PM to announce huge nuclear submarine expansion as UK told to be ready for war
Keir Starmer will make the announcement as he unveils the Government's new Strategic Defence Review, which is expected to recommend the Armed Forces move to warfighting readiness
Keir Starmer will today announce major plans to almost double the UK's nuclear-powered submarine fleet.
The Prime Minister will set out the building of 12 new attack submarines as part of the AUKUS programme, a security partnership between Australia, the UK and the US.
He will also announce a major £15billion investment in the UK's nuclear warhead programme.
The PM will make the announcements as he unveils the Government's new Strategic Defence Review (SDR). The externally-led review is expected to recommend the Armed Forces move to warfighting readiness to deter the growing threats faced by the UK.
The UK currently has five Astute class attack submarines, which are on track to become a fleet of seven warships in the near future. These will be replaced one by one with the new SSN-AUKUS attack submarines from the late 2030s. A further five new submarines will take the total to 12.
A major expansion of the industrial capabilities at Barrow and Raynesway, Derby, will see a new submarine built every 18 months in the future. These will all be built by the UK and operated by the Royal Navy.
Any possible Australian submarines committed in the future will be in addition to this and would be supported by the UK and US navies.
The Astute class submarines cost £1.6billion per warship so the new AUKUS commitment is expected to cost multiple billions of pounds.
The UK nuclear warhead programme relates to nuclear-armed submarines, which are warships containing nuclear missiles. They are different to nuclear-powered submarines, which are not armed, but have a nuclear reactor to generate power, allowing them to operate for extended periods, at high speeds and with stealthy quietness.
The programme involves the building of warheads, which are the front part of a bomb or missile that contain explosives. The UK has four nuclear-armed Vanguard Class submarines, which each contain Trident II D5 missiles carrying UK nuclear warheads.
The UK is also in the process of replacing the Vanguard class with four new Dreadnought class submarines and the warheads themselves.
The Ministry of Defence said the submarine announcements will together support 30,000 highly skilled jobs across the country well into the 2030s, as well as helping to deliver 30,000 apprenticeships and 14,000 graduate roles across the next decade.
The investment will also back the Government's commitments to maintain the continuous-at-sea nuclear deterrent, build a new fleet of Dreadnought submarines and deliver all future upgrades.
The landmark SDR will today set out 62 recommendations, which the government is expected to accept in full tomorrow. Significant investment in the UK warhead programme this parliament and maintaining the existing stockpile are among the demands.
The Prime Minister earlier this year announced the UK would increase its defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027, with an ambition to raise it to 3% in the next Parliament.
In an event launching the SDR today, the PM will say: 'From the supply lines to the front lines, this government is foursquare behind the men and women upholding our nation's freedom and security.
'This Strategic Defence Review will ensure the UK rises to the challenge and our Armed Forces have the equipment they need that keeps us safe at home while driving greater opportunity for our engineers, shipbuilders and technicians of the future.'
Defence Secretary John Healey said: 'Our outstanding submariners patrol 24/7 to keep us and our allies safe, but we know that threats are increasing and we must act decisively to face down Russian aggression.
"With new state-of-the-art submarines patrolling international waters and our own nuclear warhead programme on British shores, we are making Britain secure at home and strong abroad.'
What is expected in the Strategic Defence Review?
In response to the Strategic Defence Review, the Government's commitments will include:
Getting the armed forces to a stage where it would be ready to fight a war
Boosting weapons and equipment stockpiles and making sure there is capacity to scale up production if needed in a crisis or war
£1.5billion to set up at least six munitions factories
Buying up to 7,000 UK-built long-range weapons in a move due to support 800 defence jobs
Setting up a new cyber command and investing £1billion in digital capabilities
More than £1.5billion of additional funding to repair and renew armed forces housing
Boosting recruitment for Britain's armed forces - with the number of cadets increasing by 30%
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
What can Reform do to shift the idea it is the ‘Nigel Party'?
