess what I’m saying is it’s not new.”
Shapps insisted “it is new money”, but Nugent interrupted him to say: “Some of it is.”
Announcing the spending boost yesterday, the prime minister said he was putting the UK defence industry “on a war footing”.
He said: “I believe we must do more to protect our country, our interests and our values.
“So today I am announcing the biggest strengthening of our national defence for a generation.”