In a recent Parliamentary Written Question and Answer, Patrick Grady MP inquired about the influence of inflation on both the total lifetime cost and the next five-year expenditure of the Trident renewal programme.
Responding, James Cartlidge MP, Minister of State for the Ministry of Defence, affirmed that the Dreadnought submarine programme is on budget and on schedule, with HMS Dreadnought slated to enter service in the early 2030s.
Despite this, he acknowledged that sustained inflation has negatively impacted the programme’s cost projections compared to the previous year and noted the prematurity of providing cost estimates for the replacement warhead programme.
The information emerged through the following Parliamentary Written Question and Answer.
Patrick Grady (Scottish National Party – Glasgow North):
“To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what recent assessment he has made of the impact of recent trends in inflation rates on (a) the total lifetime cost of and (b) expenditure over the next five financial years on the Trident renewal programme.”
James Cartlidge (Minister of State, Ministry of Defence):
“The Dreadnought submarine programme remains within overall budget and on track for the first of class, HMS Dreadnought, to enter service in the early 2030s.
Inflation has remained higher than expected for an extended period and had an adverse impact on the cost forecasts for this programme when compared to the forecasts from a year earlier.
As the programme is in its preliminary phases, it is too early to provide cost estimates for the replacement warhead programme.”
In other words, it’s going to be massively over budget increasing the size of the equipment funding black hole but we don’t want to say that before the General Election because it makes us look as bad as we probably really are.
Would love to know how they get these costs so badly wrong especially this early into the project. I assume they corner cut by not currency hedging and signing contracts late on to avoid upfront costs, at the expense of long term price risks.
Hinkley C is going to be 3 years late and cost another 10 billion….. It’s mostly down to having to start all over again with the Skills and Tech having been gapped for too many years…… just like so many other big projects…. Astute was the same.
100% correct Frank that is precisely what has happened.
cheers….
Not so much skills fade this time round as massive wage increases due to Mr Fromage et al telling all those pesky hard working East Europeans to bugger off – guess what they obligingly did and look at wage rates spiralling.
The bit that gets lost in the bottom if Nig’s pint glass is that when you mention Euronorms to a Polish engineer/welder they nod and understand. Try having that conversation with someone from another continent…..the starting point if understanding is very different.
I would need to see your Facts and Figures before replying to that….
I’m afraid you are wrong that labour costs are the issue. The major cost issues are materials (containment is one of the largest concrete structures in Europe and steel),, components (RPV, PRZ, SGs, I&C, fuel, turbines etc), regulatory processes etc. The second issue is that the EPR is an overdesigned pressurized water reactor which is why EDF are going back to the drawing board to redesign it. Combining R&D efforts from Germany and France (funded by the EU framework programmes) was always going to lead to an overdesigned reactor. It was a design by committee as opposed to a design… Read more »
I was rather making the point that when a lot of my *highly paid, skilled and trained* Polish workers left that I had a sudden loss of skills and productivity. We spent a ton of money training them for over a decade. Those that were not settled left. I do not support the idea of cheap foreign labour or mass migration as a panacea. But we had got most of the Eastern European labour force gained up to a decent standard. I decry, quite often on here, the loss of trades training and skilling through the tech colleges. We desperately… Read more »
UK have 67M population if you don’t find workers on that mass of people then something is wrong with UK culture.
Hi, having run a factory that made a very substantial part of every SSN and SSBN ….. i am not actually sure that I was allowed to use foreign nationals in the assembly of most of it. Everybody to to with assembly, including me had to be cleared and absolutely no foreign visitors in the assembly bays.
That all makes perfect sense.
I only advised on policy – in a past life.
I never built SSN’s or even bits of them!
