There was strong criticism from @JGray James Gray, who has a long-standing interest in defence. He iss critical of a failure by the government to attach a timeline to its pledge to boost defence spending to 2.5% and seems v sceptical about @DefenceHQ maths: “I am rather disappointed by his tepid promise to move to 2.5% of GDP [when economic conditions allow]. I also find myself in the career wrecking position of strongly agreeing with the Shadow Defence Secretary who seemed to me to put the arguments extremely well. “The fact of the matter is last week the budget did reduce both kinds of defence expenditure by £2.5billion… By what possible arithmetic does the minister conclude we are in fact increasing defence spending when quite blatantly every expert there is in the world says we are not?” 5/