Labour breathed a huge sigh of relief after a surprise victory in the Scottish parliament by-election in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse. Senior Scottish Labour figures had feared coming second or even third behind Reform UK; for once, it wasn't expectation management. Labour insiders admit privately the tight three-horse race confirms that Reform UK is on the map in Scotland, previously hostile territory for Nigel Farage. 'Something is up when you knock on doors in Scotland and get Reform talking points thrown at you,' one minister told me. Reform's advance will make Labour's task of ousting the SNP in next May's Scottish parliament elections much harder. After Keir Starmer's landslide last year, when Labour won 37 of Scotland's 57 seats, the party had high hopes of ending SNP rule north of the border after 19 years. But an unpopular government at Westminster has dragged Labour down; it has lost one in six of its 2024 Scottish voters to Farage's party. Reform is also on course to do well in next May's elections to the Welsh parliament, where Labour has called the shots since devolution in 1998. Although Reform had hoped to come at least second in Hamilton, it can still claim momentum in Scotland. A much bigger setback for Farage than its third place was the resignation of Zia Yusuf as party chair. After Reform's sweeping gains in last month's local elections in England and the Runcorn parliamentary by-election, Farage said: 'We would not have done […] what we did without him.' Now, Farage is dismissing Yusuf's claim to be responsible for Reform's meteoric rise. Tough game, politics. The energetic, telegenic Yusuf had made a good start in professionalising Reform – something Farage spectacularly failed to do as leader of Ukip and the Brexit Party. As a Muslim, Yusuf gave Reform cover against allegations of racism, but received nasty abuse on social media from some Reform supporters. Yusuf had plans to attract Muslim voters and that is why he was angered by Reform MP Sarah Pochin's call for a ban on the burqa. However, there were wider reasons for his departure. He felt sidelined after being put in charge of the Elon Musk-style Doge unit in councils run by Reform. The 38-year-old multi-millionaire entrepreneur didn't suffer fools gladly, and his abrasive style upset some at Reform's Millbank Tower headquarters (Labour's base when it won its 1997 landslide). He was blamed by critics for escalating the feud with former Reform MP Rupert Lowe. They complained that Yusuf was not a team player – a bit rich when that label applies to Farage in spades. The departure is a reminder of Farage's achilles heel: he falls out with senior figures in every party or campaign he is involved in. The loss of Yusuf will make it harder to make the Doge exercise work. This matters because the party needs to make its claim credible that vast savings can be made from cutting waste to be a contender for power. Crucially, Farage cannot be a one-man band – the 'Nigel Party', as it's dubbed at Westminster. He gives the impression of wanting to be the only tall poppy, but will need a cabinet-in-waiting to convince voters his party could run the country. However, other parties should not get carried away with Farage's woes. Voters are less bothered about Reform infighting than the Westminster village. Conservative claims that Reform is imploding are wishful thinking, and their humiliating fourth place in Hamilton illustrates their dire position. Reform remains a real threat to Keir Starmer's hopes of a second term. Labour is banking on turning the next election into a presidential contest between Starmer and Farage. Labour insiders call it a 'nosepeg' strategy: they hope left-of-centre voters who have given up on Labour after its poor first year will hold their nose and back Starmer to keep Farage out rather than defect to the Liberal Democrats, Greens or independents. Labour plans a parallel move in Scotland: 'Vote Farage, get SNP.' As my colleague John Rentoul noted, Labour should attack Farage for his 'fantasy economics' rather than being a 'privately-educated stockbroker'. Polling by More in Common shows that voters believe Starmer had a more privileged upbringing than Farage, and believe the Reform leader speaks more for the working class than the prime minister. Starmer allies insist the lesson has been learnt. Starmer's welcome moves to tackle child poverty and his U-turn on the winter fuel allowance suggest he realises he must also make a positive appeal to left-of-centre voters and not merely ape Reform with tough language on immigration, which such voters don't like. But he will need to go further, with an economic reset including tax rises, to pay for his new social justice commitments and avoid the impression that Wednesday's spending review will mean 'austerity 2.0'. Labour's approach has dangers: in attacking Farage head-on, some Labour MPs worry, the party risks amplifying his message and building him up further. There are no easy roads to a second Labour term.
