What have the government and Labour said on defence spending?

Defence spending has become a key political battleground in recent weeks, and it came up again today when the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak gave a heavily-trailed speech at the Policy Exchange think tank.

In the speech itself, Mr Sunak said: “We’ve proudly taken the generational decision to increase defence spending to a new baseline of 2.5% of GDP by 2030. Yet Labour have refused to match our pledge.”

And in the Q&A that followed the speech, Mr Sunak said: “We’ve made the decision to increase defence spending to 2.5%... Keir Starmer and the Labour party have been crystal clear that they don't believe in that. They will not match that choice.”

So what exactly have the Conservatives and Labour pledged on defence?

Last month the government announced that it would increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030.

At the time, the government—including Mr Sunak—claimed this represents £75 billion in additional defence spending. We’ve explained previously that this figure is misleading.

By comparison, the Labour party has said it is also committed to increasing spending to 2.5% of GDP. But unlike the government, it has not set out a specific timescale to meet this target, and instead says only that it will raise spending to 2.5% of GDP “as soon as resources allow”.

In response to the government’s announcement last month, shadow defence secretary John Healey MP said Labour would support a plan that was “fully costed and fully funded, and set out in the government’s baseline budgets”.

The government’s defence spending pledge has been questioned by a number of think tanks, with the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Institute for Government and Chatham House saying the government has not adequately explained how it will be funded.