UK Parliament / Open data

Defence Supplementary Estimate 2021-22

I quite agree with both my right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) and my hon. Friend.

Bearing in mind your advice, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will conclude with one point about the budget itself. During the period in which I chaired the Defence Committee, we produced two reports—one in 2016 called “Shifting the goalposts?” and the other an update to that report in 2019—with the purpose of setting very firmly on the record what the proportion of GDP spent on defence had been historically on a like-for-like basis. It is a fact that, in the aftermath of the Korean war, defence spending as a proportion of GDP at one point was as high as 7%. In about 1963, it crossed over with spending on welfare at 6%. That was all a long time ago, but as recently as the 1980s the spending on health, education and defence was roughly the same at just over 4% of GDP.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
710 c409 
Session
2021-22
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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