{"id":382278,"date":"2026-01-21T13:44:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T13:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/382278\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T13:44:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T13:44:09","slug":"i-will-not-yield-to-trumps-pressure-on-greenland-starmer-says-at-pmqs-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/382278\/","title":{"rendered":"I will not yield to Trump’s pressure on Greenland, Starmer says at PMQs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BBCIs there a \u00a328bn shortfall in the defence budget?published at 13:05 GMT<\/p>\n

13:05 GMT<\/p>\n

By Anthony Reuben<\/p>\n

At Prime Minister\u2019s Questions, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch
\nsaid: \u201clast week\u2026 the head of the armed forces warned that our military
\nfaces a \u00a328bn shortfall.”<\/p>\n

She was referring to a report in The Times that Head of the Armed Forces Richard Knighton had warned the prime minister at a Downing Street
\nmeeting before Christmas about a shortfall over the next four years.<\/p>\n

A few days later, Knighton was asked about these reports, external<\/a> when he appeared before a
\ncommittee of MPs.<\/p>\n

He definitely did not confirm the figure, describing it as
\n\u201cspeculation in the media\u201d and stressing that the meeting being reported
\non was classified. <\/p>\n

When pressed on whether there was a shortfall he said:
\n\u201cthe cost of the programme depends on a whole bunch of assumptions that we
\nmight make, and ultimately it will be a matter for ministers to make those,
\nbased on the advice that I and others offer.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I asked Bee Boileau from the Institute for Fiscal Studies
\nthink tank about the \u00a328bn figure, she pointed out that we don\u2019t yet have
\npublished plans for defence spending over the next four years, so it\u2019s hard to
\nassess whether there will be a shortfall.<\/p>\n

Earlier, my colleague Ben Chu crunched the numbers to see how much the Chagos deal might cost the UK<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Is there a \u00a328bn shortfall in the defence budget?published at 13:05 GMT 13:05 GMT By Anthony Reuben At…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-382278","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}