WILPF UK responds to the Autumn Budget from the Labour government 2026 with the following statement and letter written to John Healey MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF UK) is very disappointed to see that the Chancellor’s new budget prioritises military spending over real human security. It is a budget for war and austerity. The budget represents continuing austerity under the pressure of war and the demands of military alliances.
A peaceful country’s security is assured by provision of adequate health, education, housing and social services, the budgets for which the government is now going to rob to fund the military. Instead, the UK needs to develop a pool of diplomatically skilled people who can enable the state to avoid conflict and who can use the United Nations to settle disputes.
If the government believes that its resources are limited it need look no further to find savings than the Sizewell C nuclear plan. The public accounts committee have told the government that taxpayers and energy consumers will face a “high level of risk” after the government agreed to take a 45% stake in this white elephant which will be superseded by renewable energy before it comes on stream. Nuclear power is not clean energy; it depends upon colonial mineral exploitation, produces nuclear waste that cannot be disposed of, and provides a target for potential aggressors.
A further source of savings – £240 billion – would be to stop the renewal of the nuclear missile programme. These missiles are another white elephant as all are agreed that they can never be used and they do nothing to improve our security.
In the current international crisis, the oil companies as well as the banks have accumulated unprecedented wealth. They should be taxed more highly to fund a people-centred economy that does not waste the planet’s limited resources in the pursuit of growth.
