John Healey’s resignation as Defence Secretary should serve as a wake-up call to those inside government still blocking the acceleration of defence investment, with delays to the Defence Investment Plan having already driven companies out of business and pushed innovative firms to consider leaving the country, the trade body Make UK Defence has said.

The organisation’s Director-General, Andrew Kinniburgh, issued the statement on Thursday afternoon following Healey’s departure from the Cabinet over the funding settlement behind the plan, calling the resignation “a significant moment for the UK defence sector” and describing the outgoing Defence Secretary as “a serious political figure” who “fundamentally understands the dangerous moment the UK and our allies face.” The trade body, he said, had enjoyed working with Healey and his advisers for nearly two years in government and four years in opposition.

The statement reserves its sharpest language for the heart of the dispute that brought Healey down. “His resignation today should be a wake-up call for those inside Government still blocking the acceleration of defence investment our country desperately needs,” Kinniburgh said, pointing out that while the United Kingdom has agreed the new NATO spending target of 3.5 per cent of GDP by 2035, “we have no fiscal plan to reach this target.”

The consequences of the resulting delay to the Defence Investment Plan, he said, have been felt hardest among smaller firms. The hold-up has “left so many of our members to struggle, especially SMEs”, Kinniburgh said. “We’ve had companies go bust, hiring plans put on hold, and innovative SMEs seriously make plans to move abroad due to the lack of work.” The United Kingdom, he warned, is in “a global race for private defence investment” and yet investors are being told to go overseas “because the UK is not moving fast enough.”

Make UK Defence has been campaigning publicly and privately for defence spending to rise and has provided the government with what it describes as credible plans to deliver the increase, with Kinniburgh saying Healey and his team “have always taken these ideas seriously” and thanking them for their work.

The statement closes with a direct demand of the government in the wake of the resignation. “Now is the moment for the UK Government to finally rise to the challenge,” Kinniburgh said, by accelerating defence spending, setting out “a clear fiscal plan to 3.5% of GDP as soon as possible” and publishing “a credible Defence Investment Plan before the NATO Summit next month.”

George Allison
George Allison
George Allison is the founder and editor of the UK Defence Journal. He holds a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and specialises in naval and cyber security topics. George has appeared on national radio and television to provide commentary on defence and security issues. Twitter: @geoallison
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87 COMMENTS

  1. Bang goes any optimism for the long awaited Defence Investment Plan.
    Seems our national priorities are the boat people £7 billion a year on benefits and costs.
    Welfare bill. Exploding.

    • The priority is net zero:

      ‘In the period 2002 to the present, the total cost to the electricity consumer of those renewable electricity subsidy schemes that we can quantify has amounted to approximately £220 billion (in 2024 prices), equivalent to nearly £8,000 per household.

      The annual subsidy cost is currently £25.8 billion a year, a sum equivalent to nearly fifty per cent of UK annual spending on defence.

      Subsidy to renewable electricity generators now comprises about 40% of the total cost of electricity supply in the United Kingdom.

      The total subsidy cost per unit of renewable electricity generated has risen by nearly 50% in real terms since 2005 and now stands at approximately £200/MWh. This contradicts government and industry claims that renewables are becoming cheaper.’

      Either the energy secretary or the defence secretary had to go. The Prime Minister decided for reasons not unconnected with his political future that his best interests lay with keeping the energy secretary in post…

      • What your describing is feed in tariffs and contractors for difference incorporated into energy bills. Not taxation or government spending. Do you understand the difference and why we can’t use people’s gas bills to cover defence spending?

        • Why not come back tomorrow and try again?

          You never know, you might make a better shot of constructing a sentence after a bit of a lie down.

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            • Well done. That’s better…not really.

              It always looks a bit silly being rude while including a simple misspelling…particularly with spell check available.

              Government policy has been to finance a number of energy and climate change policies (including the Feed-in Tariffs scheme, the Renewables Obligation, Contracts for Difference and Warm Homes Discount) through levies on energy companies, rather than funding the schemes directly through general taxation. Energy companies then, in effect, recover the cost of these levy-funded schemes from consumers through bills.

              So indirect taxation through consumer bills…I wonder why both the labour and conservative parties are so unpopular?

