Sunak suggests he won't shy away from making cuts to hit the defensive target | Defense policy

Rishi Sunak has suggested he will not avoid further cuts in public spending to boost defense spending, as he faced questions about how the policy will be funded.

He said the plan would not affect governments' ability to cut taxes and was the right thing to do in an increasingly dangerous world.

The Prime Minister has pledged to spend 2.5% of GDP on defense by 2030, an increase of more than 75 billion over the next six years compared to current levels. However, the government's numbers have faced scrutiny from economists who have said they will lead to bigger spending cuts in other areas.

Asked at a news conference in Berlin whether his defense boost would mean tax hikes and deep cuts, he said that was not a fair characterization.

We have made a choice and I am not shying away from that choice, he said. All governance is about prioritization. I have decided to prioritize defense because I think it is the right thing to do for our country.

Sunak said investment in the NHS and schools which, along with international development, are protected areas will not change.

He said the plan, which will cost £4.5 billion a year until 2028-29, is fully funded and he has already ruled out any increase in borrowing or debt to pay for it. Of the increase, 1.6 billion will come from an increase in defense research and development funding, although it is unclear which department will lose out as a result.

The remaining 2.9 billion will come from a reduction in the number of civil service workers to pre-pandemic levels, a cut of 70,000 people. It's a fully funded plan, Sunak said. We have a very clear idea of ​​how to reduce the number of civil service workers, which has grown significantly over the last few years, while continuing to invest in public services and reduce people's taxes.

However, the prime minister has faced some skepticism from economists over the cost of the commitment, which will be an extra 4.5 billion by 2028-29, taking defense spending from about 73.8 billion a year to 78.2 billion.

Defense expenditure charts for NATO members

The 2.5% target will only be reached in 2030-31, which is beyond the horizon of official fiscal forecasts, meaning a further 2.5 billion a year will need to be found from 2028-29.

Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said: The overall spending envelope is set in the budget and not adjusted. With no more overall spending (and no tax increases), that can only mean one thing: bigger spending cuts elsewhere.

He criticized the governments' figures as impenetrable, misleading and internally inconsistent, suggesting that defense spending claims were exaggerated.

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Torsten Bell, director of the Resolution Foundation, said that governments' spending plans even before the defense announcement were based on large cuts in future public spending that most economists thought were unattainable.

The scale of fiscal commitment fictions being built after this election is a real problem, he said.

Sunak's defense commitment could be academic if Labour, which has said it wants to see a fully funded plan to reach 2.5% of GDP, wins the next election.

After his meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Sunak said it was perfectly reasonable for the US to demand more European defense spending. NATO's current target for defense spending is 2%, although only 11 members of the alliance met this target in 2023. The government wants this benchmark to rise to 2.5%, which would add 140 billion to the NATO budget. s if fulfilled by all 32 members.

Unusually among world leaders, Scholz refuses to give or accept gifts with visiting dignitaries. Sunak had traveled to Berlin from Poland, where Donald Tusk had presented him with a painting of Gdansk, where the Polish prime minister was a student activist in the late 1980s, by Iwona Deptuch-Dymowska. In return, Sunak gave him a photo of Margaret Thatcher on a visit to Gdansks shipyards.