Inflation is pushing up the cost of the Type 31 frigate programme across labour and the wider supply chain, and the Ministry of Defence is assessing what that does to the affordability of the programme as a whole, according to an answer given in Parliament.
Ben Obese-Jecty, the Conservative member for Huntingdon, had asked ministers to set out which areas of the programme are under inflationary pressure, following up an answer given on 6 October.
Luke Pollard, Minister of State for Defence Readiness and Industry, said: “The Type 31 programme is experiencing inflationary pressures across a number of areas, including labour and the wider supply chain. The Ministry of Defence continues to assess the effect of these pressures on the programme and its overall affordability.”
Babcock is building five Type 31 frigates at Rosyth under a contract awarded in 2019 worth around £1.25 billion, based on the Iver Huitfeldt design, with the first of class named HMS Venturer. The programme supports around two and a half thousand skilled jobs across Scotland and the wider United Kingdom supply chain, including four hundred apprenticeships.
Ministers told Parliament earlier this month that they were monitoring the schedule for the class alongside Babcock. Norway has since selected the Type 26 design for its own frigate programme, and the Defence Investment Plan sets out further orders for crewed warships alongside the hybrid Navy of uncrewed and autonomous systems.
Its not totally surprising. Any programme that kicked off before 2020 has had a lot of unknown risks to deal with. COVID, Ukraine war, Iran war. Then the partial unknowns of brexit. Add to this being the first ship babcock has really built themselves. Then there seems to bit senior management churn too going on too.
Hi folks hope all is well.
This all sounds like an excuse to cut the number of the typ. And at the same time we have the constant drone of we are facing a war with Russia from the very same government that will find any reason to cut the defence budget.
I don’t understand how France has a smaller defence budget and gets more for it’s defence? What on earth is our MOD doing with our money? How on earth can this inept woeful government expect the public to take defence seriously and ask us to step up if we need to? I get so fed up with the negative news about our military and the issues that apper to blight it. Sorry for the rant people
Cheers
George
Welcome to the rant party George. You did better then i managed last week at holding back.
The length of time these new ships are taking to build , they will probably take as much time again in refit as soon as launched to upgrade them as will be out of date in launch
No it doesn’t, you do know what inflation is right?
‘…..the very same government that will find any reason to cut the defence budget’
Nobody is cutting the defence budget. It is rising by £10bn and hopefully by £15bn at the budget.
If the previous governments had not slashed defence spending to the bone over the previous 14 years, leaving us with a pile of elderly, clapped-out and gapped kit, £15bn would put us on the front foot. But instead, it has to go to fixing wages, service housing, base facilities, armament plants and the neglected, run down defence nuclear enterprise. So trying to acquire new platforms and weapons is going.to be a long and very costly exercise.
Moral is that you can’t take a 14-year holiday on defence spending without very detelrous results on military equipment and preparedness. For the Tories to now be shouting about the need for 3%, without a hint of shame or remorse, should be treated with the contempt such political chicanery deserves.
Thank you autocorrect but the word really is ‘deleterious’…
Fictitious nonsense. Labour is cutting defence by adding more and more non-defence items into its budget. Like today’s fire fighting announcement.
As for spending more money on service housing, did you not notice they’ve recently cancelled that.
And what wages have been fixed? Not the armed services that’s for sure.
And armament factories, like the much heralded barrel manufacture, are being paid for by private industry. German in this case.
Nothing fictitious about it Grinch the facts are:
1. The defence budget is increasing.bu.£10.4.bn over the next 4 years
2. Thesre are not ‘more and more’ non-defence things being added to the budget. £45m for Chinook and Atlas firefighting kit is a little peanut in defence tetms. In most NATO countries, the military is tasked with fitefighting.
Don’t you have anything more substantial to offer regarding these supposed non-defence items being added?
3. Ref service housing, there is £9bn budgeted to refurb the housing stock over the next ten years. The MOD had had to row back a bit to save £1bn and delay some work. That’s life, the services are on very tight budgets and the money is needed for equipment ordered.
4. There are indeed pay rises for the forces. The latest round have been backdated to 1 April 2026. The average pay has increased.by £1,650, starting pay is up to £27,282.
5. The MOD has.i believe funded Sheffield Forgemasters by £1.3bn. It has also contributed £30m towards establishing the Gun Hall at Telford. There is probably a lot more besides.
You seem to be bending over backwards to rubbish the progress bring made. Sure there is nowhere neat enough new money on the table, but at least there is some and dome useful progress is being made.
1. Does that include the 2 billion theyve been instructed to save? and the 5 billion less spent on capital equipment?
2. Chagos & intelligence.
3. The money saved from cutting housing has not been allocated to new equipment. It’s just a savings. Even Streeting says he deplores the cuts to the housing budget.
4. Mostly to keep up with inflation rather than paying the armed forces a decent wage.
5. The MoD has contributed exactly zero pounds to the Telford Gun Hall. Its entire expense is being carried by Rheinmetal.
