A new Commons committee to scrutinise spending and programmes across the Defence Nuclear Enterprise is still expected to be established before the end of the year, according to an answer given in Parliament.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy, the Labour member for Clapham and Brixton Hill, asked what discussions the Defence Secretary had held with the Leader of the House on the timetable for tabling a motion to set the committee up.
Luke Pollard, the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, said: “The Secretary of State for Defence and the Leader of the House continue to work with the House of Commons to set up a new Committee, under the House’s Standing Orders, to scrutinise Defence Nuclear Enterprise expenditure and programmes. As set out in CP1668 (page 18), the intention is ‘to establish the new Committee by the end of the year’.”
Setting up a select committee requires a motion in the House to amend Standing Orders, which the government controls the timing of, and then an election of members. Ten weeks of the year remain.
The Defence Nuclear Enterprise is the collective name for everything that supports the deterrent and the nuclear-powered submarine fleet. It takes in warhead design and production at Aldermaston and Burghfield, submarine construction at Barrow, reactor plant from Rolls-Royce at Derby, the operating bases at Faslane and Coulport, deep maintenance at Devonport, and the people and infrastructure behind all of it. The Dreadnought class programme to replace the Vanguard boats and the SSN-AUKUS attack submarine programme both sit inside it.
Scrutiny of that spending has been a running argument in Parliament for years. The National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee have repeatedly reported cost growth and schedule slippage across the enterprise, while much of the detail is withheld on national security grounds, leaving members without the figures that would let them follow the money. A dedicated committee with the clearance to see classified material is the answer ministers have offered to that.
The Defence Nuclear Enterprise now accounts for a substantial share of the equipment budget, and the Defence Investment Plan set out spending across it alongside the commitment to procure up to twelve SSN-AUKUS boats.
The Defence Nuclear Enterprise is getting £16bn a year from the procurement budget for the next decade.
The equipment procurement budget.for the three services plus rotary and weapons, is some way short of £12bn a year.
So our whole military priority is having an independent nuclear deterrent, that will likely never see action, while there is nowhere near the money left over to even fund one-for-one replacement of the rest of the kit needed. Hence continual gapping and reductions in the military inventory.
We are behaving as if we had 5%+ of GDP to spend on defence, when the reality is half that.
The DNE budget is soaring, by an additional ’20 to 25% of total defence spending, according to the MOD. It will be interesting to see this Select Committee’s reactions when the whole sorry financial picture is before them. No bad thing, cross-party parliamentary scrutiny.
What do you suggest instead? We already run our nuclear deterrent ‘on the cheap’.