Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps he plans to take to learn lessons from the implementation of (a) Strategic (i) Defence and (ii) Security Reviews, (b) Defence Industrial Strategies and (c) Defence Equipment Plans over the last 25 years.

The Ministry of Defence is committed to learning lessons from previous reviews and their implementation. The Strategic Defence Review (SDR), launched by the Prime Minister on 16 July, is taking a diverse range of views and evidence, including previous reviews, strategies and plans, into account to determine the roles, capabilities and reforms required by UK Defence to meet the challenges, threats and opportunities of the twenty-first century, deliverable and affordable both within the resources available to Defence and within the trajectory to 2.5%. The SDR will ensure that Defence is central both to the security, and to the economic growth and prosperity, of the UK. The Reviewers will report to the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Defence in the spring of 2025, and the Secretary of State will subsequently publish a version of that report to Parliament. More widely, Defence is undertaking the biggest reform programme in over 50 years, creating a stronger UK Defence centre to secure better value for money, better outcomes for our Armed Forces, and be better able to implement the SDR.