Jack Fenwick
Political correspondent

When Al Carns resigned as the armed forces minister earlier this month, he had some very specific criticisms of the government.

In his letter, he said: “We are still purchasing capability suitable for the last war while our adversaries arm for the next one.”

And Dan Jarvis nodded quite obviously to that criticism in the Commons just now.

As well as achieving extra money overall, he said he had decided to “reprioritise” £1bn of spending within the DIP to more modern forms of warfare.

He then immediately praised the work of Al Carns, who is sat three rows behind.

While MPs debate the government's spending plans, the Defence Investment Plan itself has been published in full, external on the government's website.

We're looking through the 80-page document now and will bring you key details from it.

Meanwhile, the debate in the Commons continues...

Jarvis commits £9bn over a decade to raise the conditions of military family housing "to match the service and sacrifice of those living in them".

He says that the UK has made a promise to its allies to raise defence spending to be 3.5% by 2035.

He says its commitment to Nato is absolute in a more dangerous world and it will reach 3% in the next parliament with funding set out in the next spending review, where defence will be the number one priority.

He says Britain has also met its Nato spending commitments. He adds that Britain has always stood with its allies and under this government it always will.

Jarvis says Britain needs an integrated high low force that can fight across every domain.

He announces the government will be committing £8.6bn to the global combat air programme with Japan and Italy.

The UK will invest £26bn for "extensive" naval base upgrades, £790m to protect overseas bases from air drone and missile threats and £11bn for munitions and weapons to increase UK stockpiles, Jarvis adds.

He says £64bn will go towards funding new Dreadnaught and AUCUS submarines, adding the UK's nuclear deterrent is the "ultimate guarantee of our security".

Jarvis adds there will be £3bn in funding for space capabilities, £4bn in cyber and £400m to protect undersea cable and pipelines.

Image source, UK Parliament

Jarvis says there will be a further £1bn in the defence investment plan "to better reflect how war is waged today".

He continues and says AI capabilities are "no longer capabilities of the future" - and they will now have investment.

He says the plan includes "the UK's largest ever investment in drone warfare".

Jack Fenwick
Political correspondent

Very early on in this speech Dan Jarvis said he’d managed to secure an extra £1.5bn for this plan in the few weeks he’s been in the job.

This comes after several discussions between Jarvis and the Chancellor Rachel Reeves.

Reeves is sat next to Jarvis and has been nodding along as he extols the government’s record on defence investment.

Interestingly some in Westminster were last night pointing to how strong the relationship is between Jarvis and Reeves, describing it as “collegiate” since he became defence secretary.

That’s a marked difference to the sort of briefings happening when John Healey resigned as defence secretary, when it was clear that the relationship between him and the Treasury had soured badly.

Image source, House of Commons

The defence secretary tells MPs £1.5bn more has been committed to defence spending than when he took up the job a couple of weeks ago.

"This means defence spending will now increase in real terms by 27% between 2023 and 2024 and 2029 and 2030," he tells MPs.

He says it represents a bigger increase in spending on defence across a parliament than anyone in the Commons has ever seen.

We've made some "difficult but necessary" decisions to fund this, but fiscal rules have been upheld, and day to day spending on public services have been protected, he says.

Jarvis says the defence investment plan will make sure that the armed forces have "the kit and the technology" they need for the future.

He thanks the Ministry of Defence, and says it has been a privilege working with colleagues there over the past few weeks.

Jarvis then thanks the prime minister and chancellor, and says that they have demonstrated a "steadfast commitment to our national security" and that Britain is better supported and prepared as a consequence.

He says Ukraine is "still strong in the fight" against Russia, and Britain has proven itself a "reliable ally".

He also pays tribute to his predecessor, John Healey, who he says "could not support an earlier version of the plan", adding that he will lay out what has changed and why he can support it.

Image source, House of Commons

Dan Jarvis begins by saying that our armed forces represent the very best of Britain and they "make the most extraordinarily complex challenges appear routine".

He says that they serve at an increasingly dangerous and unpredictable moment in history.

Image source, Reuters

Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis is now speaking in the House of Commons to deliver his statement on today's defence investment plan.

We will be bringing you all of the key lines here and you can follow along by clicking watch live at the top of this page.

