Kemi Badenoch disowns own party’s claim of building British ‘Iron Dome’

Kemi Badenoch has rejected the idea her proposed new missile defences would be a British ‘‘Iron Dome”, despite her party’s own press release describing it as a UK version of Israel’s system.

The Conservative leader also insisted a commitment to spend £10bn over 10 years would be enough to build the defence network, after military experts expressed doubts.

Unveiled at the party’s annual conference in Birmingham, the press notice announcing the new ‘Britannia Shield’, dubbed it “in essence, a British Iron Dome”.

But Mrs Badenoch told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We are not building the Iron Dome.

“We are doing what other European countries are doing: Greece, Benelux countries, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and Germany. We are designing something specific for the kind of threat that we face here.”

Asked why newspapers had described it as an Iron Dome, Mrs Badenoch said: “You’ll have to speak to the newspapers about that. I called it the Britannia Shield.

“But we are explaining to people that missile defence systems are things that we need right now. The Iron Dome is one type, and we want people to understand what we’re talking about, we haven’t said that we are replicating that.

“And the money that we are spending, a billion pounds a year over 10 years, should be able to deliver this.”

She said the system would protect the whole of the UK, its sovereign territories and British bases overseas.

Asked by Times Radio whether the plans were a gimmick, Mrs Badenoch replied: “No, not at all. Shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge has been speaking to senior military figures. He’s a former defence procurement minister. He knows what he’s talking about, they know what they are talking about.”

Meanwhile, Mr Cartlidge likened the phrase “iron dome” to the vacuum cleaner brand name “Hoover”.

He said: “So, the phrase ‘iron dome’ has come to be used a bit like the word ‘Hoover’ to generically refer to missile defence systems – and this is clearly a missile defence system.”

Air Marshal Greg Bagwell, former deputy commander of RAF Air Command, warned that £10bn over 10 years would not be enough to protect the UK, its territories and bases.

“You might be able to protect certain key sites, certain strategic areas. London would be an example, but of course that’s not enough,” he told Times Radio.

“If you’ve got military bases all around the country, you’ve got power stations, you’ve got critical infrastructure dotted around the country, then you’re really going to have to try and cover the entire area, which is challenging.

“The US is talking anywhere between 200bn and 1 trillion dollars (£150bn to £750bn) for their Golden Dome.”

The Conservatives have accused Labour of failing on defence, after Andy Burnham said national security could not come “at the expense of social security”.

The party says measures such as reinstating the two-child benefit cap and reforming housing benefit would help fund the plans as well as its commitment to raise defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP by 2030.