Labour is calling for “a post 9/11” style increase in defence spending in response to the Ukraine crisis following forecasts that the budget could fall by up to 3% a year this parliament despite the outbreak of a war in Europe.
The party declined to put a firm figure on the commitment sought, but, in the decade after 9/11, defence spending increased by more than £10bn a year in real terms, partly to pay for costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
John Healey, the party’s defence spokesperson, said Downing Street needed to urgently overhaul last year’s Integrated Review of defence and foreign policy, which had set out plans for an “Indo-Pacific tilt” to contain China.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrated, Healey said, that significant threats lay much closer to home and that the UK needed to “honour our Nato obligations in Europe”, and reverse a 9,500 cut in the size of the British army by 2025.
“‘Global Britain’ was the prime minister’s vanity plan, not a national strategy for Britain to be a force for good in the world. It took security and prosperity in Europe for granted,” Healey said.
“Ministers must respond to new threats to UK and European security, just as Labour in government did after the 9/11 terror attacks with the largest sustained increase in defence spending for two decades,” the shadow defence secretary added.
The government’s Integrated Review, published last March, did not forecast either “a Taliban takeover in Afghanistan or invasion of Ukraine”, Labour added. Instead, it proposed to cut tanks by a third and scrap the Hercules transport aircraft as well as cut the size of the army to its lowest level since 1714.
Under Keir Starmer’s leadership, Labour has been increasingly keen to present itself as a party focused on Britain’s national security – with Healey telling the Guardian that Labour would support any future increases in defence spending if they were proposed by the Conservative government.
Britain is expecting to spend £31.6bn on day to day defence spending in between 2021 and 2022, and a further £14.6bn on capital. But despite government promises of a four-year spending boost last year, rising inflation means spending is set to fall in real terms.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies, an independent thinktank, estimates that the day-to-day defence budget could fall by 3% a year in real terms for the rest of the parliament using the CPI measure of inflation and by 1.9% a year with capital investment included.
Healey accused ministers of presiding over inaction while the war in Ukraine continued, after no significant change was announced by chancellor Rishi Sunak last week. Several other Nato countries, led by Germany, have pledged to lift their defence spending since the war began.
“Putin isn’t operating to the Treasury’s timetable or the MoD’s five-yearly defence reviews. Russia is waging a war in Europe, so Britain can’t carry on with business as before,” the Labour MP said.
Britain has agreed to double the 900 troops it bases in Estonia and send a further 450 to Poland since the crisis began, but eastern European members of Nato, nervous of Russian intentions, want the alliance go further in the coming months.
Additional deployments will be agreed at the next summit of the military alliance in Madrid in June.
