Type 31 Frigate

Baroness Jolly Excerpts

Monday 3rd April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. That was indeed a point that came out loud and clear from the recent defence debate we had in your Lordships’ House. However, the UK is leading the way in NATO. Our defence budget is considerably more than 2% at the moment, which is the NATO target. There are, however, other European members of NATO whose defence spending does not even reach 1%. Therefore, I agree that there is a lot of ground to make up with our allies. However, in our case I remind the House that we have a budget over the next 10 years of £178 billion to invest in equipment and support, which is no mean sum.

[Baroness Jolly (LD)]

My Lords, the plans to build the Type 31 frigate are welcome and indeed interesting. However, that does not hide the fact that once the Type 23s are out of service, the size of the fleet will be at a historic low. Would the Minister tell the House what is now determined to be a minimum fleet size and, indeed, configuration, and whether there is any contingency for delays in the Type 31 construction?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, there are a number of assumptions in the noble Baroness’s question, which I will not be in a position to answer until we publish the national shipbuilding strategy. I do not accept her hypothesis that the size of the fleet in the 2030s will be smaller than it is today. Indeed, it is our ambition to make it larger.