              Oh! in 2024 the UK had the second highest domestic electricity price including taxes in the G7. UK industry is spending 60% more per unit of electricity than any other European nation.

        • But we do tax gas. We tax gas heavily because the government prefers to see North Sea output sold at international rates, allowing them to tax profits at an extremely high rate rather than consumers and business have stable energy prices. Alternatively, they could dictate a set price per barrel directly within the production licences—similar to how they manage wind or nuclear. Doing so, however, would mean vastly lower tax revenues and no global markets to shift the blame to when energy policy fails. It also helps to justify renewables when markets spike. Selling on the international market is a government decision other producing nations have sold domestically produced gas and petrol at cost or cost plus. Tories like windfall taxes because they could fund other tax cuts from the revenues, labour like them because they can blow them on quangos and vanity projects.

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      • Your source data appears to be from the ‘Renewable Energy Foundation’ website – an org who its fair to say have a major dislike of wind power. Figures, given their financial sponsors include property developers Cadogan and Rausing, Scottish Power, Calor Gas and a few other self interested parties.
        I get that subsidised energy isnt the solution but neither is reliance on carbon fuels that we have no control over. What’s your solution?

        • The Renewable Energy Foundation (REF) is a registered charity (1107360) promoting sustainable development for the benefit of the public by means of energy conservation and the use of renewable energy.

          ‘REF is supported by private donation and has no political affiliation or corporate membership. In pursuit of its principal goals REF highlights the need for an overall energy policy that is balanced, ecologically sensitive, and effective.’

          The work of climate academics supporting net zero is largely funded by a pro net zero government!

          My solution is not to start from here. More seriously, nuclear is vital but cannot provide back up to renewables since it has to be run at 80% output consistently in order to provide a decent return on capital investment. Battery storage is nowhere near ready. Tidal is very expensive and unproven in Britain.

          The answer is clearly, in addition to nuclear, more North Sea production and fracking. Russia will target pipelines from Norway so we must have at least the potential available to access our own oil and gas resources.

          • I think people would be more willing to listen to your opinions on energy policy if they thought you knew the difference between contracts for difference, feed in tariffs and taxation.

            If you want a reasoned debate then it’s best not just to grab any figure of Google that you think backs up your assertion then double down with persona attacks when people highlight your errors.

            This may be acceptable in the USA but it’s generally frowned upon in UKDJ

            • Patronising and pedantic in just one post…but you have finally managed without basic errors of grammar and spelling. Maybe give up posting when the sun is over the yardarm?

              ‘As any fule kno’, government policy has been to finance a number of energy and climate change policies (including the Feed-in Tariffs scheme, the Renewables Obligation, Contracts for Difference and Warm Homes Discount) through levies on energy companies, rather than funding the schemes directly through general taxation. Energy companies then, in effect, recover the cost of these levy-funded schemes from consumers through bills.

              So, effectively, indirect taxation through consumer bills…I wonder why both the labour and conservative parties are so unpopular?

        • Good point Andy, lots of nonsense figure thrown about on both sides of the debate with people with various axes to grind.

      • Monro pushing the anti net-zero disinformation that he’s paid to do at every single opportunity.

        But he’s deathly silent about the £17bn annual subsidy to the fossil-fuel industry.

        • Still struggling to keep up…but well done for the effort anyway…

          ‘Whenever discussing renewables subsidies on the internet, there is a form of Godwin’s Law that means it is inevitable that someone will come along and say: “Ackshually, fossil fuels are subsidised more than renewables,” or words to that effect…If we are generous to those who claim we subsidise fossil fuels, we could note that in 2022 there was about £24.6bn of one-off indirect subsidies. However, these schemes are now no longer in operation.

          On the tax side of the ledger, we have £9.8bn in producer taxes, £31.5bn of direct consumer taxes and a further £8.5bn in indirect consumer taxes, plus an unknown amount of VAT. Even in an exceptional year when the various energy bill support schemes were in place, taxes exceeded the alleged subsidies by a wide margin.

          Now the energy crisis has subsided we are left with just £200m of indirect subsidy to help the elderly and most vulnerable with their energy bills offset by close to £50bn of direct and indirect taxes…’

      • For reference, Monro denies the existence of human-caused climate change, for which there is clear evidence and broad scientific consensus. He is not somebody to take seriously on matters of energy policy.

