UK Treasury Department neglects to defend the priority sectors of the National Wealth Fund

Digest opened free editor

Rola Khaleda, FT editor, chooses her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The UK National Resources Fund will have the defense industry as one of its priority sectors, despite the government’s efforts to accelerate clearance efforts.

advisor Rachel Reeves She said on Wednesday that she wanted to be the government car, which would get a budget of about 28 billion pounds by the end of the current parliament, to consider investments in “double use technologies” and enhance the “supply chain flexibility” to support defense and security in the United Kingdom.

However, the development of its strategy to John Flint, CEO of NWF, did not include the defense as one of the main sectors that should focus on it directly. Instead, the Ministry of Finance named Clean Energy, advanced manufacturing, digital technologies and transportation.

The decision comes even when the UK seeks to increase military spending as European countries are exposed to increasing pressure from US President Donald Trump to intensify their defense efforts before the NATO summit later this year.

Britain is financing an increase in defensive spending from 2.3 percent to 2.5 percent of GDP through discounts in the aid budget, but Prime Minister Sir Kerr Starmer indicated that he wanted to raise spending to 3 percent of GDP.

In an interview with the Sunday Times this month, Reeves said she believed that NWF can do more to “enhance security and defense.”

She added: “It is clear that it is important to benefit from private sector funds as well as public spending, but if we will spend additional billions of dollars every year on the defense, I want to see this creates good jobs and pay decent wages in the United Kingdom.”

The Treasury said on Wednesday that it wanted to help direct investment to the industries on which the defense sector relied, advanced manufacturing, digital technologies and double use. Double use techniques are those that can be used in civil and military requests.

In response to a question about the defense role, Al -Khazana said in a statement that “NWF can invest directly in defense projects.”

“NWF should consider the role it can play in supporting the provision of the broader industrial strategy, including in defense, life sciences, creative industries; and infrastructure strategy, including in the water and waste sectors,” said the Ministry of Finance strategy.

In its electoral statement, the Labor Party promised to create a new wealth fund to invest in areas such as Green Steel and Gigafactories, with 7.3 billion pounds of new financing.

But in October last year Reeves Abandoning the planDeclared that the current infrastructure bank in the United Kingdom NWF will be renamed and 5.8 billion pounds, or about 1.5 billion pounds less than the proposal in the first place.

Speaking on Wednesday, Reeves said: “I am determined to move forward and faster in the growth of our economy. By directing tens of billions of industrial strengths in the United Kingdom, we will offer high -skilled high -wage jobs in every corner of the country.”