Sir Keir Starmer became embroiled in a heated argument with Sir Lindsay Hoyle after the Speaker ordered him to properly answer Kemi Badenoch’s questions.
The exchange was captured on video after Wednesday’s session of Prime Ministers Questions, during which the Prime Minister was reminded that he is supposed to answer rather than ask the questions.
“Prime Minister, it’s Prime Minister’s Questions. We’ve got to concentrate,” Sir Lindsay told Sir Keir as the two party leaders clashed on defence.
Sir Keir used the session to dismiss criticisms from three authors of the strategic defence review, telling MPs that Labour planned to spend record sums on the military.
The Prime Minister could be seen approaching Sir Lindsay’s chair as he left the Chamber to speak to him.
One MP told the Daily Mail that Sir Keir was “fuming” with the Speaker, while another told the Guido Fawkes website that Sir Lindsay stood his ground and was trying to say something back but the PM just walked off.
It is the third time in recent weeks that the Speaker has had to intervene and remind Sir Keir he is supposed to answer questions.
A spokeswoman for the Speaker told Sky News: “Questions to ministers should relate to matters for which they are officially responsible. Equally, answers should be confined to the points contained in the question.
“Every so often, the Speaker has to remind prime ministers – and ministers – of the rules of engagement in the Chamber.
“The Speaker has made this point to officials at No 10 on several occasions recently as well.”
During the exchange, Sir Keir said his military advisers were wrong to accuse him of “corrosive complacency” over the defence budget. All three authors of Labour’s strategic defence review have criticised the Prime Minister over heavily delayed plans to increase defence spending.
Lord Robertson, a former Nato chief and defence secretary under Sir Tony Blair, warned current national security plans were putting Britain in peril.
His concerns were echoed by Sir Richard Barrons, a retired British Army general, and Fiona Hill, an ex-security adviser to Donald Trump.
Challenged on the remarks by Mrs Badenoch, the Tory leader, he replied: “I respect Lord Robertson and I thank him again for carrying out the strategic review.
“My responsibility is to keep the British people safe and that is a duty I take seriously. That is why I don’t agree with his comments.”
His remarks are likely to further contribute to deteriorating relations between Labour and senior military figures over the state of the military.
There is wider concern over the shrunken size of Britain’s armed forces and their ability to respond to crises such as the Iran war.
Lord Robertson, Sir Richard and Ms Hill co-authored a strategic defence review which was presented to Downing Street nearly a year ago.
It called a move towards “warfighting readiness” and included 62 recommendations based on ministers increasing military spending to 3 per cent of GDP.
But since then a promised defence investment plan, which would set out how the extra money would be spent, has been repeatedly delayed.
It was meant to be published before Christmas but still has not materialised, reportedly due to Treasury ministers holding it up over value-for-money concerns.
When challenged on the delay, Sir Keir would not say when the plan would be released, promising only it would be “as soon as possible”.
Without the plan new orders for equipment and future decisions about recruitment levels into the Armed Forces are effectively on hold.
Mrs Badenoch warned the Prime Minister that the Armed Forces were “at the end of their tether” waiting for the funding to be approved.
But he insisted ministers “need to get it right” and hit back: “We inherited plans that were uncosted and undeliverable and we’re not going to repeat those mistakes.”
Sir Keir also appeared to reject calls from the Tory leader to cut the ballooning benefits budget to find extra money for defence spending.
She challenged him on warnings from Lord Robertson that “we cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget”.
Other Labour grandees including Baroness Harman, the former deputy leader, and Lord Hutton, an ex-defence secretary, said cuts to welfare should fund the military.
The Tory leader asked Sir Keir: “Will the Prime Minister think again and work with us to find savings to fund defence?”
Sir Keir replied: “We are reforming welfare and spending more on defence. They did neither. The welfare bill rose by £88bn on their watch, it soared by £33bn under the shadow chancellor’s watch.
“We’re fixing it, what did they do? They voted against it, they voted to keep the broken system. So taking advice from the party opposite on reforming welfare and defence spending is like asking Liz Truss how to keep your mortgage down.”
Last week, an exclusive poll for The Telegraph asked voters whether they would prefer to spend more money on benefits or the defence budget.
The question produced near-equal splits in all three nations, with defence spending winning narrowly in England, and welfare winning narrowly in Scotland and Wales.
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Thank you for joining The Telegraph’s live coverage of this week’s PMQs. Here is what we learnt:
- Sir Keir Starmer said his own military advisers were wrong to accuse him of “corrosive complacency” over the defence budget after all three authors of the strategic defence review criticised his record on the military.
