Were John Healey and Al Carns proper to resign over army spending? Take our ballot and have your say

John Healey’s exit sparked a crisis in the Ministry of Defence, with Pamela Nash, a ministerial aide in the department and Rachel Hopkins, another aide, also quitting

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Keir Starmer has been dealt a double blow after the Secretary of Defence John Healey and his Armed Forces minister Al Carns resigned.

Mr Healey’s exit sparked a crisis in the Ministry of Defence, with Pamela Nash, a ministerial aide in the department and Rachel Hopkins, another aide, also quitting.

The exodus was triggered by a row over funding, with the former Defence Secretary accusing the PM of not standing up to the Treasury, which he claimed was unwilling to commit the funds needed to defend the nation. Ministers have been locked in a tense battle over how to fund the long-awaited Defence Investment Plan (DIP), which is already more than six months late.

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In his letter, Mr Healey said the plan – which he was shown on Monday – “falls well short of what is required for defence and the country at this dangerous time”.

Mr Carns, a former Royal Marine, quit his post with a withering broadside criticising “inadequate” defence funding. He said the “machinery of government itself has been left to decay”, hitting out at long delays to the DIP.

In his resignation letter to the Prime Minister, Mr Carns said: “We ask soldiers to fight for this country, In return, we owe them the kit to do the job and the loyalty to stand by them when it’s done. We are failing on both. The same failure of seriousness runs through how this country treats the people it asks the most of, in uniform and out of it.”

Dan Jarvis has now been appointed as the new Defence Secretary after Mr Healey’s bombshell resignation. Mr Jarvis is an Army veteran who served in the Parachute Regiment in Kosovo, Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone, Iraq and Afghanistan.