Recommendation 3

The Department is not currently providing Parliament with sufficient transparency over its ever-increasing nuclear expenditure. In 2024–25, the Department spent 18% (£10.9 billion) of the defence budget on the Defence Nuclear Enterprise (DNE), a figure expected to rise to 20% for 2025–26, once its accounts have been finalised. The Department expects this will increase further to up to 25% in coming years. Nine DNE programmes have whole-life costs of more than £10 billion. The Department claims that the cost of Dreadnought, which is due to enter service in the early 2030s, currently remains within its £41 billion budget (including a £10 billion contingency). However, published information about other DNE programmes is too vague to allow Parliament to understand and challenge the range of activities they cover, what their costs are and how these have changed over time. The 2025 Strategic Defence Review identified this gap in scrutiny and recommended that Government should develop mechanisms for enhanced Parliamentary scrutiny to provide confidence that taxpayer money is being spent wisely. We understand that the Government has now agreed that a proper scrutiny mechanism will be set up. We call on the Government not to allow the current political uncertainty to delay this is essential parliamentary scrutiny. 4 recommendation The Ministry of Defence must set out how and when it will routinely provide Parliament with more detailed cost and performance information for the nuclear enterprise, so that Parliament can provide taxpayers with the confidence that the increasing DNE budget is being spent wisely.