Public Accounts Committee
Oral evidence: Affordability of the Defence Investment Plan, HC 552
Thursday 16 July 2026
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 16 July 2026.
Members present: Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Chair); Mr Clive Betts; Sarah Green; Rupert Lowe; Tristan Osborne; and Matt Turmaine.
Defence Committee member present: Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Chair).
Gareth Davies, Comptroller and Auditor General, National Audit Office; Michael Slater, Audit Manager, National Audit Office; and Marnya Jain, Alternate Treasury Officer of Accounts, HM Treasury, were in attendance.
Questions 1 to 92
Witnesses
I: Jeremy Pocklington CB, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Defence; Rupert Pearce, National Armaments Director, MOD; Air Marshal Tim Jones CBE, Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff (Force Development), MOD; and Aneen Blackmore, Director General Finance, MOD.
Examination of witnesses
Witnesses: Jeremy Pocklington CB, Rupert Pearce, Air Marshal Tim Jones CBE and Aneen Blackmore.
Chair: Welcome to the Public Accounts Committee on Thursday 16 July 2026. The long-awaited Defence Investment Plan—the DIP—was initially due in autumn 2025 and finally published by the Government last month. The DIP comes off the back of last year’s strategic defence review and outlines how the UK’s new equipment and defence infrastructure will be funded over the coming decade. It acts as the principal mechanism for converting the SDR from policy into coherent and affordable delivery of a departmental programme.
Our Committee has previously warned of the impact of the time it has taken to agree the DIP with the defence sector, particularly its suppliers. In our most recent report, we concluded the delay was both hindering the MOD’s attempts to modernise our armed forces and undermining its relationship with the UK’s defence industry. Today, we will be looking to examine the basis of the Defence Investment Plan and follow up on the Committee’s previous work relating to defence expenditure, including the F-35 aircraft and Ajax armoured vehicle programmes.
Welcome all and thank you very much for coming. Jeremy, before we start, I would just like to say that I heard today from the Comptroller and Auditor General that you have submitted your MOD accounts on time. Big congratulations are due on that, because there were a lot—£6 billion-odd —of missing assets last year, and problems with the Afghan resettlement scheme. To get them done on time is a great credit to your Department, so well done.
Jeremy Pocklington: Thank you, Chair. I thank everyone involved.
Chair: Aneen, I am sure that your team was heavily involved in that, so well done.
Aneen Blackmore: Thank you, Chair.
Q1 Chair: Rupert, I will come to you first, if I may. What I would like to do, as I am sure you will have been intimately involved in its preparation, is talk about the permanent secretary’s letter of 2 July. Although this question is complicated, will you sum up as succinctly as you can what changes you have made to defence procurement since you have been in post?
Rupert Pearce: That is not an easy thing to answer. In terms of procurement specifically, because there is a lot of work going on elsewhere—
Q2 Chair: That letter really covers it. It is headed: “National Armaments Director Group Performance Update”.
Rupert Pearce: Indeed. The key is the beginning of creating much faster, more efficient pathways for initiation of procurement—segmenting procurement into three buckets and starting to attack each of those to get average time frames down. That starts with big programmes, where we are trying to get that down from four years to two years. There is a second segment of modular upgrades, where we have a platform and we are looking to build in pace of upgrades.
Feeding innovation into our programmes in life and beyond life is a key piece of agility that we need—that, again, we want to take down to months and not years. And then finally everything else that falls into the, “Let’s do it in weeks, not months” category.
That has gone well. Each of those pathways has been fed with new procurements. Inside each of those segments we are looking to create specialised, accelerated commercial pathways. Within each of those three segments we will have particular commercial pathways, which we are evolving.
We have six pathways that we have launched. Again, we are beginning to populate those with pipe cleaners, if you like, to test out those pathways and make sure they work—and they are beginning to work. They are certainly attracting a lot of interest in, for example, the new procurements we initiated in the last year. Some 70% of those have adopted commercial pathways to move more quickly.
At the same time, I continue to support the more leftfield approach. Commercial X, which you will be aware of, has had a great track record in doing stuff outside the normal rules. For digital and data procurement under £50 million, we use Commercial X, which has absolutely slashed the time it takes to get through, and is also suitable for SMEs to use. It is low cost, high pace. We threw risk at that—we thought we could take more risk in that area—and it has gone well.
I think the average procurement is four to six months in Commercial X, and we have done hundreds of those. We have put billions of pounds to work through that mechanism. Now, I am asking two questions: what would it look like if we did it at £100 million instead of £50 million, and can we adopt some of the lessons learned more broadly inside procurement?
In the nine months that I have been around, we have made some good progress. There is a lot more that I could talk about around the edges of procurement, but that is the fundamental part.
Q3 Chair: I have one more question on procurement. Of course, all that is predicated on having the right people. From the figures, it looks like you are going to make some efficiency savings within your organisation. This Committee has been very critical in the past about SROs going into complicated programmes and not being there throughout the programme. Can you say a bit about people? How are you going to get that continuity, and how many people do you need to do this job?
Rupert Pearce: In general, I have found the people in my team to be really good. Some of that is borne out by the fact that when you give them greater ability to move at pace—as in Ukraine, for example—they perform amazingly.
We are routinely under-resourced. Whether you call it over-programmed or under-resourced, it does not really matter; it is the same thing. I want us to be much more ruthless in our prioritisation. I would rather we do a few things really well than try to do too much, with the result that the system gets gummed up.
There are three ways to attack that. One is to be more ruthless in your priorities. We need to get our ambition and resources back into balance.
The second thing is to get more resources. I am very pleased that the DIP settlement has looked at RDEL as well as CDEL, and is putting more resources into the system, whether it is for readiness or procurement. That is extremely welcome—an amazing outcome.
Thirdly, we can do much more on productivity. You cannot just snap your fingers on productivity and be more productive; you have to invest in systems. I have to work through our processes, lean them out, drive out complexity, drive in pace and agility, and invest in the digitalisation of systems. That is all part of our efficiency programme.
Two or three years from now, I would like to be coming back here and showing that we are putting more dollars to work, fully resourced with fewer people.
Chair: More pounds to work, hopefully.
Rupert Pearce: Pounds; I am sorry. Pounds, euros, dollars—whatever. I am not choosy!
Q4 Chair: I was only being facetious. Thank you very much for those opening remarks.
Jeremy, I have some fairly short, sharp questions about budgets and money to get things on the record. As I understand it, this DIP is really a costed programme for four years with a wish list for the following six years. We—this Committee and the public in general—know what you are going to do for four years, but how do we interpret it? There are a lot of references in the DIP—which I have read from cover to cover—saying, “This bit of equipment won’t be available until the late 2030s.” How can we have any confidence in what is going to happen after 2030?
Jeremy Pocklington: Let me deal first with the first four years. We have a full budget settlement agreed with the Treasury. As a result of the settlement, alongside the investment plan, the Department has an additional £15 billion of spending power—actually, £11.6 billion of additional cash, compared with the previous settlement. Obviously, I can unpack that in more detail for the Committee if that would be helpful.
For the period after that, we have set out in the document that the Government are committed to increasing spending to 3% of GDP in the next Parliament, with funding and plans to be set out in the spending review. So we will be at 2.7% at the end of the four years for which the budget has been agreed, and then it will rise to 3%. The Government have not made a decision on exactly which year that will be. Obviously, from a Defence perspective, that would have been better for us, but we understand that this is the sort of decision that Governments can only take in major fiscal events and spending reviews. That is why the language is set out like that.
How does that then equate to the investment plan? What we have done is set out the direction of the key capabilities that the Department needs. We are retaining a degree of flexibility, though, so that, as the precise detail of the funding is allocated, we can make those final choices.
While I completely understand the desire for certainty about the full 10-year period, something that has been very important for us in the plan is that there is that balance to be struck between flexibility—including in responding to the changing threat environment and changing technology; we see that changing on the battlefields of Ukraine week by week, month by month—and providing some certainty for the armed forces and for industry as well.
Technology is changing very quickly here. We were worried about achieving a sort of spurious accuracy about the medium term that we are not yet able in true heart to be confident about, given the pace of change of technology. I do not know what drones we should be buying in five years’ time—I do not think anyone will.
Q5 Chair: That is really helpful. Can we just go to some specifics of that? You say it is funded by the Treasury, but it is not yet agreed, is it? There is still £6.8 billion that has got to come from cuts to other Departments, particularly DESNZ and the Department for Transport, and they have not agreed how they are going to find that money. This is not a settled matter yet, is it?
Jeremy Pocklington: We have received the settlement from the Treasury, and I outlined the numbers there. In my 30 years’ experience in the civil service, I have learned that it is not right in a line Department to comment on matters that are for the Treasury to set out. It would not be appropriate for me to comment on matters of fiscal policy that are for the Treasury.
Q6 Chair: I understand that answer, but can we therefore assume that that £6.8 billion is guaranteed to your Department? How it is to be got from other Departments is not a matter for you, but is it guaranteed to your Department?
Jeremy Pocklington: We have received the settlement that we are now planning and building on, so yes, we have got the money and the permission from the Treasury to plan on that basis.
Q7 Chair: That is fair enough. In addition to the £6.8 billion, I gather that £4.7 billion is still to be set out in the Budget. Is that correct?
Jeremy Pocklington: I refer you to my previous answer, if I may. That is my understanding, but that is a matter for the Treasury rather than for me. I am not the permanent secretary responsible for that.
Q8 Chair: You said in the previous answer that you had permission to spend the £6.8 billion. Do you have permission to spend the £4.7 billion on top yet?
Jeremy Pocklington: Yes. We have permission to spend the settlement, according to normal delegations, and to plan on the basis of the settlement that I have been talking about—that additional £15 billion of spending power that the DIP is based on. So yes.
Q9 Chair: According to my maths, at this moment, taking those two figures of £6.8 billion and £4.7 billion, you only have £3.5 billion of new money put into this plan at the moment.
Jeremy Pocklington: The Department has received an additional cash settlement of £11.6 billion, with additional spending power of £15 billion—that is a technical distinction, but that matters to us. That money is now in our settlement, on the basis of which we are able to plan, just like other Departments have their budgets, settlements and spending reviews. It is exactly the same basis.
