Royal Navy asks for ‘massive investment’ in nuclear submarine base | UK | News
The location of the Royal Navy’s submarine fleet requires “huge investment”, a defense minister has admitted. The aging infrastructure of HMNB Clyde, also known as Faslane, has played its part in the long-running availability problems of both the Navy’s Astute-class attack submarines and the Vanguard class, which carries the Trident nuclear deterrent missile.
Defense Preparedness Minister Luke Pollard said the much-delayed Defense Investment Plan (DIP) would free up cash for the base. He said: “We need good facilities for docking submarines, we need good facilities for maintaining submarines and we need good facilities for the people who work there. At the moment, it’s fair to say that what we inherited does not meet all three of those.”
Mr Pollard blamed the “austerity policies” of the previous Tory government for leaving a “real backlog” of work to be done at the base.
He told MPs on the Scottish Affairs Committee that they could “expect to see investment in Faslane, particularly DIP”.
He said: “We will have to spend large amounts of capital to improve the Clyde’s subsea infrastructure to cope with the threats we face, and in particular we are dealing with underinvestment in some of these capital projects.”
DIP was originally planned to be released in the fall but was repeatedly postponed due to funding shortages.
Former defense secretary John Healey and armed forces minister Al Carns have left Sir Keir Starmer’s government over concerns about spending.
Mr Pollard said he “stayed on to help complete the DIP when two of my colleagues resigned” and that people would not have to “wait much longer” for it to be published.
The outgoing Prime Minister stressed that the plan would “completely overhaul” how funding is spent and would be published before he meets other NATO leaders at a summit in Türkiye on July 7.
Reports emerged earlier this month that all five of the Navy’s Astue-class hunter-killer boats were awaiting maintenance and repairs in port.
The aging Vanguard class is also experiencing its own challenges in recent years, with maintenance issues requiring increasingly longer deployments.
