John Healey will use Wednesday’s Budget to set out a path for defence spending to reach 3 per cent of national income by 2030, Andy Burnham said today.
The Prime Minister told ITV’s Good Morning Britain that national security was “at the top of the priority list” ahead of the Chancellor’s first Budget.
Asked whether the plan would cover both 3 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030 and the Nato pledge to reach 3.5 per cent by 2035, Burnham said: “It is, and we will set out a plan as to how we think is the right way to do that.”
He said the Chancellor would set out on Wednesday the path to meeting the UK’s Nato commitments, and that those commitments would be met.
“We’ve got to make sure that issues of national security are at the top of the priority list,” he added.
The Office for Budget Responsibility has estimated that reaching 3 per cent would require an additional £17.3bn in 2029-30.
Opposition critics and military figures have urged the Government to set out a path for defence spending to reach 3 per cent of GDP by the end of the decade, alongside the Nato pledge to hit 3.5 per cent by 2035.
Healey resigned as defence secretary earlier this year over a dispute about the pace and extent of military funding. As Chancellor, he has previously said the timetable would be set out at next year’s spending review rather than in the Budget.
The Defence Investment Plan, published on 30 June, set out £298bn of planned Ministry of Defence spending over the four years to 2029-30. According to a House of Commons Library briefing on the plan, it expects Nato-qualifying defence spending to rise to 2.7 per cent of GDP in 2027-28 and to stay at that level for the following two years. The briefing notes that the plan gives no indication of when the government expects to meet the 3.5 per cent target.
The plan included an additional £15bn for defence over four years. In its funding explainer for the plan, the Government said £10.3bn of that sum had been identified and that the remaining £4.7bn would be confirmed at Budget 2026.
Economists have said Healey will need to find about £10bn in tax rises or spending cuts at the Budget. Helen Miller, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said in September that lifting defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP next year would take up all of the government’s planned increases for other public services.
The Conservatives have stepped up their attacks over welfare spending in recent days after Burnham said national security cannot “come at the expense of social security”.
The Prime Minister has said he is committed both to funding the military and to bringing down the benefits bill, but not through “crude cuts”.
Asked today whether he was convinced he could lower welfare spending without losing the support of his backbenchers, following a rebellion over planned cuts under his predecessor Sir Keir Starmer, Burnham said he was adopting a “different approach”.
“The opposition parties are out there today saying, ‘oh, just make crude cuts to the welfare, the welfare budget’.
“I personally think that won’t work, and it isn’t right to do that anyway because it just leads to more and more failure and crisis and spending that isn’t helpful for anybody,” he said.
“I think we go at this a different way, which is guaranteeing support for young people up front in a way that we’ve not done before and then giving them in-work support to hold down a job or a training placement.
“It’s a different approach that we’re building, but that’s one I want to make sustainable for the long run.”
The Budget will be published alongside the Office for Budget Responsibility’s latest economic and fiscal forecasts.