Q10 Chair: That £11 billion is a settlement for your Department—
Jeremy Pocklington: Correct.
Q11 Chair: And not necessarily for the Defence Investment Plan.
Jeremy Pocklington: Forgive me, I may have confused you. The new budget totals that the Department has, RDEL and CDEL, summing to TDEL, are the funding for the Ministry of Defence, and the Defence Investment Plan is the mechanism to allocate that funding at a strategic level. I do not think I can be any clearer than that.
Q12 Chair: Understood. Going back to your earlier answer, it will be 2.6% of GDP this year, rising to 2.7% until 2030, so there is not much in terms of the Prime Minister’s promise to the NATO summit in June 2025. There has not been much towards the 3%, or even the 3.5%, put in the public domain yet. Can you give us any further information? This is a jump from 2.7% to 3% and then 3.5%—these are big figures.
Jeremy Pocklington: They are very significant amounts of public spending, and I am very conscious of that as the accounting officer. The Government have made a decision to ensure that they adequately fund the early years of this settlement. That is really important, because it enables us to get going with the transformation. Crucially, it provides the additional RDEL—the day-to-day spending—that we need, primarily for activity and readiness in the armed forces, but also to make sure that we can get after the procurement and support the transformation.
In the profile, as you set out, I certainly remember that the 2.7% is correct, and I think that it is 2.6% now, so that is correct. I will not repeat the words, but the Government have then set out the plan to achieve the move to 3%, so the trajectory would need to increase to do 3% in the next Parliament. They remain committed to achieving what is called the Hague commitment: 3.5% of GDP spent on core defence in 2035.
Q13 Chair: Again, knowing how these things work, the 3% and even the 3.5% could be well into the next Parliament. We could find ourselves not at 3.5% until the end of the next Parliament.
Jeremy Pocklington: I worry that these questions risk becoming a bit hypothetical. I think that I have very clearly set out the Government’s position.
Chair: I think that we will leave it there. We do understand where you are coming from and what your difficulties are.
We are very pleased to welcome the Chair of the Defence Select Committee, Tan Dhesi.
Q14 Mr Dhesi: Let us get beyond the hypotheticals. I will come to your good self, national armaments director. As the Chair pointed out, the Defence Investment Plan sets out the investment priorities to 2035, but only gives detailed funding allocations until 2029-30. My question is about industry. Can you explain to me in practical terms what additional certainty that provides to industry beyond the normal four-year spending review settlement?
Rupert Pearce: The four years itself is still enough of a long-term demand signal to elicit a lot of interest from industry. Industry’s immediate response to the DIP, for me, has been very encouraging. There is obviously a relief in seeing the strategy turned into the tactics of four-year to five-year detail—
Q15 Mr Dhesi: But my point is that they would have that with a normal four-year spending review settlement anyway, so what is the difference? What has the Defence Investment Plan provided that the normal spending review settlement would not have given them anyway?
Rupert Pearce: It has provided a lot more detail around the programmes and the way in which the strategic defence review will be delivered. There is real value in years 5 to 10 in terms of explaining how that expenditure will continue at a top level. It is there; it is just less detailed.
We have talked extensively to all our leading supply chain partners and to trade bodies and the DIP has been very positively received. Industry is leaning in and saying, “How can we help? How can we get involved? Where can we play? Where can we invest?” That is exactly what the DIP was designed to do.
Q16 Mr Dhesi: Can you give us some specific examples of investment, recruitment or production decisions that defence companies can now make based on the DIP’s 2035 outlook that they could not reasonably have made based on a four-year spending review settlement?
Rupert Pearce: One of the biggest examples is GCAP. Committing over £8 billion for the next four years alone unlocks a really large industrial ecosystem ready to take GCAP through its design phase and get ready to start building it. There is huge pent-up demand to do that. That is also a multilateral agreement.
Q17 Mr Dhesi: I agree, but the global combat air programme will be there for decades to come. That still does not answer my question. As the Chair and other Public Accounts Committee members know, we have a four-year spending review settlement. They could have got all this off the back of that settlement. Industry was looking for a 10-year outlook and the granularity that was provided previously in the defence equipment plan. That is good news about GCAP, but it does not answer my question.
Rupert Pearce: Let me give you another example. The air jet trainer programme—the replacement of the Hawk trainer and the replacement for the Red Arrows—will run for decades. That programme is explicitly funded in the DIP. We are out working with consortia to move that forward. That will involve years of investment from consortia to deliver the Hawk into those programmes. A lot of things that require long-term thinking by our partners are reflected in the DIP and clearly run beyond years 1 to 4, although they are more detailed.
Chair: Order. I am sorry to interrupt, but we are having technical problems with the broadcasting so I will have to suspend the sitting, hopefully for a very short time. I do apologise.
Sitting suspended.
On resuming—
Chair: We are now resuming our session. I apologise to anyone watching or listening to this session; you may not be able to hear us. The session will be recorded word-for-word and the recording will be available at some time after the session ends. For absolute clarity, I will ask the Chair of the Defence Committee to re-ask his question so that we get it on the record. I will then ask the national armaments director to answer.
Q18 Mr Dhesi: National armaments director, on the basis of what you just said, can you give us specific examples of investment, recruitment or production decisions that defence companies can now undertake on the basis of the Defence Investment Plan’s 2035 outlook that they could not have reasonably made on the basis of the normal four-year spending review settlement?
Rupert Pearce: Yes. Your question is well made, because we provide less detail for years 5 to 10 than years 1 to 4. But I do not think that will foreshorten the ability of our supply chain to invest in this plan. There is enough detail there for years 5 to 10 to show them the way, and a lot of it is a continuation of big themes and strategies of investment that are initiated in years 1 to 4.
Perhaps a good example of that would be the advanced jet trainer programme, where we are looking to bring replacements to the Hawk T1 and T2 through very long-term investment, a programme that will be initiated in years 1 to 4 but will deliver in years 5 to 10. That is a good example of long-term thinking. Perhaps another would be the energetics and always-on munition production. We are looking to break ground by the end of this year with the first of such production facilities. Again, that is long-term thinking that flows into our munitions plans and allows our supply chain to think beyond years 1 to 4 into years 5 to 10.
Q19 Mr Dhesi: I appreciate that point, but you can also appreciate industry’s perspective. They are not happy that we do not have that granularity. It is good that we have programmes such as the global combat air programme and the SSN-AUKUS submarines, both of which the Defence Committee has done inquiries on, but I think that granularity is lacking.
For the benefit of industry going forward and to send a clear demand signal to them and to our allies—as well as our adversaries—that we are serious about defence, we do need that detail. It is our hope that through your good offices or the permanent secretary we will be able to get that very soon.
Rupert Pearce: I hope so too. In the next phase, as we move into the delivery of the plan, I am going out with my team to have detailed conversations with industry at a very granular level about these programmes, their phasing and industry’s ability to lean into those programmes with resources and capital, so that it becomes a partnership in terms of an accelerated deployment of the plans in the DIP. It is in that discussion that we will really get into how we can build the right kind of trust and security for our supply chain to invest.
Chair: Thank you both for that very important clarification.
Q20 Sarah Green: I would like to ask the permanent secretary about the funding settlement that we have just been discussing for the Defence Investment Plan. Is it enough to fully implement the SDR?
Jeremy Pocklington: It is enough to get on with the job that we need to do. That is very welcome; it will enable us to make good progress in the next four years on the delivery of the vision set out in the SDR to build an armed forces that is NATO-first, and focused on being warfighting ready, on transformation, on the innovation that we are seeing in this sector, and on providing the jobs and growth that we need in the UK.
I particularly highlight and welcome the fact that I think the majority of the cash increase for the Department is for day-to-day spending—for RDEL. That is particularly important so that we can focus on readiness and activity in the armed forces. That is something that the Chief of the Defence Staff has spoken about to the House of Lords, and there were additional changes in that space in the final weeks of the negotiations with the Treasury.
Is it everything that we asked for? In my experience, no Department ever gets everything that it asks for in any negotiation with the Treasury. That is just not how Government works, but we are able to get on with delivering the SDR.
Ultimately, in the medium term, we need to see that increase to 3% and then 3.5% to deliver that full vision of the SDR, not least since that 2035 commitment of 3.5% underpins a lot of the work in NATO. Air Marshal Tim could talk about the capabilities that each country is being required to deliver.
Q21 Sarah Green: At the moment, do you not have what you need to fully implement the strategic defence review?
Jeremy Pocklington: We have got the money that we need right now to get on with delivery. That is what we are doing. Ultimately, over the 10-year period, we will need to see the increase that is referred to in the Report in order to deliver the SDR in full. Everyone already knows that; it is a well-known fact, but of course we are able to get on today.
Q22 Sarah Green: I am going to push back slightly, permanent secretary, because you have given yourself an awful lot of wiggle room so far in what you have said. You referred to getting on with the job you need to do. Earlier on, you referred to spurious accuracy and retaining an element of flexibility. It sounds like you are allowing yourself the maximum amount of wiggle room.
Jeremy Pocklington: I do not agree that that is what I am saying. It is about getting the balance right. It is about certainty and programming over the next four years, but retaining flexibility in the medium term. That is the balance that we are trying to get right to reflect the fact that the technology is changing fast. It also reflects the fact that there is uncertainty about the year in the next Parliament when we will meet that objective. We do need to retain a degree of flexibility around that.
We are taking a different approach to the equipment programme. The alternative approach would be just to have a very big spreadsheet set out over 10 years with each of those lines. That would not be appropriate for the challenges that defence is facing today. I come back to what I said earlier: the threat environment and the technology is changing.
On certainty, yes, we must provide those clear demand signals that Rupert has talked about. The industry reaction to the DIP has been positive, but we must retain a degree of flexibility in the medium term.
Q23 Sarah Green: How quickly will our people feel and see the impact of the funding increase? How quickly will it be translated into a tangible capability?
