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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Business
Jasper Jolly and Alex Lawson

UK’s ever more expensive nuclear submarines will torpedo spending plans for years to come

Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor,  are seen through a round window examining a small component during a visit to BAE Systems’ submarines facility in Barrow-in-Furness last week.
Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, visiting BAE Systems’ submarines facility in Barrow-in-Furness last week. Photograph: WPA/Getty Images

When Rishi Sunak visited Barrow-in-Furness on Monday he said the Cumbrian town was “mission critical for our country” because of its role building four new nuclear submarines to carry the UK’s nuclear weapons. If you believe Sunak’s erstwhile ally, Dominic Cummings, then that mission faces serious problems.

Cummings, once Boris Johnson’s most powerful adviser, said this month – in characteristically aggressive terms – that spiralling costs were making a mockery of the government’s budget plans. He wrote on X: “the nuclear enterprise is so fkd [sic] it’s further cannibalising the broken budgets and will for decades because it’s been highly classified to avoid MPs thinking about it.”

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