Brown gets defensive about budgets
The claim
“The defence budget has been rising every year…. The only time the defence budget has been cut was in the 10 years before 1997″
Gordon Brown, Questions to the prime minister, 10 March, 2010
Cathy Newman checks it out
Gordon Brown has been under heavy fire from the top military brass in the last few days for starving the Ministry of Defence of resources. Today he returned fire. Labour has been at war five times since it came to power 13 years ago. And the PM is adamant that during his time as chancellor, and since he got the keys to number 10, the military have got everything they asked for.
His claim at prime minister’s question time today that the defence budget has risen EVERY year since 1997 was impressive. But even before he’d left the chamber, FactCheck had got to work to find out if it was true.
Over to the team for the analysis
Gordon Brown is accused of squeezing defence budgets at a time of war. Just this week Sir Bill Jeffrey, the most senior civil servant at the Ministry of Defence, told the Chilcot inquiry the forces were kept short of funds when Brown was Chancellor.
David Cameron today took up the baton, accusing Brown of fighting “two wars on a peace time budget”. The PM retorted that the defence budget has been rising every year since Labour came to power.
Spending figures
In real terms – i.e. taking account of inflation – Gordon Brown is wrong. Figures given to us by the Ministry of Defence (see at the bottom of the post) show the defence budget fell year-on-year in real terms on four occasions since 1997 when Labour came to power – in 1998, 1999, 2002 and 2007.
Worse, the defence budget also fell below 1997 levels (again in real terms) on four occasions – 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2002.
“Near cash”
The MoD says Gordon Brown wasn’t talking about real terms growth, but was instead referring to “near cash” rises in the defence budget. “Near cash” is the simplest form of the military budget, the most basic cash figure – without inflation or depreciation taken into account.
According to the Institute For Fiscal Studies, inflation has to be factored in to make spending comparisons meaningful. So Brown was at the very least playing fast and loose with the figures by ignoring inflation.
Wrong again?
However, Gordon Brown also stated today in the Commons that the “expenditure of the Ministry of Defence has been rising in real terms under this government”. Taking him absolutely literally, “this government” was elected in 2005. But here he is also wrong. As we’ve seen just now, spending fell in real terms in 2007.
FactCheck likes a belt and braces approach, so we called several experts – including Mark Stoker, a military economist at the International Institute For Strategic Studies.
He pointed out NATO also provide accounts on defence budgets, and he reckons these numbers are more accurate.
Still falling
Looking at the NATO figures, the defence budget fell from £34.4bn in 2007 to £32.8bn in 2008.
“If you look at Nato’s figures Gordon Brown’s statement is incorrect,” says Stoker. “Either way, both sets of data indicate that the budget has not risen every year.”
Cathy Newman’s verdict
Defence spending has gone up in “near cash” terms, but it’s fiscally illiterate to use this measure, and the former chancellor knows it. The government is on firmer ground when it points out that the departmental budget is 10 per cent higher this year than in 1997, but FactCheck has established that Gordon Brown’s central claim that the defence budget has gone up every year is fiction.
UPDATE: Number 10′s response
A Downing Street spokesman said: “The government has a strong record on defence spending. Defence spending has risen by 10 per cent in real terms since 1997, and on top of a rising defence budget £8bn was spent on Iraq and so far £9bn have been spent on Afghanistan. Every additional request for funding for Iraq and Afghanistan has been met.
“As Chancellor, Gordon Brown’s successive spending reviews provided for annual average real terms growth in the defence budget.
“Exact outturns on those budgets can vary for a range of reasons, including the cost of operations, departmental underspends, and additions over and above budgets in these periods. But there can be no doubt about the government’s commitment to resourcing defence.”
The row continued the next day on the floor of the Commons.
- Full table of MoD figures
Source: MoD. Figures are calculated using the latest (4 January 2010) GDP deflator which is updated quarterly by the HM Treasury. The agreed figure of 1.5 per cent for the average annual real-terms growth over the comprehensive spending review period was agreed with the Treasury in 2007/08 and was calculated using the 2007/08 baseline (£29,411k).
There are 20 comments on this post
Good work Cathy.
