Kemi Badenoch has set out her Badenoch defence spending plan to raise the UK’s military budget to 3% of GDP by 2030, funded through a combination of welfare reforms, accusing the Burnham government of delaying action on a threat she described as immediate.
Speaking at a press conference in central London, Badenoch said: ‘Andy Burnham is kicking defence spending into the long grass. Our enemies are not going to sit around and wait for Labour to find the money to fight them.’
She added: ‘Conflict is coming, we must act now.’
How the Badenoch defence spending plan would be funded
The Conservatives say the commitment, worth £10bn a year, would be financed through several measures. These include reimposing the two-child benefit cap, which Labour scrapped in April, and reforming housing benefit. The party estimates housing benefit reforms would save at least £4bn. Removing the VAT exemption for Motability vehicles would save a further £1bn, Badenoch said, with additional money drawn from savings on the Chagos deal and redirecting funds from the British Business Bank.
Housing benefit made up about 12% of the government’s welfare bill this year, with £37.3bn forecast to be spent. The Motability scheme, operated by a private company overseen by a charity, has historically given disabled people in receipt of eligible welfare benefits a 20% VAT discount on cars. Last year, Rachel Reeves made the first changes to the Motability scheme in 50 years, removing about 50,000 premium cars from the scheme and reinstating 20% VAT for most new cars, alongside higher mileage charges.
Badenoch said the final part of her party’s plans to reach the 3% figure had now been completed. She denied that reimposing the two-child benefit cap would increase child poverty, telling the BBC: ‘It is not going to increase child poverty. What increases child poverty is children’s parents not having work or being paid low wages. We want to grow our economy.’
The wider NATO context and the scale of the commitment
The row over timelines sits against a backdrop of sharply rising NATO spending expectations. According to the Institute for Government, NATO members have committed to spending 5% of GDP by 2035 on core defence requirements and defence- and security-related spending. That figure comprises 3.5% under the agreed NATO definition of defence spending, plus 1.5% on other related activity. The Institute for Government also notes that the Office for Budget Responsibility has said the UK’s commitment to spending 3.5% of GDP on defence by 2035 would be equivalent to £40bn additional spending per year in 2025/26 prices, underlining the scale of the fiscal challenge involved regardless of which party is in government.
So far, Burnham’s government has committed only to setting out a plan in the spring to meet the NATO target of 3.5% of GDP by 2035. Burnham has insisted the government is committed to fully funding its defence plans and will set out a pathway in the spring.
The forthcoming strategic defence review adds further context to the dispute. The House of Commons Library notes that John Healey has described the review as the ‘first of its kind in the UK’ because it is externally led, rather than conducted by the government itself. It is led by Lord Robertson, a former Labour Defence Secretary and Secretary General of NATO.
Burnham has pointed to his appointment of Healey as chancellor as proof of commitment to defence investment, noting that Healey quit as defence secretary in June over the previous government’s failure to commit to a 3% increase. Badenoch challenged that directly. ‘He resigned because Britain was not on track to reach 3% by 2030 and I praised him at the time for that decision,’ she said. ‘Now that he is chancellor he does not seem to believe that any more and I am concerned he has been bought off with a promotion.’
She said Burnham should call a general election if he is unwilling to commit the money now.
The Badenoch defence spending plan was also raised at Prime Minister’s Questions, where Labour MP Tan Dhesi called on Burnham to urgently commit to a path to spending 3% of GDP on defence by 2030. ‘Defence is definitely one area where vibes alone just isn’t going to be enough,’ Dhesi said. Burnham faces pressure from within his own party as well as from the opposition to accelerate the timetable, with the government’s spring statement on defence spending now the next fixed moment for the issue to be resolved.
