Briefing points in advance of the UK government budget announcement

This briefing note was prepared by Dr Stuart Parkinson, Executive Director of Scientists for Global Responsibility.

In November 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a very large increase in UK military spending.
Total additional spending is approx. £24bn over four years, i.e. an average of £6bn per year (see table and graphs in appendices).
The core military budget in 2020-21 was £41.2bn. 3 Accounting for inflation, the increase in annual spending averages about 10%.
This jump is the highest percentage increase in military spending since UK involvement in the Korean War 70 years ago.
The spending increase is all focused on the ‘capital’ part of the Ministry of Defence’s budget, mainly on military equipment.
The main elements of the military equipment budget include: submarines and nuclear weapons (the largest); combat aircraft; warships; armoured vehicles; IT; and weapons.
Newer areas of spending include: armed drones; military artificial intelligence; cyber warfare; military space technologies; and directed energy weapons (e.g. lasers).
The spending increase is based on a premise that a highly militarised response to international security problems – based on global deployment of offensive weapons technologies – should remain at the heart of the UK foreign and security policy. We contest this view, and argue for alternative spending.
The core military budget does not include about £6bn per year of additional spending which the UK reports to NATO. This includes military pensions and some peace-keeping activity.

Comparisons with other budgets

In November 2020, the UK government announced a huge reduction in spending on overseas aid.
The budget for overseas aid is determined with reference to an international target, i.e. 0.7% of Gross National Income (GNI). The November announcement was that the UK would reduce its aid budget from 0.7% to 0.5% GNI.
The actual monetary reduction from 2020-21 to 2021-22 is £3.3bn (see table and graphs in appendices). This is on top of a reduction from the previous year due to a number of factors, including the shrinkage of the UK economy due to the COVID-19 crisis and the merger of the Dept for International Development with the Foreign Office.
No aid spending figures have yet been published for after 2022.

In November, the government announced ‘The ten point plan for a green industrial revolution’, with a budget of £12bn.
On closer inspection, a maximum of only £11bn is earmarked for spending in the next four years, averaging of £2.8bn per year.
In December, the Committee of Climate Change (CCC) published a report which analysed current and future government spending to hit its reduction targets for carbon emissions.
The CCC estimated that government spending in this area for 2020-21 was approximately £5bn. This included £2bn devoted to the Green Homes Grant (GHG) scheme.
The latest evidence is that only £0.1bn of the GHG will be spent in this financial year, meaning total spending is only £3.1bn.
The CCC estimated that annual government spending needs to increase very rapidly to between £9bn and £12bn – and that other (non-budget) measures are also needed to help switch/ stimulate the rest of the UK economy to spend at least £40bn per year on reducing carbon emissions.
Note that other climate-related spending – e.g. overseas aid for climate projects, climate change adaptation projects – are not included in these figures.