PM Announces Defence Spending Will Rise to 2.5% By 2027
Keir Starmer delivered a statement to Parliament on Tuesday (Alamy)
3 min read
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced that defence spending will increase to 2.5 per cent by 2027, after mounting pressure from MPs and US President Donald Trump.
Starmer delivered a statement to the House of Commons on Tuesday afternoon, in which he announced the timeline for the "biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War". The government had previously pledged to boost defence spending from 2.3 per cent of GDP to 2.5 per cent, but not a timeline for doing so.
As the US has signalled it wants to step back from supporting European defence efforts, the UK government has been under sustained pressure from backbench MPs and other political figures to increase its own defence spending.
The prime minister will fly to Washington DC this week to meet with Trump to discuss US efforts to bring the war in Ukraine to an end.
Since returning as president, Trump has excluded European nations, including Ukraine, from negotiations with Russia and called Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine a "dictator" — a comment rejected by all the major party leaders in the UK.
"We must find courage in our history, courage in who we are as a nation, because courage is what our own era now demands of us," Starmer said.
He announced that the government would spend 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence by 2027, which would mean spending £13.4bn more on defence every year from 2027, and from 2027, it would rise to 2.6 per cent.
Starmer added that the government would also set a "clear ambition" for defence spending to rise to 3 per cent of GDP in the next Parliament.
Starmer described the current international situation as a "generational challenge" which "requires a generational response that will demand some extremely difficult and painful choices".
The defence spending boost will be paid for in part by cutting spending on international development assistance, moving from 0.5 per cent of GNI 0.3 per cent in 2027.
"That is not an announcement I am happy to make," Starmer admitted.
The prime minister also described NATO as the "bedrock of our security" and added that it will "remain so".
"It remains the organisation receives the vast bulk of our defense effort in every domain, and that must continue," he continued.
"We must reject any false choice between our allies, between one side of the Atlantic or the other. That is against our history, country and party, because it's against our fundamental national interest. The US is our most important bilateral alliance."
Starmer called for cross-party solidarity on the issues of defence and national security.
"We must bend our backs across this House, because these times demand a united Britain, and we must deploy all of our resources to achieve security," he said.
On Tuesday morning, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch gave a speech to the Policy Exchange think tank in which she agreed on the need to increase defence expenditure "significantly" and that she would back a government decision to do so.
She asked the prime minister to consider repurposing spending on development aid "at least in the short term" and suggested "making welfare savings to fund increased defence expenditure".
Ryan Henson, CEO of the Coalition for Global Prosperity, said: "The UK should spend more on defence, but not at the expense of Official Development Assistance.
"It is in our national interest to counter authoritarian regimes and promote British values overseas – that is what our development budget does.
"Hard and soft power work together. Cutting aid may make savings in the short term but only at the expense of our long-term national security."
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