Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how much he plans to allocate to spending on defence R&D in each year to 2030.

As part of this Spending Review Period (financial years 2021-22 to 2024-25) the department established a ringfence of £6.6 billion for R&D across the four years. In the first three years of this Spending Review period the department exceeded its targets and spent over £6 billion. Whilst forecasts for R&D spend for this financial year are subject to change, we ultimately expect to comfortably exceed the £6.6 billion ringfenced figure by the end of this financial year.

Furthermore, as part of the announcement to uplift defence spending to 2.5% GDP by 2030, we are making a new commitment to ring-fence at least 5% of the defence budget for research and development from 2025-26 onwards, with an increased focus on dual use technologies or where there can be significant spillover effects from military to civil R&D.