During a parliamentary session, Dave Doogan, SNP MP for Angus and Perthshire Glens, questioned the escalating costs of the Defence Nuclear Organisation’s 10-year equipment plan, describing it as “the worst-of-all defence procurement debacles.”
Doogan highlighted the increasing cost estimates, stating, “The cost of the 10-year equipment plan for the Defence Nuclear Organisation stood at £44 billion in 2019. In 2022, it went up by 27% to £60 billion, and in 2024 it inflated by 62% to £99.5 billion.”
He asked Defence Secretary John Healey, “Can the Secretary of State reassure us that the MOD has not lost the run of itself…? What personal commitment can he give the House that he has the foggiest idea what to do about it?”
In response, Healey defended the programme and its significance, stating, “I can absolutely give the hon. Gentleman that assurance.” He highlighted the national importance of the nuclear enterprise, saying, “This is a national enterprise of the utmost importance that maintains the underpinning security for this nation, as it has done over decades.”
Healey also reassured Parliament about the management of the programme, adding, “The management of our nuclear enterprise and the budget controls are in place and stronger than they have been for years.”
Later in the session, Graeme Downie, MP for Dunfermline and Dollar, sought an update on the progress of the submarine dismantling programme at Rosyth, highlighting its potential to provide long-term employment in his constituency.
Downie noted his recent visit to HMS Swiftsure, a decommissioned Royal Navy submarine being dismantled and recycled by Babcock as part of a pilot project.
He asked, “Will the Minister provide an update on the programme, which could secure hundreds of jobs in Dunfermline and Dollar by dealing with similar submarines at Rosyth over the coming decades?”
Responding, Defence Minister Maria Eagle acknowledged the significance of the programme, stating, “My hon. Friend will be aware that despite the fact we have had nuclear submarines since 1980, we have never dismantled one, so there is a lot of work to be done.”
That’s a typo or a gaff on the part of the Minister?
Any Excel geeks on here want to factor in inflation onto the original figure and look at the exchange rate – is there justification in the increase in costs?
It would be @£55 billion, but I’m not sure we are comparing like for like.
It’s miss leading, the ten year equipment plan he is referring to moves on every year and right now the ten year plan has the peek amount of nuclear spend in it. That’s why it ramps up like that, cost have not risen by 62%. The defence nuclear organisation also includes the Astute program as well as the AUKUs program, neither of which have anything to do with nuclear weapons or the deterrent. What your seeing in the plan figures jump up is the commitment the UK made to dramatically increase the SSN fleet as part of AUKUs as well.
The treasury also set aside £10 billion contingency fund for the Dreadnaught class build which is all being pulled down. The contingency fund will be amorotized into MOD budget over a longer period.
The article he got his figures from also states that £10.9 billion of that £99.5 billion figure is inflation.
All his figures are from Demilitarise.org.uk so I would take it all with a massive pinch of salt. I can’t find any if it backed by MOD reports.
I think both Jim and Rodney are right.
If we are doing more work eleven years from now, the 10 year budget will increase next year, and that may have nothing to do with increases in costs for the same thing. Also, there was no 2024 ten year plan published. So while I can find the £44bn and 2022 was indeed around £60bn, I have no idea where the £99.5bn comes from and no idea if it’s estimated on the same basis as the standard plan.
However, there has been an issue pertaining to the last few columns which in recent years have been unrealistically low, artificially decreasing the ten-year “black hole”. Conversely it also leads to increases in forecasts in earlier years as they become more realistic the closer they get, as can be seen in the outtake tables. That’s not just DNO, who are far from the worst culprits.
Here’s a quick update: News reports say the £99.5bn figure comes from the December 2023s Equipment Plan 2023–33 report via NAO and PAC.
I looked in the original published figures in the ’23 equipment plan and the correct figure for DNO was £62.8bn. However, there’s a new split published between nuclear and conventional spend (reported separately from the DNO figures) with 10-year nuclear figures of around £118bn compared to the ringfenced budget of £110bn. There were no previous year equivalent figures.
The NAO report says “The MoD’s decision to prioritise delivering the replacement nuclear deterrent on schedule has brought forward costs at the DNO, where costs have increased by £38.2 billion (62%) compared with last year’s Plan, to £99.5 billion.”
So that’s where the number comes from, the NAO, not the MOD at all. It’s clear that NAO have deliberately attributed most of the new Nuclear Enterprise spend figures to DNO before comparison, and they admit that “the deficit” doesn’t take into account centrally held funding for nuclear. The NAO may well be right and we may see a massive increase in DNO spend in the future, but that wasn’t the MOD’s assessment. Not all Nuclear Enterprise spend goes through the DNO. Run the number through various Chinese whispers and a year later someone is asking questions in the House.
It’s a dumb question as costs vary year by year and increases to the nuclear programme (more and new warheads) was a major part of the 2021budget uplift and 2022 SDSR. There have been serious delays and overruns dating back 30 years to renewing the bomb assembly plant at Aldermaston, and price gouging and dithering by AWE and local planning nonsense costs got out of control, but I think that has been gripped now since AWE was renationalised in 2021.
Erm, we’ve had nuclear submarines since long before 1980. HMS Dreadnaught commissioned 1963 according to a quick Google…
God you´re picky!
63, 80, whatever… Numbers don’t seem to be the government’s strong suit.
Naval group does good equipment, just saying😉
No
that can’t be right, you can’t go from 44 B to 100 B just like that in 5 years
Suggests that the scope has changed along the way.