Air Marshal Jones: It starts straightaway with some immediate changes to the things that we are procuring. The most obvious example of that would be in the small drone space. In the Defence Investment Plan, we announced an additional £50 million over the next 12 months to go into a project called Rapstone, which is the Army’s innovation hub.
We realised that we need to get more drones into the hands of soldiers now so that they can look at them, train with them and get used to them. There was an immediate injection of money. Project Rapstone, being the innovation hub, is used to going out and acquiring things really quickly. This is not about the traditional procurement processes where we jump through a load of hoops and wait 18 months for things to get going. This is about fielding things quickly.
Another good example of that would be what we have done around the strait of Hormuz with minehunting capabilities for the Royal Navy. We started that very quickly earlier this year and we got real equipment into the hands of people within weeks. That is one example of what we are already doing. Of course, the bigger the procurement projects get the more difficult that gets. Clearly, we cannot procure ships and complex combat air overnight.
There is a range of things over time. In the short term, Rupert talked about the energetics and the always-on. That is really important because having the ability to produce the weapons to get on to the platforms is something that we took a long look at in this Defence Investment Plan. You have all this really brilliant equipment, but it has to have ammunition. It has to have weapons to fire. We are prioritising the coherency of that and getting that lethality so that these platforms are lethal in as short a period of time as possible.
There has been a lot of talk about 2030 being a moment of concern among NATO allies. That was very much at the front of our minds when we were thinking about how we spend the marginal pound from this settlement to maximise the lethality of our armed forces as quickly as possible, and about the most value we can add to our NATO obligations to send a strong deterrent message to Russia that says, “Look, we are going to be lethal and ready, and we are going to do that very quickly.” The idea is to get on with the munitions and deep-strike capabilities that you have seen announced in that very quickly. The priority, in our minds, was getting frontline lethality and readiness addressed as quickly as possible.
We know that there is a whole range of things that will take longer. We cannot build the sort of force—the big, heavy warfighting force—that we want to have overnight; that will take time. At the same time as billions going into the Army and its heavy armaments programme, there is the hybrid Navy and there is a lot of money going into combat air for the RAF, for example, as well as the digital enablers.
The answer to the question would be that some things will happen quickly, and other things will happen over a period of a few years as we address the lethality and get that going. Other aspects of the programme will of course take time, because they are bigger and more complex.
Rupert Pearce: May I add one thing to that? Tim quite naturally focused on the battlefield, if you like, but we are also investing in infrastructure for our armed forces. The £9 billion going into housing, for example, has already started. We are still investing £9 billion over 10 years, and we are going after 40,000 family homes. Last year, we upgraded over 1,250, and we are upgrading 2,000 this year. That is something that is real and happening.
Chair: We will come on to that, Rupert.
Rupert Pearce: That has a real impact on how people feel about being valued.
Sarah Green: You are right to raise that.
Q24 Chair: Yes, thank you for raising it. I want to build on Sarah’s question. To my mind, the most important piece of kit that you need—Ukraine has proved this in the last few weeks—is interceptors, whether those are drones, ballistic missiles, high-energy missiles or whatever. How much of a priority are interceptors in this plan? If we really get into serious warfare, they will be critically important.
Air Marshal Jones: Is this about dealing with drones?
Chair: Not only dealing with drones; I am talking about ballistic missiles and high-energy missiles—the whole lot.
Air Marshal Jones: There is new money in the plan that is specific to a better knitting together of the capabilities that we currently have to deal with, you might say, integrated air and missile defence. What we found when we studied this was that we have a lot of very good equipment, but that equipment can be rendered ineffective if it is not knitted together with a really effective sense, warn, command and control system. The initial money that we are focusing on is addressing that.
You might say that this is the modern-day version of the Battle of Britain Trenchard system. The great innovation in world war two was the integrated network of radar, observers and control rooms. That really transformed the Battle of Britain overnight, because it meant that what we had was being far more effective in how we dealt with the threat that we faced. This is the modern version of that, where of course it is far more about digital enablement and associated capabilities. What we need to focus on there is getting the equipment that we already have working a lot better together. There will be some good progress there.
To your point about the effectors, if you like, and dealing with the hard end of that, there is new money in the programme for counter-ballistic capability and for increasing our ability to counter drones and counter cruise missiles. The key thing is dealing with the mass. If we look at the lessons from Ukraine, as well as what we have seen in the middle east recently, it is no use firing a £1 million missile to shoot down a $50,000 drone. The plan addresses that by shifting the emphasis away from spending too much of our munitions capability on high-end, complex, expensive munitions that you can only afford to have few of. They are very important in their own right and have a role, but we should be making better use of the money by going after low-cost mass munitions.
Incidentally, small and medium-sized enterprises are coming out of the woodwork all over the place and telling some very impressive stories about the ability to manufacture these things, including in the UK. That gives us a better sovereign capability to draw on in terms of stockpile, which is really important when we are thinking about dealing with the mass scenarios that we have seen in the middle east and Ukraine.
It is all of that added together. It is the ability to knit it together and, od course, the ability to shoot things down.
Chair: Thank you for that answer. There are still lots of questions to be asked about that, but for the moment, let us move on.
Q25 Mr Betts: Permanent secretary, I want to come back to your response to Sarah Green. She challenged you on your words, and you said that you have got “enough to get on with the job”. Have you really got enough to make do? Is that what you were saying?
Jeremy Pocklington: That is not what I am saying, Mr Betts. I am saying that we have significant amounts of additional resources to begin the process of transforming our armed forces as a result of this plan. I asked the team for a calculation yesterday. By 2029-30, the Department’s budget will be 27% higher in real terms than in 2023-24. To the point about the profile, a lot depends on the first and the final year that you are looking at. It is a very significant increase in the Department’s budget.
This plan, as well as focusing on the infrastructure and the things that Rupert was talking about, is enabling us to make good progress in transforming our armed forces. For the Air Force, that includes upgrading Typhoons and not just continuing with F-35s, which I know we will come back to. It is also enabling us to begin the investment in collaborative combat aircraft which will be critical and is also crucial to delivering GCAP. It is enabling the acceleration of the transformation of the Army, which is a real priority of the Chief of the General Staff. It is also enabling us to complete the infrastructure recapitalisation around armoured fighting vehicles, Boxer, Ajax—which I know the Committee is interested in—and Challenger.
For the Navy, we will continue to build in this country two types of frigate and three types of submarine, but will also begin the construction of the hybrid navy. There is funding here that enables us to make progress on buying more munitions and, crucially, also create the background digital infrastructure and the digital targeting web.
Those are all really important capabilities that will enable us to deliver the vision. Air Marshal Tim is able to talk about that much more than me. It also enables us to ensure that we have more RDEL than we had previously. Readiness is partly about the kit, but it is also about training. I do not want to give you the wrong impression, but to go further in the medium term to deliver the plan, we need to see that increase.
Q26 Mr Betts: Let us explore that. Can you give us a spreadsheet showing how much you are likely to spend, out of the DIP, in each of the four years?
Jeremy Pocklington: I will bring in my colleague Aneen to talk about that, but yes, for the next four years where we have a budget, we obviously have internal budgeting. I want to come on to some of that in a second.
As we are getting on with delivery, what we now need to do is the engagement with industry. That is the job of the National Armaments Director and his team. Our job now, as we are getting into that delivery phase, is to learn things from that engagement. We were not able to do that until now, so we will need to finalise the details on the sequencing through that. So of course we have internal management information, Mr Betts—you would expect us to have that—but we have to work out what the appropriate balance is to send out the right signals to industry, but also to maintain a degree of flexibility so that we can adapt and learn along the way.
Q27 Mr Betts: So you have four years of money; you can now plan out how you are going to spend it with a reasonable degree of certainty. How can you plan spending in the fourth year when you do not know what the fifth year is going to be like?
Jeremy Pocklington: I do not know precisely what my budget total will be in the fifth year, but I have enough information on which to plan. Obviously that is not with quite the same degree of certainty, but we are mindful of that as we are now setting in some of these bigger, long-term programmes that will have a tail into that period.
Mr Betts: But how can you plan for those properly when you do not know what is coming down the line in terms of resources?
Jeremy Pocklington: I think you can; Departments do this all the time, Mr Betts. You make decisions based on the assumptions here and now. Obviously, we would have a higher degree of certainty if I knew today exactly what year and when that moment will be when we will achieve 3% of GDP, but I do not know that fact. That is a really important decision for the Government to take. But we are still able to do a lot of planning work as well, while maintaining a degree of flexibility.
Q28 Mr Betts: But that will lead to a cliff edge. You are trying to plan, not quite knowing what is beyond the cliff edge, and suddenly you will have to plan for a massive uplift in one year, won’t you? That is the reality, isn’t it? In the fifth year, if you hit the 3%, you will have a massive uplift. Can you deal with that properly?
Rupert Pearce: Yes; I think you can in terms of the longer-term programmes that we initiate in years one, two and three. Obviously, many of those are going to carry on for a lot longer, into the 2030s, and that will naturally create a requirement for funding through the 2030s.
Jeremy Pocklington: Just for completeness, what we have said is that we will set out the pathway to 3% at the next spending review. That is what the document says.
Q29 Mr Betts: The 3% commitment is by 2030, is it not?
Jeremy Pocklington: The document says, “in the next Parliament”.
Mr Betts: I thought there was a wider commitment to NATO to do that.
Jeremy Pocklington: That is 3.5% by 2035. The document refers to the Government’s commitment to meet 3% of GDP in the next Parliament, and to meet 3.5% of GDP for what is called the Hague commitment—the NATO commitment—by 2035.
Q30 Mr Betts: That is just about one year beyond the next Parliament, so in the next Parliament you will have to be going from 2.7% to 3.5%. That is a massive increase. The problem with massive increases that they do not always tend to be the most efficient way of dealing with things. Rupert Pearce is sort of nodding there. This is a problem, isn’t it?
Rupert Pearce: Well, what has happened in the last 12 months is that the threat picture has intensified. In the SDR, we felt like we had 10 years to transform, to strengthen our supply chain and to up the pace of innovation, but it now looks as though a lot more has to be accomplished at the front end of that plan than when the SDR was written.
