{"id":203001,"date":"2026-06-30T16:24:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T16:24:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2026\/06\/30\/will-the-uks-plan-for-defence-help-it-hit-natos-spending-target\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T16:24:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T16:24:17","slug":"will-the-uks-plan-for-defence-help-it-hit-natos-spending-target","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2026\/06\/30\/will-the-uks-plan-for-defence-help-it-hit-natos-spending-target\/","title":{"rendered":"Will the UK’s plan for defence help it hit Nato’s spending target?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The government has published the much-delayed Defence Investment Plan (DIP) and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said the additional spending represents a “huge historic shift for our nation”.<\/b><\/p>\n

BBC Verify has been looking at how much extra the government is committing to spend on defence in the coming years – and whether it puts the UK on track to hit its promised commitments.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Ministry of Defence’s overall budget for 2026-27 is \u00a368.3bn, according to the Defence Investment Plan. <\/p>\n

However there is a measure known as Nato-qualifying defence spending which is wider than the MoD’s budget, because it includes state spending on things like military pensions. <\/p>\n

According to this measure the UK’s spending was estimated by the military alliance to be \u00a370bn in 2025, equivalent to 2.4% of the UK’s GDP in that year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In February 2025 Sir Keir committed to raising Nato-qualifying defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027.<\/p>\n

The prime minister also announced that the activities of the UK’s security and intelligence agencies would – by 2027 – be classified as Nato-qualifying defence spending. As a result spending would hit 2.6% of GDP by 2027.<\/p>\n

The prime minister also stated a “clear ambition” to increase spending to 3% of GDP “in the next parliament”.<\/p>\n

At a Nato summit in the Hague in June 2025 the UK and other members committed to spend 5% of GDP on defence and security with 3.5% going to Nato-qualifying “core defence” by 2035.<\/p>\n

The alliance’s members agreed that the rest of the 5% (1.5% of GDP) could be made up of spending to “protect critical infrastructure, defend networks, ensure civil preparedness and resilience, innovate, and strengthen the defence industrial base.”<\/p>\n

Sir Keir said on Tuesday that the measures in the DIP “takes us to 4.2% under that commitment”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When he resigned on 11 June, former Defence Secretary John Healey said that the DIP he had been presented with only committed to take Nato-qualifying defence spending to 2.68% by 2030.<\/p>\n

He said this was insufficient “to defend the country at this time of rising threats” and the government should be committing 3% of GDP to defence by 2030 rather than in the next parliament. <\/p>\n

The actual DIP says that “based on latest projections” UK defence spending will rise to 2.7% of GDP by 2027-28.<\/p>\n

It does not provide a year-by-year estimate for later years but states that the money spent on defence “by the end of the decade will be 2.7% of GDP”.<\/p>\n

That suggests that the proportion of GDP spent on defence is not planned to change between 2027 and 2030<\/p>\n

That 2.7% figure suggests an increase on the original DIP of around 0.02% of GDP, which the government has found since Healey resigned – that’s equivalent in today’s money to \u00a3600m extra in 2030.<\/p>\n

Healey posted on X after the DIP was published on Tuesday that a “target date” was needed to achieve the 3% target and a “clear plan” for how the UK gets to Nato’s 3.5% of GDP by 2035.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sir Keir Starmer has insisted that as a result of this Defence Investment Plan the UK is on a “trajectory” to achieve the ambition of spending 3% of GDP in the next parliament.<\/p>\n

And the DIP states that the separate commitment to Nato of 3.5% of GDP by 2035 “will be met”.<\/p>\n

However, it is hard to see how reaching 2.7% of GDP by 2030 would put the UK on a trajectory to meet that target.<\/p>\n

Future spending reviews could potentially change that picture if they commit more money for the MoD’s budget and other defence activity in future years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The prime minister has frequently claimed the government is spending \u00a3270bn on defence over this parliament which he says is “the biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the 1980s”.<\/p>\n

This number represents the total cash spending figure for the MoD budget set out in the 2025 Spending Review, covering the four years to 2028-29.<\/p>\n

Sir Keir said today that the DIP increases this by “a further \u00a315bn”.<\/p>\n

So this \u00a315bn figure is an increase in defence spending over four years relative to previous plans.<\/p>\n

Reports suggest that the original DIP would have increased spending by \u00a313.5bn over four years. <\/p>\n

That suggests that, over four years, the government has found an additional \u00a31.5bn for defence since Healey resigned from Sir Keir’s cabinet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

It has also been widely reported there was a \u00a328bn “shortfall” in the UK’s defence budget.<\/p>\n

The figure was originally reported by the Times in January<\/p>\n

The paper said the Chief of the Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, had warned Sir Keir at a meeting late last year that the MoD faced a \u00a328bn shortfall over the next four years.<\/p>\n

The MoD has said that \u00a328bn number did not come from them and it has not been officially confirmed.<\/p>\n

It might represent an internal MoD estimate of the gap between its available budget funding over the next four years and the cost of existing commitments.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The government has published the much-delayed Defence Investment Plan (DIP) and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said the additional spending represents a “huge historic shift for our nation”. BBC Verify has been looking at how much extra the government is committing to spend on defence in the coming years – and whether it puts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-203001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nWill the UK's plan for defence help it hit Nato's spending target? - Tahrir News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2026\/06\/30\/will-the-uks-plan-for-defence-help-it-hit-natos-spending-target\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Will the UK's plan for defence help it hit Nato's spending target?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The government has published the much-delayed Defence Investment Plan (DIP) and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said the additional spending represents a “huge historic shift for our nation”. 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