Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 26
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)
In July 2023, the Department’s Permanent Secretary wrote to the Chair of the previous Public Accounts Committee to say that it would not provide a full Plan that year as it needed “to work through the direction from the 46 Q 5 47 Public Accounts Committee, Oral Evidence: Defence equipment plan 2023–33, Q 61, HC 451, 22 January 2024 48 HM Treasury, Spring Statement 2025, para 2.4, CP 1298, March 2025; The 2.6% figure referred to in the announcement on 11 June includes the 0.1% intelligence and security services contribution. 49 Q 3 50 Q 59 51 C&AG’s Report, The Equipment Plan 2023–2033, Session 2023–24, HC 315, 4 December 2023, paras 1.2 and 1.3 15 Defence Command Paper 2023 (DCP23) and further understand the impact of extraordinary inflation and how to mitigate it.”52 In December 2023, however, it published affordability analysis of its equipment and support projects for 2023 to 2033, in which the forecast costs of £305.5 billion were £16.9 billion more than its available budget.53 The total forecast 10-year defence costs to 2032–33 were £42.5 billion more than the overall budget.54 The previous Public Accounts Committee reported on this in March 2024.55
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.