The British government’s defence spending is set to be increased by more than £1 billion ($1.21 billion) so that there is no real-terms cut in the next two years, reported the Telegraph newspaper on Saturday.
According to the report, the increment in the budget will be announced by UK’s Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt in the spring.
According to the newspaper, as per the estimate of military experts, the budget of the Ministry of Defence must increase from £48.6 billion to £50.1 billion in 2024-25 to avoid real-terms cut as the country’s inflation continues to remain more than 10%.
In the autumn budget presented last month, Hunt said that the requirement of increasing the defence budget has been recognised by the government and confirmed that the budget will be maintained at least 2% of the gross domestic product in accordance with NATO.
“We have one of the largest defence budgets in Europe and in 2020 we announced the biggest increase to defence spending since the Cold War,” said a government spokesperson while speaking to Reuters.
The spokesperson further stated that any increase in the defence budget will be considered in the next integrated review’s part, which will also lay out the country’s foreign policy, security and defence priorities in the spring.
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The announcement of an increase in defence spending will be seen as Defence Secretary Ben Wallace’s victory, who was pushing hard for this in the past year.
Royal United Services Institute’s deputy director-general Prof Malcolm Chalmers, while speaking to The Telegraph said, “It looks as if the Chancellor in his Spring Budget will provide enough money to maintain the core defence budget in real terms over the next two years. And indeed the Government has already committed to doing that next year.”
(With inputs from agencies)