Therein lies the debate and discussion that caused the DIP to be delayed, because that is a very difficult set of choices to make. It has forced hard priorities, which we have talked about, in the DIP, and we have tried to get as much crammed into the front end of this investment plan as possible to deal with the intensification of the threat. That is the first thing—it has forced some very hard decisions and some priorities—but it has also infused the front end of the investment plan with more money than was initially expected.
But you are right: for the second half of the plan, we do not have the shape of the line between where we are today and 3.5% by 2035. Because we do not have that, as the permanent secretary has very clearly laid out, we cannot commit to the level of detail in those years that we can in the first four years.
Q31 Mr Betts: That brings us on to the issue of procurement. You rightly say that you are going out to industry and trying to work with it to develop new capacity with smaller British firms. How can you say, “We have this new capacity and we would like you to develop it, but we are not sure that we will continue to place the orders in four years’ time”?
Rupert Pearce: I do not see that as a big issue. My focus out of the gate is the really intense getting up to pace in the first two or three years of this DIP. I think the bulge is years one, two and three of the investment programme.
We will get so many things initiated and out the door that I do not see the things I am initiating in the first three years as causing a problem for me in years five to 10. That is when we are into steady state and it is more predictable for the things that we have costed in some gory detail, which get greenlit in the first three or four years.
Q32 Mr Betts: Can you commit to international arrangements with other NATO members beyond 2029?
Rupert Pearce: Yes. It is the same thing. Our work with allies is a bit of a safety valve release. We fund some of our programmes based on our having to incur all the costs of them, but if industry leans in and says, “Let me partner. Let me find a different way of working with you,” and our allies say, “Here is a programme we want to do too,” that takes some of the heat out of the DIP. So it is really the opposite problem.
Looking at what we want to initiate in the first four or five years, we are thinking beyond year four in terms of that cost, but that is more predictable. What Jeremy and I are saying is that it is difficult to provide real detail on new things that we are bringing into the investment plan in years five to 10, because we do not know what our resources are to lay on top of the things that we have already committed to in years one to four.
Q33 Mr Betts: Working with NATO colleagues, doing joint procurement and sharing risk and so on is important, but so is the issue of nuclear. I have asked this question before; I hope it is beginning to be addressed in Government somewhere.
France has a nuclear department. It looks at nuclear in the round—defence and civil. We have not managed to do that in this country, historically. I was at Sheffield Forgemasters yesterday with the Secretary of State, looking at the guns that we are producing for Ukraine. That was an incredible investment. The Secretary of State went to see it. There is really impressive stuff going on. There is a factory there equivalent to five football pitches, with 40 machines, each as a big as a detached house. This is a real, substantial investment.
There is also the investment into the nuclear side for submarines, and generating the potential capacity to build SMRs in the civil nuclear sector. I understand that there is a tug of war going on between Departments about who might pay for that. Obviously, MOD owns the facility. MOD invests for the nuclear submarines.
DESNZ might be interested in the civil nuclear for its partner, Rolls-Royce, but it does not want to spend money on the rest of the nuclear industry. There are potentially other firms coming in to build SMRs that could use Forgemasters. The Department for Business and Trade, DESNZ and MOD are having a bit of a stand-off about who pays for this. There is a bottleneck that needs addressing. Do we need to join this up as part of our procurement exercise?
Rupert Pearce: The short answer is yes. We take great pleasure in working with other parts of Government for joint benefit. Whether it is innovation or defence as a customer for SMEs and growing British companies, we are very happy to collaborate with DESNZ, DSIT and DBT, and we do so in most weeks.
We are very interested in the area of SMRs. We are interested in next-generation energy, and the defence estate can perhaps play a meaningful role in supporting that. We take great pleasure in Rolls-Royce’s big wins. There was a huge win by Rolls-Royce for SMRs in Sweden recently: that was a great result for Britain, and we were happy to lobby on its behalf in Sweden.
Q34 Mr Betts: It is disappointing, of course, that they have just placed orders in South Korea for the SMRs that are going to be built for the UK. That is not the way to do it, is it? We need to look at that.
Rupert Pearce: Yes. All these things are a balancing act. If we are going to get into co-design, co-procurement and co-production with our NATO allies, for example, it has to be win-win. We cannot just say, “Great, thank you—now it all goes to Britain.” Obviously, we have a “buy British” approach and we will spend as much money as we can in the UK, but we are also trying to fulfil our obligations in NATO to do more joint procurement.
Q35 Mr Betts: I have one final question for the permanent secretary and Rupert Pearce. For the record, are you guaranteeing that all the efficiency savings identified in this DIP will be found? The MOD does not have a great track record of delivering efficiencies.
Jeremy Pocklington: May I unpack a little what the target is and how we are getting after it? It is a very high priority for everyone on this panel and for the leadership of the Department. We have identified £10.7 billion of efficiency savings, and I am conscious that that has attracted attention. The first thing to say is that that is a four-year number. Setting that against the £298 billion total investment from the Department over those four years, it is an efficiency plan of approximately 5%, so it is broadly in line with other Departments.
We absolutely need to get after this. Aneen can say a little bit more about this, but we have put in place new arrangements that require all four areas of the Department to have an efficiency plan, on which we will hold them to account for delivery.
The efficiency target reflects work that is already under way. Some good efficiencies have already been delivered by the Department. That includes the efficiency savings that come from buy-back; the Annington Homes deal is a good example. It also includes the efficiency savings from the procurement reforms that Rupert talked about earlier, but there are lots of other things that we need to go after on service redesign. We need to make progress on the workforce, as we talked about.
What gives me more confidence is the new arrangements that we have put in place. The other thing I want to highlight is that we have received a £500 million modernisation fund from the Treasury, which was added to our settlement in the last couple of weeks. That will make sure that we are able to prioritise the funding that will allow us to go after things like corporate services modernisation and the changes we need to see from artificial intelligence to deliver these savings.
Q36 Mr Betts: I want to follow up on high-maturity savings. Are those savings initiatives that you have already identified that you can implement?
Jeremy Pocklington: There is a very technical definition, which I invite Aneen to explain.
Aneen Blackmore: You rightly identify that the DIP sets out where we have high-maturity efficiencies and then the pipeline below that. “High-maturity”, by our definition, means that they have been delivered or are just about to go into delivery, so they really are at the highest level of maturity. Below that, we have a full pipeline of efficiencies at varying degrees of maturity to deliver the target.
Q37 Mr Betts: So those precise statements can be put alongside particular items?
Aneen Blackmore: Absolutely. The Defence Investment Plan sets out the strands that are across the Department, but as the permanent secretary alluded to, underneath those strands are many lines of programmes with named accountability to deliver those programmes.
Q38 Mr Betts: You mentioned, permanent secretary, that you will be pushing this right the way through the period of the DIP. Do you therefore have targets for efficiency savings for each year that someone will be able to monitor progress against?
Jeremy Pocklington: We will. I think page 79 of the investment plan sets out those numbers on a year-by-year basis.
Q39 Mr Dhesi: Permanent secretary, the Defence Investment Plan provides more detail on defence’s strategic priorities, but there is less programme-level financial information than previous defence equipment plans, so how can Parliament, and indeed the Public Accounts Committee and the Defence Committee, be confident that scrutiny of affordability and value for money has not been weakened in any way?
Jeremy Pocklington: I said earlier that the Defence Investment Plan has a different approach from the equipment plan. For the first time, we are looking across all of defence’s budget. In that example, it goes further than the previous equipment plans.
The focus in the Defence Investment Plan provides details on individual capabilities in that four-year total, whereas the equipment plan tended to be based more often on the command programme budget as well, so it was done more by service in the past.
We have adopted a different approach here for the reasons we have talked about at length. The other thing we have done is commit that we will publish an annual update for the plan. I am well aware of the concern that we have not published annual updates for the equipment plan for a number of years—
Mr Dhesi: Three years.
Jeremy Pocklington We have committed that we will publish updates of this equipment plan, where we will of course need to set out major changes, as you would expect.
Q40 Mr Dhesi: That still does not answer my question of there being, as Mr Betts pointed out previously, perennial procurement problems within defence. How can Parliament be confident that scrutiny of affordability and value for money will be there and not weakened?
Jeremy Pocklington: By providing regular updates, I am confident it will not be weakened. The other thing I would note is that I genuinely welcome scrutiny—it does not always feel like that in every hearing—from the NAO on this issue. I know that will continue.
Q41 Mr Dhesi: The NAO does a great job, but can you point me to a specific example, permanent secretary, where the Defence Investment Plan provides Parliament with more information about affordability and delivery risk than would have been the case under previous defence equipment plans?
Jeremy Pocklington: As I have said, there are literally chapters in the investment plan that the Department did not previously publish on—
Mr Dhesi: I am not looking for chapters, permanent secretary. I am looking for a specific example.
Jeremy Pocklington: There is, for example, housing, and the four-year totals we have set out as part of that reset of the plan.
Q42 Mr Dhesi: I still haven’t got my specific example. I understand that there are chapters, and it is a wonderful document that is on Mr Betts’s desk right here, but can you provide a specific example?
Jeremy Pocklington: I think I have given you all the information I can at the moment.
Mr Dhesi: With all due respect, you have not. I have asked for a specific example where the DIP provides more information about affordability and delivery risk than previous defence equipment plans and processes.
Jeremy Pocklington: The plan is a new approach that we have taken to set out our overall approach as a Department. I am sure the Committee will have thoughts and recommendations on this, and we will need to consider those in the usual way. However, what we think we are doing here is providing information across a broader range of the Department’s activities.
Mr Dhesi: No doubt the esteemed Public Accounts Committee and Defence Committee will be delving into this matter further. I haven’t got the response in terms of a specific example, but let me move on to the surface fleet—
Rupert Pearce: May I add something? I have to do the delivery, and I look forward to sharing how we get on with you and your Committee and being as full, frank and transparent as I possibly can be in your looking at how we are doing and critiquing it. We will take that critique on board.
It seems to me that the DIP is not a delivery document in the way that an equipment plan, I suspect, was. It is a document designed to send long-term demand signals to industry, so fundamentally, it is a strategic document. It has a different purpose.
