Andy Burnham has said an uplift in defence spending will not come “at the expense” of benefits.
During Prime Minister’s Questions, Burnham said “national security can’t come at the expense of social security” in response to attacks from Tory leader Kemi Badenoch over the absence of plans to get defence spending up to three per cent of GDP.
The Prime Minister’s spokesman insisted that Burnham still believed national security was the “first duty” of the government when he asked for clarification on the statement.
But in Parliament, Burnham criticised the Conservatives’ plan to cut housing benefits by £4bn in order to fund defence spending.
He said: “I don’t think myself that taking £4bn out of housing benefit is going to get the right consensus around this issue, because that would create levels of homelessness in this country that we wouldn’t have seen before – hundreds of thousands of children in temporary accommodation.
“We do everything to support our national security, but it can’t come at the expense of social security.
“Having strong national security also depends upon having resilience in our communities.”
The Tories’ plan to cut housing benefits includes reducing the local housing allowance and cutting social sector rents.
Housing benefits are set to increase by billions of pounds over the next four years.
The Tories seized on the PM’s comments as evidence that the government does not have a plan for getting welfare spending down.
Burnham faced with welfare and defence headache
Meanwhile, the welfare budget is set to rise to 11.1 per cent of GDP in 2030 compared to 10.7 per cent currently. This represents a jump by just under £40bn in welfare spending between the current financial year and 2029-30.
Pensioner spending is projected to rise from £169.2bn to £187.5bn while disability benefits will increase from about £50.2bn to £61.1bn.
By contrast, the defence budget is only set to rise to 2.7 per cent of GDP next year while no clear funding plans for lifting it to 3.5 per cent of the UK economy by 2035 under a Nato commitment have been unveiled. The government is also tasked with finding about £15bn over a four-year period in extra taxes and spending cuts to back the current Defence Investment Plan.
The government raised welfare spending at last year’s Budget as it lifted a two-child cap for benefits.
Burnham has said he wanted to “get the welfare bill down” and cited a review by the former health secretary Alan Milburn into Neets, who are young people out of employment, education and training.
The Milburn review, as well as a separate report by Sir Stephen Timms on disability payments, is not expected until after the Budget.
Burnham has added that he did not support “crude cuts” to the welfare bill after Sir Keir Starmer’s government failed to deliver £5bn savings on disability payments.
Chancellor John Healey is under greater pressure to raise defence spending as he quit Starmer’s previous government over a failure to fund a boost in military expenditure to three per cent of GDP by 2030.
The government has said it will set out its plan to hit defence spending targets at next year’s Spending Review rather than the Budget.