In response to a question from Conservative MP Mark Francois, the Ministry of Defence has provided detailed projections of the UK’s defence budget for the upcoming financial years.
Francois, who represents Rayleigh and Wickford, had asked the Secretary of State for Defence to outline the UK’s total defence expenditure for the years 2024-25 and 2025-26, both in cash terms and as a percentage of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), excluding any expenditure related to support for Ukraine.
Maria Eagle, the Minister of State for Defence, responded on 13 November 2024 with the following figures: For 2024-25, “total defence spending is expected to be £64.4 billion, equating to 2.29% of GDP. This will rise to £67.7 billion in 2025-26, or 2.30% of GDP.” When excluding expenditure related to Ukraine, “the figures adjust to £61.4 billion for 2024-25 and £64.7 billion for 2025-26, which corresponds to 2.18% and 2.19% of GDP, respectively.”
Eagle noted that the financial figures for future years are subject to the outcome of the second phase of the Spending Review.
The increase in the UK’s defence budget follows an announcement by Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who confirmed a £2.9 billion rise in the Ministry of Defence’s budget, as part of a broader strategy to enhance national security.
The government say it is committed to ensuring that the UK maintains its NATO commitments and continues to provide military support to Ukraine. The funds are also aligned with the government’s Defence Strategic Review, which is expected to shape the future direction of defence priorities.
The £2.9 billion increase reflects, say the government, their ongoing pledge to strengthen defence capabilities, though the timeline for meeting the 2.5% GDP target remains uncertain. This funding boost comes amid broader fiscal efforts, which include a £40 billion tax increase aimed at stabilising the economy, with further measures such as increasing national insurance contributions from 2025.
In recent reports from the UK Defence Journal, there has been consistent mention of the government’s long-term goal of reaching 2.5% of GDP for defence spending. However, as outlined in both recent official statements and budgetary projections, no definitive timeline has been provided for achieving this target.
I’ve got another £10 the MOD can have.
0.01% is within the margins of uncertainty for projecting GDP out to 2026, so a more accurate headline would be that it isn’t really going to rise proportionately at all. ‘consistent mention of the government’s long term goal’ is easy because it costs the treasury nothing. Actually doing it would require a genuine acceptance of the need to prioritise national security, and – by implication- deprioritise some other area of spending.
Not sure how deprioritising something like Health or Education would go down with the electorate no matter how sensible it would be in the current climate. Unfortunately, few realise how severely depleted the Armed Forces have become and the potential consequences of it’s current condition should war break out closer to home.
We’ve become far too comfortable ignoring existential threats
The Peace Dividend delusion has allowed politicians to safeguard their electoral prospects by shifting Defence spending to social provision and even war in Europe hasn’t enabled them to pivot back to Defence.
Military leaders talking about conscription was intended to be a voter nudge so that popular support for the alternatives would get the politicians to act.
Remembrance Sunday not a big enough clue for you, people?!
The irony is that Russia and their armed forces in the era of the Peace Dividend have been responsible for more conflict and bloodshed in Europe than their Soviet predecessors during the Cold War.
That’s because the Soviet Union faced a committed enemy that was spending around 5-6% of GDP on defence and made it very very clear it would without hesitation fight to mutual destruction. If it had ever sniffed weakness it would have crossed the IGB in a heartbeat.
Actually I suspect most people are understanding and realistic; and are reconciled to the NHS not delivering 1st world heath care. An ‘assisted dying’ service will be the final nail in the coffin for the NHS – put it out of its misery.
Actually I suspect most people are understanding realistic and are reconciled to the NHS not delivering 1st world heath care. An ‘assisted dying’ service will be the final nail in the coffin for the NHS – put it out of its misery.
What you wrote was complete rubbish the first time, you didn’t have to repeat it just to cement that fact LMFAO
Great star cluster. PIOTCTS.
There are so many layers of government overspend and waste that can and should be targeted way before critical front line services get effected.
I think implying it’s either defence or the countries free healthcare/ education is a fallacious argument.
Healthcare is not free, it costs money someone has to pay the bill one way or another.
In 1997 the UK spent £76.3 billion on health care or 3.3% of GDP. As off 2022/2023 that has increased to £222.51 billion or 10+% of GDP.
In 1997 we had 260,204 Nurses, in 2023 we had 382,485 Nurses. In 1997 we had 57,099 Doctors, in 2023 we have 138,604 Doctors.
