What was claimed
In this Parliament, the government will spend £270 billion more on defence than it would otherwise have done.
Our verdict
Incorrect. This figure refers to the Ministry of Defence’s total projected spend between 2025/26 and 2028/29, and is not how much spending will increase by.
“We have already committed to 2.5% in 2027, and we will hit that. That means that, in this Parliament, we will spend £270 billion more than we would otherwise have done on defence.”
While giving evidence to Parliament’s Liaison Committee this week, the prime minister Sir Keir Starmer claimed the Labour government will “spend £270 billion more than we would otherwise have done on defence” in this Parliament.
But this isn’t correct.
As we explained earlier this month after hearing a similar claim from Mr Starmer, this figure—£270 billion—is roughly the total projected spend of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) between 2025/26 and 2028/29, not the cumulative total of year-on-year increases in spending as Mr Starmer suggested.
Totalling the planned MoD spends for each of the years between 2025/26 and 2028/29 gives a figure of £272.2 billion.
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In cash terms, the MoD’s budget increased by £1.9 billion between 2024/25 and 2025/26 and it’s set to increase by £3.3 billion next year, compared to 2025/26. It’s unlikely any government would keep the defence budget frozen in cash terms each year while they’re in charge.
The government has committed to spending 2.5% on defence by April 2027, and it says defence spending that matches NATO’s broader definition will surpass this and reach 2.6% of GDP by April 2027. The Ministry of Defence has said this planned increase “means that, over this Spending Review period, the government will invest over £270 billion in cash terms on defence”.
Defence minister Luke Pollard MP previously referred to this figure of £270 billion as the “total of the Ministry of Defence's budget from financial year 2025/26 to 2028/29”.
We’ve asked Mr Starmer and Number 10 about this and will update this article if we receive a response.
Ministers should correct false or misleading claims made in Parliament as soon as possible in keeping with the Ministerial Code which states that they should correct “any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity”.
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