The new defence secretary, Dan Jarvis, has called on Andy Burnham to increase defence spending dramatically from 2030 and “evidence the trajectory” towards a Nato target that would mean £25bn a year more for the military by the middle of the next decade.
The former paratrooper said he was confident that the prime minister-in-waiting valued national security, as he openly lobbied him for cash that would probably have to come from cuts elsewhere.
“What I absolutely will want to see is that in the next spending review we commit the resources to evidence the trajectory to 3.5% [of GDP],” Jarvis said, speaking before the annual Nato summit gets under way on Tuesday in Ankara, Turkey.
Jarvis, who is keen to remain in post, has been in contact with Burnham and his team already to discuss defence priorities and the £298bn, four-year defence investment plan (Dip) that was finally published last week after months of ministerial wrangling.
“I’ve known Andy for a very long time and I have not a shred of doubt that as prime minister he will make sure that we’ve got the resources that we need at a point of challenge,” Jarvis said.
He said: “The world is absolutely more dangerous and more complicated than at any point during my lifetime,” as Russian warships and shadow fleet vessels accused of launching drones over RAF Lakenheath sail around the UK.
Britain is gearing up for its most significant sustained deployment in years, safeguarding the strait of Hormuz in a joint operation with France, should the US and Iran agree on a sustainable peace, amid reports that Downing Street has kept Burnham out of the detailed planning.
Jarvis will travel to Ankara with Starmer and the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper. He said he would personally reassure his US counterpart, Pete Hegseth, that the UK would meet the 3.5% spending pledge agreed last year amid pressure from Donald Trump.
“I will give him [Hegseth] the commitment that we will honour the pledges, the commitments that we’ve made to the United States and to our Nato allies,” Jarvis said of the biggest increase in military spending since the second world war.
Jarvis’s predecessor, John Healey, quit last month after Starmer would only commit to increasing defence spending to 2.68% of GDP by 2030, leaving a steep curve to hitting the 3.5% target in 2035.
The incoming defence secretary won a modest £1.5bn more over the next four years as part of a £298bn defence investment plan, partly to increase spending on drones, though the uplift had a negligible impact overall.
It prompted a backlash after it emerged that spending on roads and other capital programmes was being cut and that a £4.7bn hole would have to be filled by the Treasury as part of Burnham’s first budget.
Burnham, a former Greater Manchester mayor and health secretary, has little background in defence or foreign affairs. But he did say in an interview on Thursday that he would “fully fund” the defence investment plan and that if he became prime minister there would be “no compromise on the security of the nation”.
Meeting the Nato commitment will require a £25bn shift in resources towards defence, paid for either by cutting spending elsewhere, extra taxes or higher borrowing, though at present there is limited headroom to raise debt significantly.
Jarvis said he recognised that “what I need to do is make the case for defence” to the public and to cabinet colleagues. Leaving a funding gap for the next budget was “entirely routine in terms of Whitehall accounting”, he said, and it had been necessary to publish the delayed Dip ahead of the Nato meeting.
“I don’t think we should be distracted from the fact that in a short space of time we skewed more money and we sharpened our capabilities,” Jarvis said, arguing that he had secured about £600m extra for drones after he had spent much of his first days studying how they were being employed in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Jarvis said he was able to get the Dip out where Healey had failed because he ensured “negotiations with the Treasury were conducted in the most constructive and productive fashion” in a series of meetings with the chancellor, Rachel Reeves.
The Treasury ultimately approved an extra £15bn for defence until 2030, £1.5bn more than Healey had obtained, though not as much as the £18bn originally sought in negotiations that had begun months earlier.
Jarvis first learned that Healey had quit while he was on a visit to the Sandhurst training academy for military officers, marking 30 years since he had first arrived as a cadet. “My phone was ringing away,” he said, though in fact he was told the news – “a big shock” – when somebody came over to tell him.
Starmer offered him the cabinet job in person at Downing Street that evening, which he said “felt like a very big moment, because for 30 years or more I’ve been thinking about these things”, dating back to his time in the military.
The minister was commissioned into the Parachute regiment, where he served in Kosovo, Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan, before he resigned in 2011 to become the MP for Barnsley Central, and now Barnsley North. He has also served as mayor of South Yorkshire, then was security minister before being promoted.
Jarvis said he accepted Starmer’s job offer promptly and he did not consider it appropriate to demand more money for defence as a precondition for accepting. “It wasn’t a transactional conversation,” he said.
He added that he was keen to stay on under Burnham – he will have spent five weeks in the role on the earliest day that the MP for Makerfield can reach No 10. “It’d be for Andy Burnham to determine,” he said, “and I very much hope I have the opportunity to continue serving”.
