Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 31
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)
However, costs of the DNE are rising, driven by various factors.69 The Department is seeking to quicken the pace of delivering its nuclear programmes. The Department noted, however, that there is a very strong correlation between speeding up the schedule and costs, because many of the costs are workforce related. Inflation continues to flow through into costs. The Department has also added new programmes to the DNE, such as to re-establish the capability to produce nuclear reactor fuel for defence 62 Q 60 63 Letter from the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence relating to the future of the Defence Equipment Plan, 13 May 2025 64 Q 41 65 The overall defence budget also increased between 2023–24 and 2024–25 meaning that the nuclear budget as a percentage was around 18% of the total budget. 66 Q 12 67 Q 15 68 Qq 19 and 20 69 Q 13 17 purposes.70 In consequence, forecast costs for the DNE for the ten years from 2023 and 2033 have increased by around £10 billion to approximately £128 billion from the £117.8 billion reported in the NAO’s 2023 Equipment Plan report.71 However, that 2023 Plan itself had reported that the DNE’s costs were already £7.9 billion more than its budget of £109.8 billion.72
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.