No 10 to ditch defence spending manifesto pledge | Defence policy

Boris Johnson and Ben Wallace could be in a collision course as Downing Street abandons its pledge to increase the defense budget by at least 0.5% above inflation each year.

Wallace, who is attending the Nato summit in Madrid this weekend, has reportedly written an open letter to the prime minster requesting that the defence budget be increased to 2.5% percent of GDP by 2028. It currently stands at 2.1%.

Wallace was expected publicly to call for an additional increase in a speech to be delivered to the Royal United Services Institute, (RUSI) defense thinktank later Tuesday.

The 2019 Conservative manifesto pledged to keep defence spending above the 2% of GDP target sought by Nato, and also “increase the budget by at least 0.5% above inflation every year of the new parliament”.

But, with inflation at a high of 9% and expected further increases, this would be a significant increase. A senior government source warned that the pledge was unlikely be kept.

“There is a reality check on things that were offered in a different age,” they said.

“The intention is always to honour manifesto commitments but they were made before £400bn was spent coping with a global pandemic that none could have possibly foreseen.”

The prime minister’s official spokesperson said of the 0.5% promise: “We are committed to that and the 2% [Nato GDP target] but again I’m not speculating on future fiscal commitments.”

The Ministry of Defence could resist a failure to meet the 0.5% above inflation rise. Wallace’s leaked request for defence spending to reach 2.5% of GDP, first reported by Talk TV, came as newly released figures from Nato show the proportion spent by the UK has fallen for a second year running.

A UK defence source refused to comment on a leak, but added: “The defence secretary and the prime minister have always said that the government will respond to any changes in threat, which is why in 2020 the Ministry of Defence received a record defence settlement.”

Figures released by Nato on Monday show that Britain is projected to spend 2.12% of national income on defence in 2022, above the alliance’s 2% target but below the 2.26% spent in 2021 and 2.3% in 2020.

The UK is expected confirm its commitment to Estonian defense during the Nato summit. It already has 1,700 soldiers there. It is part a wider NATO policy to increase the size of the forces defending eastern Europe’s frontline states to the level of a brigade.

The army’s chief, Gen Sir Patrick Sanders, also suggested that Britain would need to spend more defense money in order to withstand Russian aggression. The chief of the general staff said that the British army had to mobilise “to prevent war”, arguing that the military faced a “1937 moment” in which it had become necessary to modernise and adapt “to meet today’s threat”.

The service chief did not directly call for extra spending but told a land warfare conference that the UK and other European Nato members had to assume more of the cost of defending Europe given the US’s growing concern with China.

He said: “Given the commitments of the US in Asia in the [coming decades], I believe that the burden of conventional deterrence will fall increasingly to European members of Nato.”