Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what the status is of each of the Royal Navy’s Type 45 destroyers.

As of 2 December, two Type 45 destroyers are immediately available. The remaining four are in various stages of refit and are therefore not available for operations.

The normal operating cycle of every ship involves them entering different readiness levels depending on their programmes, periods of refit and Departmental planning requirements. This is carefully managed to ensure the Royal Navy has sufficient assets available to deliver concurrent operational outputs, both in the UK and around the globe; whilst also sustaining longer term availability to meet changing defence demands in an uncertain world.