Britain spending less on defence than France and India as budget cuts push it down global table Jack Maidment
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/02/12/britain-now-spends-less
Britain now ranks seventh in a league table of the world’s biggest defence spenders, below India and France, after budget cuts.
Gavin Williamson, the Defence Secretary, said in a speech on Monday that the UK was a “nation with the world’s fifth biggest defence budget”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/02/12/britain-now-spends-less-defence-france-india-ranks-seventh-global/
Data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) showed that while the UK ranked fifth in 2015, spending $55 billion, it has subsequently fallen to seventh in 2016 and 2017.
In 2017 the UK’s military expenditure stood at just over $47 billion.
Defence sources said there were a number of different league tables for defence spending which used different criteria and methodology which meant there was not one definitive ranking.
The United States remained top of the SIPRI league table for military spending in 2017, with its $610 billion outlay almost three times the $228 billion spent by second-placed China.
US military spending represented more than a third of the world’s total spend on defence in 2017.
Saudi Arabia ranked third with Russia in fourth, India in fifth, France in sixth and the UK in seventh.
Defence sources said SIPRI data included spending on state paramilitaries – something other league tables do not – and because France employs such forces its defence spending is often considered higher than the UK.
John Spellar, a Labour defence minister under Tony Blair and a current member of the Defence Select Committee, said the statistics showed the armed forces were being “hollowed out”.
He said: “This seems to bear out the major concerns of the Defence Committee and indeed MPs on all sides of the Commons about defence, that the Government has been hollowing out our military capability in a Treasury driven programme of cuts.
“There needs to be both in terms of manpower and in terms of equipment a rebuilding of the defence budget to ensure we can play our part in collective defence and protect UK citizens at home.”
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