The Labour government’s commitment to increase defence expenditure to 2.5 per cent of GDP from next year will not fully fund the planned expansion of the armed forces, a top military official has warned.
Sir RIchard Knighton, chief of the defence staff, told MPs on Monday the rise in government funding would not be enough to cover recommendations in the flagship strategic defence review (SDR) published last year.
“We can’t do everything we would want to do as quickly as we would want to do it within the budget that is set, Knighton told the defence committee.
“That requires ministers to make difficult trade-offs.”
When asked if proposals in the SDR could be introduced without spending cuts in other departments, he said: “If we wanted to do everything that’s currently in the programme and everything that’s in the SDR with the budget we have, then the answer is no.”
The reported shortfalls in the defence budget will add to pressures on Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves to act to limit departmental expenditure and avoid having to change fiscal rules to allow more borrowing.
He also appeared to confirm reports of a heated discussion between senior defence representatives and the Prime Minister last month, though he said reports in The Times and The Sun of a £28bn spending gap was “speculation”.
But Knighton refused to be drawn on a date for the publication of the defence investment strategy, which was due months ago.
“I will tell you that we did meet the Prime Minister in December, and we did talk about a number of issues associated with defence, including the defence investment plan, but the material that was discussed at that meeting was classified secret, and so I’m not going to talk about that in public.”
“There is no point having a defence investment plan that can’t be delivered or is unaffordable.”
Defence upgrade in jeopardy
Little detail on defence investment could spark concerns across industry, with defence manufacturing being one key growth area the Labour government intends to focus on.
In more alarming remarks, Knighton said the UK’s armed forces were not ready for a “full-scale conflict” in a damning assessment of the country’s military capabilities.
Labour MP Tan Dheshi, chair of the defence committee, criticised the government’s attitude to defence, suggesting the UK was “trundling along rather than realising the urgency of the moment”.