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Rishi Sunak has claimed he can protect public services and cut taxes while boosting defense spending by £75 billion over the next six years, raising the prospect of deep cuts to vulnerable government departments.
The British prime minister told a news conference in Berlin on Wednesday that his prioritization of defense – after promising this week to increase spending on it to 2.5 percent of national income by 2030 – does not extend to investment in the NHS and schools would have an impact on him, but that did not rule out real cuts elsewhere.
Sunak stressed that his defense spending commitment was a “fully funded plan”, pointing to the government’s proposal to cut around 70,000 public sector jobs, which official figures say would cost £2.9 billion a year by 2028/29 would release for the defense.
Speaking alongside Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Sunak said that in addition to increased defense spending, Britain would “continue to invest in public services and cut people’s taxes.”
Officials said a larger portion of the government’s research and development budget would be allocated to the Ministry of Defense, increasing the department’s spending by a further £1.6 billion a year.
The government estimates that increasing military spending to 2.5 percent of gross domestic product from the current 2.3 percent of GDP will cost an additional £4.5 billion a year by 2028-29.
Sunak said defense would receive an extra £75 billion over six years. However, the calculation is based on the sum of annual spending increases and the assumption – questioned by economists – that spending would otherwise have been frozen in cash. Labor called it a “false figure”.
By 2030-31 the defense budget is expected to be £7 billion a year higher than it is now, and further spending to reach that level has not been funded.
The government has not indicated how it will raise the £2.5bn shortfall between that £7bn and the extra £4.5bn a year, although ministers have promised no part of the increase will come from borrowing or debt .
But economists have warned that the plan is likely to entail deep cuts to public services in vulnerable departments, including areas such as prisons, courts and local governments.
Ben Zaranko of the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank said cuts to public services and a larger share of the research and development budget would “not be enough” to fund defense spending through 2030.
“Ministers want to spend more on defense but they don’t want to spend more overall. Areas already facing cuts will now face even bigger cuts as a result of this commitment. “The government is not ready to get involved in this,” Zaranko said.
He added: “My estimate is that unprotected departments are now facing cuts of about 4 per cent a year – that’s two-thirds the rate we had.” [former chancellor] George Osborne cut these departments in the 2010s. It’s on the order of full-throttle austerity measures.”
Torsten Bell, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation think tank, said the government’s claim that the defense pledge was fully funded was “a joke”.
He argued to X that even providing the current basic defense spending of 2.3 percent of national income in the next parliament “would require even deeper cuts in other departments”.[s]“.
Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer confirmed earlier this month that he shared Sunak’s ambition to increase defense spending to 2.5 percent, but declined to match the prime minister this week and agree to meet the target by a specific date .
John Healey, shadow defense secretary, said that in the event of a Labor general election victory expected later this year, Labor would conduct a review within its first year in office to assess the state of the armed forces, national security threats and defense needs Evaluate resources.
In the House of Commons on Wednesday, Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden accused Labor of having “no plans in a dangerous world”.
In a foretaste of the attacks the Tories will launch in the upcoming election campaign, Dowden accused his Labor colleague Angela Rayner of “voting to abolish Trident” and supporting former party leader Jeremy Corbyn “who turned the army into an army wanted to transform into “peacekeepers”.
Rayner countered: “We all want 2.5 percent.” [of GDP spent on defence]. The difference is that we have not reduced the army to its smallest size since Napoleon.”
BAE Systems, Britain’s leading defense group and the main munitions supplier to the British armed forces, is expected to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the increased spending.
The government has pledged to invest at least another £10 billion over the next decade to boost domestic ammunition production. BAE secured new contracts worth up to £400 million last year to increase production capacity of key 155mm artillery shells eightfold.
Additional reporting by Sylvia Pfeifer