        • That is a misrepresentation. It may very well be that human activity has made some contribution towards a changing climate. However there is no scientific evidence for that, only models that assume it.

          And the worst scenario projected by various models, upon which ‘net zero’ by 2050 is based, has just been jettisoned as implausible.

          That is because many are now waking up to the fact that the models themselves are deeply suspect:

          ‘One of the most striking features of Earth’s climate history is its rhythmic natural structure. Throughout the Holocene, we observe:

          multidecadal oscillations (~60 years),
          centennial fluctuations,
          millennial‑scale cycles such as the Eddy cycle,
          and the Hallstatt–Bray cycle.

          These patterns appear in ice cores, marine sediments, tree rings, and historical documents. They also correlate with solar and astronomical proxies.

          These cycles are not speculative; they are among the most robust features of paleoclimate research.

          Yet current GCMs do not reproduce these oscillations with the correct amplitude or timing.

          This is not a minor detail. If models cannot capture the natural background variability of the climate system, then attribution regarding the global warming from 1850–1900 to the present becomes inherently uncertain, because any unmodeled natural contribution to the warming (for example due to solar activity increase during the same period) necessarily reduces the fraction of warming that can be confidently assigned to anthropogenic forcings. And if the anthropogenic contribution to past warming is smaller than assumed, then its contribution to future warming — and therefore the associated climate risk — must also be proportionally reduced.’

          Nicolas Scafetta March 2026

        • 100% accurate 👍🏻
          He’s a paid troll introducing climate-change denial and anti-renewable propaganda into any comment section he can, no matter how irrelevant it is to the original article.

          • Maybe drop the people who you say are supposed to be paying me a line because I haven’t received a single penny so far. Thanks.

            • Then you’re stupider than you sound if you’re not, because there’s plenty out their paid to vomit the rubbish you post.

              • Very disappointing. I thought you must have known who they were.

                So it was just another statement of yours unsupported by any evidence?

                That doesn’t sound very clever…or honest, does it?

                I resent your nasturtiums…

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                • I’m very familiar with the organisations but why should I assist either them or you with the speading of your lies?

                  I resent that you’re an oxygen theif but 🤷🏻‍♂️

        • ‘…our current spending commitments for carbon capture and heat pumps (£30bn) are a mistake in the first place, an extravagant waste of public money on two things that won’t move the dial on anything, not poverty targets, not carbon targets – the only dial moving is green energy company profits. Keir Starmer should insist on these cuts, it’s not as if he’ll lose an ally in the process.’

          Dale Vince 12 June 2026

    • Other than it doesn’t cost £7b a year for boat people. That bill includes hard working low waged employed people on benefits. Same with the net zero arguement, it’s the biggest growing industry with the highest paid jobs outside AI and it’s time our nation invested in the future rather than leaving all those jobs to the US.

      • I suspect the main issue is we have privatised all out public sector assets, and they seem to be far more expensive to run than other equivalent nations.

        It’s funny how the media quotes the top line figure of the welfare bill but never talks about where the money actually goes, as that would break their narrative.

  2. Defence??? £6 Billion for two aircraft carriers and £100 Billion for a choo choo train line.
    It doesn’t make any sense to me.

    • HS2, along with other civil programmes, should be slowed or even halted along with energy targets and new education investment for twelve months. This would allow new defence programmes to be initiated and support UK defence companies that otherwise could close down. The new Labour leader needs to prioritise immediate spending on the NHS and defence for the next fiscal year.

      • The amount of money we are talking about to get the DIP out the door is so small we really don’t need to take any action. Slowing HS2 won’t accomplish anything, it’s already been slowed down so much that it’s costing us greatly.

        £5 billion over four years is nothing, we can easily borrow it.

  3. Take a look what happened to AERALIS the UK company who were hoping for a contract from the MOD to build the next generation jet trainer for the RAF . Only a couple of months ago I seen an interview with the company Director saying unless the government give a decision soon they will go under and needed a deal soon and were hanging on by a thread. Sadly I found out a few weeks back the company are now in administration. No comment from government.

      • Bit like a big piece of the defence investment plan then. Jokes aside i think you’ll find every single airframe ever built started as concept on the drawing board. Difference is in the 1950s the government used to back some of them.