Q43 Mr Dhesi: I’ve got that point already; I thought you would perhaps point me to a specific example. That would have really helped the deliberations of the Committee.
Coming on to surface fleet availability, permanent secretary, we are all aware of the embarrassment in March: we could not get a single naval asset to the middle east when our good friends in Cyprus were attacked by Iranian drones. A lot of us are concerned about the availability of frigates, particularly the Type 26s. We have the excellent £10 billion deal with Norway—the Defence Committee was out there recently—which is great news, but it seems that we may well be producing more for Norway, so there may be a capability gap in the UK.
We are also aware that certain vessels have either been retired or laid up, such as HMS Iron Duke, HMS Westminster or HMS Somerset. Can you reassure the Committee that there will be surface fleet availability based on what is in the Defence Investment Plan, and that there will not be any capability gaps?
Jeremy Pocklington: That question is best directed to Air Marshal Tim.
Air Marshal Jones: Before I answer that question, may I correct an answer I gave a few minutes ago? I referred to the Battle of Britain system as the Trenchard system—I have been reading about Trenchard, so I perhaps have him on the brain at the moment—but it was, of course, the Dowding system. In order that I can show my face in front of my RAF colleagues in future, may I make that very important correction?
On surface fleet availability, our Type 23 frigates have done a terrific job, but they are old and the maintenance required to keep them going becomes more expensive and difficult over time. We have a very good approach to that, which makes sure that we are doing our very best and spending the money well to maximise the availability of the Type 23 frigate fleet.
At the same time, investment is going into Type 26 and Type 31. Therefore, it is about the overlap between those two. We have a very careful plan to manage that overlap to deal with the question that you asked—we are all concerned about making sure that that does not happen in so far as we are able to provide the frigate capability at sea that we know we need. As of now, with the Defence Investment Plan, we are confident that we have as good a plan as we could possibly have to make sure that we manage that transition well and deliver the capability at sea that we need.
Q44 Mr Dhesi: On that transition, can you reassure the Committee that none of the Type 23s will be retired until there is a Type 26 replacement for them, so that there is not a gap?
Air Marshal Jones: That is the plan at the moment. Our plan is to have one-for-one swaps. We plan to overlap over time, so that as Type 26s come online, we retire Type 23s, to give ourselves the coverage that we need.
Q45 Chair: Permanent secretary, for accountability to Parliament, you have said two things today that I would like to clarify on the record. One is that you said that a transition for how we will get to 3% of GDP will be announced at the next spending review. Can we assume that that spending review will take place as normal? Perhaps you cannot answer that, but if it does take place in the normal timetable, that will be next spring.
Jeremy Pocklington: For a precise record, I was referring to paragraph 3 on page 13 of the Defence Investment Plan: “The Government is increasing defence spending to 3% of GDP in the next Parliament, with funding and plans set out at the next spending review, where defence will be the number one priority.” That is the commitment we have made.
Q46 Chair: Is that going to give us a pathway to how and when we will get to 3%?
Jeremy Pocklington: Funding and plans require us to know what date we will be achieving that objective. The timing of the next spending review is—
Q47 Chair: I understand that, and I knew you would say that, but at least we know something now. The other thing I want to clarify is that you said that there will be an annual update to Parliament, which the DIP makes clear. Can you tell us what time of year that will be? That is critical as to when the NAO and our two Committees are likely to be able to study the progress in detail.
Jeremy Pocklington: We are working towards doing that in July, which would be the right time to do it—before summer recess.
Q48 Chair: So we can expect one at this time of year next year?
Jeremy Pocklington: That is what we are working towards at the moment.
Q49 Chair: I am going to take a break in a minute, but I wanted to raise one subject with you, Rupert, to do with new infrastructure and how much the Government fund and how much the defence firms take on as risk. I am looking at page 70 of the DIP in particular; it says that you are going to invest £26 billion in Project Royal Oak over the next decade, which is “the biggest naval base upgrade for over 45 years, including multibillion-pound upgrades at Faslane, Portsmouth and Devonport.” Have we got the balance right between what the Government are putting into these huge facilities and what the defence contractors ought to be putting in?
Rupert Pearce: That is a very good question, which we will answer when we start taking these programmes out and putting the DIP into delivery mode. Those are exactly the conversations that we are going to have. We are looking for industry to leverage its balance sheet to support the DIP. There seems to be a lot of interest from financial investors and defence companies to invest long term in the business of defence, which is extremely welcome. So long as we can make a good value-for-money case for that, it will be a great outcome.
Q50 Chair: Permanent secretary?
Jeremy Pocklington: We absolutely want to go after private investment. In some cases, there are reasons of national security that would mean that the Government want to ensure that they have full control and ownership of some of the assets in question that we are talking about.
Chair: Thank you for those answers. We are going to take a short break. If we could be back here at the latest by 11.20 am, that would be really helpful.
Sitting suspended.
On resuming—
Q51 Chair: On nuclear, permanent secretary, I know that you have accepted our recommendation and that a sensitive scrutiny committee may or may not be being set up, but that does not stop this Committee from asking questions about nuclear, because, if nothing else, it is such a big part of your budget.
In some respects, the DIP provided some useful information. Nuclear is one of those areas where we got figures on the record that I have not seen before, so that was helpful. Those figures show that a great deal more money will be spent on nuclear. It is likely to move from the present 18% of your budget to anything between 20% and 25%. As page 29 tells us, that is an additional £20 billion. Can you give us a clue as to why those costs are going up so rapidly?
Jeremy Pocklington: Nuclear will comprise approximately £63 billion of the £298 billion being spent by the Department in the investment plan. As I have said to the Committee in one of my previous appearances, that is around 20% and 25% of the budget; there is a deconstruction of that in table 3.
Let me take a step back from some of those individual programmes. What we are doing here is a significant recapitalisation of the Nuclear Enterprise in this country. That is a phased recapitalisation that is happening over time and—anticipating where you may go next—will take longer than the next four years to deliver. It actually comprises a significant number of very large multi-decadal programmes that are coming on stream.
Some of them are starting to reach peak spend, but we will see more over the next few years. That is because we are currently in construction or design for three types of submarine. Obviously, the new ballistic missile submarine is the one the Committee will be most familiar with, but we are also continuing the Astute-class designing and AUKUS as well.
We have a programme to deliver a new warhead. We have the new infrastructure programmes that you have already referred to. For the Nuclear Enterprise, this is particularly about Clyde and Devonport as well. We also have a new nuclear fuels programme. What we are seeing is that the budget is growing because the scope of the enterprise is expanding in order to deliver the recapitalisation that we absolutely need to see, given that the nuclear deterrent aspect of this is the ultimate guarantee of security for the UK.
It is a very significant amount of money, so I welcome the new arrangements we are putting in place and understand the desire and need for scrutiny that reflects the sensitivity in this space. It is also a major engine of growth and prosperity. I want to note that, and I suspect many members of the Committee will have seen that in Barrow and elsewhere in the country.
Q52 Chair: The problem with this is that it is ringfenced money. Therefore, the more the nuclear budget goes up, the more pressure it will put on the procurement plan elsewhere. It is difficult for us because we cannot get into the detail, but I wonder why it is going up so quickly, particularly in submarines.
I thought the Dreadnought programme was always understood to be £31 billion plus the £10 billion contingency—so £41 billion. If it is only Dreadnoughts, that has gone to £47 billion. The warhead seems to have increased hugely at £13 billion. It looks as though these costs are going up way in excess of inflation.
Jeremy Pocklington: It is not only Dreadnought. As I have set out, it also includes the maintenance budget for existing submarines, so it is part of the Navy spend. This is about the scope of the programme increasing; that is the key thing that is happening that is driving these costs, as we are bringing forward these new programmes, like this crucial programme on the warhead and like the infrastructure programmes we have talked about.
Q53 Chair: Because we cannot get into the detail, how can we—this Committee that, of all Committees, scrutinises Government expenditure—be assured that we are getting value for money from this programme?
Jeremy Pocklington: I really understand the frustration around this, Sir Geoffrey, and I understand the need for scrutiny, but these programmes are of the utmost sensitivity, and are central to our national security, so we treat information very sensitively—
Chair: I understand that, which is why I am not pressing you on the detail.
Jeremy Pocklington Which is why I think the new arrangements in place are the appropriate arrangements for more detailed scrutiny.
Q54 Chair: I am not questioning that either. I am simply saying these are very big increases, so how can we, the Committee that scrutinises Government expenditure, be assured that you, the accounting officer for the entire Department, are really sure yourself that these are providing value for money and these increases are properly scrutinised?
Jeremy Pocklington: I am confident that we have arrangements in place in the Department to ensure that, despite the sensitivity, we have robust scrutiny in place to drive value for money. That includes specific governance arrangements that we put in place around the defence nuclear board, whereby people with appropriate classification, including non-executives with private sector expertise, can come in and help to support that scrutiny, because that is the thing that we need to happen.
Yes, these programmes are of the utmost sensitivity, but we also need very good project management to be under way. That is, of course, the primary job of the Chief of Defence Nuclear, who leads that work, but there are robust governance arrangements in the Department around this.
Q55 Matt Turmaine: I will talk a bit about defence housing and ask some questions around that. I recognise what an important subject this is. One of my constituents raised the case of their grandson, who was living in very poor accommodation. I am delighted to say that that has now been resolved, as I believe, Mr Pearce, you said that programme has already begun.
Both the strategic defence review and the Defence Investment Plan talk about this money and this investment. The SDR identifies at least £7 billion of funding in this Parliament, including over £1.5 billion in new investment for rapid work to fix the poor state of forces’ family housing. Have you reduced the amount that you expect to spend on improving and replacing military accommodation over the course of this Parliament?
Aneen Blackmore: We are still committed to spending the £9 billion over 10 years, which was the commitment that we had set out, and we are particularly focused on starting the work as quickly as possible on the worst housing to address exactly the type of example you have shared, so that we ensure we have housing that works for our service personnel.
