UK’s likely next PM Andy Burnham faces defence funding gap

Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis is facing questions over the funding gap and whether Burnham was blindsided,

Andy Burnham will have to find an additional 4.7 billion pounds ($6.2bn) to close a defence funding gap if, as is widely expected, he becomes the United Kingdom’s prime minister later this month.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Tuesday announced a long-delayed defence plan aimed at making the UK’s depleted armed forces war-ready amid ⁠rising security threats and warnings that Russia could attack a NATO member as soon as 2030.

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However, the plan’s commitment to spend an additional 15 billion pounds ($19.9bn) came under scrutiny within hours of its release after accompanying documents showed that almost a third of the funding still needed to be found in a budget later this ‌year.

Burnham only found out about the funding hole on the day it was published, Minister of Defence Procurement Luke Pollard said on Wednesday.

“It’s not unusual for governments to make announcements saying this is what we’ll spend, and then to complete the details of that at the next budget,” Pollard told Sky News.

Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis is facing questions over the funding gap and whether Burnham was blindsided by the need to plug it in his first budget.

Jarvis sidestepped repeated questions about whether it had been made clear to Burnham that he was being left with a funding gap.

“Of course, we’ve been talking to Andy Burnham and his team about this plan,” Jarvis told BBC Newsnight, pointing to Starmer’s focus on a “smooth transition” of power.

Burnham is widely expected to become the UK’s prime minister later in July.

“I know that if Andy Burnham becomes the prime minister … that he will take national security as seriously as Keir has taken it,” Pollard said.

He later declined to answer questions on when Burnham had been told of the financial details, saying, “I’m not involved with those conversations,” in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Opposition politicians and former military chiefs also criticised the defence investment plan for failing to set out when defence spending would reach 3 percent of GDP, on the way to meeting the UK’s NATO commitment to spend 3.5 percent of GDP by 2035.

Starmer defended the costings on Tuesday, saying much of the additional funding would come from reallocating spending from other government departments.