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.
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.
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.
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
£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?
“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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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.
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.
£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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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.