Q56 Matt Turmaine: One of the reasons I asked that question is that the Chair of the Defence Committee has suggested that there are reports that the spending will actually be rephased and that we will not spend £7 billion during this Parliament, and in fact we will spend £3 billion during this Parliament, with £5 billion phased for the subsequent Parliament. Are you able to comment on that?
Aneen Blackmore: I can say that, as part of the Defence Investment Plan process, we looked at phasing of a number of investments, ensuring that we had the right balance. We spoke earlier in this Committee about the balance of capital investment versus readiness versus infrastructure. But what was really important to us in the plan is that the commitment to £9 billion over 10 years was retained as an absolute priority.
Q57 Matt Turmaine: I absolutely appreciate that, but if these reports are true, we are looking at a drop of more than 50% in the amount that will be spent over the course of this Parliament, which presumably will have a pretty significant impact on the provision of decent-quality housing for our service personnel.
Aneen Blackmore: I don’t have the specific figures on the spend for this Parliament, but as I said, I can provide the reassurance that the commitment to £9 billion over 10 years is an absolute priority in the plan.
Q58 Matt Turmaine: Perhaps we could follow up on that; if these reports turn out to be accurate, it would be very interesting to hear a little more about it. Let me ask a related question to Air Marshal Jones. What impact do you expect this to have on recruitment and retention over the course of the Parliament and over the course of the overall 10-year plan?
Air Marshal Jones: It is a very important part of the investment in our most important asset, which is our people. I have lived in married quarters and families accommodation. I have also lived in single-living accommodation, when I have been detached to bases. We all know exactly how important it is to have good accommodation. There is a huge amount of investment going in, but you are quite right: it is a pretty mixed picture in places. That is why this money is really important. It is a large amount of money that we trust will make a big difference to people on the frontline.
Q59 Chair: Aneen, could you write to us with precisely how much you will spend on this matter in this Parliament? It is really important, for the very reason the air marshal just gave, that we keep up the pace of modernising this housing. I think you have committed to do nine out of 10 houses over the course of the plan. We would like to make sure that it is being kept up with in this Parliament. If you could write to us, I would be grateful.
Aneen Blackmore: Absolutely, Chair.
Q60 Tristan Osborne: I have a series of questions. The first is a general question about the training of armed forces personnel within the DIP. We have discussed the number of capital programmes, but some of this is about personnel and the change that is needed. I will specifically talk about the F-35. I declare an interest: I have BAE Systems in my constituency, which manufacturers components for the F-35 programme.
I am not a defence expert—I put my hands up to that—but I study history. Part of the challenge with the armed forces in previous conflicts is that you have sometimes gone into them thinking about the war of yesterday and not tomorrow.
Nine out of 10 deaths in Ukraine at the moment are not by bullets; they are by drones. My question is about the training and development of our armed forces. In our armed forces, we have proud traditions, but the conflicts of the future are not necessarily the same as those in the past. In terms of drones in our armed forces, do we have a programme that will train military personnel in our armed forces to use drones, rather than potentially using bullets through the SA80? That is what the future is: drones will be chasing armed forces on the ground.
Have you received any institutional conservatism or pushback from people who are clasping to the wars of yesteryear and not necessarily moving forward? How do you deal with those challenges internally? That is my overarching question.
Air Marshal Jones: Those are really great questions. Everyone I speak to who has been anywhere near those conflicts comes back with exactly those lessons. Only a week ago, I ran an internal MOD session at a classified level with a large audience to reflect on the lessons of recent conflicts, and all those points came out.
Under defence reform, I have taken on a new team, part of which is dedicated to what we call warfare development, which is effectively taking those sorts of lessons and making sure that we hardwire them into the other part of my team, which is responsible for what we will procure in terms of capabilities. Unless one part is talking to the other, you are at risk of just going out and buying new versions of the old thing. I really agree that this is important.
On investment, I hope that the Defence Investment Plan tells a good story on that. We certainly think that it does, although there is always more we can do. On specifics, I would point to the uncrewed systems centre and DroneTEX site that were opened recently at the Swindon facility. That will be the largest indoor test facility for drones in Europe, and that belongs to the MOD. It is being run by a collaboration of armed forces, industry and innovation leads, and we draw academia into that as well. The whole point of it is to do exactly what you are describing: make sure that we are joining it all together so that, when we put down the lines of money for the things we will actually buy, it reflects that.
You also talked about training, which is also part of it, because it is not just about kit. You will have heard that the Chief of the General Staff was at the RUSI land warfare conference recently, and he talked very expansively about how he is transforming the British Army to not just be equipped differently but train differently. All of that is based on the experience we have had working closely with Ukraine; there is a very strong relationship there. We are making sure that it is not just our equipment programme but our training and exercising that is changing.
Q61 Tristan Osborne: To follow up, I want to talk about our ballistic missile UK defence and then the F-35 programme. One of the key stories of the last number of years is defence of our infrastructure and capability from ballistic missile threats and drone technologies. One of the concerns that has been raised by Members in the Defence Committee and on the Chamber Floor is around whether this plan has resilience for some of those future threats from missile-based technologies and drones at the scale needed to compete.
I will give you an example—anecdotally, because I am not a defence expert. I understand from the media that China is producing millions of drones; it has a scale-up capacity that is, in some cases, unparalleled in history. Within this plan, is there capability to defend against those sorts of technologies beyond what we have now, which some might argue is pretty poor?
Air Marshal Jones: Yes, there is new investment here. One example is that we have put a significant increase in money on counter-drone for fixed sites in the United Kingdom. You will have seen, about 18 months ago, the stories about drones hovering over airfields. It just does not take a lot to disrupt life and operations with small, cheap drones. Getting after that and addressing it, as well as the cruise missile threat and Shahed drones in the middle east—all of that is accounted for in the way we have prioritised the investment.
In my job, on a regular basis, I sit in a room with no windows, and I read classified reports about what our potential adversaries are planning in terms of the equipment they are procuring. It is my job and my team’s job to make sure that we make a plan that keeps us ahead of that. All our plans are ultimately threat-led. They are docked into NATO; we work very closely with our NATO allies.
We share intelligence about the threat and collaborate on our plans, and all the things you are describing are very much at the top of our list in terms of how we are translating that into the investments we are making.
Q62 Tristan Osborne: Understood. That neatly segues into my next question. We were talking about low-cost, high-volume drones. I will now move on to the F-35 programme, which is high-cost.
My colleagues here have raised our concerns around levels of scrutiny, and I appreciate that there are a number of national security issues, but nevertheless, in any other Government area where you see costs overrun by significant margins, that raises broader questions about whether or not scrutiny is taking place. My direct question to you is: when do you expect that the F-35’s interim stand-off capability will be ready for operational use?
Air Marshal Jones: We want that to happen very quickly, and before 2030. We made a provision in the plan to procure the American weapon that goes with F-35—that is currently cleared on to that weapon and gives it stand-off precision strike capability. We need to go and work the detail of that out in conversations within industry, but that is accounted for in the plan. That is all part of the earlier point I was making about the importance of looking at not just platforms but their lethality, because platforms without the right munitions aren’t a lot of use when it comes to warfighting, are they? Therefore, we have to think about both. That has very much been part of the thinking that has gone into this plan.
Q63 Tristan Osborne: I want to push you on a few points—you may not be able to answer them because of other reasons. Within the Defence Investment Plan, do we have a costing for the F-35B and new F-35A? You mentioned 2030, so presumably you have some idea of what you are ordering and how that looks at this stage.
Air Marshal Jones: We do. There will be another tranche of deliveries of F-35; that is in the plan. You will be aware that we have announced that we will be purchasing F-35A as part of that, which is the land-based variant of F-35, with F-35B being the carrier—or principally carrier-based variant. The exact detail of that delivery profile is something that we are yet to confirm with our partners in the US and with industry, but we want to get those aircraft online and fielded as soon as we can in the 2030s.
Q64 Chair: We keep being given that answer; the squadrons at RAF Marham must be tearing their hair out, not knowing what their total numbers are likely to be. When are we likely to know the aim for the total number of the F-35A, which I think was 12, and the total number of the F-35B, which I think was 11? When are those likely to be procured?
Air Marshal Jones: The exact profile needs to be worked through with industry over the next few months. We have a good idea that this will be in the early 2030s, and it will range later into the decade towards the mid-2030s, once the entire profile is delivered. We need to work that through with industry, because until we can confirm the exact delivery profile, I am unable to give detail on that.
We are planning on 12 F-35As as part of that tranche of 27. Our plan is that the F-35A will be principally deployed on to the operational conversion units, so it will be used for training. However, the F-35A will also form a core part of joining NATO’s dual-capable aircraft nuclear mission, so those aircraft will take on that role.
Q65 Chair: That is a fairly dire answer, isn’t it? We are struggling to put one squadron on to one of our aircraft carriers, and they are having to make do and mend. The Committee went to Marham; surely we can do better than having to wait until the mid-2030s, as you indicated. That is a long time to have to wait for additional aircraft, isn’t it?
Air Marshal Jones: The order book is set out, and it has always been our plan that, at about the turn of the decade, that next tranche of aircraft will arrive. As soon as we can in the 2030s, we want to get those deliveries coming in.
On your wider observations on F-35 in Marham, I have read the Committee’s report into F-35—of course, we recently wrote back to you on some of the specifics. I think you made some excellent points that have definitely given us assumptions to take into the Defence Investment Plan, so that we can address the concerns that the Committee raised on a range of those points. In that sense, the Committee’s report has been very helpful to us in making sure that we have the right focus in the Defence Investment Plan to take into the F-35 programme. Of course, we all want it to be a success, and all those areas that the Committee identified are important.
Chair: There may be other points on the F-35 that I will come back to, but I want to let Tristan finish.
Q66 Tristan Osborne: I have one last question, if I may. On defence procurement generally, a number of concerns have been raised about overspends in previous years, and you mentioned that there are national security sensitivities with this.
Has the Department considered looking at a model where, similar to the NAO, a third party of experts—it does not necessarily have to be a quango, but it could be—can scrutinise some of the procurement processes that you have done in a more secure setting? That way, it would be within the security apparatus, but they could then feed back to the Department internally on how some of these things might have gone right or wrong.