        • AERALIS was nothing, had nothing, no track record, just a nonsense concept in a crowded market of actually exist planes

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    • I have a great Paper Model you can buy…. I showed It to my Kids and they thought It was brilliant, unlike AERALIS, It actually flew. 👊🛩️

      Want to buy a Boat for the bath ? I have a great paper one of those too. ⛵

    • Aeralis collapsed because Barzan Holdings, the strategic investment arm of Qatar’s Ministry of Defence and Aeralis’s main financial backer, withdrew its funding amid regional conflicts in the Middle East.

  4. Your source data appears to be from the ‘Renewable Energy Foundation’ website – an org who its fair to say have a major dislike of wind power. Figures, given their financial sponsors include property developers Cadogan and Rausing, Scottish Power, Calor Gas and a few other self interested parties.
    I get that subsidised energy isnt the solution but neither is reliance on carbon fuels that we have no control over. What’s your solution?

  5. Dan Jarvis is now Defence Secretary. Ex para. He looks and sounds good BUT he htill has Starmer and Reeves to contend with.

    • Exactly. And then Starmer and Reeves have their backbenchers to contend with many who screamed about lifting benefits etc.

  6. Morning Chaps.
    Just a note about the constant attacks on people on benefits, It pays to differentiate between those who genuinely could not live without them and those who Take the piss.

    Only when you can walk in the shoes of the less fortunate, can you know their pain.

    When we stop caring as a nation, we become empty Inside.

      • Thanks.
        It’s a shame that some people are oblivious to the suffering and pain that the less fortunate have to endure on a daily basis, often they become so overwhelmed by their struggles, they choose to end their lives.
        Reading the constant attacks from some on here, makes me feel sad.

        Words used In Ignorance are often more damaging than they could ever comprehend.

        • I am annoyed that MSM plays it as a defence vs welfare, black & white choice. Andrew Neal pointed out that this Labour government plans to spend £ 9 billion on unproven CO2 capture by 2030 that probably won’t work & even if it did, the amount of CO2 it would reduce is negligible. That £ 9 billion could help fill the defence spending gap.

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        • An American I knew once asked what I thought of universal health, it’s issues and costs. I said it has its flaws and expense but I willingly accept that knowing no one, especially those in dire need, will ever be turned away. You are right, that is a caring society. let us keep it that way.

    • I was made redundant in 1980 and I got £8 a week and milk tokens because we had a one year old baby. That was it. To say it was demeaning would be an understatement. Now, we have gone way too far in the other direction with tens of billions wasted on the “piss takers”. Having been a councillor and school governor I have seen people reduced to the breadline, sick people with a choice between food and heating, youngsters trying to take care of parents with very little help so yes , there are many very needy folks out there. I have also seen the expert claimants who know the law and the ins and outs of what to get out of the rest of us. Something dramatic needs to be done, but it will probably never happen. Well put my friend.

    • You are absolutely right in that distinction.

      The real issue is that the scale of benefits warps behaviours: I constantly have employees and sub co tractors telling me they can / cannot do this because of benefits.

      Getting as much out of the benefits system drives a huge number of people’s thinking.

    • Good point Halfwit, much of the issue is that the people who are taking the piss and the very same people calling for benefits to be cut but also claiming what they get is not a benefit but an entitlement that they paid for.

      No means tested benefits

      Winter Fuel
      Old age travel pass
      Basic state pension

      Just like Personal Independence Payment, NHS and Universal Credit these are all welfare payments. People need to understand that when we are talking about cutting welfare to pay for defence (which I agree with) that it’s all welfare payments in the table.

      No one in the UK ever paid into a system that covered their basic state pension. National insurance pre dates the basic state pension by forty years. National insurance was set up to pay for medical care and sickness and disability benefits.

      We don’t even have to actually cut anything to afford a defence increase. We just need to remove the triple lock on the basic state pension and we will have tens of billions to play with.

  7. Let’s be absolutely clear about what is going on here.

    This is a return to the ‘court factionalism’ of the recent Conservative years, petty party politics overtaking the national interest.

    The PM wants to keep the present Energy Secretary onside because he has union support and the PM.needs that for the approaching leadership battle.

