Royal Navy: Type 31e Frigate

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My noble friend speaks with considerable authority on this matter. The modernising defence programme is about making our Armed Forces more capable, against the harder threats that we now face, and it is looking at how best we can use our growing budget to that effect.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, this Question prompted me to look at the National Shipbuilding Strategy, whose first birthday is today. When it was published a year ago, it was meant to be a solid basis for industry to develop. It is interesting to see how it is starting to erode. Paragraph 56 said of the Type 31e ships:

“The first will be in service by 2023”,


but “by 2023” means during 2022. The Minister has just answered a similar question by saying that it will be by the end of 2023. This is the first incremental crumble in the strategy. In paragraph 61, the strategy said:

“We have set a maximum £250 million per ship price for the Type 31e”.


Are either of those statements still sound, or is this one year-old strategy going to crumble incrementally, like all the strategies before it?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, our target dates have not changed, as I have already said, and we still believe that industry can deliver all five Type 31e frigates at a price of £1.25 billion. The national shipbuilding strategy is an overarching strategy for the future of naval ship-building in the UK over the next 30 years, and is much wider than the procurement of a particular class of ship. Type 31e is a pathfinder project for a new way of procuring warships, and we are learning beneficially from those challenges.