KEIR Starmer’s decision to cut billions of pounds of infrastructure spending to fund new military equipment will cost the UK around 10,000 jobs, according to an analysis of the government’s own figures.
The prime minister announced this week that he was putting an extra £15 billion into defence over four years to overhaul the armed forces and boost British manufacturing.
The plan requires £6.8 billion to be raised through unspecified cuts to departmental investment programmes and a further £4.7 billion entirely unaccounted for, due to be allocated only at the next budget.
The analysis, by researchers at the Transition Security Project, found that while the extra defence spending would generate about 10,000 jobs by 2029-30, taking the money from other sectors would cost nearly double that.
The findings cut against claims by Starmer and his chancellor, Rachel Reeves, that reallocating large sums to the Ministry of Defence would boost employment. Starmer said on Tuesday that ‘every pound in this plan will work twice’, supporting more than half a million jobs by the end of the decade, while a government spokesperson called defence ‘an engine for growth’ that would create nearly 60,000 jobs.
By the government’s own calculations, raising the defence budget by £25.2 billion over six years would create 60,000 jobs, or 2.4 for every extra million invested.
Office for National Statistics figures put the return far higher elsewhere, at 11.5 jobs per million spent on transport and 10 on energy and net zero. On that basis, stripping 2 billion pounds from other departments in 2029-30, as planned, would cost close to 20,000 jobs, twice the number defence creates.
The government is spending more than £2 billion on new fighter jets to carry nuclear bombs mainly made in the United States.
David Edgerton, professor of the history of science and technology at King’s College London, said ‘there is no reason whatever to expect military expenditure to generate more jobs than any other kind of expenditure. The defence dividend is broadly speaking a con.’
Khem Rogaly, a co-author of the report, said: ‘Far more jobs are created when investing in public needs like health, education and addressing the climate crisis.’
Andrea Egan, general secretary of Unison, said the plan meant ‘extra cash for war and overseas interventions, but less for schools and hospitals’.
