Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what progress he has made on the Defence Investment Plan.

We are working to finalise the Defence Invesment Plan (DIP) and the Prime Minister is determined to publish it before the NATO summit.

Our aim is to ensure decisions in the DIP are robust and support the development of both current and future capabilities, helping to drive the transformation of our Armed Forces described in the Strategic Defence Review.

It is the first zero-based review of Defence’s budgets in eighteen years and goes significantly further than the last Government’s Equipment Plan by looking across every budget line, including people and infrastructure. In the meantime, routine budget management and prioritisation decisions in the MOD are being conducted in a way that is coherent with the DIP.

We are not letting the DIP delay us from doing the things we know we need to do. We have signed 4,010 Defence contracts since July 2024, including 1,335 with a value of £1 million or more, and spent more than £31 billion with UK industry last year – an above inflation increase in spending.