In 1997 i had a NHS dentist i could go to my Doctors at 9am and been seen by 11am.
Roll on 2024 i cant get an NHS dentist or treatment for a broken mollar and broken wisdom tooth. I tried on and off for nearly 6 months to get an appointment with my local GP.
I gave up eventually and went to a walkin centre and was told to rush to hospital and have an emergency EKG. As i keep collapsing with pain in my right hand side of my chest.
At the hospital the EKG stuff was ignored the doctor who could barely take my bloods blamed my liver. My liver was fine, perfect in fact, i was told to lose some weight and that it was muscular and that was it.
Both the walk in center and hospital completely ignored me. When i kept trying to tell them that my rib keeps poping out. Its not broken its like it keeps dislocating and poping in and out.
So we have gone in this country form being able to get treated but having to wait a long time for an operation or see a specialist. To a complete cluster fuck of a situation were the NHS barely functions. Whilst trippling the amount we spend on the NHS and masively increasing the number of staff.
Sorry mate but i dont think the NHS needs any more money. What it needs is a team of forensic accountants and specialist from our own department of goverment efficency. To tear the entire thing apart and find what the bloody hell is going on. Where the holy hell is all the money being spent and what the hell are all these extra staff doing. Also there has got to be some kind of fraud going on and people need to swing for it.
Sorry health spend GPD was not 3.3% in 1997 is was around 7.9% we now spend around 10%..the Uk health
Why is that, well healthcare inflation is very very different to normal inflation..infact as a rule of thumb you add 3-4% to healthcare inflation because it has more drivers than normal inflation
1) population increase so on average between 1997 and now so the cost of things have doubled, but the population has also grown .8% per year..so you have to added to standard inflation wich has seen a doubling in price.
2) the median age of the population in 1990 was 35 by 2020 it was 40…I’m afraid that means we have more people in their 70, 80, 90s with multiple long term conditions and that costs a huge amount more per person. On average we spend £3000 per person per year on healthcare but the older frail population with multiple co morbidities can each cost £50,000 a year. So in 1997 16.8% of the population were over 65 now it’s almost 19%…that’s a 2% increase in the most costly group, long term condition rates have also increased year on year and we are now at 43% of the population with a long term conditions..it was in the mid 30%s in the 1990s.
3) changes in treatment…we have massively more expensive treatment pathways now..as an example you had a dense stroke in 1997 we would put you to bed make you comfy and wait for you to die..now we have 24/7 hyper acute stroke centres..that diagnose via scan and treat the Stoke so you will recover and need 6 months of therapy before heading home….with a heart attack in 1997 we gave you a drug that cost a couple of pounds…now you have a massively complex surgical procedure called primary angio plasticity…we moved from a treatment costing pounds needing a junior Dr to precribe and a nurse to give..to hyper advanced surgery needing a whole surgery team…
basically we pay the NHS £3000 per year per person for healthcare..France pays £4500 per person, Germany pays £5000 per person and the US pays £15,000 per person…so your getting 3k worth of healthcare per year Germans get £5000..that’s why they get good care and the NHS is poor…you can complain all you want but until the Uk starts to pay what France or Germany have paid for every person for every year then you will have shite care…my advice go private..because our tax system only pays for emergency care..
I have an advice for you. Identify as an animal and go to a veterinary clinic…
I would get better treatment.
Possibly not, but there are other things that could be cut. If HMG feels able to borrow to fund Milliband’s vanity projects it could reallocate the money to defence instead- and doing so would bring more plausible benefit in terms of supporting our industrial base. Then there’s the matter of ‘overseas aid’. Why isn’t our effort to aid Ukraine being funded entirely from that budget?
Deprioritising education will lead to an uneducated population. Hardly what this country needs if it is to return to any useful level of productivity, which in turn is required to support defence spending and employ engineers and software developers to build our military capacity. We also require a healthy population of people to actually work, including in the military.
What mechanisms have UK to check if health and education money is well spent?
It hasn’t so it is not surprising that technology in last 20 years got cheaper and better while education and healthcare aristocratic professions without competition are much more expensive.
Need clarity on whether Ukraine spending is to be included in 2.5 to understand whether any future increase to our operating budget will be miniscule or just small.
It also needs to be looked at in terms of what that Ukraine assistance takes the form of, though, in terms of the accounting method.
