Spending on the welfare system and foreign aid will have to be cut to pay for a dramatic increase in defence expenditure, Labour MPs have told The i Paper.
MPs said it was inevitable that “additional savings” would have to found across Whitehall to quickly ramp up military spending amid concerns that Europe can no longer rely on America for its security.
The news come ahead of a critical week for Sir Keir Starmer in which he will fly to Washington DC to hold talks on Ukraine with US President Donald Trump on Thursday
Labour has already committed to increasing spending on defence from its current level of about 2.3 per cent of GDP to 2.5 per cent by 2030.
However, with Trump demanding European countries spend more on their military with the US saying it will no longer be “primarily focused on the security of Europe” and with the expectation that European nations may have to deploy peacekeeping troops into Ukraine, Starmer is coming under pressure to go further and faster.
Speaking in Glasgow today, Starmer appeared to set the tone for his White House meeting, saying Trump was “right” that “we Europeans – including the United Kingdom – have to do more for our defence and security”.
Labour MPs widely believe that the ramping up of military spending will have to be funded by cuts across a number of departments, to protect ring-fenced areas such as the NHS.
A Labour MP said: “There’s not going to be a solution where the money all comes out of one pot. It’ll probably be small amounts of savings in lots of different places.”
Luke Akehurst, the MP for North Durham, meanwhile told The i Paper: “It is about communicating to the electorate that our top responsibility, the top responsibility of any government – Labour, Tory – is the protection of its citizens and its interests and its national security.
“It will mean that we will have to find additional savings from elsewhere in order to meet our commitments when it comes to defence spending.”
A Labour MP said that savings would likely come from “unprotected” departments outside of health and education and could include “reducing the welfare bill” by getting people “off benefits and into work”.
A second Labour MP agreed, saying it was “already obvious that welfare spending needs urgent change and to be reduced dramatically”.
The MP added that “diverting international aid spend to mirror foreign and defence priorities should be part of the answer”.
The Conservatives said on Sunday that they would support moving money from the welfare and aid budgets into defence.
Another Labour MP said that reprioritising money from aid to defence was an “excellent idea”.
“The principle should be every penny we spend overseas should be driven by national security,” they said.
“Some may still end up in things we do under the aid budget but it’s not ‘aid’, it’s about projecting power and security. But it would mean more on hard power and less on poverty reduction type things.”
However, not all Labour MPs are on board with the idea of cutting spending on aid, which was already reduced by Boris Johnson from 0.7 per cent of national income to 0.5 per cent during the Covid-19 pandemic.
A Labour MP said: “Suggesting cutting overseas aid would be self-defeating. Why would you stop doing something that is about soft power and diplomacy and solving conflicts before they happen, in order to use that to fund defence?”
A Labour backbencher said: “It’s not a very Labour thing to do… if you really did want to piss off the whole of the middle of the Parliamentary Labour Party… you’d turn around to them and say ‘we need more kit for the military and we’re going to pay for it by taking food from out of the mouths of starving children in Africa’.”
However, one of the MPs who backed diverting money from the aid budget said they believed the PLP could be won round.
“Aid is definitely a sensitive subject for many. But there are many sensitive subjects,” they said.
“The PLP will get on board because Keir is the PM and it’s so obvious that Britain needs to spend more on defence in this world. And in the worst case world, we could do it on Tory votes.”
Starmer and his aides are reported to have been wargaming Thursday’s meeting, having spent recent days attempting not to fan the flames of Trump’s outbursts against Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders.
The PM said over the weekend that Trump was “right” about calls to increase European defence spending and hopes that laying out UK plans to hit 2.5 per cent and head towards 3 per cent could help smooth negotiations over the role of the US in securing Ukraine’s future.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said the UK would significantly increase its commitment from the current 2.3 per cent share of gross domestic product (GDP) and urged other allies to “step up alongside that”.
Asked by Sky News whether the Prime Minister would promise Trump that the UK will spend “much more” when he meets him next week, Phillipson told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme: “Let’s be clear, 2.5 per cent is ambitious.
“We will get there, but it is ambitious, and this is also in the context of the public finances which, let’s be honest, were left in a devastating state by the Conservatives – a £22 billion black hole, no credible plan for this nonsense that they claim around how they were going to reach 2.5 per cent.”
Speaking to Times Radio, she also suggested the UK ultimately needs to go further than the 2.5 per cent target, which the previous Tory government had pledged to reach by 2030.
Asked whether the figure was enough, she said: “No it’s not enough, we do need to go further, we recognise that.
“We recognise we need to go further, as do our allies, both in reaching that 2.5 per cent commitment, but making sure we do everything that is necessary to keep our country safe.”
Downing Street was contacted for comment.
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