Pressure is growing across party lines for clarity on the government’s Defence Investment Plan, with MPs from multiple parties warning that delays risk undermining capability planning and wider defence readiness.
During exchanges in the House of Commons, Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty warned that the timetable for the plan was already affecting decision-making.
“The delay to the defence investment plan is obviously having a huge effect on our capabilities, and the plan is in danger of being overtaken by events,” he said, pointing to pending approvals for underwater uncrewed systems and mine countermeasure programmes.
He also raised operational questions about autonomous mine-clearing vessels deployed to the Gulf, including their readiness and support arrangements.
Alongside this, MPs highlighted the framework set out in the Strategic Defence Review, noting that any removal of capabilities from the plan should be based on advice from the National Armaments Director and service chiefs, and queried whether such advice had been provided as the plan is finalised.
Liberal Democrat MP James MacCleary added to the pressure, linking the delay to wider concerns about national readiness and the pace of legislative follow-through.
“Liberal Democrats share concerns about the whereabouts of the defence investment plan, and urge the Government to come forward with its publication,” he said.
“At a time when senior military figures have warned repeatedly that Britain is not ready for war, my question is this: if the threat is urgent, why is the legislation not?”
MacCleary also pressed ministers on the timing of the promised Defence Readiness Bill.
“If the Secretary of State cannot tell us when he will publish the defence investment plan, can he tell us when he will introduce the defence readiness Bill?”
Defence Secretary John Healey acknowledged the importance of the plan but did not provide a publication date, describing it as a major cross-government effort.
“This is a whole-of-Defence effort; we are working flat out to deliver the defence investment plan. It will put into practice the 10-year vision that the strategic defence review set out in June last year,” he said.
“When we have that completed, we will report that to the House.”
Healey rejected suggestions that delays were holding up investment decisions.
“The defence investment plan is not holding up important investment decisions. We have awarded more than 1,200 major contracts since the election,” he said.
He declined to comment on specific operational matters raised during the exchange.
“The hon. Gentleman is the last person in the House to expect me to set out the detail of those sorts of operational arrangements in public.”
Responding to questions on wider preparedness, Healey said work on defence readiness was ongoing across government, but again did not set a timeline.
“Preparation for greater defence readiness, and greater societal and economic readiness, is going on at present,” he said, adding that a Defence Readiness Bill would be delivered “in due course.”
Won’t change until all the main parties have a defence spending trajectory.
I do think that defence has to be taken out of party politics.
You’re right, but you could make the claim about a lot of things to be fair.
I agree 100%. Defence should be a cross party issue and taken out of being a political football.
So do I and once its agreed which it never will be the Treasury should have to find the overspend from Benefits and Benefits alone.
I’m sure that’ll really get the public onside, if they know that more defence spending will directly corellate to less money for benefits (including pensions).
Thanks for letting me know! You’re right I don’t think it would be popular.
It’s a long shot hoping we might get some much needed gear.
Fairly irrelevant if there’s no money and the government of the day will always control the budget. Sadly the political class don’t understand how to create value but are rather good at wasting money. Quoting Freidman and the 4 ways of spending No.4
Spending someone else’s money on someone else: This method has the lowest incentive for efficiency, often leading to the least careful spending.
Pretty much the way government spends tax revenues.
It was supposedly days away from publication when the Ajax thing blew up.
How bad a fallout could that really have?
£6 billion
Then risk it out of the plan and go forwards with other items. Boxer and CAVS Patria, etc.
Instead of holding everything up why can’t they put “Ajax” in the appendix on its own and still to be dealt with?
I imagine the supposed £28bn shortfall in fulfilling the SDR is causing some headaches.
Shite, this Government hiked NI on the military and raised £70 Billion in two years, so there’s more than £28 Billion raised already.
I hope so and I hope in future they ring fence Defence spend or benefits will continue to be a protected priority as it is now; by these Jokers.
With announcements of RCH 155 and AW149 he is not wrong to say the delay in the DIP is not yet holding back major programs.
Why can’t they just show up and release a preliminary DIP Draft , still TBC version? Then we can all tear it to shreds, give feedback and behold a final DIP version might appear TBA?!
What we don’t know is the extent to which existing programmes are likely to exceed future budgets. The 2023 10 year equipment plan threw up a large shortfall. But that was because
(a)the RN included costs for projects not even fully specified, much less approved – T83, MRSS, FAD, T32 and
(b) the bringing forward of costs of defence nuclear.
So the apparent shortfall was meaningless. The 2022 plan, compiled on a different basis, showed a small surplus over 10 years.
The current government may know the current projected spend. But their failure to publish the DIP gives the impression they don’t and allows them to deflect proper parliamentary scrutiny.
It’s not a draft paper for public consumption. Its role is to set out, in detail, how defence has determined the allocation of upwards of £800 bn over the next ten years to meet the objectives set out in the SDSR.
It is an extremely large jigsaw, covering.every aspect of defence manning, admin, operations, technology, procurement, deployment, etc. All complicated by the fact that defence is in a very rundown state, with personnel and equipment gaps all over the place. Plus an alleged £27bn black hole in the procurement budget. Plus the new and pretty major doctrinal shift to a hybrid manned/autonomous-unmanned force, which will involve developing upwards of a dozen new technology systems.
