The Defence Secretary has said he is confident Andy Burnham will give Britain’s defence the investment it needs despite leaving the next prime minister a £4.7 billion funding gap.
Dan Jarvis told reporters on a visit to missile manufacturer Cambridge Aerospace on Wednesday that he had the “assurance that, as prime minister, Andy Burnham will make sure that we’ve got the investment coming into defence”.
But Mr Jarvis acknowledged there would have to be “conversations” with the man expected to take over from Sir Keir Starmer in less than three weeks, vowing he would “fight hard for defence”.
Tuesday’s Defence Investment Plan (Dip) saw Mr Jarvis secure a £15 billion uplift in defence spending, largely funded by cuts to other departments’ capital budgets.
But the Treasury has yet to spell out how it will fund almost a third of the increase, leaving £4.7 billion of funding to be set out at the next budget.
That decision leaves Mr Burnham with a potential headache for his first budget as he faces a choice between higher taxes, more borrowing or further spending cuts in order to plug the gap.
Mr Jarvis defended the decision to put off some of the funding decisions until the budget, saying it was “not unreasonable” that “those kind of commitments are made in the context of a major fiscal event”.
But asked where the extra money would come from, he said this was up to the Treasury, adding: “My job is about securing more money for defence.”
Earlier, defence minister Luke Pollard suggested Mr Burnham had only found out about the £4.7 billion gap when the Treasury figures were published on Tuesday.
Mr Pollard told Sky News: “Downing Street have a close dialogue with Andy’s team… I understand they’ve been keeping him close to the process, and told him yesterday when the Treasury published the statement and the breakdown of the financial costs.”
But he later declined to answer questions on when Mr Burnham had been told of the financial details, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he was “not involved with those conversations”.
The long-delayed plan to fund the armed forces was published on Tuesday, including the £15 billion boost to spending.
In a written statement to Parliament, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said only two-thirds of the sum – £10.3 billion – had been identified, while the remaining £4.7 billion would be “confirmed at Budget 2026, in a fair and balanced way”.
On Wednesday, Downing Street insisted the plan was “credible”, but declined to “get ahead of” the next budget on questions of how the £4.7 billion would be funded.
Prospective prime minister Mr Burnham was briefed on the Dip before its publication, but it is understood he was not told about the need to find an additional tranche of funding in his first budget.
In what appeared to be advice to incoming prime minister Mr Burnham, Ms Reeves later warned that borrowing more to fund defence would be a risk to the country’s national security.
In an article for The Telegraph, she said: “By preserving economic resilience, keeping borrowing costs down, and supporting growth, they enable us to spend what is needed to secure Britain.
“A Britain spending beyond its means is a weak Britain – one that is more vulnerable to global shocks like the ones caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and more recently the war in Iran.
“That weakness would be something that our adversaries could exploit, to the detriment of our national security, right down to the pounds in people’s pockets. I will never let that happen.”
Mr Jarvis has denied the funding gap was a hand grenade for the Makerfield MP – Sir Keir’s likely successor – and his new chancellor, insisting it was “absolutely the opposite”.
He sidestepped repeated questions on whether it had been made clear to Mr Burnham that he was being left with a funding gap.
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“Of course we’ve been talking to Andy Burnham and his team about this plan,” the new Defence Secretary told BBC Newsnight, pointing to Sir Keir’s focus on a “smooth transition” of power.
Ms Reeves said the Treasury would focus on finding “efficiencies” and cancelling or delaying “lower priority programmes”, while emphasising the Government would not cut day-to-day spending to pay for defence.
Transport and energy budgets will face larger cuts than other departments, but Downing Street was unable to say which specific projects would be scrapped or scaled back to pay for increased defence spending.
Asked if there was a list of projects that would be cut, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said details would be provided “by the autumn”.
The spokesman also declined to rule out cuts to some hospital building programmes, but said plans to remove dangerous Raac concrete from hospitals and the first wave of the Government’s New Hospitals Programme would go ahead.
The plans include billions more for the next generation of stealth jets, the largest ever investment in drone warfare and confirmation that the UK will buy F-35A planes capable of carrying nuclear bombs.
But older equipment, including two Type 23 frigates and older Chinook and Wildcat helicopters, will be retired.
The Dip was originally due to be published last year, but was delayed in part due to bitter Whitehall wrangling over money.
The funding in the Dip comes on top of the £270 billion promised for defence from 2025/26 to 2028/29.