Wales Online
5 hours ago
- Wales Online
The £6bn rail line argument that masks what you should be really angry about
Our community members are treated to special offers, promotions and adverts from us and our partners. You can check out at any time. More info Over the last few days, there has been one hot topic in the world of Welsh politics - a train line which will run between Oxford and Cambridge. Given these two cities are roughly 200 miles from Wales, you can be forgiven for asking why. East West Rail is a railway project which will link Oxford and Cambridge at an estimated cost of £6.6bn. Any money spent on it will trigger extra payments to Scotland and Northern Ireland so they can spend it on their transport systems. But, just as has been the case throughout the HS2 debacle, there won't be any extra money for the Welsh Government. The reason for this is both incredibly simple and reasonable on the surface but devillishly complicated and truly unfair beneath it. It may not necessarily be a scandal in itself. But it symbolises everything that is wrong with how rail funding is allocated in England and Wales. For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here On the face of it, this issue isn't linked to the spending review that has been happening in Westminster for the last six months or more and of which chancellor Rachel Reeves will stand up in the Commons on Wednesday and deliver the conclusion. Yet it helps shed a light on why that will be enormously complex to understand and why the real story may not be the one you read in headlines that evening. So bear with us while we go through it. The fury from politicians Opposition politicians in Wales have been fulminating about East West rail. They say that the rail line should have been classified as an England-only project like Crossrail so that the Welsh Government would get a guaranteed share. Lib Dem MP David Chadwick said Wales will lose out to the tune of between £306m and £363m as a result. Describing it as another HS2, he said: "Labour expects people across Wales to believe the ridiculous idea that this project will benefit them, and they are justified in not giving Wales the money it needs to improve our own public transport systems. 'It's a disgrace, and it shows there has been no meaningful change since in the way Wales is treated since Labour took power compared to the Conservatives." Plaid Cymru's leader Mr ap Iorwerth took a similar tack, telling plenary: "For all the talk of the UK Government acknowledging somehow that Welsh rail has been historically underfunded, this is some partnership in power." Yet, while there's a lot of truth to what they're saying, it's also much more complicated. Which is where the spending review comes in. Comparability factors There will be so many numbers in the paperwork that accompanies Wednesday's spending review that finding the most important ones isn't straightforward. Yet if you want to know just how much of the England and Wales transport pot is going to be sucked into paying for massive rail projects in England like HS2 (£66bn) or East West rail (£6bn) or all the tram/train projects being promised in England outside London (£15bn), then look out for the overall transport comparability factor for Wales. Very simply, this is the number that the Treasury uses to work out how much the Welsh Government should get for every £1 it spends on transport in England. The reason everyone has been so, so angry about HS2 and the massive billions being poured is that back in 2015, Wales used to get a comparability factor of 80.9%. Yet when the number crunchers in Horse Guards Road sat down to work out how much the Welsh Government should get at the last spending review in 2021, that comparability factor fell to just 33.5%. Ouch. For every £1 spent on transport by Westminster, since the last spending review the Welsh Government has received a population adjusted share (5%) of 33.5%. Or about 1.6p. For context, it used to be around 4p. If Mr Chadwick and Mr Iorwerth are right and the UK government plans to plough even more money into rail in England in the coming years on projects like HS2, East Coast and what the Tories used to call Northern Powerhouse rail, then the new comparability factor that the Treasury mathematicians will conjure up this time could be even lower. But even that is massively misleading. Because if the UK government also promises to plough vast sums into rail in Wales then the comparability factor for the Welsh Government would not rise - it would fall further still. Is your mind boggling yet? We said it was complex. What the Welsh Government wants Because the Welsh Government isn't responsible for rail infrastructure spending, the transport comparability factor really just reflects how much money is going on rail. The less that's spent on rail, the higher a share of the overall transport pot the Welsh Government gets. The more that goes on rail, the lower a share of the overall transport spot the Welsh Government gets. The real problem for Cardiff Bay then is not the comparability factor. Neither is it the fact that East West rail isn't classified as England-only. The problem, as far as the Welsh Government is concerned, is the fact that the England and Wales rail pot itself isn't shared fairly. HS2 and East Coast rail are the symbols of a system that is broken that pours vast sums into English rail projects while Wales misses out. Even if they were classified as England-only, the money would go to the Welsh Government which isn't responsible for rail infrastructure spending. "The way that the system operates at the moment—for years I've been saying—is redundant," Wales' transport minister Ken Skates has said. "The east-west line, which has been in development, I believe, for around about 20 years now, is part of the rail network enhancements pipeline, where everything in a large footprint, a substantial footprint, including Wales, is packaged together. "Where you have all schemes in England and Wales packaged together in what's called the regional network enhancement pipeline it means that projects in Wales are always going to be competing on the business case with projects in affluent areas of the south-east, of London. That means that we are at a disadvantage. "I want to see it change. I've been saying it for years. There's nothing new in this story. I've been saying that we need reform for years and suddenly people have woken up to it." Wales' First Minister Eluned Morgan has said the same. "What we have is a situation where there is a pipeline of projects for England and Wales. Are we getting our fair share? Absolutely not. Are we making the case? Absolutely." "I've made the case very, very clearly that, when it comes to rail, we have been short-changed, and I do hope that we will get some movement on that in the next week from the spending review," she said. What does this mean for the spending review When Rachel Reeves stands up in the Commons on Wednesday, we fully expect she will announce some funding for rail in Wales, as you can see in our piece here, and our expectation is that will be about the rail stations earmarked in the work by Lord Burns after the M4 relief road was axed. They would be in Cardiff East, Parkway, Newport West, Maindy, Llanwern and Magor. But what matters is how much and when - and how that compares to the money being spent in England. Imagine the chancellor announces a few hundred million pounds for those rail stations in Wales in the spending review, what we do not - and will likely not know for many years - is whether that amount is a fair reflection of the mass spending she has announced in England because we know she has also touted £15bn of improvements in England. It will likely take years for academics to assess what kind of share of the rail pot has been spent in Wales. In the past, it certainly has not been fair. In 2018, a Welsh Government commissioned report by Professor Mark Barry estimated that the Network Rail Wales route, which covers 11% of the UK network, received just over 1% of the enhancement budget for the 2011-2016 period. In 2021, the Wales Governance Centre told MPs on the Welsh affairs select committee that had rail been fully devolved to the Welsh Government, Wales would have received an additional £514m for enhancements via Network Rail had rail infrastructure been devolved as it is in Scotland. So when Leeds West and Pudsey MP Ms Reeves gets to her feet in the Commons on Wednesday, you can pretty much guarantee there will at least one or two headlines relevant Wales. But we may not understand what they really mean for a while yet and East West rail won't help us understand either.