I accept that this relates to national security, and some of it should not be in the public domain, but are there not also ways in which you can potentially learn lessons from mistakes in procurement, which might help with your efficiency savings?
Jeremy Pocklington: Of course, and having that sort of scrutiny is very important. Other than the NAO, one example of how we do it is the role of non-executives with relevant experience, and I have talked about the board that oversees the Nuclear Enterprise. Rupert may want to say a little bit about the board that we are establishing for the National Armaments Director, which will be able to do exactly that sort of scrutiny.
Rupert Pearce: We have a board, but that is also largely what NISTA does for large programmes. We have a large number of the largest programmes in Government sitting in the MOD, and NISTA reviews them regularly. It does exactly that kind of challenge, and we respond to that.
For example, one of our largest upcoming programmes is the GCAP programme—or the global combat air programme—which involves developing sixth-generation combat aircraft with Japan and Italy. NISTA made a recommendation on staffing it up that we are following, and it is part of our DIP investment. There are bodies that oversee our programmes. Inside my group we have a board; many of the non-execs have extensive experience in procurement and complex programmes. I have a committee of the board that reviews our performance on both greenlighting programmes and managing the programmes in life.
Q67 Tristan Osborne: Who is auditing NISTA, or scrutinising its capability to scrutinise you? If the budgets have gone massively over budget, there is a genuine question about whether it is doing its job correctly. Are we holding it to account for how it is managing programmes and projects? I just want to make sure that future programme projects are efficiently delivered.
Jeremy Pocklington: That is a great question: who audits NISTA? I fear that I have gone to this well a few times in this hearing, but it is actually a Treasury body—
Chair: I think that the C&AG wants to come in on that.
Gareth Davies: The answer is that we do.
Tristan Osborne: There we go.
Q68 Chair: I have a couple more points on F-35s. One is that I think there was a nonsense over spares for the F-35s—the spares pack, which seemed to have been controlled by the Americans. We learned when we went to Marham that some of the poor pilots had to go from Operation Highmast—going around the world to Japan—straight into the Gulf situation. There must be a huge difference in the requirement for spares between wartime operations and what are called peacetime operations. The idea that in the middle of a war you would have to get spares all the way back from RAF Marham is a complete nonsense, isn’t it? Have we sorted that situation out so that it will not happen again?
Air Marshal Jones: The issue of spares, which of course was in the Committee’s report, as I recall, is very much part of the overall approach to F-35, to make sure that we are maximising its readiness so that we can avoid the sort of situations that you are describing. I am not familiar with the specifics of it, I must say, but to the principle, I think it is absolutely true that, rather like how a platform without weapons is not very lethal, a platform without spares cannot fly, in the case of F-35. We have to wrap it all together.
That was one of the aspects of the Committee’s report that we took away and have taken into the Defence Investment Plan: the provision of the deployable spares packs so that the spares are in the place where the aircraft are. That is a consideration that we need to make sure is addressed in order that in the future, when we are deploying these aircraft around the world, we have a sufficient number of spares so that they can fly.
Q69 Chair: Permanent secretary, one of the reasons for buying the A version is that it has the capability to carry a nuclear weapon. Where in this DIP does the costing and development of that come? Does it come within the nuclear figures that we have just talked about, or is it completely separate?
Jeremy Pocklington: It is obviously an American weapon on F-35As that we are talking about. Ultimately I think that is a matter for the next decade—that is my detailed recollection. If I can find any further information that I can share with you on the precise timing of that I will do so, but it might need to await the Committee. However, let me take that away.
Chair: It was not really the timing that I was getting at, permanent secretary; it is actually where the cost line is within the DIP. Is it within those nuclear figures or somewhere else? But do write to us.
Jeremy Pocklington: Costs into the next decade will not be in the numbers in this document. That is the point I am making.
Q70 Chair: Perfectly understood. Can I come back, Air Marshal, to Tris’s point about anti-ballistic missile capability? I was being very careful with my question, but that is obviously an urgent requirement. Can you give us any idea of how quickly you are working on that subject and are likely to have extra technology in the field?
Air Marshal Jones: I probably cannot comment on the detail of plans for operational reasons.
Chair: No, I was not expecting you to; that is why I phrased my question carefully.
Air Marshal Jones: If the Committee is looking for an assurance that that is under active and urgent consideration, then the answer is yes. There are a range of ways to deal with those sorts of threats, and we are examining a number of areas where we can address that over time, but that is something that I probably will not be able to comment on in detail.
Chair: I phrased my question carefully and your reply was very helpful.
Air Marshal Jones: We are not alone in NATO in perceiving this threat as a very significant one.
Q71 Chair: The next question is on the vexed subject of Ajax. Rupert, you are nodding your head.
Rupert Pearce: I was agreeing with you that it is a vexed question.
Chair: It is a vexed question, but whether you want to give us an unvexed answer, I do not know. We are talking about Ajax 2—the upgrade—but we are not even sure that Ajax 1 works yet. Can you set out a timetable for when we can be absolutely certain that all six variants of the Ajax are going to be deployable by the Army?
Rupert Pearce: Sure. Whether it is Ajax 1, Ajax 2 or Ajax 3, it is all Ajax. GD tells us that the prior variant that led to the problems around the Titan Storm operation was among the most tested vehicles of its kind in history—it had 40,000 miles of testing. As you know, when the various bodies looked at this—the accident investigation bodies, the independent experts and so on—they said it was technically a safe vehicle that passed every health and safety standard necessary.
The issue is more one of operational integrity, because obviously it is not operational if your soldiers are experiencing symptoms that range from severe moving sickness to noise and vibration injuries—short-term injuries, I would add. We have a strong plan, which our experts have looked at very carefully. Remember that Titan Storm took place amid the capability drop, so it was not the final version of Ajax that was trialled and tested under operational conditions.
Capability drop 4 is in the process of dropping right now. There is a whole series of changes and fittings, such as improved air conditioning and so on. We will implement automatic track tensioning, which is a big step in terms of both ride comfort and operationalisability, because it means the users will not have to keep getting out to adjust track tensioning.
We are going to be running trials on composite rubber tracks, which could be another big step change. One of the things that has happened with CRT is that it has become available for heavier and heavier vehicles. GD’s view, and our view, is that that could be an appropriate step for Ajax. That does two things: it will make the ride more comfortable and allow variants for Ajax that improve its exportability.
Finally, we are also looking at upgrading the onboarding process in two important ways. First, GD run a programme for the US Department of War that involves much more holistic, detailed onboarding and training for the Army when it takes delivery of a vehicle. We are taking that as the gold standard. We are looking at ways in which our aviation colleagues onboard as well and taking that into account. We are professionalising and taking further that process so that our warfighters are better trained to the vehicle in hand.
Secondly, we are improving the feedback loops. What we found, to our chagrin, was that there was nowhere for troopers’ comments to drop. They gave us comments that dropped into the ether. We need a proper feedback loop where stuff gets picked up.
When people say, “This isn’t working, that’s not working, or it would be better if we did this”, that needed somewhere to go. There is now somewhere to go, and we will iterate through that with GD. We can put Ajax into a programme where we are continually improving it based on real-world experience.
In other words, it is a very holistic approach. There is not one problem that we fix and we are done; it is a whole series of things that need to be taken together and got after. I am confident that over the next 12 to 18 months all those things will be dropped and implemented, and we will have a fundamentally better armoured vehicle.
We still believe that this is among the best recce-strike vehicles of its type in the world and that there is a very large export market for GD and Merthyr Tydfil to get after. In our experience, there is huge interest. Once we can get the Army behind it in an unqualified way, it will be a very successful vehicle.
Q72 Chair: To re-emphasise, you are saying that within the next 12 to 18 months the Army will have six fully operable versions of Ajax in the field.
Rupert Pearce: Yes.
Q73 Chair: Good. Have you resolved the finances? Who will pay for all of the modification, delays and everything else? It does not seem reasonable that the UK taxpayer should be paying for all that, so where have we got to with the negotiations?
Rupert Pearce: We are in the process of reigniting those, because it was DIP dependent. We have a position in principle agreed with GD, and now we need to nail that down and sign up to the new terms. That will include a long-term service and support arrangement, which was not in place before these problems. We are killing a number of birds with the same stone. We will emerge with all that work having been agreed and a long-term support contract alongside it. We will be in a much stronger position in terms of supporting this vehicle in the field as well.
There will be costs for us, but I have to say publicly that we have been very happy with the way that GD has leaned into this. It has invested very significantly out of its own pocket to get this vehicle to where it needs to go. It is not all costs on the UK taxpayer. I cannot say what the exact number will be yet, but where we are in principle is a very good overall outcome for MOD and for the taxpayer.
Q74 Chair: What does the £1.1 billion mentioned in the DIP actually provide for? Does it include Morpheus, for example?
Rupert Pearce: It does not include Morpheus, as far as I am aware. Correct me if I am wrong, but that is a separate programme that delivers next-generation communications capabilities into our armour. It includes all the capability drops, all the changes and the long-term support agreement.
Q75 Chair: Where are we with Morpheus? Presumably we will have to go through all the tests and everything else with these Ajax vehicles when you change from Bowman to Morpheus.
Rupert Pearce: I think Morpheus is dead.
Chair: Morpheus is dead?
Rupert Pearce: Yes; I think Morpheus has been abandoned and replaced by new work being initiated on future Bowman capability, which is in the DIP, but is at an early stage of development. Tim, am I right about that?
Air Marshal Jones: I would need to come back and check.
Q76 Chair: Perhaps you could let us know in your note on this. That would be very helpful indeed.
Rupert Pearce: I am very happy to provide you with detail on exactly where we are with next-generation communications. The Morpheus programme first got detached from Ajax and then—
Q77 Chair: We will need to take Bowman out, or whatever it is, and then put whatever you are going to replace it with in. Then you will need to test that the two are compatible.
Rupert Pearce: Absolutely. That is in our plans and in the DIP, and it is fully funded. It is just not Morpheus.
