Military spending and protecting the UK against an attack from Russia must be Andy Burnham’s top priority as he arrives in office next week, defence chiefs and MPs have warned.
The new prime minister has pledged to prioritise improving living standards for Britons when he takes over from Sir Keir Starmer, expected to be on 20 July.
But The i Paper can reveal serious concerns about the lack of funding under the Starmer government for a UK version of an “Iron Dome” to protect the nation from an airborne missile attack, despite the current Prime Minister’s warning that Britain could be at war with Russia by 2030.
Under the Defence Investment Plan (DIP) published on 30 June, the government committed to spending £790m on integrated air and missile defence (IAMD).
However, this is around £200m short of the “up to £1bn” pledged in the Strategic Defence Review (SDR), the military blueprint published last year, that the government said would be fully funded.
Two of the SDR’s co-authors have said the incoming prime minister will have to review funding for defence over the next four years.
Military chiefs and defence experts have already warned that the £15bn package in the DIP is not enough to equip Britain for war.
The plan also reveals that day-to-day spending on defence (RDEL), which includes operational costs like military salaries, pensions, training, equipment repairs and the running of bases, does not keep pace with the current 2.8 per cent rate of inflation up to 2029.
‘Blunting the UK’s ability to respond to threats’
Ben Wallace, the former defence secretary, said this equated to a real terms cut in day-to-day spending, and would “massively blunt the UK’s ability to deploy against the real threats we face”.
This week, the government is expected to publish an annual update to the National Resilience Action Plan – first published in 2025.
The review is likely to set out the measures the UK government is taking to shore up homeland defence and protect critical national infrastructure from cyber and other attacks from hostile states, as well as resilience to climate change and other major challenges.
But Mike Martin, a Lib Dem member of the Commons defence committee, said: “Where are there not gaps in our resilience?”
He pointed to the roughly £200m shortfall on air and missile defence between the SDR and the DIP: “The SDR rightly said that the IAMD was this massive issue that you need to get grips with and put aside £1bn.”
That was cut by more than 20% to £790m in the DIP, Martin said, “even though the government promised that [it] would fully fund the SDR”.
Royal Navy warships, including the Type 45s pictured, are among those being phased out by the government (Photo: Leon Neal/Getty Images)He added that the Iran war broke out in the gap between the two – “and the government actually said at the time, the Iran war makes it even more pressing that we sort out IAMD”.
Martin said the decision by the government to phase out the Royal Navy’s fleet of warships, including Type 45 Destroyers, by 2035 would hamper the protection of the UK.
“I think UK citizens imagine that [it] has a kind of Iron Dome that shoots everything down. That’s not true. It’s our Destroyers. That’s it.
“The DIP fails to get us ready for war by 2030 because most of the investment falls between 2030 and 2035. The government’s own intelligence assessments say we’re most likely to have an attack by 2030.”
‘The DIP will have to be looked at again’
Gen Sir Richard Barrons, one of the authors of the SDR and a former Armed Forces commander, said he and his fellow co-author Lord Robertson believed “the new PM will have to review the proposed level of funding for defence over the next four years and beyond”.
“It will be necessary because of the risk posed by Russia and the demands of our allies in Nato, to find more money sooner to transform and revitalise defence to sustain credible deterrence,” Barrons said.
“This would mean reopening the DIP to the extent that when more money is found sooner, they would have to decide when and how to spend it in order to do better.”
Giving evidence to the defence committee last week, Robertson, a former Nato secretary general, said the new PM would have to “look at the DIP again”, citing pressure from Nato allies and President Donald Trump.
They would be asking Britain how it planned to increase defence spending from 2.7 per cent of GDP by 2029 to 3.5 per cent by 2035, Robertson added.
‘Defence budgets artifically inflated’
Wallace, defence secretary under the previous Conservative administration, said day-to-day defence budgets were being squeezed due to capital spending being diverted from elsewhere.
The current plan shows real-terms defence spending rising more slowly than the current headline inflation rate of 2.8% – just 2.15% in 2026/27, 2.58% the following year, and 2.05% by 2029/30.
“No one should be fooled by a defence budget artificially inflated by capital spending from other departments’ underspends,” Wallace told The i Paper.
“Cutting, in real terms, the budgets for operations, training, re-stocking ammunition and servicing will massively blunt the UK’s ability to deploy against the real threats we face.”
He added: “It is a proper squeeze because RDEL is being spent on benefits and a ballooning NHS budgets.”
The MoD disputed the 2.8 per cent inflation figure, saying the department instead uses a Treasury-set “GDP deflator” from March 2026, which it said shows real-terms increases each year.
A spokesperson said the Defence Investment Plan represents “nearly £300 billion in defence over the next four years” and a “26.7 per cent real-terms increase in spending”.
On air and missile defence specifically, they said £790m had been dedicated to “enhance protection of the UK homeland and overseas bases from air, drone and missile threats” – a figure they said should be considered alongside more than £2bn in further funding for air defence, counter-drone capabilities, and the Typhoon fleet, including £1.1bn in Typhoon spending, over £750m for counter-drone, and over £350m for Sky Sabre.
The department said it “did not recognise” the shortfall The i Paper put to them, and that the UK would always seek to defend itself against any threat, initially through deterrence and with an appropriate response.
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