Image source, Reuters

Britain's commitment to spend 5% of GDP on defence and national security by 2035 may be too late, Lithuania's defence minister says.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's World at One programme, Robertas Kaunas says he thinks the UK is doing "what is necessary to meet capability targets" but says they should be "met on time".

"I'm not sure 2035 is the right date. In Lithuania, we think we should be ready by 2030," he says.

As a reminder, Nato members agreed to spend 5% of GDP on defence and security-related spending by 2035 - with 3.5% on strict defence spending and 1.5 per cent on national security.

For Lithuania, "5% by 2035 doesn't sound very ambitious," Kaunas says. He adds that Lithuania already spends 5.38% of GDP on core defence, in addition to 1.6% on wider security needs.

According to Starmer, the defence investment plan will bring UK spending on defence and national security as a percentage of GDP up to 4.2% - take a closer look at the league table of Nato spending here.

Joe Coughlan
Live reporter

Image source, PA Media

Today's funding towards the UK's defence systems will provide "short-term certainty" but "long-term uncertainty" to the country, according to a retired Royal Navy captain.

John Foreman tells me that he expects to see a variety of sectors within the armed forces faltering if more funding is not pledged towards running costs, including exercises, maintenance and equipment.

He says: "The armed forces are already struggling. They have got a little bit more money for running costs between now and 2030 but it's still not anywhere near enough."

Despite being unconvinced by the government's pledges as a whole, Foreman says he is encouraged by the plans towards strengthening the UK's nuclear deterrent and global combat air programme.

He adds: "That is what Russia fears, not a few drones here and there, but proper capabilities."

How does UK defence spending compare with other Nato members?published at 13:56 BST

13:56 BST

By Tom Edgington

Speaking about the government’s defence investment plan (DIP) earlier, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said an extra £15bn would be spent on the UK military, which he described as a “massive step forwards”.

But how does UK defence currently compare with its Western allies?

According to Nato estimates for 2025, every country in the alliance achieved the previous 2024 target of spending at least 2% of the size of their economy (measured by GDP) on defence.

Last year the UK spent 2.3% - putting it 14th among the 32-member alliance.

In cash terms, the US is still by far the single biggest spender on defence, spending about $980bn (£720bn) last year - 60% of the Nato total.

Nato members are now committed to spend 3.5% of GDP on core defence by 2035.

Speaking this morning, Starmer said defence spending would rise to 2.7% “putting us on a trajectory to reach 3% in the next parliament“.

However, he did not specify in which year defence spending is expected to reach 2.7% of GDP.

We’ll be able to go into more details about the proposed extra spending when the DIP is published in full - that’s expected to be this afternoon.

Yasmin Malik
BBC Newsbeat

Image source, Oliver Tatlow

Today's investment plan will affect Oliver Tatlow's job.

Tatlow, 22, is a systems engineer degree apprentice at Leonardo - a supplier of defence and security equipment to the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

He says the threats facing the UK are "changing all the time", but that those working in the UK's defence need to be given "the best possible chance in that environment".

"What we do protects our people, who can then protect us," he says.

Tatlow has worked on the RAF’s Typhoon combat aircraft and is also studying a degree in electronic engineering.

He feels that people and recruitment are crucial to keeping the country safe, and that the UK needs "more apprentices and graduates coming into defence".

"We can prepare, we can react, but through all of that we need people."

Image source, Reuters

Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte says he welcomes the defence investment plan, arguing that "stronger UK defence makes us all safer".

Speaking shortly after Keir Starmer's speech, Rutte says the plan "is a good step towards reaching the 3.5% of GDP on defence agreed in The Hague last year".

He says defence spending and production will be "an important focus" at the Nato summit in Turkey next week.

It follows a meeting between Starmer and Rutte at No 10 yesterday, after which the Nato chief thanked the prime minister for "everything" he had done during his premiership.

Former British Army and Nato commander Hamish de Bretton-Gordon says "the key thing" in the defence investment plan is to fund a "change in warfare".

Speaking to Radio 5 Live's Nicky Campbell, he says increasingly, there are drones "directed by AI rather than sort of eyes on the ground".

"Doing insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, the sort of tank wars I fought in the first Gulf War to what we're seeing in Ukraine is very, very different," he says.

He adds it's important to "invest in new capabilities" that will provide "a conventional deterrence".