While I’m not looking to get into the migration discussion, if you think that the workforce issue on our nuclear projects (and across infrastructure and construction in general) is purely down to letting the skills die away, then respectfully you are mistaken. The (British) workforce is aging, their productivity is shockingly low, they get into dispute constantly, and they like it that way because it keeps their own wages up and guarantees longer periods of employment on contracts. Unfortunately, there also aren’t enough younger people coming into the trades to resolve this problem any time soon. I’m not saying that… Read more »
i respectfully completely disagree with you. I’m actually involved in the training of engineers. Given proper training our youngster will do a great job (even better than some of the old timers), They have a good work ethic if given half the chance. Our schools are primarily to blame but I have turned around some young people who on the face of it looked incompetent and lazy. They weren’t they just needed someone to help them achieve their goals as they had low self-esteem from the years wasted in awful primary and secondary schools (lack of decent male role models… Read more »
I’m glad and grateful for the work you do- my brother is a primary school teacher and is habitually frustrated by the system he has to operate in and how poorly it serves the students he teaches. Some of the ideological stuff he’s had to navigate has boggled my mind… That said, I am currently involved in infrastructure construction (maybe I’m one of those terrible managers you speak of, but I hope not…!), having spent a decade in the offshore industry. To say that the difference in attitude between the can-do, get-done attitude of offshore contractors compared to the ones… Read more »
Joe I completely agree with you on what you said with regard to government. I used to think it was incompetence but now I’m thinking it is by design for some ulterior motive. Tories, Labour, Lib Dems they all have your snouts in the trough.
When non-specialist Maths lessons prioritise trigonometry over compound interest and percentages, history barely scratches on key points of British history like the Civil War, and you completely strip away almost every opportunity to follow a practical/technical path to employment- you have to wonder, don’t you…?
Like i said above the issue is culture. Politics(activist-journalists, education political complex, arts political complex) make the culture and morals because there isn’t more religion. Seeing the news is like going to the church in the past,
When you have a soft “science” job where things don’t have to work and you get paid much more because of that political favoritism than in a job where things have to work because they are mechanical something is wrong…
That is BS, British Leyland died decades ago, I used to run a very large factory, making substantial precision engineered equipment for Defense and other industries. Our uint was one of the most skilled, economic and competitive in a global group, often having to bail out units in Asia and Europe. Additionally, you think the Nissan investments, at a site already branded globally their most efficient plant is a result of poor efficiency, productivity or skill. Having worked for a global manufacturer, I can tell you that most manufacturing in the UK has very little to learn from almost anybody.… Read more »
I think you and I are speaking at cross purposes- I’m very glad that British manufacturing is doing well, and hope that it continues and expands.
You seem to have missed that I was talking about Construction and infrastructure though- which is a very different sector and picture of health, unfortunately.
So, please, take a more careful read through what someone is posting before accusing them of spouting BS?
Bravo. It is dismantling the cohesion of this nation from within as too many refuse to integrate. My dad agrees, and he too is an immigrant. Though he didn’t come here to jump on benefits, they didn’t exist, he worked from day one, and being western European there were no culture issues beyond learning English.
He actually had to have a job in place to even be admitted in. What a concept…..
I don’t disagree with the problem of integration- it is not just a UK problem either. My wife is an immigrant, came over at 18 and got a job within 2 weeks- worked her way up and now runs her own company. She has a better work ethic than many British natives I know- and I think that’s part of the problem. I have no problem with holding on to family/cultural heritage, I think it is great and adds to our cultural richness; it’s not as if “English/British” culture has remained un-influenced since the time of the Celts. But, there… Read more »
Hi Joe. Thanks for that. Yes, why is it not happening. This is an issue that needs nationwide debate, not leftists screaming race, as many are genuinely concerned and simple offhand dismissals like that do not help.
A nation without it’s own identity, culture, with a set of values specific to it and the majority of its people is what exactly?
It’s a country worth fighting for if the people in it get a fair wage etc. Plus you are so inaccurate. ALL EU workers were given the right to stay. Covid was the problem. In the Canaries many of the Spanish went back to Spain and when things opened up wages there went up too because not enough people left to do all the work in the tourist trade.
BREXIT and COVID worked gens in hand.
The ones who were not sure went back to Poland and never came back. That goes for a few who applied for settled status and went back anyway.
A lot of them said they didn’t feel welcome with all the pseudo xenophobic nonsense from the Fromagists.
Sure other countries are struggling with workforce. Workforce got very used to being at home doing very little in lockdown and being paid. The constant bleating about mental health didn’t help much either.
