Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps her Department is taking to minimise the time taken to dispose of retired nuclear submarines.

An established programme of work is in place to dispose of our decommissioned nuclear submarines as soon as practicable. Good progress has been made and the initial phase of dismantling of the first submarine, SWIFTSURE, has been completed. Work continues on the removal of low level radioactive waste from the second boat, RESOLUTION. We expect to have a fully developed process for steady state disposal ready by 2026. In parallel, we continue to examine techniques and processes that can maximise the efficiency of this work.