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UK Ministry of Defense.
LONDON–UK Defense Secretary John Healey has reiterated the new Labour government’s commitment to increasing defense spending to the equivalent of 2.5% of GDP.
Speaking at the party’s annual conference in Liverpool on Sept. 23, Healey said the government “will set out a path to increase defense spending to 2.5% of GDP, a level not matched since 2010.” He added that “security will be the foundation on which our Labour missions are built.”
Healey’s party has been criticized for not saying when UK defense spending might hit the 2.5% target, particularly by the previous Conservative government, which lost power in July after 14 years.
Prior to the election it had committed to reaching the spending target, equivalent to around £87 billion ($116.4 billion) a year, by 2030.
Labour is not expected to lay out its defense spending plans until after the completion of the ongoing Strategic Defense Review, currently underway and expected to be completed by summer 2025.
Healey told the conference that the Conservatives had “hollowed out and underfunded [defense] over the last 14 years,” adding that the issues were “much worse than we thought.”
He did not make commitments to defense equipment in his speech. But Healey said he had already taken steps to eliminate barriers to defense recruitment, claiming he had scrapped around 100 outdated policies which stopped people from joining the armed forces.
“Over the last 10 years more than a million [young people] applied to join the [armed] forces, yet three in four gave up ... because it takes months and it’s tied up in red tape,” Healey said.
Healey also said he had set new targets to reject or make conditional offers to recruits within 10 days and enable them to start training within 30 days.
He also announced plans to set up a more direct recruitment route for those interested in cyber roles, noting “if you are a top gamer or coder, your country needs you.”
The UK government would also continue to support Ukraine with £3 billion in military support “for as long as it takes for Ukraine to win,” Healey said.
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