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Chancellor Rachel Reeves will increase the UK defense spending by 2.2 billion for the next year as she gives a gloomy spring statement in which she will claim her economic plans have been blown up by “a changing world”.
Reeves will insist on Wednesday she is providing “security” for British people – both militarily and economically – but her speech to MPs will be overwhelmed by shameful growth data, a fiscal and a acceptance that things can get worse.
It will try to establish a positive rotation in the gloomy point of view, insisting that an additional dose of £ 2.2 billion of military spending from April will strengthen jobs in British defense companies.
Additional funding, which will come from new cuts to the overseas aid budget and the Treasury Reserve, will receive the UK protection costs to 2.36 percent of GDP in the 2025-26 financial year.
Reeves has already said it will hit 2.5 percent in 2027 – an additional 6.4bn – funded by a larger raid on the foreign aid budget. “As defense costs increase, I want the whole country to feel the benefits too,” she means.
The Chancellor’s statement takes place in the shadow of Donald Trump, whose election as US president has forced Britain to increase military spending. Reeves has acknowledged that a global war of global trade will also create economic “heads” and will further delay growth.
The Chancellor will collect a hole in the public finance of about £ 15 billion, created by slow growth and higher borrowing costs, with a wave of pruning for well -being and government spending, though it denies that it is turning into “coercion”.
It will also publish a forecast from the Independent Budget Liability Office, which is expected to halve its October growth projection for 202 percent.
Treasury officials say there will be no tax increase in its statement, but economists believe it can become inevitable in its autumn budget unless the country’s economic resources begin to improve.
The Chancellor is being taken by conservatives claiming that she is overseeing a return to “coercion”, a claim that ministers are determined to reject.
Darren Jones, the main secretary of the Treasury, on Tuesday informed 75 ministers in the spring statement plan, which is expected to include a cut of at least £ 5 billion a year from Whitehall’s expenditures later in parliament.
He said this was not a “coercion”, stressing that real expenses for public services would grow every year in this parliament and were growing from a higher base, after the large injection of Reeves’ money into NHS and other areas in its October budget.
Paul Johnson, head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said the tightening conversation “is highly overwhelmed in the context of what the government announced in October and compared to the recent government plans.”
Reeves is struggling with a negative feeling of treating her economy. One of Yugov’s study found that only 16 percent of voters thought the government was treating the economy well. Only 11 percent hold a positive view of Reeves’ performance.
On Tuesday, the Chancellor was publicly criticized by a ministerial colleague for receiving “Freebie” tickets at a Sabrina Carpenter concert, 24 hours before announces deep cuts for well -being and public spending.
Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook was asked what he thought about Reeves’s decision to participate in a concert in a VIP box earlier this month without paying for tickets.
“I personally don’t think it’s appropriate,” Pennycook LBC told. “If I want to go to an O2 concert, I’ll pay for it. But individual MPs, individual ministers, make their decisions.”
Reeves said she accepted the VIP package for “security reasons”, but many labor lawmakers asked her judgment privately at a time when she is making deep cuts in the benefits of illness and disability.
The Chancellor will publish along with the spring statement an assessment of the impact of how £ 5 billion of welfare cuts will affect ordinary voters, with many labor lawmakers who are afraid of political consequences.
