Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the sufficiency of the management and technical resources within the Ministry of Defence to manage both the Type 26 and Type 31a programmes at the same time; and how many (1) Defence Equipment and Support, and (2) Royal Navy, staff they estimate will be needed to manage each of those programmes at their peaks.

The Ministry of Defence is satisfied with the number of people and balance of capability dedicated to each programme, in both Navy Command and Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S), and has a plan to increase those resources to respond to the needs of both the Type 26 and Type 31e programmes in the future.

The transformation of DE&S has introduced a balanced matrix management structure, which allows specialist resources to be deployed more easily to meet the demands of equipment procurement projects.