- Rejecting Lord Robertson’s warning that he was failing to keep Britain safe, Sir Keir said: “My responsibility is to keep the British people safe and that is a duty I take seriously. That is why I don’t agree with his comments.”
- Kemi Badenoch said Lord Robertson, a former defence secretary under Sir Tony Blair, was “Labour through and through” and called on Sir Keir to cut welfare to fund an increase to 3 per cent of GDP.
- However, the Prime Minister appeared to reject this suggestion, saying he was “reforming” welfare while increasing defence spending by more than at any time since the Cold War.
- Insisting the Tories had “hollowed out” defence during their own time in office, Sir Keir said he was “clearing up their mess” across the economy and defence.
PM: I’m cleaning up the Tories’ mess
The Prime Minister insisted he was “cleaning up the mess” left by the last Tory government as he ignored another demand to cut welfare.
Lewis Cocking, a Conservative MP, told Sir Keir Starmer that welfare spending was set to rise by another £70bn by 2030.
Mr Cocking said: “The last time I asked the Prime Minister about this he said he was ‘mending the system’. Well since then this disastrous Labour Government has raised taxes on working people to give more to those who don’t.”
Asked by Mr Cocking what his message was to Britons who felt he was “taking them for mugs”, Sir Keir replied: “I’ll tell them they were let down very badly by the last government for 14 years and we are clearing up the mess.”
Fuel duty freeze less urgent than end to war, says Starmer
Sir Keir Starmer said seeking an end to the war in Iran mattered more than extending a cut to fuel duty.
The Prime Minister told MPs: “Obviously fuel duty is frozen until September, energy bills have been reduced. And we’ve also made it clear that we won’t tolerate profiteering on unfair prices...
“The most important thing we can do is to de-escalate the conflict and get the Straits of Hormuz open and that’s why I’m co-hosting the summit on Friday in order to make progress on both those fronts.”
Keir Starmer: I won’t back down despite Trump’s trade deal threats
Sir Keir Starmer insisted he would not change his position on the Iran war despite Donald Trump’s threats to rip the UK-US trade deal.
Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, said the US president’s remarks must be “the last straw” and urged the Prime Minister to cancel the planned visit of the King and Queen Camilla to the States.
Sir Keir responded: “My position on the Iran war has been clear from the start. We’re not going to get dragged into this war, this is not our war. And a lot of pressure has been applied to me to take a different course and that pressure included what happened last night.
“I’m not going to change my mind, I’m not going to yield, it is not in our national interest to join this war and we will not do so.”
The Prime Minister backed the King’s visit, however, adding that the bond between the UK and the US was “far greater than anyone who occupies any particular office at any particular time”.
Starmer suggests no carve-out for spy agencies in Hillsborough law
Sir Keir Starmer suggested the security services would not be exempt from the Hillsborough law on the 37th anniversary of the stadium disaster which killed 97 Liverpoolf fans.
Bereaved families have demanded that the legislation, which aims to force public officials to tell the truth after disasters, apply in full to MI5 and MI6. Ministers appeared to heed their demands in January.
At PMQs, Ian Byrne, a Liverpool Labour MP, told Sir Keir: “Prime Minister, this is your responsibility. It is within your power to take control of this process and make good on your promise to deliver this legislation.
“So will you commit today to rule out any carve-out for security services and finally delivering a full Hillsborough law worthy of the name, or will they be failed by the state once again?”
Sir Keir responded by thanking Mr Bryne for his decades of campaigning, saying he was “personally committed” to working with families. He added: “We’re discussing this precise issue with the families, and I will make sure that he is fully updated.
“I reaffirm my commitment to delivering the legislation, to ensure the duty of candour applies to all public servants.”
Starmer declines to commit to warship upgrade
Sir Keir Starmer declined to commit to an upgrade of Destroyers including the HMS Dragon warship, whose travails have exposed the crisis facing the Armed Forces during the war in Iran.
HMS Dragon took three weeks to reach the Eastern Mediterranean after an attack by an Iranian-made drone on a British RAF base in Cyprus. It was then returned to port after experiencing problems with its water supply.
Kemi Badenoch said Lord Robertson, one of the authors of Sir Keir’s own strategic defence review, was “Labour through and through”.
Mrs Badenoch continued: “They all need to think about why they stuck their head above the parapet... I want to ask the Prime Minister a very specific question.
“In January 2024, Conservatives approved an upgrade of Destroyers like HMS Dragon so they can better intercept ballistic missiles. In July 2024, the Prime Minister paused that plan. Will he immediately approve and fund that critical upgrade now?”
