Select committee: Defence Committee
Conclusion 100
First Report - Ready for War?
Published 4 Feb 2024
Addressed to Ministry of Defence
Defence Committee Armed Forces Readiness All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
When we raised the prospect of specialisation with the Minister for the Armed Forces, he suggested that the greatest challenge would be coming to a consensus on what the UK might specialise in.212 He acknowledged that due to the current period of “great geopolitical uncertainty and instability” the UK Armed Forces were being asked to do more than they were designed for, but maintained that it was important for Britain to have a tier-one Army, Navy, Air Force and cyber force which could fulfil a range of tasks. He gave an example of a task which was not warfighting but was still considered “non- discretionary”: Dauntless … was rushed out of refit successfully to go and furnish a non-discretionary task to be available to the Overseas Territories during hurricane season. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office rightly pushed us on that. Dauntless successfully met the requirement. While she has been there she has been able to do all sorts of great stuff, working with partners in the region doing counter-narcotics and, more widely, flying the flag for freedom, all very valuable. She will come back, refurbish and will be ready again for operations. The tempo at which she has been doing all of that you won’t find in any handbook, and the First Sea Lord would rightly say to you that some risk comes with that.213
From: Defence Committee, First Report - Ready for War? (HC 26), 4 February 2024
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 25 April 2024 (deadline 4 April 2024).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government agrees there is no regular mechanism to scrutinise readiness and offers an annual open session, releases some Defence Planning Assumptions headlines, and sets out its position on stockpiles, recruitment and procurement.
- On transparency, the government "recognises that the Committee should have public access to more information on planning assumptions and readiness" and releases headlines from the 2023 assumptions, committing to release "as much as possible" of the next iteration "when national and NATO planning processes have matured".
- It agrees the response time for the inquiry was slow and "will make every effort to ensure this is not repeated".
- On the £1.95bn from the Spring Budget 2023, it states the money "will be spent in full on measures to address gaps in our capabilities". It says exact stockpile holdings are "not releasable on the grounds of national security".
- On recruitment and retention, it says a formal response to each Haythornthwaite Review recommendation "will be published during 2024", with next steps for delivery and implementation for each.