Sir Keir Starmer has “serious questions to answer” about his defence spending uplift, the Tories have said, after a cabinet minister admitted the PM’s figures were misleading.
The prime minister on Tuesday promised to boost the defence budget from 2.3 per cent to 2.5 per cent of GDP ahead of a crunch meeting in the White House with Donald Trump on Thursday.
At a Downing Street press conference, Sir Keir said the increase amounted to Labour spending £13.4 billion extra each year on the armed forces.
But economists at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) quickly questioned the PM’s calculations, claiming that compared with current spending trends it actually amounted to an increase of just £6 billion each year.
And on Wednesday morning, defence secretary John Healey was forced to admit the PM’s claims of a £13.4 billion increase were misleading.
Mr Healey told the BBC that, in real terms, the figure “would be something over £6 billion” and claimed the “definition of defence numbers can be done in different ways”.
Shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge said the PM’s spending announcement had “unravelled in just 24 hours”. “It now appears the figure is just half of what Keir Starmer promised to parliament today,” he said.
“If Labour are serious about boosting our armed forces, they need to be straight about the facts of what they’ve announced,” he added.
It came after IFS director Paul Johnson accused the PM of playing “silly games with numbers” providing “totally inconsistent figures” measured against different benchmarks.
The think tank’s associate director, Ben Zaranko, had earlier suggested the increase in spending would amount to around £6 billion, rather than the £13.4 billion the PM had indicated.
Mr Zaranko said: “As a minor note to what is a major announcement, the prime minister followed in the steps of the last government by announcing a misleadingly large figure for the ‘extra’ defence spending this announcement entails.
“An extra 0.2 per cent of GDP is around £6 billion, and this is the size of the cut to the aid budget. Yet he trumpeted a £13 billion increase in defence spending.
“It’s hard to be certain without more detail from the Treasury, but this figure only seems to make sense if one thinks the defence budget would otherwise have been frozen in cash terms.”
Concerns are also being raised that Sir Keir’s announcement yesterday amounts to no extra defence spending because of his plans for the Chagos Islands.
It is being claimed that the £6 billion extra for the Ministry of Defence taken from the aid budget will in fact be spent on leasing back the Diego Garcia base once Sir Keir pushes ahead with giving Mauritius the Chagos islands.
A Tory source said: “Basically there will be no new money. All Labour are doing is transferring the money needed to pay for the Chagos deal with the MoD who will now have to pay for it. This is smoke and mirrors.”
But a government source hit back, adding that there were “orders of magnitude” between the annual uplift in defence spending and any future payments to Mauritius for the Chagos deal. “It’s nonsense,” the source added.
The Tories say that by moving money around, Sir Keir is “trying to con Donald Trump” into thinking there has been a defence spending increase when there has not really been one.
Currently, the UK-US airbase is on British sovereign territory so there is no need to pay for a lease. However, the Chagos deal will mean that the UK will have to pay for a 99 year lease.
Sir Keir indicated the uplift in defence spending would not include payments to Mauritius, telling MPs at PMQs it was “for our capability on defence and security in Europe”.
He stressed that the Chagos deal is “extremely important for our security, for US security”.
He promised to put the deal and the costings before parliament, branding figures being “bandied about” are “absolutely wild off the mark”. But his official spokesman would not rule out some of the uplift in defence spending going towards Mauritius. Shadow defence minister Mark Francois asked how Labour MPs would be feel about foreign aid being cut to give billions to Mauritius.
“It’s madness,” Mr Francois said.
And Mr Healey declined to say whether the increase in defence spending includes funding being used for the Chagos Islands deal. A figure for the value of the deal has not been disclosed, but it has been reported at a cost of £90 million per year.
The commitment to increase spending comes ahead of the prime minister flying to Washington to meet president Donald Trump.
Sir Keir will follow French president Emmanuel Macron in visiting the president in Washington DC, while Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to visit on Friday.
Kyiv has agreed to a minerals deal which had been pushed for by the new US administration, according to Ukrainian officials, which could be signed off when their president visits Washington.
Mr Zelensky had claimed the 50 per cent share of rare minerals initially demanded by America would have been akin to selling his nation, but Ukraine now appears satisfied the deal will lead to a continued flow of US military support in its war against Russia.
