Andy Burnham will inherit a £4.7bn bill to deliver the Defence Investment Plan if, as expected, he becomes prime minister next month – a fiscal time bomb that has already triggered a backlash from a serving minister. Hamish Falconer, the Lincoln MP and minister, went public about the uncertainty now swirling around a road widening project for the A46 Newark bypass near his constituency, one of the sharp trade-offs forced by the much delayed plan.
The plan, unveiled by Sir Keir Starmer before his last scheduled set‑piece foreign event as PM – the Nato summit in Ankara – was intended to spare Burnham from having to front up its publication himself. But the numbers point to a big gap the next government will need to fill this autumn. Already, finding another £5bn from existing budgets could prompt plenty more backbench gnashing of teeth.
“Andy Burnham faces a £4.7bn bill to fund Starmer's defence plan amid warnings of shortfalls and tough trade-offs.”
Sir Keir was in a reflective mood as he took public ownership of the DIP, keeping a promise to have it published before the summit. Heading to Ankara without it would have heaped further embarrassment on a man already en route to the fire exit of leadership. But, as he put it, “there will always be those who say, whatever the sum is frankly, it is not enough”. He acknowledged the plan marked the “end of my journey” and he would “depart the stage… knowing we have left this country in a better state than we got it”.
Not everyone agrees. Sir Ben Wallace, a former defence secretary, said the DIP felt like an attempt to “give Sir Keir a leaving present”. “But if you start unpicking the facts and the hard figures, almost nothing has changed,” he added.
The truth is that military budgets will be well short of the UK’s Nato commitments by the end of the decade – a shortfall European allies and a combustible White House are likely to notice. Squeezing other departments is one option, but raising taxes would be fraught and the headroom for extra borrowing is limited. Another is to abandon Britain’s residual ambitions to be more than a regional power, though allies are not keen for the UK to take that route.
Compounding the challenge, Dan Jarvis, the new defence secretary, said on Tuesday that 47 out of 49 major projects were delayed or over budget. At the heart of the plan is a massive investment in nuclear, which already accounts for 20% of the entire defence budget and is rising to 25% as modernisation continues. A total of £47bn is being spent on nuclear submarines, principally Dreadnought boats to replace the ageing Trident‑carrying Vanguards, whose crews now endure record‑breaking patrols of six months or more. Yet, as the public accounts committee complained in June, the nuclear programme has been subject to limited scrutiny by parliament because it is considered too sensitive.
The reckoning came after it emerged late last year that the Ministry of Defence’s sprawling ambition was £28bn underfunded – prompting months of bitter ministerial wrangling. Labour ministers are right to say their Conservative predecessors left behind a funding mess, while increasing commitments by extending support to Ukraine and signing up to develop nuclear‑powered submarines with Australia and the US, and fighter jets with Japan and Italy.
Defence Minister Luke Pollard told the BBC there had been “regular talks between Downing Street and Andy’s team about the defence investment plan”. For now, Burnham has not commented on the DIP. But as one prime minister departs and another prepares to move in, the brutal arithmetic of defence spending is unlikely to get any easier.