Labour is running down the defence capabilities of the UK. Healey resigned because of this a few short months ago. Any notion that Labour is increasing defence spending is Labour Party Central propaganda.
The important thing to remember is the frigate issue is not a this government issue.. it’s an issue that was created between 2005 and 2016.
The government cannot make Babcock build any quicker.. the industrial capacity you have is basically something that was created decades ago.. that’s why they are called strategic workforces as you are planning for what will happen in a decade or 2 not now.
Blame them for what they have control over.. not for the things they don’t, otherwise you simply blame them for everything.
Sorry but Labour has been in power too long to escape responsibility. Of course they could help Babcock’s build the ships faster. Are you nuts??
If you noted I said between 2005 and2016, that’s both Tory and labour and libdems.
But I do not think that you can really put any of the delivery delays on the present Labour government, in the end the delays are fundamentally programme issues and industrial capacity/workforce issues that were imbedded over 2 decades.. no can shift that in 2 years.. because it will take a decade to shake out the industrial capacity/ workforce and lack of programme skills.
I do blame them for things like
1) not keeping an Albion running
2) binning the 2 wave class tankers
3) binning the tranche 1 typhoons
Those are things I can critique.. shit programmes and lost industrial capacity that can over the decades before.. not their fault.
They could most definitely have increased the speed in delivery, they still can. Both Bae and Baabock’s have submitted proposals to do exactly that but they fell on deaf ears (from both parties).
I’m not sure to be honest with BAE they have 4 keels laid out and building the hulls and 2 being fitted out that’s a huge amount of industrial capacity.. without building another shed and finding another dock I’m not sure they can churn out the T26 faster than they are now planning unless there was a massive capital expenditure on a future shed and massive expansion of training ( and training future capacity takes away efficiency from present capacity… it’s the old challenge of expanding your training pipeline’s balanced against its impact on your present productivity.. it was an issue I had.. in theory I could set up pipelines to train any number of emergency nurses and nurse practitioners but each trainee was a drain on my present resources as someone has to train them )
Babcock as a new builder are still very much in the identifying all the fuck ups Stage of the improvement cycle and throwing more capacity at them will just create a greater capacity to fuck up…
Bae and Babcock’s beg to differ from your “expert” view.
Of course they do.. but if you note they are not saying that they can build any ships quicker and the reality is Babcock have fucked up the fitting out… so evidence dear boy over wind.
Both companies have most definitely submitted proposals to build the ships more quickly. Fell on deaf ears. Bit like yours.
Babcock did not put forward any plans to bring the build forward.. the bae plan to increase capacity was taken forward but has been eaten by the 5 extra frigates it’s building for Norway.
Hi George. I quite agree with what you ve said
High inflation isn’t the fault of the MOD. Blame Trump and his Iran war. And France really doesn’t get more for its money. Numbers over substance and capability. And they have insanely high national debt. We really don’t want to be like France at the moment.
I would cut half the staff at the MOD as the place to start. They are grossly inefficient. Their productivity must be terrible.
So we can now expect further “soft” annoucements related to the affordability of the prorgram over the coming months, before a formal cut/sale of the Type 31 fleet.
For what its worth, i’m going for a final Hull number of 3…….any takers?
Given four are currently under construction, that’d be surprising.
I’m afraid the number of potential buyers for poorly equipped ships, badly assembled by a newbie shipbuilder, will be vanishingly small.
All 5 will be in build or fitting out before a decision is made. I can still see two being sold off cheap. I see that as more likely than a reduction of Type 26 numbers, even if they claim a balanced fleet with Norway is maintained.
It also doesn’t look good for the Mk41 fit out but time will tell.
Sold off for scrap maybe.
Distinctly possible, although someone will buy them if they are cheap enough.
I have no faith in this mob at all and believe investment over the past four decades has been way below par. We need a significant step change in defense spend, not the dribble here and there, nor adding additional line items to the budget (intelligence etc).
T’is but a very bad joke!!
Most of the cost increase is due to the stretched out payments (aka spending profile) imposed by the Treasury to minimise annual costs at the expense of a much higher total bill. That plus the crap job Babcock’s is doing in building them.
And Sir John Parker in his National Shipbuilding Strategy, advocated for warships to be built by Babcock’s (his old company) and other companies with zero maritime experience (box builders) because he said it would be easier and cheaper for them. I wonder is he was ever rewarded by Geo Osborne for his ridiculous ideas that Geo paid for.
Yes it’s telling that they knocked out and launched the hull very quickly, but have really struggled with the fit out.
Yawn. Labour and supply chain inflation and overall affordability are what we will have to accept for news on T31….I must go over there for a long stand.
£250m per ship was always a ridiculously low price and quite unrealistic. As Babcock are discovering. You wouldn’t get a much smaller corvette for that price.
No shit Sherlock.