‘He’s a junior minister’: Ben Wallace slaps down Johnny Mercer as war of words escalates

Defence secretary says junior Tory colleague ‘lucky’ not to have headache of running department

Defence secretary Ben Wallace (PA)

Defence secretary Ben Wallace has dismissed criticism from Tory government colleague Johnny Mercer, the veterans’ minister, about his efforts to secure more money for the military.

The public row saw Mr Mercer’s wife accuse Mr Wallace of treating her husband with “disdain” amid the dispute over funding ahead of chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s March Budget.

Mr Mercer had claimed it was “not credible” for Mr Wallace to say Britain’s armed forces had been “hollowed out” in his push for a spending hike.

But Mr Wallace said Mr Mercer was a “junior minister” who “luckily doesn’t have to run a budget” as he contrasted their level of government responsibilities.

The defence secretary told LBC: “Johnny is a junior minister, and Johnny luckily doesn’t have to run the budget. I have a defence budget that has to deal, like all the other budgets, with inflation, with changes to threat, and I have to just deal with that. And that’s my job.”

Asked if Mr Mercer – whose role as minister of state for veterans’ affairs is within the Cabinet Office rather than the Ministry of Defence, was being naive, Mr Wallace said: “No, no, no. I just think, you know, his experience is not ... he’s not the secretary of state.”

He added that as defence secretary “I run a department of 224,000 people”, while “he’s got 12 people in the office”.

Felicity Cornelius-Mercer sprang to her husband’s defence, tweeting: “Wow. The disdain from for [Mr Mercer] and his office for veterans affairs really is something else. You may start to realise why care for veterans is such a daily battle.”

During a debate last month in the Commons, Mr Wallace said he was “happy to say that we have been hollowed out and underfunded”.

Only days later, he said a “growing proportion” of government spending would need to go towards keeping the country safe, in a message that was read as being directed at Mr Hunt ahead of the March Budget.

It comes against a backdrop of UK efforts to support Ukraine in pushing back invading Russian troops and rising global tensions with China.

On Wednesday, Mr Mercer told LBC: “It is obviously not credible to say that the money has been taken out of defence.”

In a bid to defuse the row, Downing Street said Rishi Sunak thinks the Ministry of Defence and Office for Veterans’ Affairs both do “vitally important work to support the UK”.

Asked which of the two ministers are best expressing the government’s view on defence spending levels, the PM’s official spokesman said: “I think the defence secretary has made it clear on a number of occasions that defence spending turned a corner under this government due to the spending review in 2020.

“It provided an uplift of £24 billion over four years, and of course additional funding has also been provided for Ukraine.” The spokesman said future defence spending is a “live issue” for Mr Hunt ahead of the March budget.

Meanwhile, Mr Wallace told The Sun that Britain could be engaged in a war – whether a “hot or cold” one – by the end of the decade, as he warned the world is “more dangerous, more anxious and more insecure”

He said: “Conflict is coming by the end of this decade, whether it is a cold war or hot, war is coming. We just have to recognise that in order to deter you just have to be ready, you have to be equipped and you have to stand with your friends and your allies.”