Q78 Chair: I have one other question, which is really the most important, on the communications spine—all the digital warfare command and control systems. Can you give us any information on that? How much will that cost? It is in the DIP. Is it one of those items that is likely to spread well into the 2030s? I think it is.
Rupert Pearce: We have announced £1.8 billion of investment into the digital targeting web, and that covers a multitude of things in addition to that. That is just the system off which sensors, effectors and deciders will hang. As a system, that needs to function in every domain—land, air, sea and space. It also needs to be integratable with other people’s similar systems so that NATO can essentially have a digital targeting web that works across the whole of NATO. It is a really big undertaking.
Inside MOD, we have the foundation pieces for that, which are, in no particular order: a proper data strategy, so we can secure data, locate it in the right place and interrogate it in the right way in the cloud at the core of the system, and we will increasingly need to do that at the edge as well.
Then we have to have an AI strategy, or a machine learning strategy, that can interrogate the data in the right way, find the right patterns and derive the right insights that are actionable. Then we have to deliver all of that from the edge to the cloud from sensors and effectors to the deciders. Then, when the deciders make the decision, we have to export that back to the edge and the effector that makes the effect. That is called the digital backbone. That has to be highly secure as well, so we need a secure cloud and a secure communications backbone.
Then you have something that is the infrastructure to which you can lash your sensors, effectors and deciders. You then turn it on, and data flows, algorithms give you insights and decisions can be made. It is an incredibly important capability for our armed forces because I think that we can deliver decision advantage in this context, particularly when we aggregate the data, and therefore the insights and AI power, across NATO. Thirty two nations acting together on this gives us unparalleled decision advantage. Decision advantage is the ultimate deterrent.
Q79 Chair: I have caught up with myself. Table 4 on page 32 gives us some insight into all of this. I see now that this is to be delivered. The digital targeting web in that table is £1.8 billion, and the digital backbone is £5.5 billion. We are talking about a lot of money but, contrary to what I had in my mind, according to that table this is to be delivered by the 2029-30 financial year. Is that realistic?
Rupert Pearce: Yes, I think it is, given the pace at which—
Q80 Chair: It is an incredibly complicated new technological system. Do you really think that is realistic?
Rupert Pearce: It is going to be hard and challenging, but it is necessary. The pacing is driven by the threat. Is it ambitious? Yes, of course. But you would want us to be ambitious in this area.
The thing that gives me heart is that the components of this web are no different from what big corporates are doing to digitalise their business processes. We just happen to have a different application set, if you like. We have industry—very substantial companies with a lot of experience in this area—leaning in big time to help us. Can we get it done? Yes. Will it be hard? Yes.
Q81 Chair: That is really positive. I am struggling to find it in the plan. I do not know whether it is for you, Rupert, or you, permanent secretary, but my last question is on autonomous vehicles. There is a figure in here of £5 billion, but that figure seems to be for an awful lot of different things, including medical things, space and so on and so forth. With all these questions that we have been asking about drones and autonomous vehicles, there seems to be an awful lot to go into that £5 billion. Can you provide any further clarity on that?
Rupert Pearce: I am not sure we break out the autonomous ground vehicle on its own.
Q82 Chair: You did not; that was the problem.
Rupert Pearce: It is part of that larger figure. We have active plans to go out and work with industry around the ground vehicle. Are you looking for confidence on the system or the numbers?
Q83 Chair: This goes right to the heart of Tris’s question—the old traditional equipment versus the new, emerging equipment, which Ukraine has proved is so important. I am just not clear what that £5 billion is going to include.
Rupert Pearce: I am struggling as to which £5 billion.
Q84 Chair: I am very happy if you give us a note on this, because it is so important.
Rupert Pearce: That £5 billion, if it is the one I think you are referring to, is specifically about drone investment. It is not, for example, about our hybrid Navy investments. It is not about collaborative combat aircraft. Those are separate line items. It is not about autonomous ground vehicles either.
Q85 Chair: It is solely about drones? £5 billion on drones?
Jeremy Pocklington: I think we should provide you with them.
Q86 Chair: You should give us a note because it is so important.
Jeremy Pocklington: There is quite a lot on page 26 and 27 of the report that decomposes the £5 billion.
Rupert Pearce: That £150 million is itemised here and is uncrewed ground vehicles. That is the piece of uncrewed ground vehicles that will deliver all these different services on an autonomous basis to our Army forces. That ranges from the supply of munitions and recovery of injured soldiers to the delivery of kinetic effects. There are all sorts of different things that you can do with these ground vehicles.
Q87 Chair: That is what worries me; there is an awful lot in that category.
Rupert Pearce: Yes, but there are off-the-shelf capabilities that we can buy from global companies that are already investing in this area for reasons other than defence. I am really keen that, for these kinds of areas, we access existing global supply chains, IOT capabilities and autonomy so that we do not reinvent things for what is actually a pretty straightforward capability.
Q88 Chair: I am still not clear in my own mind how much money you have got. Air Marshal, do you have any information on this for us?
Air Marshal Jones: No, I think it is as you just heard.
Q89 Chair: Permanent secretary, I would be grateful if, in your comprehensive note, we could have something on precisely what you are going to spend on drones, interceptors and updating new technology on drones.
Jeremy Pocklington: That is pages 26 and 27. I am very happy to provide more detail on uncrewed ground vehicles or any of the specific things that you want. However, maybe the Clerk could refine the request because this is the £5 billion that we have. I worry that my reply will be pages 26 and 27 of the investment plan.
Chair: Well let us just see where we get to.
Q90 Rupert Lowe: I have a general question. I have listened with interest to the answers that you have given today. Jeremy, I have read the Committee’s report on the strategic defence review, and particularly at the comments of Lord Robertson, who says that we are not moving fast enough and that there are too many committees and reviews. It is arguably a case of the blind leading the blind.
I then read in our Committee briefing that this Committee has repeatedly raised concerns about the time that Government have taken to agree the DIP and the impact of delays on the defence sector and suppliers. Most recently, in spring ’26, the Committee concluded that the ongoing delay was both hindering the MOD’s attempts to modernise the armed forces and undermining its relationship with the UK’s defence industry. Again, the theme seems to be common.
I look at your CV, Jeremy, and I see that you have been permanent secretary in four different Departments since 2020 and you took up this job last November. Arguably, you could be described as a jack of all trades and a master of none. That is not a reflection on you; I think that it is a reflection on the civil service.
Chair: I think that we want to be careful here.
Q91 Rupert Lowe: I have a key question here, Geoffrey.
The question is: have you got the right team around you? Are you the right man and have you got the right team around you to make these crucial decisions, which are arguably now a matter of national defence and security?
Jeremy Pocklington: I am incredibly impressed with the senior team that I have in the Ministry of Defence. I am delighted that Rupert Pearce is our national armaments director and an excellent DG finance on the panel, and Air Marshal Tim and the entire military leadership as well.
Defence reform gives us the opportunity to move more quickly to clarify accountabilities within that system, in order to get on and deliver. I know that every single person on this panel—all of the witnesses—want to focus on that. Of course, it would have been better to have published the Defence Investment Plan earlier. We would have liked to have done that if we could have. It was a complex task. The SDR is a very important document, and I am very grateful to Lord Robertson and the other reviewers for their work on that.
The threat has changed in the period since we published that review. We are seeing Russian activity, not just in Ukraine, but more activity in the High North on the eastern flank of NATO. We are also learning lessons from Ukraine. It was right to do that and to take our time to get this plan right.
It is also now a matter of public record that it was challenging for very senior Ministers to reach agreement on this, and ultimately the previous Defence Secretary resigned over it. There have been subsequent changes since then. So there are very good reasons why this has taken the time it has, but I am delighted that we now have the plan and the team we need to deliver it.
Q92 Rupert Lowe: The purpose of my question is this. Today we have talked about various budgets and spend. In my experience of running any form of strategic investment, if you end up with the wrong team making the decisions, you end up with budgets going to the wrong place.
I read people like General Richard Barrons saying in 2018 that the Army was not fit for purpose. His view of the DIP was basically that we may as well not have bothered. I read Fiona Hill talking about the fact that we are losing the hybrid war with Russia, which is a crucial part of our defence. The hybrid issue, to your point, Jeremy, is incredibly important. We look at John Healey’s resignation statement, Al Carns’s resignation statement, and comments from senior leaders of the armed forces. This is an incredibly important issue.
From the taxpayers’ point of view, we want to make sure, first, that we are not wasting taxpayers’ money and, secondly, that we are genuinely preparing ourselves for what, as you say, is an increasingly febrile environment. National security is underpinned by our economy. We talk about a percentage of GDP, but our GDP is far from certain.
Our economy is very weak. Ultimately, we need to invest in this. I think that from everybody’s point of view, it is worth asking this general question because I am concerned, when I read all this stuff, that we may not have the right formula. If you can assure me that you are the right man and that we have the right formula, then I will be happy.
Jeremy Pocklington: This is the first duty of Government, and I feel that every single day I do this job. What you have said about the importance of clarity of accountability and capability and knowing that you have the right people—what my military colleagues would call the SQEP—is absolutely critical to delivering programmes.
I have spent 30 years in Government managing budgets and delivering some of the most complex and challenging budgets in Government. I can really see how those skills are applicable to the work in Defence.
Chair: If there are no more questions, can I thank you, permanent secretary, national armaments director, Air Marshal and Aneen very much for coming today? It has not been an entirely straightforward session, as you probably anticipated, but I think you have given us a lot of very useful information. If we could follow up all those points in writing, I would be more than grateful.
There will be an uncorrected version of the transcript in the next few days if you want to look at it. If there is anything you have said that you want to correct—quite rightly, Air Marshal, you corrected the record on one point—or if there is anything else, let us know. We will be considering your evidence very carefully and deciding what to do about it.
I think it is probably in the public domain—my Clerk will tell me off now—that the NAO is going to do an in-depth study of the DIP in November and we will be having a hearing in December. If we could give you advance notice of that, we would love to have you back in December. I am sure you would love to come.
Mr Betts: Just before Christmas.
Chair: The permanent secretary is smiling—that would be the best Christmas present he could have. Thank you all very much indeed.