Army in crisis as £500m blackhole exposed amid recruitment chaos | UK | News

Damning analysis has shown that funding for British Army troops has dwindled by £500million in real terms in five years.

Spending by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) on service personnel is projected to be £11.66billion in 2024/25.

This, when adjusted for inflation, represents a fall of almost 4%.

£9.95billion was spent on troops in 2019-20, The Telegraph reports.

Research by the House of Commons Library found that this would be equal £12.13billion in 2024-25.

Commissioned by the Liberal Democrats, the study found that there has been a fall of 3.9% in real terms spending since 2019-20.

The House of Commons Library said on December 4 that, in the 2023/24 financial year, the UK spent £53.9billion on defence.

It added that spending plans set out in the 2024 Budget, presented by Rachel Reeves on October 30, show that defence spending is expected to total £56.9billion in 2024/25, increasing to £59.8billion in 2025/26.

This is equivalent to an annual average real-terms growth rate of 2.3% between 2023/24 and 2025/26.

As a member of NATO, the UK is committed to spending 2% of GDP on defence expenditure that meets NATO’s definition. The latest NATO estimates show that the UK spent 2.3% of GDP on defence in 2024.

It comes after the Defence Secretary, John Healey, admitted that the Army is on course to fall to its lowest number of personnel for more than 230 years.

In October, the Labour minister confirmed that the number of troops will fall below 70,000 for the first time since 1793.

At that time, the British Army had around 40,000 soldiers. But this total was rapidly increased in order to fight the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.

This Autumn, the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer committed to increasing the defence budget by £2.9billion for next year.

On December 18, Sir Keir said that the US president-elect, Donald Trump, was right to say that “Europe needs to do more” on military expenditure.

Mr Trump has urged the US’ European allies to increase military spending, claiming that it is unfair that Washington spends so much more.

Starmer also told LBC that he had been having “constructive discussions” with the former and future president on a number of issues, including the military.