I do have to admit I’m really getting tired of people shouting racist all the time. It’s so intellectually devoid of any meaning as it is has lots all its real meaning. I’ll be honest if you asked me whether I would prefer a culturally homogeneous society from the 1970s and 1980s I would absolutely say yes and that does not make me a racist in any way, shape or form. I’m married to someone from overseas and I respect her culture but she respects mine. British society has not been enriched by the vast bulk of immigration. It has… Read more »
For immigration control = racism nonsense thank New Labour.
Just the opposite, the majority of material and equipment costs are near the front of the cost curve due to them being long lead items. Reactors, cores, turbines, Motors, valves, weapon handling systems etc etc have to be ordered way in advance. These days when they assemble a boat, the vast majority of kit has to be at hand, ready to be outfitted before the Rings are welded up. Where inflation really hits you long term is staffing, utilities, tax etc. The command deck spans multiple rings,so is preassembled, lifted and slid into (gently) into one ring and then secured.… Read more »
Even marginal % increase in the submarine budgets are massive in RN context as submarines are such a huge % of the overall budget.
So it isn’t good new.
Why is it increasing?
This isn’t the same as saying ‘make be a big steel cylinder, put some VL tubes in it, a propellor on the back & a reactor thingy inside….’
It is quite complex new tech that is being debugged for AUKUS as well.
UK is serially producing new designs that are quite different from their predecessors. This isn’t just incrementation.
SB like your cortina Mk 1-5 evolution offer. vinyl delux option for the aussies
I can do a good line in go faster stripes?
clarkson remarked that TVR brought out a totally new car each time. brave but did not secure the company’s future.
An interesting point.
But if you don’t innovate and increment holistic design knowledge withers.
Equally if you increment you gain the economies of continuity and production knowledge and supply chain but close out the ability to innovate without massive costs……
What is being done here is PWR3 and all the timings for the next generation.
Not related to this story but it seems Russia just shot down one of their own IL-76 transport planes transporting Ukrainian prisoners of war.
The video I’ve seen online shows a missile track coming up from the ground, hitting it and then the aircraft slamming into the ground with a total loss of life.
Dodgy IFF and trigger happy SAM battery commanders I think. In summary Russia just shot their own aircraft down but then blamed Ukraine, despite the fact the aircraft was over 50km inside Russian airspace.
They’ve done that before with the Malaysian flight blamed the Ukrainians when in fact it was fired from Russian aligned separatists in Eastern Ukrainian
It may also be another example of their murdering POWs and blaming Ukraine. Do you recall the dodgy missle strike that killed lots of the Azoz prisoners?
Not being macabre but were they alive prior too the crash and the Azov holding building explosion? Hard too verify all consumed by fire then easy too point the blame on Ukraine no witnesses
I think you could be right. The Azoz incident in particular could have been covering up evidence of torture.
If true seems like Russian forces care extremely little for others and even their own. Hope the truth comes out and it won’t look good if it was from Ukrainian forces. .
I watched Lavrov give a live interview and take question from the media regarding the incident.
I’d be amazed if he would put himself in that situation if he was not 100% sure of the facts.
You could see how much he loved talking about it.
So Saddly I think its true.
Although to me while wearing my foil hat it looks like the Russians set it up. Wouldn’t be surprised if they leaked info about a flight full of air defence missiles and then loaded the plane full of prisoners!
Inflation hit 11% at one point last year; literally every capital project will be more expensive as a result. But tax income will go up too, so the two balance each other out. What matters is keeping to schedule and to resist making design changes.
North Korea seems to turn out a new Nuclear weapon every other Tuesday, maybe we should ask Kim how its done??
A new missile to test, maybe. I do not think they have many warheads.
Their workers rights, conditions and pay I assume are not the same as at AWE either!
They get their costs wrong because they forget to factor in the cost of support, training, spare etc, etc.
Caught up with a friend from DE&S the other day, bemoaning about a project he joined in November, where the PM hadn’t done any accounting for spares, through life support etc etc.
Nothing changes.
Increases in costs… every single contract that the MOD signs, ends up costing millions and millions over the initial cost.
Exactly what you get, when you let capitalism run riot over everything. Oh and lets not forget the impact that monopolies and snide mergers cause.
“oh nooo… only we can make that, at a cost of…” Whatever they want.