Sir Keir Starmer will urge European countries to commit more in defence spending as he heads to Brussels for security talks.

The prime minister will call on Europe to “step up and shoulder more of the burden” to fend off the threat posed by Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Sir Keir, the first prime minister to meet all the leaders of the 27 EU nations in Brussels since Brexit, will argue the bloc needs to capitalise on the weak state of the Russian economy by continuing with its sanctions regime.

The prime minister will meet NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Monday afternoon before travelling to meet with the leaders at an informal meeting of the European Council.

Sir Keir is expected to say: “We need to see all allies stepping up – particularly in Europe.

“President Trump has threatened more sanctions on Russia and it’s clear that’s got Putin rattled. We know that he’s worried about the state of the Russian economy.

“I’m here to work with our European partners on keeping up the pressure, targeting the energy revenues and the companies supplying his missile factories to crush Putin’s war machine.

“Because ultimately, alongside our military support, that is what will bring peace closer.”

Sir Keir’s suggestion that EU countries should spend more on defence was criticised by the Conservatives, who have urged the government to increase defence spending to 2.5% of national income.

Shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge said that while “continuing to do everything possible to support Ukraine must remain our top security priority”, it had to accompanied by “urgently increasing defence spending on our own armed forces”.

“Starmer is actually delaying spending 2.5% and, as a result, undermining our ability to rearm at the scale and pace required by the threats we face.”

The prime minister said at the end of last year that he would “set out a path” to lift defence spending to 2.5% of national income in the spring.

The UK says it currently spends around 2.3% of GDP [gross domestic product] on defence.

Last year EU member states spent an average of 1.9% of EU GDP on defence, according to the European Defence Agency, a 30% increase compared with 2021.

Earlier this week European Council President Antonio Costa said the 23 EU members who belong to NATO are likely to agree to raise the defence spending target above the current 2% of national output at the next NATO summit in June.

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However, Donald Trump has repeatedly criticised NATO – the military alliance consisting of 30 European countries and the US and Canada – arguing that his country is contributing too much to the alliance’s budget while Europeans contribute too little.

During the US election campaign, President Trump said America would only help defend NATO members from a future attack by Russia if they met their spending obligations.

He also said members of NATO should be contributing 5% of their GDPs to defence spending – rather than the previous target of 2%.

The session of the Informal European Council comes as the government seeks to reset its relationship with the EU and boost areas of cooperation, including on defence and tackling illegal migration.

On Sunday the prime minister hosted German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at his country residence Chequers, where the two leaders agreed on the “importance of scaling up and coordinating defence production across Europe”, Downing Street said.

However, the government has repeatedly said that a closer relationship with the EU will only be sought within its red lines – meaning there will be no return to freedom of movement and rejoining the customs union or single market.

More people are crossing the English Channel in small boats on the weekend. Our data analysis shows last year 40% of the total number of arrivals happened on a Saturday or Sunday.

We have been looking into possible reasons why many more people are arriving in small boats on the weekend, and the explanation might not be quite what you expect.

Here are a few theories.

French staffing and resources

One suggestion is that French border force, police and coastguard are not working to a consistent level seven days a week.

“Gangs have realised there are lower or less engaged staffing on weekends on the French side,” a former senior Home Office official who worked closely on deals with French tells me.

A former immigration minister said they found it “frustrating” that “we were paying the French but weren’t able to specify operational deployments”.

They said it would “not surprise me if the French had fewer people at the weekend and the people smugglers have come to realise that”.

Hundreds of millions have been given by the UK to France to police the Calais coast, most recently almost £500m in 2023.

Another former senior government official with responsibility for borders said the French would be able to demonstrate that “hundreds or thousands of officers are working there” but “strategically it suits France to have the gust with us”.

But when we put this to the French side there was a pushback.

Marc de Fleurian, the Calais MP from Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party, says “blaming the other side of the Channel” is the “easy answer”.

He said it’s “cowardly to say it’s the other side’s fault”.

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Pierre Henri Dumont, who was the Calais MP from 2017-2024, said: “The reality is you can have as many police officers as you want, but people will cross the Channel. If you have eight rather than 100 police officers that won’t change anything at all.”

A French coastguard source told Sky News there are the same staffing levels at the weekend, he says “any suggestion there is less staffing on the weekends is laughable and an easy thing to say”.

Smuggler planning

Smuggler supply chains might be linked to a specific day for a range of reasons, for example, as one former senior Home Office official suggests, the fact “boat engines, or parts, might arrive on a Friday”.

Mr Dumont says smuggling networks rely on people to do small jobs, like transporting boats, who may also have day jobs in the week. He says the reasons behind the weekend uptick “are not necessarily predictable ones”.

Another factor may be that because French police tend not to intervene once a boat is in the water, many small boats set off from inland waterways. The canal-type waterways which come inland before the Channel are often full of fishing boats on weekdays, making it easier to launch from the waterways on weekends.

Another suggestion from a Home Office source is that while many migrants who cross the channel are based in the camps around Calais, many use public transport to arrive for a timed departure and are therefore reliant on transport timetables which may be more limited at different times of the week.

Weather coincidence

Leaked Home Office analysis shows that of the number of weekend days where small boat crossings were more likely because of good weather conditions was disproportionately high last year.

The figures show that 61 out of 197 days where the weather meant there was a realistic possibility, likely or highly likely there would be a channel crossing were weekend days. However, we only have figures for 2024, and it seems unlikely the weather alone could account for three years of higher crossings on weekend days.

Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of breaking lockdown rules when a voice coach came to Labour headquarters during COVID.

The Labour Party has denied the prime minister breached COVID rules in December 2020 for employing actress and voice coach Leonie Mellinger to help him prepare a response to Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal.

Two Sunday Times journalists, Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund, said in their book Get In that Ms Mellinger advised Sir Keir on his speaking style.

Politics latest: Starmer heads to Brussels for talks

Excerpts of the book said she qualified for “key worker” status and visited the Labour Party’s headquarters on 24 December 2020 wearing a face mask.

At the time, London and the South East were under Tier 4 restrictions, which meant no households were allowed to mix and people had to work from home unless they were unable to do so.

Conservative former minister Richard Holden has written to Sir Keir asking whether he thinks he was breaching the law.

A Labour spokesman said: “The rules were followed at all times.”

It is understood Sir Keir was working at the time with a small team that was preparing him for a response to Mr Johnson’s Brexit deal, with a TV camera filming it all.

A recommendation on Ms Mellinger’s website from Sir Keir says: “Thanks for all your help and support along the way which made all this possible.”

Mr Holden has asked the prime minister if he will now appoint an independent investigator to clear up the claims.

The Tory MP wrote in his letter: “Do you think it would be right for other members of the public to get acting lessons during tier 4 restrictions?”

Sky News understands there will not be an investigation into whether Sir Keir was working.

Signing off the letter, Mr Holden added: “There is a strong public interest into your conduct during the pandemic and it is clear from these revelations that not only have you misled the public but you had a casual disregard for the law at a time when so many people were making such difficult sacrifices all in the service of advancing your own political career.

“You have said ‘honesty and decency matters’ – I hope you will treat these questions to you with the same standards you asked of others.”

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This is not the first time Mr Holden has questioned Sir Keir’s lockdown conduct.

He queried the Labour leader’s conduct around “Beergate”, when Sir Keir and deputy leader Angela Rayner were pictured drinking beer and eating a takeaway at a Labour Party meeting during a local election campaign in Durham in April 2021.

A police investigation found they had not breached COVID rules as the event complied with the regulations for work gatherings, with a pause for food.