Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what progress he has made on the Submarine Waterfront Infrastructure Future programme in the context of the Delivery confidence assessments for Government Major Project Portfolio Defence projects.

The delivery confidence assessment for the Submarine Waterfront Infrastructure Future (SWIF) programme reflects the likelihood of successful delivery at a specific point in time and the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA) Gate Review process is an integral part of the Assurance Framework that the Ministry of Defence has in place to support project delivery.

Despite positive progress, there are still challenges to the delivery of the SWIF programme. The delivery team is working closely with NISTA and the contractor to recover the programme. The current focus is on the completion of design work, where we have increased the pace of design decisions and streamlined approvals, to enable the start of construction. We have used the principles set out in the Nuclear Regulatory Review as part of these reviews, to identify new opportunities to accelerate work.