Labour leadership candidate Andy Burnham was only informed of the spending black hole on Tuesday, ministers suggest
Watch the moment Defence Minister Luke Pollard admits he was only shown the defence spending plan "in the last few days" during a grilling on GB News about a £5billion black hole.
Speaking to the People's Channel, Mr Pollard said he saw the plans "relatively late on" before they were unveiled by Sir Keir Starmer to the nation.
Following the publication of the long-awaited Defence Investment Plan, it has been revealed that only £10billion of the pledged £15billion has been "set aside" for spending.
Ministers have also suggested that Makerfield MP and leading Labour leadership candidate Andy Burnham was only informed of the spending black hole on Tuesday.
Pressed by GB News host Christopher Hope on when he was made aware of the finalised defence plan, Mr Pollard told GB News that it was "relatively late on" because of his "role within the ministry".
Asked whether it was on Tuesday that he saw the final plan, he then admitted: "It was in the past few days, because I only saw the formal draft, as many of the public did when it was published by the Treasury alongside the Defence Investment Plan.
"But I know that the Defence Secretary has been working very closely with the Chancellor and the Prime Minister to secure the uplift in the funding that we now have."
Grilled on the £5billion black hole within the defence plan, host Ellie Costello asked the Labour minister how the Government plans to plug the spending gap.
Mr Pollard told GB News: "So we've got a £298billion defence plan for the next four years, that £15 billion increase, two thirds of that increase has been funded by asking other departments to give up 1P in the pound of their capital budgets and move that money to defence.
"£4.7billion of that increased defence budget will be set out in the Autumn Budget, which as you will know is fairly common Government practise, something done by previous Governments that announced the policy intent, and the detail of how that is afforded at the next Budget will be in the autumn this year."
Questioned on why the Labour Government chose to cut road and energy budgets rather than the benefits bill in order to bolster defence spending, Mr Pollard argued the Government should "help and support people to get them back into work".
He said: "I want to see people that are on welfare, if they can work, get back into work, and that's why you will know that we've set out a billion pound increase in the help and support to help people that are on some of those incapacity type benefits to be able to go back into the world of work.
"I want to see more people work if they can. If they can't, I think we should be supporting those and I think that would be a view shared by many of your viewers.
"But if people can work, they should be working and that's the steps that I want to be taking and I know the Government wants to be taking to get people into work. And I think the Defence Investment Plan actually is a good opportunity of creating some of those jobs."
Challenging Mr Pollard further, Ellie asked him that as the Minister for Defence Readiness, he can "say hand on heart that we are ready for an attack".
He responded: "I can say hand on heart that if we were attacked today, the UK armed forces would respond to that. But would we be more ready tomorrow and the day after that? Absolutely.
"That's why we're on the path to move from expeditionary warfare, the era of Iraq and Afghanistan to the era of war-fighting readiness.
"Now, that was a key recommendation in the Strategic Defence review that was published roughly a year ago that set out that we need to change the way that our armed forces are structured, the way they operate the train and are equipped to reposition ourselves, to be able to deter, in particular, Russian aggression and to be necessary to fight it.
"And that's why when the Prime Minister set out that we need to be ready to respond to a potential Russian attack by 2030, we're doing that by increasing that readiness."
Defending the Defence Investment Plan, Sir Keir Starmer has said: "Our Defence Investment Plan commits more to investment on our armed forces. It delivers the modern keep and capabilities our personnel need to keep us safe, meaning we buy British to create jobs here at home and strengthen our international leadership."