Treasury yet to do due diligence on finding extra money for UK’s Nato spend

Tri-service personnel from UK’s aremd forces beside an Mk5 Chinook at the Special Operations Forces HQ at Upavon, Wiltshire, England. Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA View image in fullscreen Tri-service personnel from UK’s aremd forces beside an Mk5 Chinook at the Special Operations Forces HQ at Upavon, Wiltshire, England. Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA Treasury yet to do due diligence on finding extra money for UK’s Nato spend How to hit the 3.5% of GDP defence spending promise would be a matter for ‘the next prime minister’, MPs told The Treasury has as yet carried out no analysis of the trade-offs necessary for the UK to hit the 3.5% of GDP defence spending promise made to Nato , chief secretary Lucy Rigby has said. Under robust questioning in a joint session of the Treasury and defence select committees on Wednesday, Rigby repeatedly said that how to fund additional defence spending would be a matter for “the next prime minister”. Keir Starmer, who is attending his last Nato summit in Ankara, Turkey, has promised the UK will hit the 3.5% target by 2035. The failure to set out a future spending path was among the reasons for the dramatic recent resignation of John Healey as defence secretary. Asked if the Treasury had done any number-crunching , Rigby said, “these are decisions for the future government to make.” Treasury select committee chair, Meg Hillier, reminded her, “you are the chief secretary of Treasury. You’re the one in the government who oversees all the public spending.” Asked, “have you done an analysis of the trade offs that would need to be done, in the short or long term?” Rigby first deferred to the Treasury official appearing alongside her, and when pressed again, responded, “no, is the short answer.” Committee member Bobby Dean pointed out the scale of the shift that would be necessary – “you’re talking about £30-40bn extra, equivalent to 3p to 4p on all rates of income tax.” Rigby said there would have to be a debate about “public consent” for such a change. The government has an interim target of spending 3% on defence in the next parliament, but the path to that has not yet been set out – a question Rigby said would be left for the next spending review, expected in mid-2027, by which time Andy Burnham is expected to be prime minister. “We’ve said for the next parliament, we will get to 3%. And I understand that the question is being asked when in the next parliament. And I come back to the fact that the prime minister has said that defence will be the number one priority at the next spending review,” she said. Rigby repeatedly stressed the difficult decisions in prospect, however, saying, “it’s not straightforward: money is finite.” Healey resigned in the run-up to the publication of the contentious Defence Investment Plan, which set out an additional £15bn of funding for the department over the next four years, taking it to 2.7% of GDP. Whitehall departments have been asked to cut on investment plans to fund the shift; but Rig