Tag: military spending

Today, 20 October 2022, Liz Truss, UK Prime Minister, has resigned and the British Government is in a feverish condition following a couple of weeks of disastrous policy decisions and U-turns. The newly appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, has said that there will have to be painful cuts in the spending of government departments.

SO THERE WILL BE CUTS to public services – AND THE BRITISH PUBLIC WILL surely question why arms spending is continuing to increase rapidly.  Surely the public will not accept that arms manufacture would take precedence of over key departments such as the health service,  and education
The UK now has the biggest defence/arms spending budget in Europe. On 19th of November 2020 the government announced the largest military spending budget for 30 years.
This amounted to a £16.5 billion increase above the manifesto commitment over four years.
On existing forecasts, this is an overall cash increase of £24.1 billion over four years compared to the previous year’s budget.
The Royal United Services Institute said that the “additional cash represents a real-term increase of between 10 percent and 15 percent in the defence budget.”

HUGE FURTHER INCREASES IN SPENDING PLANNED
But now the government is planning astronomic further increases.

Professor Malcolm Chalmers of the Royal United Services Institute web 2 Sep 2022 commented on the latest UK arms spending target:
“To deliver on its commitment to spend 3% of GDP on defence by 2030, Liz Truss’s government will need to increase defence spending by about 60% in real terms. This is equivalent to about £157 billion in additional spending over the next eight years, compared with current planning assumptions. By comparison, the 2020 Spending Review, and the associated Integrated Review, allocated an extra £16.5 billion over four years. This would be the biggest increase since the early 1950s.”

Professor Malcolm Chalmers, Royal United Services Institute website, 2 Sep 2022. TO PUBLIC SERVICES