Dozens of hospital and school building programmes, road and rail upgrades and improvements to IT systems in frontline public services could be at risk of delay due to the government’s diversion of funds for defence, experts and unions have warned.
Each Whitehall department is being forced to find 1 per cent of savings from their capital spending budgets over the next four years to help fund the Defence Investment Plan to ready the country for war.
Keir Starmer’s official spokesman said that the plan “delivers the decisive action we need on defence in a way that’s within our fiscal rules and that will not take resources away from day to day spending on frontline services like health or education”.
Shorts
He said there was a “credible plan for funding the vast majority of this package”, through “reprioritising” £10.3bn of departmental spending and a further £4.7bn to come in the Budget this autumn.
