NATO chief Rutte visits UK for first meeting with PM Burnham
The UK’s DSRB discussions represent a shift from the position held under Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who had rejected the idea. Healey himself had privately pushed for UK membership in the bank while serving as defence secretary, before he resigned in June accusing the Treasury of being unwilling to provide the resources needed to defend the country. In his resignation letter, he said there were “credible ways” to fund extra defence spending, including “working multinationally.”
Treasury officials stressed that no decision on UK membership has been made. A government spokesperson said the UK was “fully committed to working alongside our international partners to scale defence industrial capacity” and was “working closely with our Canadian allies on ensuring the Multilateral Defence Mechanism and Defence Security Resilience Bank are complementary.”
Canada has led efforts to establish the DSRB, which supporters say would enable governments to borrow at lower costs to increase military spending. The bank already has backing from Albania, Bulgaria, Belgium, Greece, Latvia, Luxembourg, Romania, Turkey and Ukraine. Membership for the UK and other G7 countries would carry an upfront investment cost of around £870 million spread over three years, the BBC reported.
Paying for the UK’s growing defence commitments is one of Healey’s biggest challenges as chancellor. He is preparing for the Budget in October and next year’s spending review. The government has so far avoided committing to raising defence spending to 3% of national income by 2030, instead repeating only the longer-term goal of 3.5% by 2035.
The DSRB discussions coincide with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte’s travel to the UK for his first meeting with Prime Minister Andy Burnham. Burnham had been due to meet Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in the UK on Wednesday before cancelling the engagement following the death of his father.
Rutte is scheduled to give a speech in Oxfordshire, where he is expected to say the UK is “serious about security” and to praise the country’s efforts supporting Ukraine. The BBC reported Rutte is also expected to say NATO will not be intimidated by Russia’s campaign of hostile actions. In remarks prepared for delivery, Rutte is expected to say that “Russia wants to stop us helping Ukraine – but their actions will only lead us to do more for Ukraine.”
The visits come after NATO forces shot down a drone over Lithuania in what the BBC described as the latest security scare on the alliance’s eastern flank, where tensions remain high amid Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. On Tuesday, Denmark also accused a Russian warship of firing two emergency flares at one of its helicopters while it was tracking the vessel in the Baltic Sea.