Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 29
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 ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
At the end of our evidence session, we asked the Department to write to us setting out a satisfactory and precise methodology for providing Parliament with an update on its spending plans at least once a year.62 The Permanent Secretary has since written to us, but yet again he has failed to address our concerns. Instead, the letter contained platitudes regarding the Department’s commitment to report to Parliament annually to provide opportunities for regular scrutiny, but was vague about how the Department would do this.63 The recently published SDR says that the Department will develop a new ten-year Defence Investment Plan, which will be completed in autumn 2025. While the SDR says this will supersede the Equipment Plan, the ongoing lack of details means we cannot judge how adequate a replacement this might be. The rising cost of the Defence Nuclear Enterprise (the DNE)
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.