Just a bit.
Of course the scope has changed. We are building fewer Astutes in the years in question, more Dreadnoughts and more SSN-As. On average we are building more expensive equipment between 2025 and 2034 than between 2020 and 2029. We may even be starting to work on the new warheards by the first half of the next decade.
On the face of it that’s pretty shocking but then that’s the reason an SNP MP framed the question this way, it’s a sort of loaded, offensive closed question. Unfortunately the Minister answered the question but didn’t explain why it’s increased so much.
I’ve been around long enough to know that when it comes to costing out a 10 year plan you need to factor in for inflation and a reasonable margin for the unforeseen.
Now before anyone jumps in shouts about U.K. industry being crap and expensive let’s just take a look at what can possibly have happened in the period 2019 / 2025 other than inflation (equates to £55 billion in Dec 2024 money) to £99.5 billion.
The DNO isn’t just about Nuclear Submarines, it’s the missiles, the warheads, the cost of R&D and production new boats, systems, upgrades, refits, refuelling and decommissioning of old boats and facilities.
So since 2019 BJ decided to reverse the cuts to the numbers of warheads and do so at the same time we are introducing New ones, so extra investment needed in the facilities at £X billion extra.
After 60 years of inactivity we have actually got round to starting to dispose of old Submarines, that is £billions to be spent at Rosyth and Devonport.
A large amount of Plop landed when it was realised that the down stream cost of not ordering follow up orders for PWR2 SSNS after Vanguard meant a lot of refuelling and refits were needed. Unfortunately none had invested in facilities needed and were totally inadequate due to decades of neglect. That’s more Billions to be spent at Devonport and HMNB Clyde.
All the Facilities at BAe Barrow, RR Derby, SFM had been starved of investment for decades so when PWR3 Dreadnought got into the early project stages it was realised that the whole lot needed more £Billions spent.
And then just to add the Cherry on Top of our Cost Cake, AUKUS came along and everything didn’t just need renewing it needed expanding PDQ. All of a sudden the flood gates opened and to put it mildly I have never seen programmes being carried out at the pace that they are.
So to summarise I think massive investment in infrastructure, technology, industrial capacity, training and recruitment of 000’s of new workers probably explains why the 2019 crystal ball didn’t cover the 2025 costs.
Glad I’m not in Politics as my answer would probably have been a bit blunt. “Do you want your share of the investment in industry and extra jobs or not ?”
Goodbye conventiinal military.
I’m afraid so.
Which is why any increase needs to go to conventional and not nuclear before conventional withers and dies.
It is the big projects that are a threat to conventional.
Sun dodgers need to come from somewhere…..
That is about right.
As I’ve said a few times on here we’re are trying to backfill a huge hole caused by lack of capital investment.
That is a far larger hole than the one that Rachel from accounts claimed to have found!
Fighting in sandy places on a Peace Dividend budget caused the investment taps to go to OFF….
Uk needs an equivalent to French Dga: a group of civil servants highly qualified engineers committed for a 20 to 40 years long public m and drafting long terms industrial plans so Politics stick to it.
Hi SB it’s just a Tsunami of very expensive priorities that have been ignored, delayed or just plain ignored for nearly 30 years all coming to the boil at once and non of them can be ignored. The Political / CS establishment is fundamentally anti defence spending (no votes and doesn’t increase CS Mandarin jobs), doesn’t understand that industry / capabilities need constant well planned investment.
The stupid thing is that if investment at a relatively low but constant rate had happened between 1990 and 2020 we would be sitting pretty and have sufficient Capex to increase conventional defence.
There is one bit of all of the new investment that has me scratching my head, and it’s the project for the 2 new floating Drydocks, it only makes sense if one is intended to be forward deployed or we are planning on increasing the SSN Fleet as per 1SL aspiration. My hunch is that it’s the former option and it would be very handy to have a UK sovereign asset in Australia to “assist” RAN with their UK powered SSN’s.
That might just explain why they are taking so long scoping out the requirement as it couldn’t be an off the shelf solution.
Interesting. I’d not heard anything about putting a floating dock abroad. I thought it might be because they were planning on pensioning off the lift or maybe taking it out of use for some years for a rebuild.
If I remember correctly, the swing from a small surplus in the 2022 10 year equipment plan to a deficit in the 2023 forecast was caused by two main factors. The first and smaller element was the RN including costs for ambitions that were not authorised plans- T32, T83, MRSS, FAD. The larger element was the increase of£44b in the nuclear programmes, largely a result of re profiling of the original timescale but also in the light of AUKUS. Both of these needed an expansion of Barrow which is ongoing.
The danger is that with a flat budget, nuclear will put further pressure on conventional programmes and leave nothing for possible new capabilities like GBAD.
Without a significant increase in the overall budget, it is hard to see how , for example, T32 or even MRSS can be afforded.
The 2023 increase was £39b not £44b.
It is impossible to see how we run what we have with a flat budget never mind nuclear’s massive appetite for cash!
1 – My first thought was “£99bn – WTF?”
2 – My second thought was … Aha he’s an SNP MP, probably a BS-Artist.
3 – My third thought was … Dave Doogan MP, what a moniker. He sounds like a refugee from the Flumps, just from his name.
(But I think if I add a link to a Youtube of the Flumps, complete with Theme Tune on the Trombone, I get lost down the moderation rabbit hole for a week – so I won’t.
Check out: The Flumps, the Cloud, Part 1 on Youtube.