£2.9bn black hole in Trident funding

THE MINISTRY of Defence is facing a £2.9bn black hole in its programme to maintain and renew Britain’s Trident nuclear deterrent, the Whitehall spending watchdog has warned.

The National Audit Office (NAO) said the MoD is set to spend £50.9bn over the next 10 years on designing, producing and maintaining the submarines which carry the Trident missiles and their nuclear warheads.

With the programmes, referred to as the Nuclear Estate, accounting for a quarter of all defence equipment spending over that period, the NAO warned it could “destabilise” the entire equipment plan unless the “affordability gap” is addressed.

The MoD has already had to commit find to £3bn in savings over the next 10 years to make affordable the £31bn Trident renewal programme, replacing the ageing Vanguard-class submarines with four new Dreadnought-class boats.

It has also had to obtain permission from the Treasury to draw £600m from a £10bn contingency fund for the programme as well as delaying work on a replacement for the Astuteclass attack submarines by two years.

The NAO said that the MoD may be forced to make further inroads into the contingency fund if it is to cover the additional £2.9bn which it needs to find by 2028.

“Problems with the affordability of the Enterprise could destabilise the department’s overall equipment plan given that around a quarter of its planned spend on equipment relates to nuclear programmes,” the NAO said.

In the current financial year alone, the MoD is forecast to spend £5.2bn across the Nuclear Enterprise, accounting for 14 per cent of the MoD’s budget. It includes £1.8bn on submarines, £1.4bn on missiles and warheads, £790m on propulsion systems and £220m on managing the Enterprise.