Starmer tells NATO chief UK will publish DIP before summit

The Prime Minister has told the NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte that the United Kingdom will publish its Defence Investment Plan ahead of next month’s alliance summit in Ankara, in a call that comes days after the resignations of his Defence Secretary and Armed Forces Minister over the funding behind that very plan, Downing Street has said.

According to a readout of the call, held on Saturday morning, Sir Keir Starmer updated Rutte on plans for the Defence Investment Plan and underlined his commitment to publish it before the summit. The two men agreed that in the face of shared and evolving threats, allies must step up together, strengthening collective defence and delivering more, faster, with the NATO Secretary General welcoming the United Kingdom’s increased investment in defence as an important contribution to the alliance and to meeting the threats it faces.

The Prime Minister also reiterated his commitment to reaching three per cent of GDP on defence in the next Parliament, Downing Street said, making clear that national security would remain the government’s top priority, backed by what the readout called the hard-edged decisions needed to deliver it. The two agreed to stay in close contact.

The phrase will draw attention given the events of the past week, with the outgoing Defence Secretary John Healey having resigned on Thursday after telling the Prime Minister the settlement behind the plan was backloaded, would reach just 2.68 per cent of GDP by 2030, and would force decisions that could make the country less safe. The Armed Forces Minister Al Carns quit hours later, writing that the plan was not built for the threat the country faces and was neither transformative enough nor sufficiently funded. Starmer used the same “hard-edged decisions” language in a television interview on Friday, language the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has since seized on in a letter contrasting it with the verdicts of the two ministers who resigned.

The commitment to publish before the summit pins the government to a firm deadline at a moment when industry bodies, the Commons Defence Committee and one of the Strategic Defence Review’s own authors have all warned that the plan, and the funding behind it, falls short of what the moment demands. The readout does not address whether the settlement Healey refused to sign will be revised before publication, leaving open the central question of whether the new Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis publishes the plan as drafted or reopens it.

The Defence Investment Plan is the programme-by-programme spending document intended to turn the Strategic Defence Review published last year into firm commitments on ships, aircraft, vehicles and munitions, and it has been promised repeatedly since the autumn. The NATO summit in Ankara, at which allied leaders are expected to take stock of progress towards the alliance’s new spending targets, now functions as the hard deadline against which the United Kingdom’s rearmament plans, and the political crisis surrounding them, will be measured.