Britain’s shrinking Army is ‘actually going to grow’ again, says Defence Secretary Ben Wallace

BRITAIN’S shrinking Army will finally grow again after years of cuts, the Defence Secretary has revealed.

Ben Wallace hailed Liz Truss for granting a huge uplift in defence spending.

He also lashed out at former Chancellor Rishi Sunak for failing to give the cash needed to keep Britain safe.

The new PM has vowed to hike spending to three per cent of GDP by 2030 — estimated to be around £100billion — and has also announced a new defence and foreign policy review.

Mr Wallace, who has been in the role since 2019, is delighted that after “30 or 40 years of defending against cuts” the Ministry of Defence is “actually going to grow” again.

But he told Trending In The Newsday Telegraph it would be a “total waste of time” to just reinstate troops to how they were in the 1980s.

He said: “We need to invest it in the right places.

“I think we are going to need a bigger Armed Forces to be more concurrent and more global.”

He accused former Chancellor Mr Sunak of holding a “corporate raid” on his department.

But he praised new Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng for “getting it”.

Mr Wallace added: “The reason I supported Liz Truss was that the risk we were prepared to tolerate in the middle of the decade are not risks I want to tolerate any more in light of Russian aggression.”