{"id":479729,"date":"2026-03-17T04:00:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T04:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/479729\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T04:00:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T04:00:07","slug":"uks-reeves-spooks-mps-with-hunt-for-defense-cash-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/479729\/","title":{"rendered":"UK\u2019s Reeves spooks MPs with hunt for defense cash \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>However, it is not clear which element of the welfare budget might be singled out. Keir Starmer\u2019s government was forced into a major climbdown last year after facing a revolt over plans to reduce the cost of disability benefits, and is currently attempting to draw up alternative reforms.<\/p>\n<p>The investment plan is now effectively \u201con hold\u201d until the Treasury finds new sources of revenue, two people working on the DIP said.<\/p>\n<p>No. 10 Downing Street and the U.K. Treasury declined to comment.<\/p>\n<p>The defense industry <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/keir-starmer-britain-arms-industry-defense-whitehall-armies-sdr-nato\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">has been warning for months<\/a> of the damage caused to businesses by the failure to publish the DIP, which was originally scheduled for last fall. Asked about it Monday, Defence Secretary John Healey failed to give assurances that the document would be published before the pre-election \u201cpurdah\u201d period, meaning it would not come until May.<\/p>\n<p>Separately, Starmer <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/keir-starmer-uk-needs-to-go-faster-on-defense-spending\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">has stressed that<\/a> the U.K. needs to go \u201cfaster\u201d on overall defense spending, raising the expectation that Reeves will need to hunt for additional billions during this parliament.<\/p>\n<p>John Bew, an academic and former adviser to several prime ministers including Starmer, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newstatesman.com\/ideas\/2026\/03\/dont-let-britain-decline\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">wrote last week<\/a>: \u201cThere is currently no route to higher defence spending \u2014 which is inevitable unless the nation is content to continue on a path towards greater insecurity and irrelevance \u2014 without major cuts elsewhere in the public spending stack.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The PM and chancellor have both spoken of a wish to collaborate more closely with the EU on defense funding after the collapse of talks on British entry into the SAFE loan program, but details remain scant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"However, it is not clear which element of the welfare budget might be singled out. Keir Starmer\u2019s government&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[458,140,59,57,58,555,465,1805,420,50,423,1445,1351,56,54,55,162,476],"class_list":["post-479729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-budget","tag-defense","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-industry","tag-investment","tag-john-healey","tag-keir-starmer","tag-news","tag-parliament","tag-rachel-reeves","tag-security","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-weapons","tag-welfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479729","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=479729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}