Next chancellor will have to find £5bn to fund black hole in defence funding, government figures reveal – as it happened

Keir Starmer earlier unveiled a £15bn plan but said defence spending cannot be ‘bottomless pit’ and MoD has to ‘spend better’ Keir Starmer is speaking now. They are at Malloy Aeronautics, a firm that designs heavy-lift drones, and Starmer says this morning they showed him one of the heaviest drones he had ever seen. Last year, I made the decision in the national interest to reprioritise aid spending towards defence and achieve the biggest uplift in defence spending since the end of the cold war. That was the right choice because the world has changed. National security is economic security. Continue reading...