Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 26
26
Accepted
Department did not publish full 2023 Plan, revealing a £16.9 billion budget deficit.
Conclusion
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
Government Response Summary
The government commits to publishing a new Defence Investment Plan (DIP) in Autumn 2025, which will be affordable and allow thorough scrutiny of spending, implicitly addressing past issues with the Equipment Plan's affordability.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
5.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: Autumn 2025 5.2 The DIP, to be published in Autumn 2025, and its future iterations will allow the Committee to thoroughly scrutinise the department’s spending plans as they evolve over time. The Secretary of State for Defence has made it clear that the DIP, including the investment in equipment procurement and support, will be affordable within the department’s Spending Review settlement. 5.3 As the Committee will appreciate, officials appearing before Select Committees can describe and explain government policies, but it is not their role to anticipate or pre-empt Ministerial decisions or announcements. The government’s plans for the DIP were set out in the SDR publication on 2 June 2025. Noting his personal accountabilities to Parliament as Accounting Officer, the Permanent Secretary’s letter of 13 May 2025 and evidence at the Session of 28 April 2025 went as far as was possible in advance of those Ministerial announcements.