A rise in UK defence spending to 3.5 percent of GDP could require around 85,000 additional workers across the industrial base, MPs have been told during evidence on the delayed Defence Investment Plan.
Appearing before the House of Commons Defence Committee, ADS Defence Director Samira Braund said the scale of workforce growth needed would be significant if higher spending is to translate into deliverable capability. “At ADS, we have already modelled that if you are going up to 3.5%, that is an additional 85,000 jobs. That is a significant increase,” she said.
The figure emerged during a wider discussion about how quickly defence spending should rise and whether industry could absorb a major increase without worsening inflationary pressures or supply chain strain. Braund argued that some funding needs to begin flowing soon, but suggested that a more gradual increase would better match the sector’s ability to recruit, train and invest. “We need to see some money flowing through the system sooner rather than later,” she said, adding that to ensure “the right capability, with the right people and the right skills, it would probably need to be incremental.”
Other industry witnesses broadly agreed that a steady rise would be easier to absorb than a sharp surge. Arnab Dutt of the Federation of Small Businesses said the approach should be “more tortoise and less hare,” while Make UK Defence’s Andrew Kinniburgh argued that immediate front-loading would be most useful in areas such as research, development and preparing supply chains, with larger production increases then following later.
The evidence session focused on the consequences of the continued delay to the Defence Investment Plan, with trade body representatives warning that uncertainty is already affecting recruitment, apprenticeships, investment decisions and supply chain stability. Witnesses described a sector struggling to plan, even as ministers continue to promise higher spending in the years ahead.
Kinniburgh told MPs that long-term demand signals are essential if industry is to expand efficiently. He argued that stable multi-year commitments would allow companies to invest in productivity and capacity, helping to contain costs over time. Without that certainty, he warned, delays are likely to keep pushing costs higher and undermine the sector’s ability to scale.
Braund also linked future jobs growth to the need for clearer planning assumptions. She said industry is already preparing for expansion through trade body programmes, SME mentoring and supply chain readiness work, but that businesses still need to understand when and where funding will flow. In her view, the challenge is no longer simply policy design, but moving into delivery.
And if I had a unicorn I could fly to the moon.
It was made clear by the Prime Minister in his evidence to the Liasison Committee that he has not shifted from moving to 3% “in the next parliament”, so no costed commitment past the small rise to 2.5% which is still a full year away. 3.5% remains Starmer’s ambition for who ever is in power the parliament in 2035, and who could reject it at the drop of a hat.
My unicorn cannot fly to the moon, its like this government though. It farts fairy dust.
She also made clear in her evidence to the DSC that there is indeed paralysis, in direct contradiction of government denials, as so little is happening SMEs are threatening to quit the sector.
But how to pay for the required increase in defence spending?
Get rid, immediately, of the absurd, quicotic and entirely unevidenced pursuit of arbitrary net zero targets!
Oh…but climate change….
The latest research?
‘…considering interglacial onsets and decays as well as intermediating Ice Ages, it turns out that a rise of this amount would have been considered unusual more than
200,000 years ago, but this rise is not unusual in the current interglacial which started some 20,000 years ago with around 16% of all centuries since the last Ice Age exhibiting a temperature rise of at least 1.1°C. None of these could have anthropogenic components as they pre-dated the industrial era. This result suggests that attempts to partition the current rise into anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic components are questionable given that it is not even unusual’
Did you see Ofcom are investigating climate denial? Careful, Millipede will have you nicked.
Great stuff!
Of course, I welcome Ofcom’s interest in this matter as providing yet more evidence for their root and branch reform under the next government.
Noting the quotation marks in my previous post, the author whose work they should address is none other than Les Hatton, Emeritus Professor in Computer Science at Kingston University.
‘(Professor Hatton) was recently able to determine from ice core records that 100-year rises of 1.1°C in the current interglacial, which started 20,000 years ago, have occurred in one in six centuries. Going back 150,000 years, the frequency was around one in six to one in 20 centuries. None of these findings suggest that current warming is either unusual or primarily caused by human activity.’
Follow the money as always.
Spot on.
For clarity, funding for Professor Hatton’s paper?
‘Funding
This study received no funding.’