Massive proliferation of different types of free zones leads to ‘zone-stacking’
EUROPEANPOWELL
When Labour unveiled its Defence Industrial Strategy in September 2025, ministers wrapped it in the familiar rhetoric of “innovation,” “skills,” and “regional growth.” But behind the glossy press releases and photo ops with factory workers lies a more disturbing truth: Britain’s latest “growth zones” scheme isn’t just about jobs or technology, it’s about embedding the military-industrial complex at the heart of the UK economy.
Five new “Defence Growth Zones”
The new strategy establishes five Defence Growth Zones (DGZs) in Cardiff, Belfast, Glasgow, Sheffield, and Plymouth, backed by an initial £250 million over five years. Each zone will “foster collaboration between government, industry and academia” to “stimulate innovation, strengthen supply chains, create jobs, and attract private investment.”
Sound familiar? It should. That’s almost word-for-word how the government described Investment Zones and Freeports. Only now, the sectors in question are shipbuilding, drone manufacturing, and battlefield AI.
The blueprint is clear: take the same corporate-subsidy model tested through Freeports and Enterprise Zones, rebrand it for the defence sector, and badge it as “national security.”
Plymouth: the perfect test case for zone-stacking
If there’s one place that shows what’s really going on, it’s Plymouth. The city already hosts the Plymouth & South Devon Freeport, one of the government’s flagship tax-break hubs, and now it’s being hailed as a national “centre for marine autonomy” under the Defence Growth Zone banner, with £4 billion of projected investment over the next decade.
Local authorities have gone further, describing Plymouth as a “Defence Strategic Investment Zone” under the wider Industrial Strategy Zone framework. That means one patch of coastline is now simultaneously a Freeport, an ISZ, and a Defence Growth Zone, each with its own package of subsidies, planning flexibilities, and public funding streams.
In policy circles this is known as zone-stacking: overlapping incentive regimes that funnel multiple layers of state aid and regulatory relaxation into the same corporate hands. In plain English, it’s a subsidy bonanza, all underwritten by the public purse.
Defence as an “engine for growth” — or corporate welfare?
The government’s own strategy document spells it out: the goal is to make “defence an engine for growth.” It promises to “back UK-based businesses,” strengthen the domestic supply chain, and “unlock private investment.” That might sound benign, until you realise it’s the same justification used for decades of privatisation and outsourcing the state as venture capitalism for big business.
What this really means is using defence procurement, a budget now expected to rise sharply under Labour’s 3 %-of-GDP defence-spending target, as a vehicle for industrial subsidy. The state buys the kit, the contractors pocket the profits, and ministers get to claim they’re “re-industrialising Britain.”
The industry lobby group ADS, representing arms manufacturers and aerospace giants, has eagerly endorsed the plan. Its own analysis claims that boosting defence spending to 3 % of GDP by 2035 could create 50,000 new jobs, rising to 85,000 if spending hits 3.5 %. What ADS doesn’t highlight is who those jobs would actually serve — or who pays for them.
Jobs for whom?
Independent research offers a sobering counterpoint. The Centre for Cities review of earlier enterprise-zone programmes found that many of the “new” jobs created were low-paid or temporary, and that over one-third simply displaced employment from other areas. In other words, shiny new zones don’t necessarily generate new work, they just move it around, often at great cost to the taxpayer.
There’s every reason to expect the same pattern here. When defence contractors set up in Freeport-style zones, they benefit from business-rate relief, customs exemptions, and public-funded infrastructure. But workers get short-term contracts, low-skill assembly jobs, and few lasting community benefits once the subsidies run dry.
Militarising economic policy
Framing defence as “economic strategy” is more than just bureaucratic rebranding. It marks a profound shift in how the UK conceives national development. Industrial policy is no longer about building sustainable civilian industry or green manufacturing; it’s about embedding military production as a growth engine in its own right.
This is the quiet militarisation of economic policy, normalising defence expansion as the route to prosperity, rather than a cost of it. Plymouth, with its layered zones and billions in “defence innovation” funding, is the pilot project. If it works politically, expect many more to follow.
The bigger picture
From Westminster’s perspective, the beauty of Defence Growth Zones is that they don’t look like arms spending. They look like “levelling up.” They can be sold as jobs, innovation, or local growth. But peel away the branding and the logic is the same: ever-closer integration of the state, academia, and private arms corporations in pursuit of profit and geopolitical muscle.
The real question isn’t whether these zones will “create jobs.” It’s what kind of economy we’re creating, and whose interests it really serves.
Sources
- UK Government, Defence Industrial Strategy 2025: Making Defence an Engine for Growth (Sept 2025) — assets.publishing.service.gov.uk
- GOV.UK press release: New Defence Growth Deals Created to Boost Local Economies (Sept 2025) — gov.uk
- ADS Group analysis on UK defence spending and jobs (2025) — adsgroup.org.uk
- Centre for Cities, In the zone: Have enterprise zones delivered the jobs they promised? (2019) — centreforcities.org
- Plymouth City Council / Invest Plymouth: Team Plymouth: Defence Strategic Investment Zone materials (2025).
- UK Government, Industrial Strategy Zones Action Plan (2024–25) — gov.uk
This article (Keir Starmer’s Defence Growth Zones: Militarising the Economy by Stealth) was created and published by EuropeanPowell and is republished here under “Fair Use”
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