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Brown’s a liar. Now thats something I haven’t heard for the last five minutes…..
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Yesterday you said Grayling was speaking facts, even though he was using selective figures. Today you accuse Brown of lying, because the figures he used were selective.
Are you making up the rules as you go along?
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I do wish someone in the TV media would call Brown a liar to his face.
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It appears the time it takes to rubbish statements by our great leader gets shorter by the week. Does he take us all for fools?
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Brown’s assertion was not merely “fiscally illiterate”: it was obviously and positively misleading given the effects of “defence inflation”. Throughout Labour’s period in office, both equipment costs and pay awards have outstripped inflation; while the above-inflation pay awards have been driven in part by the need to recruit and retain personnel during a period of high operational activity, they will also have been pushed upwards by the need for the MoD to compete in the labour market against other areas of the public sector (including the NHS) whose workforces benefited from Mr Brown’s largesses while Chancellor. Any increase in the MoD budget will not have been sufficient to allow for these increased costs; Brown knows it and (unless he takes the electorate for a fool) he knows we know it too.
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It would be good for Cathy (or her team) to apply defence inflation to the figures as they are specific to this industry and therefore offer a realistic figure of inflation rather than general inflation.
I wouk in construction and if I applied general inflation to any costs rather than the published construction inflation figures it would be be professionally irresponsible, and I would be liable to my clients.
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Well done he was telling porkies and needs to be called on it. BUT
the Tory position is one which has some glaring holes in it as well.
Defence spending fell in 98 and 99 when Labour first came in when Brown and Blair implemented the cuts laid out in Ken Clarkes Tory budget of 1996. They have to take responsibility for doing it but the Tories can not claim they would have done anything different as it was their plans.
In 2005 the Tory Manifesto was not we will spend lots more on Defence but we will spend the same as Labour for the next 2 years i.e 2006 and 2007. Again it may have fallen but tha Tory published plan at the time was to do the same.
The Tories want to give the message that if they had been in it would all have been different but the 2 parties quite close on defence policy for decades.
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In terms of the Iraq and Afghan Money which was added separately it would be useful to see it year by year alongside the other figures to get an idea of what we as a country are spending.
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The article says, “And the PM is adamant that… the military have got everything they asked for”
I don’t have the text of his speech in front of me, but wasn’t his claim that every “urgent operational requirement” was granted? If so then this is an entirely different thing – UOR has a very specific definition within the budget terms for the military. I am informed that all UORs were granted, but many longer term requests weren’t.
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Destroys the myth, established by Goebbels, that if you tell a porkie, make sure it’s a big ‘un and keep on reinforcing and repeating it, till it gains credence and becomes established fact.
It’s utterly disgraceful that Gordo chooses to be mendacious over the lives of soldiers, lives on the line, that LieBour have sent to fight and die on foreign fields.
Good deconstruct Cathy.
Wonder how Jon is taking the bad news.?
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I’m not a Brown fanboy but I think you were being unnecessarily harsh on Brown here. He said that spending rose every year… in cash terms, it did. He said that the defence budget is up 10% in real terms since 1997 – and it is. Of course it’s a slippery little trick to use cash instead of real terms, but to conclude that he’s lying – the needle hard over in the red sector – is a bit strong.
The defence budget HAS risen significantly in real terms since 1997, even if there are a few bumps in the graph. Now whether that’s enough to make up for ‘military inflation’, or to cover the operations the government has required of the military, is another more complicated question.
And lastly – why have you ignored Brown’s claim that it fell in 1987-1997? Is that true – in real or cash terms?
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best work so far Cathy.
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Glad to see Gordon exposed, sorry its not front page news everywhere. The BBC haven’t even covered this story. Supine.
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Alas, I have become desensitised to to this governments’ continuous spin. But to get caught misrepresenting figures you yourself were responsible for compiling just beggars belief! That amount of incompetence must require a special effort.
I take it the letter to the Chilcot enquiry explaining this “oversight” will also contain an apology to the military commanders who complained GB was being disingenuous and were accused by Labour back benchers of being politically motivated.
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I hope you get the credit you deserve for this.
So many news channels are too lazy to do anything but churn out the PR handed to them by the political spinners.
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