The UK Statistics Authority has ruled that former Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and two government departments were misleading in their descriptions of a £270bn defence spending figure. The watchdog said the figure was not an increase in spending, as claimed, but represented the total amount the government planned to allocate to defence between 2025 and 2029.

In March, Sir Keir appeared before the House of Commons liaison committee and told MPs: "We have already committed to 2.5% in 2027, and we will hit that. That means that, in this Parliament, we will spend £270bn more on defence than we would otherwise have done."

That statement, according to the UK Statistics Authority, fundamentally misrepresented the nature of the figure. The authority’s interim chair, Penny Young, said in a letter to Conservative shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge that it was incorrect and misleading to describe the £270bn as an increase in defence spending over the course of the Parliament, or as an extra £270bn.

Instead, the watchdog clarified, the £270bn represents the proposed overall spending on defence over the lifetime of the current Parliament, from 2025-26 to 2028-29. In other words, it is the total projected budget baseline, not an additional

Source: MSN News