Conservatives push to cut green spending to fund UK defence, pledging up to £50bn in new fund

London — The Conservative Party unveiled a policy to divert funding from green-energy programmes into defence, arguing that the country must prioritise military readiness amid evolving security threats. Party leader Kemi Badenoch said that if elected, the Tories would reallocate about £17 billion to the Ministry of Defence and mobilise up to £50 billion through a Sovereign Defence Fund to invest in defence start-ups and new technologies, including drones.

Under the plan, £6 billion would be reallocated from the government’s research and development budget to defence. The National Wealth Fund, launched last year to back economic growth and the push for clean energy, would be renamed the National Defence and Resilience Bank. The Conservatives said £11 billion from the fund’s current allocation to eco-projects would be redirected to defence, with the remainder used for national resilience such as water and transport networks.

The party says these moves would speed up the United Kingdom’s progress toward higher defence spending, arguing that it needs to reach 3% of gross domestic product by the end of the decade. That target would outpace the government’s own plan, which envisions defence spending at about 2.5% of GDP by 2027 and 3.5% by 2035. Badenoch argued that the country should decouple arms imports from China and invest more in sovereign capability, saying the nation must be able to sustain conflict in scenarios like Ukraine without overreliance on foreign producers.

"The next Conservative government will move funding from [Energy Secretary] Ed Miliband’s vanity Net Zero projects and use it to back our military to accelerate their war readiness," Badenoch said in remarks broadcast to news outlets. "We must ensure our armed forces are equipped and ready to defend our country. In the face of growing threats we should be investing more in defence, yet all we see from this Labour government is heel dragging and vague promises."

The plan also emphasizes expanding capability in defence innovation, arguing that greater private sector investment is needed to speed the development of new systems and supply chains that reduce exposure to hostile states. Badenoch said the government should work to limit Chinese components in critical military procurement and promote domestic manufacturing.

The proposal comes amid wider concerns about Britain’s defence readiness. A recent Commons Defence Committee report warned that the UK remains "nowhere near" where it needs to be to defend itself and its allies against growing threats, citing heavy reliance on the United States and insufficient investment in Britain’s own security framework. Chief of the Defence Staff Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton has said the pace of private investment in the defence industry is "painfully slow" and urged more young people to enter the sector.

The current government has already launched UK Defence Innovation, a programme with an annual budget of at least £400 million intended to back new technologies and boost defence-related jobs. Still, a long-awaited defence investment plan has faced delays, complicating the ability to deliver a coordinated national strategy.

Labour immediately rejected the Conservative plan, accusing the party of favouring fantasy economics and of leaving the armed forces hollowed out and underfunded when they were last in government. A Labour spokesperson pointed to the party’s own defence uplift, arguing that Labour would deliver a higher level of investment in the current Parliament and warned that the Conservative approach risked undermining long-term security by undermining essential, non-military investments.

In the debate over geopolitical risk, lawmakers and security officials have stressed the need for a robust, self-reliant industrial base and a defence workforce prepared for rapid technological change. The policy, if adopted, would mark a significant shift in how Britain funds security and resilience projects, tying together defence, critical infrastructure protection and strategic autonomy in a single funding framework.

As the government remains under pressure to articulate a clear, funded path to defence readiness, observers will watch how the proposed reallocation would affect investments in other priority areas, and whether Parliament would approve moving substantial sums from climate and resilience initiatives to military capacity in the coming years.