Sir Keir did not give such a commitment. Instead, he told Mrs Badenoch: “The Dragon was commissioned by a Labour Government. But she stands there and says ‘please forget the fact we hollowed out the Armed Forces’.”
Badenoch: Use Chagos money to fund MoD
Kemi Badenoch asked Sir Keir Starmer to use money that would have been spent on his Chagos Islands deal to fund defence.
The Tory leader said: “It’s being reported that the Treasury is asking the MoD to make £3.5bn worth of cuts this year. He won’t fund our welfare because he wants to fund more welfare. That’s why he has a welfare plan to 2031 but no defence investment plan at all.
“Now that the Chagos surrender deal is dead, will the Prime Minister put the billions from ditching Chagos into defence or is that going into welfare as well?”
Sir Keir declined to address her point, saying: “We are spending more on defence, record amounts on defence, £270bn in this Parliament, £5bn extra.”
The Chagos deal, which would involve paying Mauritius £34bn to take control of the archipelago, has been delayed following opposition from the White House.
Starmer refuses to prioritise defence over welfare
Sir Keir Starmer rejected Kemi Badenoch’s call to cut the benefits budget to fund defence spending.
Mrs Badenoch quoted Lord Robertson, one of the three authors of the, who said on Tuesday: “We cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget.”
She asked Sir Keir: “Will the Prime Minister think again and work with us to find savings to fund defence?”
However, the Prime Minister responded: “We are reforming welfare and spending more on defence. They did neither. The welfare bill rose by £88bn on their watch, it soared by £33bn under the shadow chancellor’s watch.
“We’re fixing it, what did they do, they voted against it, they voted to keep the broken system. So taking advice from the party opposite on reforming welfare and defence spending is like asking Liz Truss how to keep your mortgage down.”
Speaker rebukes Starmer over failure to answer questions
Sir Keir Starmer has been rebuked by the Commons Speaker over his failure to answer Kemi Badenoch’s questions.
Sir Lindsay Hoyle cut Sir Keir off to tell him: “Prime Minister, it’s Prime Minister’s questions and we’ve got to concentrate. Kemi Badenoch!”
Mrs Badenoch, the Tory leader, had demanded Sir Keir Starmer explain the “hold-up” in publishing the defence investment plan. The plan was initially promised last August but remains on the Prime Minister’s desk following deadlock between the Ministry of Defence and the Treasury.
Mrs Badenoch said: “He promised the defence investment plan would be published last autumn. I asked him at PMQs six weeks ago when it would be published, he had no idea. It is now the middle of April. What’s the hold-up?”
Sir Keir responded: “I’ve set out my position. The defence investment plan is the first line-by-line review of defence budgets for 18 years. If you’re going to support and make your country safe you have to get the right calls on the big issues. She called for us to jump into the war.”
He was criticising Mrs Badenoch’s initial support for Donald Trump’s war on Iran, which he called a “massive error of judgment”, when he was cut off by Sir Lindsay.
Prime Minister refuses to set date for defence investment plan
Sir Keir Starmer has refused to set a date for the publication of his long-awaited defence investment plan, blaming the Tories for the state of Britain’s hollowed-out forces.
Kemi Badenoch observed that Lord Robertson, who criticised Sir Keir on defence on Tuesday, was a former Labour defence secretary and a former Nato secretary-general.
She continued: “Lord Robertson’s criticisms were of the Prime Minister and he said Britain’s national security is in peril. Our Armed Forces are at the end of their tether waiting for this Government to fund the strategic defence review. There are still two weeks of the parliamentary session left, so why won’t the Prime Minister publish the defence investment plan before then?”
The Prime Minister repeated that he had introduced the “biggest defence spending increase since the Cold War” and that this Government would spend £270bn on defence across the Parliament.
Sir Keir said: “These are record amounts, decisions of a Labour Prime Minister, a Labour Chancellor and a Labour Government. When they [the Tories] came into office, defence spending was 2.5 per cent. When they left it was 2.3 [per cent]. When they came into office the Army was 100,000. When they left office, 72,000.
“They cut frigates and Destroyers by 25 per cent. They cut mine-hunters by 50 per cent. She said at the weekend our defence is the weakest for 400 years. That is what they left behind.”
My advisers are wrong about defence, claims Starmer
Sir Keir Starmer has rejected the criticisms of his own military advisers, insisting Britain would remain safe on his watch.
Lord Robertson, a former defence secretary under Sir Tony Blair who wrote Sir Keir’s own strategic defence review, accused the Prime Minister of a “corrosive complacency”, remarks that were backed by his two co-authors.