When the staffs put all the bits together, it will inevitably add up to 200, where the budget is100. As the bids from the service departments go under the microscope and many cherished projects have to be trimmed down, delayed or axed to fit in the budget, there will inevitably be an arm-wrestle between and within the services over what each regards as essential.
It is a big exercise and it seems we are starting from scratch in waking up to our shortage of munitions, lack of industrial resilience, poor service pay and conditions, shortage of personnel, transformation to hybrid warfighting etc, etc. We are not at 1938 levels of endeavour, more like1936 and just starting to emerge from the sleepy peace dividen years.
Of course the delay in publication is not great. We know that, once the big items of personnel, the nuclear submarines and Tempest are funded, there won’t be a lot spare for everything else that’s needed. But I for one am just going to be patient and hope that the staffs can energe with a good, expansionist plan.
Tempest is not funded, that’s hit by the delay.
Last I heard, it’s funded to the end of this financial year, so getting to squeaky bum time
My view is that if Defence of the Realm amounts to “200” rather an account’s budget of “100”, then the budget has to be doubled to “200” and cuts made to the overhead of running the country. In terms of the economy its a nil sum calculation. GDP from enlarged defence industries then matches the lost GDP from reduced costs of reduced overheads.
There has to be a line drawn somewhere regarding how much of the national cake defence can demand. My 100 is that line. It is currently increasing to 2.5% of GDP and to 3.5%.in ten years time. If there is no line, then the Navy will say, see our 53 ships, well we actually need 100 to meet all obligations and the othet services will follow suit. Trouble is, the public won’t pay for the 200, which would mean very significant tax rises. If it was so easy to boost defence spending to 200, why did the government not do so over the last 14 years? Answer is, even if they had wanted to, they would have been slung out of office at the next election, because voters would not accept the reduced standard of living that increased taxes would enforce.
The answer lies in two parts I think. The Government is doing the first part, increasing the defence budget as much as it can from the public purse. There is an extra £14bn in the budget by 2027/8, including an extra £5bn this year. That is a 22% increase. That is probably about the political limit that government and populace will support.
The second part would be to raise additional money via a SAFE-type fund or defence bonds, to boost immediate procurement of equipment, which are essentially long-term loans, but excluded from the fiscal borrowing rules. City investors do not seem to be against that, but the Chancellor is apparently opposed..
Failing that, we will have to get Parliament to agree an extra penny in the pound in tax for defence. That would raise a good bit of the defence shortfall over 10 years. But you can imagine the parliamentary bunfight, with the left saying we need a penny in the pound for welfare and another one for the NHS, while the right says we should be cutting taxes for the middle classes so oppose any increase at all.
Just saying a grateful nation should cough up the 200, which is twice what it can actually afford, is not so easy in reality.
Just another MOD/HMG/HMT mess….DIP Should have been with us 4mths Ago…IN THAT TIME We’ve been Humiliated by the Iranian Conflict/ Cyprus…Our International Reputation and Foreign Policy is in Tatters and our Military, Ridiculed all over the Domestic and Global Media….! CRISIS! WHAT CRISIS?
This is starting to feel like one of those government projects that outruns its lifespan so it gets replaced with something else and so the merry-go-round of bullshit starts afresh. History is littered with plans that never became progress and this is sounding like another. The world changes too fast for a load of bean counting pencil pushers to spend years over the blindingly obvious only to report on something that no long exists or is needed. The next stage will be to re-assess the ongoing forward look and report in time for the Budget in 2027 you just wait and see!
The navy and air force are our first line of defence. Both have been emasculated by successive governments and will take 10-20 years to recover. We have less need for a standing army but it could be recovered much more quickly. Forget heavy armour, our land forces need to.be highly mobile and high tech. Fight fast, hard and smart.
There is an interesting story in Breaking Defense , March 17.
This is the new Armaments Director, Rupert Pearce, before the Defence Select Committee. He had told them three months ago that the DIP would be published in a matter of days. He is reported as telling the Committee now:
‘I admit that I got it wrong. It’s an extremely complex reset, a ten-year reset. There’s so many moving parts here. It has just taken a lot, lot longer than I thought it would to get this right and to agree it across government.’
That is a refreshing bit of honesty from someone in the MOD and unusual for someone senior to put their hand up and take personal responsibility.
As I said in a post above, the DIP is actually a very big jigsaw. One with a load of missing pieces, like Ajax and the technical problems with Wedgetail and the scope and cost of all these new ‘transformational’ unmanned goodies and heaps more. It will take time to hammer out a realistic plan and costings and I imagine the staffs are at full throttle pulling it all together. If it means a proprietary forward plan that is affordable, it is worth waiting a bit longer for.
It is this issue of ‘agreeing it across government” that rings an alarm bell. Is their opposition in the cabinet or on the backbenches, or in the Treasury, or all three? I don’t envy John Healey his task but he looks to be hanging on in there.
For ‘proprietary’, read ‘proper”.
For ‘is their opposition’ read ‘Is THERE opposition’
I should proof-read more carefully…
Why don’t we talk about the equipment and front line operatives we have to compare with where we are in comparison previous the year rather than the amount of money spent as that gives no indication of effectiveness of our forced
Treasury needs a metaphorical punch in the face.