AMONG the surprises George Osborne managed to conjure up in his budget speech was a commitment that Britain would continue to meet its NATO pledge to spend at least 2% of its GDP on defence for the rest of this decade. Rather than facing another round of severe cuts—the fate of other so-called “unprotected departments”—defence spending will now grow by 0.5% a year, reaching £47.7 billion in 2020, up from £38 billion this year. An additional joint security fund of £1.5bn a year will be established, to be shared between the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the intelligence agencies on a contingency basis.
According to Malcolm Chalmers of RUSI, a think-tank, under the previous planning assumptions and projected GDP growth figures spending would have fallen to 1.7% of GDP by 2020/21. The move was met with delight both by Washington, which has been lobbying heavily from the president downwards for Britain to stick with the totemic figure, and the armed forces. The chief of the defence staff, General Sir Nick Houghton, declared that it was “a great day for the country”. He added that it would “change the whole dynamic” of the forthcoming...Continue reading
via Brian Rushton, A promise honoured (sort of)
No comments:
Post a Comment