Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential impact on the economy of cancellation of the Type 32 frigate programme.

There are currently no plans to withdraw the Type 32 Frigate Programme and it remains a key part of the future fleet for the Royal Navy. The Programme is currently in its concept phase and work continues, across a number of defence organisations, to ensure the programme is affordable.

Defence Equipment and Support (DES) have been allocated overall funding to develop various concepts on multiple projects. It is therefore difficult to delineate precise costs, but we would estimate that approximately c.£4 million of this funding has been allocated to the T32 programme.