Can We Afford To Keep The UK Safe?
Newscast
BBC
4.3 • 6.6K Ratings
🗓️ 14 April 2026
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today, a former Nato chief has said that the UK's security and safety is "in peril" and Sir Keir Starmer's government has shown "corrosive complacency" towards defence.
In a directly political intervention, Lord Robertson - who is now a key government adviser - says "We cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget." It comes on the day the IMF has warned the energy shock from the Iran war will hit the UK the hardest of the world's advanced economies. Adam and Chris are joined by Ben Chu from BBC Verify and Helen Miller from the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:06.0 | Welcome back, Chris Mason. Hello. |
| 0:07.8 | Hello. |
| 0:08.5 | Are you rested after your Easter break? |
| 0:10.7 | I think I'm supposed to say I'm recharged and ready to go. |
| 0:13.8 | No, but I am, actually. I had a nice break. It was all good. |
| 0:16.6 | And, you know, they were into election campaigns and all of that. |
| 0:20.0 | There's no shortage of news about. Well, your first gig I noticed was the Scottish Leaders debate on Sunday night. Yeah, Paisley Town Hall on Sunday evening. Fascinating six-way debate. There's another one to come in Wales. That'll be six-way as well in a couple of weeks' time. And all the debates going on in England too. So, yeah you can't be election campaigns. And yes, there's more than one this time. And you're also back to another |
| 0:43.2 | old chestnut, which is a row about defence spending. Yeah. And, you know, one that we're familiar |
| 0:49.1 | with, aren't we? Because there's a wider conversation going on and has been for some time |
| 0:53.1 | at Westminster, amongst plenty of political parties, |
| 0:55.5 | around, |
| 0:56.1 | you know, |
| 0:56.4 | how do we have a societal conversation about the prospect of increasing defense spending? |
| 1:03.2 | And then with what tradeoffs, |
| 1:05.5 | with what tradeoffs for taxes, |
| 1:07.3 | with what tradeoffs for other spending? |
| 1:10.2 | That's been going on for a while, not least because |
| 1:11.9 | of the context of the Ukraine war and then sharpened, I think, in the context of the conflict in |
| 1:17.4 | Iran because of the economic consequences it has in the short to medium term that we'll come on |
| 1:22.6 | to discuss. But then the questions that it raises again and have been raised again today by Lord Robertson, |
| 1:31.3 | the former Labour Defence Secretary, the former Secretary General of NATO, saying that he thinks |
... |
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