PEACE campaigners said that Labour had “missed the point” today, after the party accused the Ministry of Defence (MoD) of wasting £13 billion of taxpayer cash since 2010.

The party used independently collated data to identify 67 cases of waste, including £4.8bn on cancelled contracts and £5.6bn of extra spending on programmes that went over budget.

The MoD, which has an annual budget of more than £40bn a year, said that it had to take “tough decisions” to protect the country, but none of its 36 major projects is rated green – defined as being on time and within original cost projections. 

Examples include an extra £1bn on building a new nuclear warhead manufacturing facility near Reading, which is already 76 months behind schedule, and the RAF’s fleet of new Protector drones – currently £325 million over budget and more than two years late.

Some £4m was also lost on an abandoned IT system and hundreds of armoured vehicles, purchased for use in Iraq and Afghanistan, have been “written off” at a cost of £213m.

Labour said that ministers are “failing British troops and British taxpayers,” with shadow defence secretary John Healey suggesting the money lost could have paid for more tanks, aircraft and warships.

But the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament stressed that the real problem is the “overblown and provocative excess” of Britain’s defence industry.

General secretary Kate Hudson told the Morning Star: “Labour calling for ‘better management’ of vast and wasteful spending on increasing militarisation is just completely missing the point.

“Britain needs to spend on health, on climate change, on infrastructure – meeting the needs of the people, not ratcheting up global tensions and pouring money into military hardware.”

She called for the nation to be a “force for peace in the world not post-imperial posturing.”

Stop the War Coalition’s Lindsey German pointed out that Labour’s intervention came after leader Sir Keir Starmer’s stress on “patriotism” in a keynote speech on Tuesday.

She told the Star: “It is a travesty for Labour politicians to complain that we need nuclear warheads developed more quickly and more tanks aimed at killing working people in other countries. 

“They should be arguing for less money on militarism and weapons, and more on housing, education and healthcare.

“That would both improve the security of millions of people and show recognition that the 21st-century wars have only made the world much more dangerous.”