Britain needs more Scottish built frigates MP warns

The MP for Dunfermline and Dollar has called for increased orders of Type 31 frigates, greater use of east coast assets including Rosyth dockyard, and a single funded High North strategy, warning that the UK should consider itself already in conflict with Russia, in written evidence to the Defence Committee’s Defence in the High North inquiry.

Graeme Downie, who chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group on Estonia and whose constituency is home to Rosyth dockyard and HMS Caledonia, told the committee that defending the High North must be understood as the first duty of government, saying that when Putin illegally invaded Ukraine in 2022 the impact was felt immediately by British families through higher energy bills and that “any future action Putin takes will hurt those same people first and worst.”

Russia’s behaviour in the region confirmed its long-term intent, Downie said, pointing to a major military buildup including new air bases in Murmansk, expanded air defence deployments and a fleet of ice-capable vessels, Russian submarine activity at its highest since the Cold War, and a pattern of hybrid threats including underwater activity around Scotland’s subsea infrastructure. Drawing on discussions with senior Estonian officials in his capacity as APPG chair, he said that even a peace settlement in Ukraine would not stop Russian aggression but would simply redirect it toward the Arctic and North Atlantic, adding that “when they offer advice, we should listen.”

Downie also argued the government should consider increasing orders for more Type 31, describing them as cheaper and quicker to build and adaptable over their lifetime to fulfil different roles, saying this could be “particularly critical for the future hybrid navy envisaged in the SDR and emphasised by the Royal Navy.” He also argued for greater use of east coast assets such as Rosyth and DM Crombie to improve response times and deterrence posture into the GIUK gap and northern waters, saying this was how the UK could “shorten our logistics tail, reinforce allies at speed, and make presence in the High North continuous rather than episodic.”

On the protection of subsea cables, Downie described them as the digital arteries of the economy and called for investment in seabed monitoring, resilient routing and hard power capacity to deter and act against threats around the northern approaches, saying these were “defence tasks, not merely regulatory ones.” He cited energy industry leaders who had told him: “If a Russian submarine appears next to one of our installations, who do I call?” and said the government must have a credible answer.

The deployment of HMS Dragon to Cyprus following the drone attack on RAF Akrotiri was raised as evidence of the strain on UK readiness, with Downie saying it demonstrated the limits of the UK’s ability to transfer capability between theatres and that the lack of viable support ships forced the country into “piecemeal, reactive deployments rather than coherent, strategically focused force projection.”

Downie noted that China controlled 70 per cent of rare earth mining and 90 per cent of processing and described the Arctic as a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the West to reduce its dependence on China, provided development was done responsibly and in line with Western values. He also pointed to the suggestion that HMS Prince of Wales’s High North mission might have been shifted to the Middle East as a warning against short-term thinking, saying had that decision been taken it would have signalled that the West was still seeing the High North through a tactical lens rather than the decade-long strategic one required.

He concluded that the High North was Britain’s frontline and that leadership required urgency, clarity and action, saying simply that “delay is not defence.”