If some or all of that £3B is a sum of the value of the AS90s and other gear that we’re sending them out of existing stocks, then Treasury putting that figure into the defence budget to essentially re-stock ammunition and supplement replacement programmes (the Archer buy, adding to what may already be in place for RCH155) then I’m not concerned. That’s essentially what a lot of America’s assistance has been, and makes sense to be in MOD’s budget.
If it’s a redirection of assigned MOD funds ascribed to the value of the equipment sent (AS90s etc.), then that’s a different issue- we’d be seeing a real terms drop in what the MOD has to spend.
My understanding was that the £3B was mostly if not all the first, rather than the latter. But someone may know more than I.
Ukraine aid isn’t part of the defence budget, but does qualify for NATO defence spending so will count towards the 2.5%
Ah right. So if the conflict ever ends, and the government still wants to hit 2.5, we’re quids in as it’ll have to be moved over.
Paul, what do you think HMG will do in the 2.5% era when it finally arrives?
Same as what they are doing now.
Maria Eagle’s statement confirms that the 2.29% now ie 2024-25, (which many round up to 2.3%) includes UKR spending….and when that is taken out we are down to 2.18%.
Maria Eagle, the Minister of State for Defence, responded on 13 November 2024 with the following figures: For 2024-25, “total defence spending is expected to be £64.4 billion, equating to 2.29% of GDP. This will rise to £67.7 billion in 2025-26, or 2.30% of GDP.” When excluding expenditure related to Ukraine, “the figures adjust to £61.4 billion for 2024-25 and £64.7 billion for 2025-26, which corresponds to 2.18% and 2.19% of GDP, respectively.”
£64.7bn is still a lot of money given we’ve so few ships, troops and aircraft to show for it. Compare this to Israel’s budget £24bn and see what they get for it, more troops, jets, tanks. Even Italy has nearly more of everything with a fraction of our budget. Time to cut the MOD civilian blob size and waste
There’s a number of reasons for that, nuclear for one, domestic design and development of high end capabilities is another.
Certainly waste is a major factor too however.
Israel mainly develops ‘systems’ and varous ordnance, missiles, small arms etc (something it excels at), it’s R&D and manufacturing commitment is far lower than the UK, their nuclear capability is mainly aircraft delivered too.
To add to that, they rely on the US and very favourable FMS terms.
Israel is not representative because they get so much aid from USA. I’m not aware that Italy gets US aid, though considering the Italian American heritage that’s surprising. So comparing with Italy is probably more realistic.
Hard to know how much transactional efficiency (short term) might be strategic inefficiency (long term). There seems to be tension between sustainment of sovereign capabilities and commercial reality. Examples; Submarine, Ship, Fighter, Tanks all require deep skills and experience to build on time and budget.
If you don’t order Typhoons now, don’t be surprised that you can’t build Tempest later.
You’ve seen too many Mafia movies. Only 4.8% of Americans claim Italian heritage. There are almost three times the number of Americans with German heritage.
Israel gets 2-3B of a 24B budget from US. That said their navy is very small and they have much less population plus always in war so fat is much reduced.
I think UK should compare itself with Italy and France. My main problem is the lack of coherence in land and naval forces.
This is a really good point wrt Italy. I wasn’t fully aware of this, I’ve not looked into it in much detail but our budget is about 3 times there’s, yet most things on surface glance appear similar bar our nuclear attack subs and trident. I’m struggling to understand the 40billion difference.
Anyone knowledgeable know any more around this?
The Italian military is massively pared back compared to its paper status. While I can’t speak for their navy, I know for a fact that their army and air force are struggling badly on the equipment side. As an example, they officially have 14 C130Js at Pisa. In reality, as anyone who has flown commercial there will know, approximately half these aircraft will be missing props/radar/engines (plus loads of avionics and other kit you can’t see externally) as their spares support is so poor they are having to regularly cannibalise other aircraft. Last I heard (and this was a few years ago so bear that in mind) they were unable to generate more than 3 lines of aircraft (on a fleet of 14!) due to these issues. I heard even worse numbers on the Tornado fleet, though that was around 10 years ago now so may have changed. Even then, the complexity and difficulty of maintaining old aircraft won’t have gotten easier with the passage of time…
Thanks for this.
“Time to cut the MOD civilian blob size and waste”
Which parts of MoD would you cut? DES. DIO. DNO. ST Com. HO&CS. DSTL?
Who would do the task those organisations carry out, which number into the hundreds.
