The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that specialised steel used in the construction of the Royal Navy’s new Dreadnought-class submarines is being imported from France due to the absence of domestic production capability, according to a written parliamentary response published on 30 April 2025.
Responding to a question from Ben Obese-Jecty MP (Conservative – Huntingdon), Minister of State for Defence Maria Eagle stated: “There are no UK suppliers of the specialised steel required in the manufacture of submarine pressure hulls.”
She explained that UK submarine steel requirements continue to be met by a mix of domestic and international suppliers through prime contractors, based on availability and performance. “This reflects the need to source specific grades of steel, not all of which are available in the UK, and ensures competitive procurement in terms of cost, time and quality,” she said.
While submarine pressure hull steel must currently be imported, Eagle confirmed that “other grades of steel used in the manufacture of submarines are sourced from a range of suppliers, including a number of UK companies.”
The Minister emphasised that the government supports UK industry participation wherever possible. “We encourage the sourcing of UK steel wherever it is technically and commercially feasible and publish our future pipeline of steel requirements, enabling steel manufacturers better to plan and bid for government opportunities.”
She added: “This Government is committed to ensuring that defence spending supports British-based businesses and economic growth which will be a key tenet in the upcoming Defence Industrial Strategy.”
The Dreadnought-class submarine programme is one of the UK’s largest and most strategically significant defence projects, intended to replace the current Vanguard-class fleet and sustain the UK’s continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent into the 2060s.
It’s all rather pathetic. We used to produce the best steel in the world.
Bluff and bluster by the Labour minister. Trying to hide the damage net zero is doing to our industrial and now defence capability.
Evidence please, that is such a lazy cop out accusation. British industry has been in decline since the 1900s first very gradually but significantly post war and decimated in the 60s and 70s. Geez even the US which exploited our weakness and technology and lack of competitors post war has declined ever since the mid 50s. It has been a failing of our own creation, lack of investment, poor efficiency and rank bad management and the change in resource World production costs as time passed.
Our energy costs are terrible but why? The reasons are widespread and with a long complacent history, certainly not a recent ‘green’ issue. However the lack of investment in renewables back in the 90s was a big mistake, thus the extra compressed cost now, India in the last 18mths brought more renewable production online than our whole renewable history. The lack of investment in nuclear in that period too was a factor, as our existing stations started to fail and reach end of life, but in reality nuclear isn’t cheap just sensible as part of a coordinated plan to avoid fluctuating oil/gas prices. Our energy costs are totally dictated by the price of gas which we buy on the open market and unlike certain other Countries we no longer retain strategic storage so the vagaries of World events like war destroys our efficiency. We decided over the last 15+ years to commit to gas to produce electricity that was naive especially as we don’t any longer have enough North Sea gas to fulfil it and again we don’t benefit directly from it anyway we buy it on the open market so World prices still apply even to the gas we produce. We need to become more self sustaining all new warehouses should have solar roofs, new housing solar and heat pumps, offices solar glass there’s a British Company that can apply an electricity generating film to any surface. Now we have to commit to modular reactors as soon as viable and push towards fusion of course which finally is starting to look more attainable.
Looking back we should have committed more to wave power and to the Severn and Wash schemes but as usual we have been far too complacent for far too long. However one thing is certain had we spent even longer committed to old fossil fuel sources of energy it was never going to give us cheap energy and we lost most of our heavy energy when we actually did exploit it. Meanwhile privatisation gave us none of the cost efficiencies promised and simply prevented a true National plan being implemented while the Govt still seems to have to invest to get those private companies to commit to change. Worst of all both Worlds in my view.
“We decided over the last 15+ years to commit to gas to produce electricity”
Nah, that was decided upon back in the 90s by John Major and the ‘dash for gas’. In the 70s Tony Benn had ensured coal and nuclear would provide Britain’s leccy and North Sea gas would be reserved for heating. In hindsight transitioning to renewables in the 90s would have been a smarter move. But hey, at least we had cheap energy for a few decades.
HY-80 hasn’t been manufactured in the UK for at least 40 years. Steel is generic term for multiple different alloys with very different elements used
Wow how low this country has sank ..
“The absence of domestic production capability” says it all.
The Vanguards were the same. HY-80 was from the States that time
I thought the steel came from British Steel for the Vanguards when we still had the capability to produce specialised steels…
Nope. HY-80 has been mostly imported from the US or France
No surprise 🙄
Total rubbish.
at least, if we ever run out of . specialised steel ??
we will have a head start on building wooden ships.
get the victory ready. .lol?? just an honest thought..
This cannot surprise anyone. It will take a generation to even try to get back our industrial base so lets hope Vlad gives us the time or Donald J or any other fascist lurking out there