Keir Starmer hints at tax rises after next election to fund defence
The prime minister has left the door open to tax rises to pay for increased spending on defence after the next election, saying that defending Britain must come before all else.
Sir Keir Starmer said it was the 'first duty of the prime minister to keep the country safe' but that Labour had committed itself during the last election to placing no new taxes on working people.
But he did not rule out increases after 2029.
Starmer is attending a Nato summit at the Hague, Netherlands
KIN CHEUNG/PA
Starmer said it was 'pretty obvious we're living in volatile times, probably more volatile than most of us have lived through recently, and we have entered a new era for defense and security'.
Asked whether he would need to raise taxes to meet the Nato commitment of 5 per cent of GDP , the prime minister said his manifesto at the last election included commitments not to raise taxes on working people and that Labour would 'stick to our manifesto commitments'.
However, the government had already said it would not set out how the full funding would be settled until after the next election, which would bring with it a new manifesto.
Starmer said: 'Every time, we've set out our defence spending commitments. So when we went to 2.5 per cent in 2027-28, we set out precisely how we would pay for it. That didn't involve tax rises.'
Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, told Times Radio: 'We can all expect to be writing bigger cheques to HMRC over the next few years.'
He said: 'We've been talking about things, 3.5 per cent of national income by the mid-2030s. That's an extra £30 billion or £40 billion compared with what we're spending now. Now, where that's going to come from goodness only knows.
'Well, I think we do know. It's going to come from £30 billion or £40 billion more taxes, because in the end there's nowhere else it can come from.'
Starmer will on Wednesday sign Britain up to meet the 5 per cent target by 2035, alongside Nato allies, in response to what he called an 'era of radical uncertainty'.
The spending will be split in two parts. There will be 3.5 per cent towards direct defence capabilities and the remaining 1.5 per cent for 'resilience and security', which can include infrastructure projects, measures to increase energy security and money committed to control migration.
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