At PMQs on Wednesday lunchtime, Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, asked: “Lord Robertson, who authored the Government’s strategic defence review, has said the Prime Minister has a ‘corrosive complacency’ when it comes to defence. Why did he say that?”
Sir Keir responded: “Let me start by saying I respect Lord Robertson and I thank him again for carrying out the strategic review. My responsibility is to keep the British people safe and that is a duty I take seriously.
“That is why I don’t agree with his comments. Last February, that was seven months after taking office, I took the decision to increase defence spending from 2.3 per cent to 2.6 per cent, paid for by a difficult decision on overseas aid.”
Sir Keir said he had committed to raising defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP by the mid-2030s, insisting that his delayed defence investment plan “will be published as soon as possible”.
“We need to get it right, we inherited plans that were uncosted and undeliverable and we’re not going to repeat those mistakes,” he added.
Starmer: We’ll ‘make the changes needed’ after Southport
Sir Keir Starmer said he would “make the changes needed” following a public inquiry into the Southport attack.
An official report published at the start of this week found that the murder of three young girls would have been stopped if the killer’s parents had acted as “they morally ought to have done”.
Their failure to report him left him free to kill Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Bebe King, six, and attempt to murder 10 others at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on July 29, 2024.
Addressing the report at the start of PMQs, Sir Keir said: “I cannot imagine the pain that it will cause the families of all those affected.
“We will make the changes needed to honour the victims, the injured and the families, and our thoughts remain with the loved ones of Elsie, Bebe and Alice and all of those impacted.”
PMQs follows Trump’s latest attacks on Starmer and Reeves
Donald Trump has threatened to rip up his trade deal with Britain after Rachel Reeves attacked his lack of an exit plan for his war in Iran.
In another broadside against Britain, the US president suggested that he could change the agreement he reached with Sir Keir Starmer last year, because of Britain’s lack of support in the Middle East.
Britain became the first nation to agree a trade deal with the Trump administration in May 2025, in what was hailed as a show of the strength of UK-US ties.
However, in a thinly veiled threat to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor on Wednesday, Mr Trump said: “We gave them a good trade deal – better than I had to, which can always be changed.”
It is highly likely that Sir Keir will be challenged on the president’s remarks at PMQs, which starts in just a few moments’ time.
Why Starmer’s own defence advisers have turned on him
The three authors of Sir Keir’s strategic defence review – Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, Sir Richard Barrons and Fiona Hill – have turned on him across three extraordinary interventions in the past 48 hours.
The trio accused the Prime Minister of leaving the UK vulnerable, and were backed by senior Labour figures including three former cabinet ministers.
The war in Iran has raised fears about Britain’s readiness for a future conflict after the Royal Navy’s sluggish response exposed the crisis facing the Armed Forces.
Lord Robertson, a former defence secretary under Sir Tony Blair who also served as a Nato secretary-general, said: “There is a corrosive complacency today in Britain’s political leadership.”
Sir Richard Barrons, a retired Army general, and Dr Fiona Hill, a former chief adviser to the White House on Russia, both said they agreed with the concerns of their co-author.
You can read the full story here
Labour weeks away from wipeout in Wales
Could Wednesday’s PMQs be one of the last handful taken by Sir Keir Starmer?
The position of the Prime Minister looks safer than it did at the height of the Mandelson scandal, with some Labour rebels firmly opposed to the idea of changing leader as war continues to rage in Iran.
However, the local, Welsh and Scottish elections are nonetheless expected to be painful for Sir Keir and his party, which is expected to lose control in Wales for the first time since devolution.
An exclusive poll for The Telegraph reveals that Plaid Cymru is set to emerge as the largest party in Wales, with Labour pushed into third place behind Reform UK.
Labour is also facing a Reform rout across England, with the near-total collapse of the Red Wall and the loss of stronghold councils held since the 1970s.
Tony Diver, our Political Editor, has more here
Starmer expected to face defence backlash at PMQs
Sir Keir Starmer is expected to face a backlash over defence spending at PMQs this lunchtime.
The Prime Minister’s own military advisers have turned against him over his plans for national security, accusing Sir Keir of “corrosive complacency” that has put Britain in peril.
Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, is expected to use this lunchtime’s exchange in the Commons attack Sir Keir’s failure to set out a timescale for increasing defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP.
There have also been delays to the Government’s flagship defence investment plan in the wake of an ongoing rift between the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence.
Mrs Badenoch has called on Sir Keir to significantly cut welfare spending in order to reach 3 per cent of GDP.
