Astute-class Submarines

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord West of Spithead]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the time to build an Astute-class submarine has reduced as the shipyard has gained experience of building that type of vessel.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Astor of Hever) (Con)]

My Lords, the build time and commissioning for each Astute-class submarine continues to reduce as lessons are learnt. For the first boat, HMS “Astute”, this took 170 months from the start of manufacture until operational handover to the Royal Navy. The second boat, HMS “Ambush”, achieved this in 149 months.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. As he will know, the first build of any class always takes longer. Perhaps he could write to me with the answer to this question: how long has HMS “Artful”, which is the third of the SSNs, taken from laying down to sea trials, compared with HMS “Agamemnon”, which is the one that is being built at the moment? All the information I have is that these lengths of time are suddenly starting to stretch out, which means that more money will be spent. Is the Minister aware that the US is now very concerned that the stretching out of timescales may impact on any future submarines, and worried about the impact on the common missile compartment that the Americans are funding to a large extent, but that we will be using?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I will write to the noble Lord on the point that he asks about. The Astute submarine programme required the UK’s nuclear submarine design build capability to be re-established following a 10-year gap since the delivery of the last Vanguard-class submarine. The consequences are still being felt across the whole of the submarine enterprise. Further improvements are still needed and we are working very closely with our key suppliers to ensure that they make those improvements.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I am aware of this but it is probably difficult for me to say too much about the subject from the Dispatch Box.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, I was not going to ask about that subject but, as we know, at one stage we had 16 attack submarines but now we have six, and that has an impact on antisubmarine warfare by submarines. My question really goes back the build rate—the drumbeat—of these submarines. The drumbeat was extended unnaturally because we did not wish to have the submarines coming off the production line quickly. That means that each boat costs more than it should have done. Is that not correct, or does the Minister believe that we had to build them over that timescale?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, the noble Lord is right but we are working with industry to try to speed up the manufacture of these submarines, and I think we are being very successful in that initiative.