Andy Burnham Stunned As Keir Starmer Hands Him £5 Billion Defence Spending Time Bomb

Andy Burnham has been left stunned after it Keir Starmer handed him a £5 billion black hole in the government’s defence spending plans.

The PM-in-waiting was briefed in advance of the publication of the government’s Defence Investment Plan (DIP) on Tuesday.

It set out plans to boost the defence budget by an additional £15bn by the end of the decade.

But in a written statement to parliament, chancellor Rachel Reeves said only two-thirds of that 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”.

With Burnham set to take over as prime minister on July 20, that means he and whoever he chooses to succeed Reeves at the Treasury will be tasked with finding the cash to fund the gap.

Sources close to Burnham confirmed the announcement of the funding gap had “come as a surprise” to him and his team.

Max Werner, senior research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said there would be “further impacts on other areas of spending, tax or borrowing on top of those set out in today’s announcements – implying one key early decision for the next prime minister”.

The £15bn uplift announced in the DIP is £1.5bn more than previous defence secretary John Healey managed to secure, which led to his resignation from the cabinet.

However, the document did not set out how the government plans to hit its target of spending 3.5% of national income on defence by 2035.

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