‘STARTING today, I can announce this government will begin the biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War,’ Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in the House of Commons yesterday.
‘We will deliver our commitment to spend 2.5% of GDP on defence but we will bring it forward so that we reach that level in 2027.
‘Let me spell it out, that means spending £13.4 billion more on defence every year from 2027,’ he added, saying that his goal is to raise defence spending to 3% of GDP by no later than in August 2029.
He said the initial funding would come by cutting funding for overseas aid from 0.5% of GDP to 0.3% by 2027, claiming: ‘That is not an announcement I am happy to make.’
Charities were stunned by the aid cut, with Save the Children calling it ‘a betrayal of the world’s most vulnerable children and the UK’s national interest’.
‘There is nothing respectful about slashing lifelines for families in the most dangerous places,’ the charity’s chief executive Moazzam Malik said.
Hannah Bond, the CEO of ActionAid UK, said: ‘There is no justification for abandoning the world’s most marginalised’.
Referencing similar cuts made this month to USAID in America, she added that such reductions ‘only deepen harm to civilians caught in conflict’.
Plan International UK said the news ‘comes at the worst possible time,’ adding: ‘In their election manifesto, the government committed to returning the UK aid budget to 0.7% of GNI (gross national income), yet this is clearly now a broken promise.’
Disgracefully, the GMB union welcomed the announcement that defence spending will increase, with Matt Roberts, GMB National Officer, saying: ‘Defence spending can be a powerful force domestically for growth and levelling-up in our regions and nations – but only when we make good choices to buy British and invest in growing UK industry, skills and apprenticeships.
‘Labour must make the right decisions for working-class communities that rely on our defence industry. Every pound of this budget increase should go into actual defence spending and not the HR costs that were included under the Conservatives.’
Lindsey German, Convenor of the Stop the War Coalition, said: ‘There is something grotesquely awful about a Labour government denying the WASPI women around £10 billion in one off compensation but then immediately committing to £13 billion a year for this increased spending…
‘The unions who welcome this are deluding themselves: it will do little for their members in those industries and will worsen the social security of housing, health and education that millions of workers in this country desperately need.
‘The beneficiaries will be the warmongers and the arms companies, whose profits are assured. They want wars to continue. It is not in any of our interests to do anything but oppose them.’