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Sir Keir Starmer has promised to “spend more” on defense, even after the treasure told the ministers who headed other departments to model for budget cuts up to 11 percent in the coming months.
“Part of my message to our European allies is that we all have to grow both in skill and expenses and funds,” the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom said on Monday. “This includes the UK. That is why I have made that commitment to spend more.”
Starmer has pledged to determine a “path” to increase the protection costs from 2.3 percent of GDP to 2.5 percent, but has refused to say when the goal will be reached.
His problem – shared with other European leaders who gathered in Paris on Monday for a crisis meeting in Ukraine – is that public finances are already strained to break the point.
Chancellor in the UK Rachel Reeves wants to delay increased protection costs to 2.5 percent-with an additional annual cost of about 5bn-6bn-as long as possible to facilitate pressure on public finances before a choice of choice Expected in 2029, according to people, informed her thinking.
Starmer has told the defense chiefs that while he will eventually hit the 2.5 percent target, he will not meet their demands to increase costs by a further 4BN to 2.65 percent, as discovered by the Financial Times.
In a sign of chronic squeezing in public finances, the treasure has told most government departments to model for three different scenarios in the next review review.
The cuts range from 2-11 percent during the three-year expense review period, the last figure reported first by Bloomberg. Exercise is a standard treasure process to force ministers to identify possible cuts.
Starmer has promised that there will be “no return to coercion”, but there is a growing concern throughout Whitehall that expense review will produce heavy cuts in many areas. The review will be completed in June.
As the line of the economy line, Reeves’ problems have been exacerbated by the shameful data that has deleted a £ 10 billion pillow against breaking its fiscal rules.
Referring to the treasury modeling exercise for possible cuts, a person involved in the expense review process said: “Totally is completely unrealistic if you do not want big cuts in current services.
“But we are all taking modeling seriously because we can see that there is no money after all the head room that had been swallowed. It will be catastrophic.”
A government interior said the scenarios for the cuts presented in the departments were “the type of things you see at the beginning of any expense review”.
The Treasury said: “The Chancellor has asked all departments to provide savings and efficiency of 5 percent of their current budget as part of the first revision of zero -based spending in 17 years and any pound of government spending is being questioned, to root out the debris and get the best value for taxpayers. “
She added that the spending scenarios in the government departments were not final allocations.