Bretton-Gordon believes Russia's invasion of Ukraine happened because when Vladimir Putin "looked west, there was not a conventional deterrence that worried him".

"So we now have to build one to prevent these sorts of things happening in future."

Image source, Getty Images

The UK's defence budget is being boosted "faster than any other major government department", the chancellor has said.

Speaking in a social media update after this morning's news conference, Rachel Reeves says that the demands on UK defence are "growing".

She repeats comments from Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis that the country is "learning the lessons" of drone warfare from the war in Ukraine, adding that £400m will be spent on setting up a military defence system with partners.

The chancellor says: "UK security is our number one priority and this money will ensure that the UK can fight the wars of tomorrow, not the past."

Unshackled Starmer begins to reflect on his legacypublished at 12:46 BST

12:46 BST

Chris Mason
Political editor in Berkshire

Image source, Reuters

Hello from the drone manufacturing site in Berkshire where the prime minister has been speaking.

We are surrounded by the latest extraordinary aircraft — drones — some of which will soon be deployed in Ukraine.

A few things stand out to me from the prime minister:

The government has managed to find an extra £1.5bn in the last few weeks for its defence investment plan.

That in itself is quite something — we await the precise trade offs to explain how that was possible and why it took the resignation of the previous defence secretary John Healey to make it happen.

The other thing that struck me is this: the prime minister is quite a buttoned up character in public, but I could detect today a sense of unshackling, a sense of perspective, a sense that he wants to reflect in public on what he’s managed to achieve, and not, in office.

And — as he has regularly reflected — the brutal trade offs that confront any prime minister — and particularly so in an era of low economic growth, a high average tax burden, spiralling benefits bill and demands for vastly more for defence.

Squaring those circles isn’t remotely easy. Note how disparaging he was of the Liberal Democrat plan for defence bonds — which he dismissed as more borrowing ‘on the never never.’

The subtext to it all was this is mighty difficult — and it’ll soon, in all likelihood, be for Andy Burnham to wrestle with.

Image source, Getty Images

Today's defence investment plan will be backed by £298bn of funding over the next four years, the Ministry of Defence has said, with key projects including:

• Over £8bn which will go towards the global combat air programme, building a new stealth fighter jet alongside Japan and Italy
• More than £63bn on strengthening the UK's nuclear deterrent, including funding submarines, a new warhead and 12 F35A fighter jets
• £26bn on Project Royal Oak, aimed at upgrading UK naval bases including those at Faslane, Portsmouth and Devonport
• Over £5bn on drone transformation, including £650m towards autonomous systems such as drones and uncrewed ground vehicles
• Nearly £2bn for integrating the armed forces through the new digital targeting web framework, for destroying identified targets faster
• £790m on greater protection for UK homeland and overseas bases from threats, as well as a new defence operations centre, expanded counter drone systems, directed energy weapons investments and upgraded missiles for Type 45 destroyers
• £11bn on increased weapons stockpiles including long-range strike weapons, cruise missiles and one-way effectors. The MoD says it will have built at least six new energetics factories by 2030
• £900m of spending is on efficiency and reform procurement, including £500m on improving AI and workforce transformation productivity and £400m on setting up the multilateral defence mechanism
• £100m on the prime minister’s rapid AI delivery taskforce, as well as a further £115m on raising the UK's defences against AI threats

Thorny trade-offs for Starmer will be waiting for his successor toopublished at 12:00 BST

12:00 BST

Henry Zeffman
Chief political correspondent

We knew before Starmer spoke what the reaction to his speech would be from most rival political parties and leading defence figures, as well as some within the Labour fold: that this is not enough funding given the scale of the threat the UK faces.

Starmer nodded to the possibility that his successor may well have to come back before long with more defence spending when speaking about how this was a platform to be built on.

Throughout there was an implicit acknowledgement of the unusual reality that he is the prime minister unveiling this significant amount of defence spending but will not be the one to deliver it.

The PM also talked about the trade-offs of defence spending and how he has cut capital spending from other departments to spend money on defence. But he said that he did not want to cut spending on day-to-day public services, ie schools and hospitals.

This was an argument made by some government sources off the record in the aftermath of John Healey’s resignation, now made explicit.

Those are the thorny trade-offs that are going to be in Andy Burnham's in-tray before long.