Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 21
32nd Report - The Future of the Equipment Plan
Published 20 Jun 2025
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee The Future of the Equipment Plan All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
The government launched the Strategic Defence Review (the SDR) in July 2024 and said it would publish it in the first half of 2025.41 The Department told us that the SDR would try to balance ambition and resource, but also chart the direction needed to respond to the current geopolitical situation and ensure that the UK has the armed forces it needs, both now and for the future.42 Five weeks after the Department’s oral evidence to us, it published the SDR on 2 June 2025.
From: Public Accounts Committee, 32nd Report - The Future of the Equipment Plan (HC 716), 20 June 2025
Government response
Latest Treasury Minutes progress report to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Thirty-second Report of Session 2024-26
The government responded to the whole report on 4 June 2026 (deadline 20 August 2025).
Treasury minutes: Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Thirty-second report from Session 2024-26
Published 16 September 2025.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government agrees with five of the Committee's recommendations on Ukraine support, procurement reform, the Strategic Defence Review and annual reporting, and disagrees with the recommendation on detailed Defence Nuclear Enterprise cost reporting in the annual update.
- On Ukraine, the government agrees with the recommendation and states that the department will support Ukraine "for as long as it takes", expecting to provide £4.5 billion in capability support this financial year.
- It agrees to update the Committee by June 2026 on procurement lessons from Ukraine and on how procurement has improved under the National Armaments Director Group, with a target to agree key performance indicators "within the next three months".
- It agrees to turn the Strategic Defence Review into a Defence Investment Plan, to be published in the autumn, which the department "will ensure" is affordable, and says it will provide updates "as requested by the Committee".
- It disagrees on Defence Nuclear Enterprise reporting, saying it is "better" to provide the financial information within wider MOD financial reporting, and is "continuing to consider" an earlier proposal for a new scrutiny committee.