LONDON — As the U.K. is boosting military spending, the government is allocating additional funds to the local industry along with plans to bring foreign contractors to Britain, according to Luke Pollard, the nation’s recently appointed minister for defense procurement and industry.
“We have an extra 5 billion pounds [$6.77 billion] in our defense budget. It’s the largest uplifting of our budget since the Cold War,” Pollard said in a keynote speech at the 2025 DSEI UK show in London. He was referring to the additional funds allocated for the years 2024 and 2025.
Pollard said defense spending should be considered the backbone of the U.K.’s economic growth, and for this to hold true, the country must intensify its efforts to attract investments by both British and foreign defense companies.
In his new role, Pollard declared he will also strive to make military procurement spending more efficient, but the minister did not name any particular programs which he intends to target with these efforts.
“It’s not that we are just spending more on defense, we have to reform our defense,” Pollard said.
On Sept. 8, the minister presented the government’s Defence Industrial Strategy to the House of Commons, the lower chamber of the British parliament.
“This is a plan supported by £773 million of investment — a plan to make defense an engine for economic growth in every nation and region of our country,” Pollard told lawmakers. “All the pledges made today can only be met because this Labour government have committed the largest sustained increase in defense spending since the end of the cold war: 2.6% of GDP by 2027, and 3.5% by 2035, alongside our NATO allies.”
The minister cited the recently signed $13.5 billion deal under which Norway will acquire British-made warships designed for anti-submarine warfare as “the biggest warship deal in our history.”
He also said the U.K. government’s “new office of defense exports brings responsibility for defense exports back into the Ministry of Defence and creates a government-to-government exports structure that reflects what our allies and industry need.”
Pollard was named to his current role on Sept. 6, replacing Maria Eagle. Prior to this, he served as the parliamentary under-secretary of state in the Ministry of Defence. He was elected the member of parliament for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport in July 2024 on the ticket of the country’s ruling Labour Party.
Jaroslaw Adamowski is the Poland correspondent for Defense News.