It is never as easy as just cutting lumps out of MoD.
We could do what we did the last time someone cut the numbers in 2010 and engage expensive consultancies to manage it at a mere tripling of the price. They wouldn’t be civil servants so we would reduce public sector headcount and boost private industry in one go. No wonder Cameron loved it. Easily worth all the taxpayers’ money to have so much to boast about.
It’s been a few years since we had to renationalised AWE, so I’m sure we could privatise that again, and the Chinese could buy Sheffield Forgemasters just like they did British Steel.
Public sector bad, private sector good. Or was that the other bunch. I forget.
Cutting the experienced managers and leaders of complex systems for the sake of efficiency always works well in the end ( not 😵💫) ..but everyone hates the managers, administrators and specialists… because the guy on the coalface will always know how to run a mine better than the mine manager…they tried to get GPs to run the NHS for the last 14 years…it went a bit Pete tong…working a clinical room is not the same as planning and purchasing all the different levels of care for a million people.
UK inflation up to Sept 2024 was 1.7%, so 0.0.1% by 2026 doesn’t even cover inflation. that is not a real world rise by any stretch.
i am not a big fan of the arbitrary %GDP benchmarks for defense spending
what really matters is capability and quantity to achieve a meaningful military force.
my 2 cents
GDP figures are typically quoted in real terms for the year in question, so inflation is already accounted for.
The govt is working on creative solutions. I reckon there is a secret plan to up-cycle FV432s into Tempests.
Nah, they’re bringing back THAT rifle.
Far too sensible an idea for them 😉
FV432’s with Nimrod wings?
When the Chancellor said the Defence budget was going to rise along with the economy, what else were we to expect than flat figures wrt GDP?
Once GDP “inflation” is taken into account we are looking at a rise of the order of £300m across the whole of UK Defence, which is a little more than I had thought from the budget speech. It may all get swallowed up by CSG 25, not to mention the new Military Strategic HQ. This goes on the back of 24/25, probably the tightest financial year for a long time wrt conventional capability.
The squeeze continues and we can expect a further hollowing out of UK defences, albeit a small one, if nothing is done. I optimistically believe something will be done and these numbers won’t stand.
All this is irrelevant if Trump takes a knife to its contribution to NATO. That new US Defence Secretary looks as if he takes no prisoners, so God help the US forces let alone what happens in Europe. The Trump victory will I fear lead to a major realignment of US force disposition and that means the rest of us will have to dig deep, to fill the hole left behind.
This is what reality biting looks like. European politicians have been ignoring their obligations to their own Defence for far, far too long. It’s about time the incompetent Cameron-Merkel view of International Politics is taken outside and shot.
A major re-alignment of US forces is long overdue. A Continent with 450 million people and a GDP of $12 Trillion shouldn’t need to be defended with US blood and treasure.
Nations stripped of their national heritage will not care to fight for big ideas like global norms, international finance and security frameworks. Europe is already invaded by invite of treasonous governments so who cares if those same govs are on the chopping block from some other?
Yeah I’m not gonna fight for righttrash white supremacists and nor will any decent sensible people. We will fight Nazis though whenever and wherever they raise their pathetic, ignorant ugly heads.
Well I’m sure your confederation of zombie knife wielding, Islamic queens under a very colourful flag will do just great. Have a great war.
Yes, but all of NATO (all 32 countries) exists to provide deterrent forces to provide security across the Euro-Atlantic area….and if deterrence fails to then warfight in that area….or occasionally further away.
If the USA is under attack, all of NATO would weigh in under Article 5.
The only time Article 5 has ever been called up in NATOs history since 1949, was to come to the aid of the USA and defeat their enemy. European NATO paid with much blood and treasure; UK alone lost 457 service personnel killed, many thousands wounded, and the treasure expended was £22.7bn.
I see your comments as part of the ignorant fascist group think that has put Trump back in the White House.
NATO is effectively a mutual insurance policy. We all underwrite one another’s defense to the collective benefit of all. In just over 75yrs only one country has ever ‘claimed’ under that policy. You invoked it for Afghanistan. Everyone turned up, everyone took casualties, three of your allies took heavier casualties than you did. They were two European NATO allies, Denmark and the UK, and Australia.
You then elected a Russian agent who threw it all away.
Now Europe may have to claim and you reelect said Russian agent to stab Ukraine and the whole of Europe in the back.
.
