Defence Investment Plan

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

The noble and gallant Lord is right to point out the importance of GCAP and how it offers a sixth-generation option for us after 2040, when Typhoon is expected to go out of service. There is money in the defence investment plan for the upgrade of Typhoon to ensure that it has the capability that it needs until 2040. Regarding other partners in GCAP, as I said to the noble Lord, Lord Fox, we are open to discussions with anybody who comes to us with proposals or desires to join that programme, but that will be a matter for international negotiation between ourselves, Italy and Japan, although we are not opposed to looking at having further partners as part of that scheme.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, may I say that this is a disappointment, to put it mildly? I am on the same side as the Minister on this. This, I assume, was what led John Healey to resign—I suspect that it was the same document. Given that, does he think that any other Minister should resign, given the appalling lack of money in the Statement?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

There is an additional £1.5 billion, and there are also some changes with respect to the way in which there is a greater emphasis in this document on autonomy, AI and the transformation of the Armed Forces to have more new types of aircraft, vessels and capabilities. For me, that is as important as the amount of money, compared with not spending on new capabilities. But I would just say to the noble Lord that it requires difficult decisions to do that. On replacing the Type 45, we have scrapped the plans that we had in the document in favour of replacing them with new, uncrewed vessels. That requires us to make really big decisions, and there are a number of those sorts of decisions all through the document. Of course there is a debate about the amount of money, which is why I have talked about the 2027 spending review, but it is also about the type of capabilities that we need. The document shows that we are not afraid to make big decisions around that to give us the capabilities that we need in the future as well.