    Meanwhile Britain reneges on its international commitments to its allies, our reputation as a reliable ally in tatters while confidence in the country from international markets sinks ever lower, inflation and interest rates on the rise.

    Ultimately the result for the labour party will be the same as it has been for the Conservatives.

  8. If the government want’s to save money we could start with setting up our Nuclear deterrent as a stand alone project with its own budget and ask at the same time for contributions from other Nato and European countries who have lived under our umbrella for the last 40 years, the French have seen the light we should be doing the same.
    We should be building Frigate sized ships in under 5 years with lead vessels in 6 years not the 10 years we are seeing at the moment. The same should apply to Submarine construction 10+ years per boat is a very costly joke.
    Instead of a limited number of vessels per class we should keep building them and once we have got our fleet up to an agreed level the older vessels can be put up for sale so we always have an up to date modern fleet with a modern ship building capacity kept in full time work all paying taxes to No 11 Downing street.
    Personnel levels and recruitment should be decided by the armed forces not civilian companies who’s only interest is how much money can they make out of the defence budget.
    There are a 101 ways to save money if the country is really that cash strapped but the defence of the UK should not be one of them.

  9. What an F ing shambles, a total mess. Lies, half thruths, misleading head lines, Stamer has failed and now he will try ride it out and bluff, worst leader in 60 years. DIP will be a penny pintching joke, spun up to look great but it will be worse than expected. God help our military if they ever do have to fight it will cost lives, a lot of lives.

  10. Apparently Millband is refusing to reduce his budget.
    In which case, do we actually have a PM?
    Or a puppet figurehead?
    A PM who is “unable” and a Treasury “unwilling” to spend necessary to fund the armed forces, and which subsequently forces two resignations.
    Tell me, please, why has that not prompted both the PM and Chancellor to resign?
    The other spin that gets my goat, this “keeping us safe” crap.
    1. With open borders and a inability to deal with illegals we are not safe.
    2. The military exists to fight Britain’s enemies. Keeping us safe is a byproduct of that, trying somehow to put acceptable spin on a grim reality. That military should be resourced according to Britain’s world standing as a P5 member, supposed major power, and one if the world’s biggest economies.
    If HMG refuse to do that, then for me than that shows the lefts ingrained loathing of Britain being somebody on the world stage is alive and well within this supposed changed Labour Party?

    • Problem is we already spend one third more than France, also a P5 member and will likely far exceed Russian spending again after their conflict ends. The UK itself faces little direct threat and people in the UK are not willing to pay vast sums of money to defend other people or to meddle in international politics. The USA is 6 times our size, China is 20 times our size. No amount of conceivable UK military spending can ever give us any prestige or international reputation beyond what we have as a middle power.

      If we spend so much as $1 dollar less than America our own traitorous media and former military leaders will still berate the nation as being s**t or not top tier, (Jackie Fischer was doing the same routine in 1905) and “not what we used to be”. When we had five aircraft carriers it wasn’t good enough because America had 15. It doesn’t matter that the Queen Elizabeth class is one of the largest most capable carriers on the planet it’s not a “proper carrier”.

      The same traitors said the extract same thing in the 80’s in the 50’s in the 30’s and at every point since 1914.

      The UK armed forces have became a national embarrassment, not because they are not immensely well trained and capable but because of their ever growing need to swallow billions of pounds of cash to keep up with the USA and its out of control MIC.

      France spends one third less than the UK, its military has capability gaps so large we could not dream of having them yet its people have much more pride in its forces. This is because France has built a military for its own needs, not to keep up with America, project power into Asia and defend eastern Europes borders but to do what France needs and wants.

      We spend 13X more than Finland, another nation that built an armed force for its own needs and who’s people are also immensely proud of it.

      The problem in the UK is not our ability to pay for a military, it’s our inability to define what we are paying for. We are always competing against the current USA or some perceived capability we had thirty years ago (which never existed) when viewed through rose tinted glasses of people’s youth.

      When I was in the TA nearly 30 years ago we literally had a rifle that didn’t work that had been known to not work for 15 years and we didn’t even have a plan to fix it. Now listening to the Time’s and the Telegraph and the never ending conveyor belt of ex generals they pay to spout of nonsense, I’m suppose to believe those were the good times when we spent more than 3% of GDP on defence and had plenty of everything.