£60 odd billion goes nowhere it seems.And current Govt blames their predecessors and wants the money for Health etc….Mindset will be the French,Germans and particularly the up arming Poles are between us and the Russians…..The newly Trumped USA will probably go toe to toe with China in the Indo Pacific saving UK the bother…So UK can just pootle along with ever decreasing Land Forces,fabulous billion pound frigates,future fabulous £1.5 billion destroyers(4 maybe?) and wait for Tempest!!
Defence inflation has been running ahead of general inflation for years,. So flat or CPI adjusted budgets gradually buy fewer and fewer numbers. Trafalgar class SSNs were built between 1979 and 1991 at an average cost of £200m. That is equivalent to £600/700m today. Astutes have cost @ 2.5 times as much to do the same job. Similar rises in unit cost are to be found in combat aircraft and AFVs.
If we want bigger numbers, we have to settle for lower cost, lower capability equipment- T31 for example.
The word pathetic comes to mind. Is this GDP as it stands or after Reeves destroys the private sector. It could be 0.01 per cent of nothing.
That’s quite a chunky jump in GDP they are comparing with.
I make 64.4/61.4 an increase of 5.4%. Take a bit off for the 0.01%, and 2% inflation (last month was 1.7%, this month a little higher) and that leaves a real GDP increase of 3%+.
Is it really that high?
I think your calculations may be off, but I agree it’s still too high.
It’s £64.4×100/2.29 = £2.81tr GDP this year (24/25) and £67.7×100/2.3 = £2.94 tr next year, so an absolute increase of 4.7% in GDP. Very high. However, the number of significant figures are a little lacking after subtraction and there could be errors creeping in.
The Conservative projections from earlier this year (in Defending Britain) were £2,786tr this year and £2,875 tr next, so there’s been a significant increase in both years’ GDP projections since May. The projected year on year increase back then was 3.2%. It looks like the Labour figures are just bigger all around.
The OBR are currently (30th Oct) forecasting 3.8% nominal growth, and with inflation running at 2.1%ish that’s 1.7% real growth, which seems believeable to me if a little bullish.
I have doubts about Eagle’s figures. Can’t remember offhand, but defence spend for this year was around £54bn, which went up to £57bn with the recent increase.
That is a good way short of her £61,4 bn excluding Ukraine.
At least we finally got a truthful-ish figure about how much we spend on defence, excluding Ukraine. It is 2.18% of GDP, not the 2.3% that Boris, MOD etc have been whitewashing us with.
Working from the previously-published GDP and defence spend figures, i believe the true figure is somewhere between 1.99% and 2.04%. However, MOD/HMG always seem to be able to massage the figures, even their own figures, to present a rosier picture than the maths point to.
I’m glad that someone finally asked the question, good on Mark Francois.
The UK doesn’t determine what qualifies for NATO spending.
£57b is the MODs budget. Other things count towards NATO defence spending, Ukraine for example, which is £3b.
Defence spending is 2.3%, if you start taking things off then you can no longer compare it to anybody else.
I am aware of that James. We have been told for several years that we are spending 2.3% of GDP on defence and are rather pleased with ourselves for being in the top tier of NATO spenders.
The issue that has been obscured is, what is the CORE defence spend, EXCLUDING Ukraine, and what percentage of GDP does it really amount to?
The Hoiuse of Commons Library has it as 1.9% in 2022/3. I work it out for 2023/4 at 1.99 to 2.04. So without the Ukraine spend, we are barely reaching NATO’s 2% minimum target.
The Minister’s answer tells us it is now over 2.1%, which may be on the optimistic side regarding GDP.
The official NATO figure that gets published includes the Ukraine spend, so we can rightly claim to be spending 2.3% overall. But the core budget available to the services for pay, equipment, housing etc remains around 2%, basically the minimum possible we can get away with without attracting the ire of the USA and allies.
With The USA electing what even Disney must object to being called a “mickey mouse” government intent on wrecking American democracy & our enemies on the march, this is terrible news that we’re sticking at way too small for benign peacetime in a very, very dangerous world with major threats to the free world.
Remember its the boots on the ground that do the fighting and dying
It is always a % of GDP so given the way things look like they are heading the money spent on defence will fall along with GDP unless local government pension funds can be persuaded to risk all in dash for growth.
I am supposed Ukraine is combing out of the defence budget and not out of central covenant spending.
Now boys, say thank you to the nice Chancellor and don’t go and spend it all at once.