Rishi Sunak urges NATO allies to pump more money into defense

The Prime Minister also brushed aside 'outdated' alliance spending reports showing the percentage spent by Britain is set to rise from 2.16 % in 2022 at 2.07. % in 2023

The Prime Minister took a look at NATO's defense spending reports (

Image: AP)

Rishi Sunak took a look at NATO's defense spending reports as he flew to Lithuania for this week's summit.

Walking to Vilnius, he called on the allies to inject more money into their armies. Only 11 of NATO's 31 members have pledged to spend at least 2% of their GDP on their armed forces.

The latest NATO figures show the percentage spent by Britain is set to fall from 2.16% in 2022 to 2.07% in 2023.

Contested by the Mirror, the Prime Minister claimed that the alliance's figures - published last Friday - were "outdated". Still, the NATO publication says nations had until June 23 to announce their spending plans.

“Each ally’s Ministry of Defense reports current and estimated future defense expenditures according to an agreed definition of defense expenditures,” the document states.

"The cut-off date for information used in this report was June 23, 2023. Figures for 2022 and 2023 are estimates."

NATO leaders at the summit in Lithuania (

Picture:

Getty Images)

Asked about the fall in the percentage of GDP the UK allocates to defence, Mr Sunak insisted they had not factored in a £5billion increase for defense fleet of Royal Navy Trident-armed nuclear submarines and to replenish stockpiles of weapons sent to Ukraine announced in March.

He told the Mirror: "Those numbers are out of date. When they compiled the numbers for this chart you see, what they didn't have was the increase in defense spending This does not include, for example, the £5 billion announced in the Spring Budget, which is strengthening the nuclear business and rebuilding stocks.

"If you take this into account, defense spending would increase as in our own figures, and we will continue to be the biggest spender in Europe and the second in NATO."

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