South Wales Guardian
5 hours ago
- South Wales Guardian
Rayner faces Labour backbench call to ‘smash' existing housebuilding model
Labour's Chris Hinchliff has proposed a suite of changes to the Government's flagship Planning and Infrastructure Bill, part of his party's drive to build 1.5 million homes in England by 2029. Mr Hinchliff has proposed arming town halls with the power to block developers' housebuilding plans, if they have failed to finish their previous projects. He has also suggested housebuilding objectors should be able to appeal against green-lit large developments, if they are not on sites which a council has set aside for building, and put forward a new duty for authorities to protect chalk streams from 'pollution, abstraction, encroachment and other forms of environmental damage'. Mr Hinchliff has told the PA news agency he does not 'want to rebel' but said he would be prepared to trigger a vote over his proposals. He added his ambition was for 'a progressive alternative to our planning system and the developer-led profit-motivated model that we have at the moment'. The North East Hertfordshire MP said: 'Frankly, to deliver the genuinely affordable housing that we need for communities like those I represent, we just have to smash that model. 'So, what I'm setting out is a set of proposals that would focus on delivering the genuinely affordable homes that we need, empowering local communities and councils to have a driving say over what happens in the local area, and also securing genuine protection for the environment going forwards.' Mr Hinchliff warned that the current system results in 'speculative' applications on land which falls outside of councils' local housebuilding strategies, 'putting significant pressure on inadequate local infrastructure'. In his constituency, which lies between London and Cambridge, 'the properties that are being built are not there to meet local need', Mr Hinchliff said, but were instead 'there to be sold for the maximum profit the developer can make'. Asked whether his proposals chimed with the first of Labour's five 'missions' at last year's general election – 'growth' – he replied: 'If we want to have the key workers that our communities need – the nurses, the social care workers, the bus drivers, the posties – they need to have genuinely affordable homes. 'You can't have that thriving economy without the workforce there, but at the moment, the housing that we are delivering is not likely to be affordable for those sorts of roles. 'It's effectively turning the towns into commuter dormitories rather than having thriving local economies, so for me, yes, it is about supporting the local economy.' Mr Hinchliff warned that the 'bottleneck' which slows housebuilding 'is not process, it's profit'. The developer-led housing model is broken. It has failed to deliver affordable homes. Torching environmental safeguards won't fix it—the bottleneck isn't just process, it's profit. We need a progressive alternative: mass council house building in sustainable communities. — Chris Hinchliff MP (@CHinchliffMP) June 6, 2025 Ms Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary, is fronting the Government's plans for 1.5 million new homes by 2029. Among the proposed reforms is a power for ministers to decide which schemes should come before councillors, and which should be delegated to local authority staff, so that committees can 'focus their resources on complex or contentious development where local democratic oversight is required'. Natural England will also be able to draft 'environmental delivery plans (EDPs)' and acquire land compulsorily to bolster conservation efforts. Mr Hinchliff has suggested these EDPs must come with a timeline for their implementation, and that developers should improve the conservation status of any environmental features before causing 'damage' – a proposal which has support from at least 43 cross-party MP backers. MPs will spend two days debating the Bill on Monday and Tuesday. Chris Curtis, the Labour MP for Milton Keynes North, warned that some of Mr Hinchliff's proposals 'if enacted, would deepen our housing crisis and push more families into poverty'. He said: 'I won't stand by and watch more children in the country end up struggling in temporary accommodation to appease pressure groups. No Labour MP should. 'It's morally reprehensible to play games with this issue. 'These amendments should be withdrawn.'