  11. What is going to get interesting is what happens next. Starmers days are clearly numbered and will Burnham rip up the DIP and start again or will he leave as is. If he rips up and starts again then we return to uncertainty. Not enough money invested is better than nothing due to inertia.

    • Hi Steve the DiP is coming out long before any leadership contest. Starmar will be gone before Christmas but no one is in a hurry and everyone in Labour wants to DiP out now with the lowest possible settlement figure.

      The MoD has lost any political backing it may have had, the constant political briefing against everyone has won it no friends in the Treasury or the Labour Party.

      Starmer may be forced to go with the middle figure £18 over £13.5 billion to save his blushes at the NATO summit but it’s unlikely. No one will ever want to put their neck out again for defence spending.

      There are no votes in it for politicians and no matter how much money someone secures for it the media and ex generals will always be howling for more. Now these traitors think they have scalped a Prime Minister (and a labour one at that) they will be out for more blood.

      No “sensible” politician will go near defence spending ever again.

      The department is now as toxic as the Jim Hackers “integrated transport strategy” in Yes Minister.

      • The DIP is coming out yes but it’s entirely possible that Burnham will announce a subsequent review of it and that takes another couple of years. It’s not legally binding on his government to follow it, just because Starmer announced it.

          • How do? He will be almost certainly PM after summer and it’s then upto him and his now chancellor how the budget is distributed and the DIP is dependent on that. So of course it could chuck it in the bin and reassess if he wants. Plenty of time before the election to do so.

              • Labour is much more centralised than the Conservative Party. You might get a change in PM and chancellor but the manifesto will not change so not much else will change.

                Andy Burnham is the exact same centrist politician as Kier Starmer or Rachel Reeves. Andy is just more experienced and has better media skills.

            • Because the defence review will be finished before Burnham is PM and if you know anything about Whitehall it is that no experienced politician wants to conduct a defence review if they can avoid it.

              Tony Blair/ Gordon Brown spent 13 years in government, fought numerous wars and did one review. Budgets are set on a three year basis so Burnham will have no input into MoD spending before the next election.

              No one in Makerfield or the Labour Party is voting for Andy Burnham to increase defence spending and Andy knows that.
              Starmer was daft enough to get sucked in by the MoD mostly because he liked feeling presidential on the world stage. Burnham won’t make the same mistake.

              • World has changed since Blair/brown. Currently defence is of interest to voters which means doing stuff even if it’s just moving paper around on the topic is a vote winner. If you know anything about politicians they will latch on to any topic that has votes in it.

                  • Not true. Opinion polls have had it’s value jump across all parties. Immigration and cost of living still above it along with NHS but it’s far higher than it was a couple of years ago.

  12. What is really interesting is an interview with Al Cairns in which he said he resigned for 2 reasons 1 is the money, but really importantly is that he said he fundamentally did not agree with the DIP and it had been designed to fight the last war and not the next war, and did not take into account the learning from Ukraine, Cairns is someone who knows what he’s taking about, so although it’s not been published yet maybe it needs ripping up.. just sort the long lead items and immediate needs.. then relook.

    • That’s a good point Jonathan, I hadn’t seen that but I have been echoing the same point. The MoD had been screaming for more money for all the capabilities it needs to fight a modern war but seems to be against giving anything up.

      It’s seen the noise generated by Trump and the general increase in defence spending across Europe as giving it Cart Blanche to get everything it wanted while giving nothing up.

  13. Jonathan, Al Carns’ (who I respect immensely) comment is slightly odd. DIP is the detailed means by which SDR is funded and implemented. If he agreed with SDR’s conclusions, which recognised lessons learned for the Ukraine war and is future-looking, why does he think that DIP doesn’t do that? I wonder what the specific criticisms are that he has (apart from it being under-funded of course).

    By the time DIP is published it will be 2 years on from Labour forming a government. Could we wait any longer for DIPv2.0?

  14. Healey’s departure is a realisation that Kier has lost the plot and there is little point in supporting policies which he never liked anyway.

    He might as well align himself with someone new. Perhaps he is thinking of standing himself.

    Virtually any PM in the last 100 years could do better than this even the dead ones.

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