Jim Cunningham – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Cunningham on 2016-01-12.

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what estimate his Department has made of the (a) total research and development spend by his Department in each of the last five years and (b) forecast research and development spend by his Department in the next five years.

Mr Philip Dunne

Ministry of Defence (MOD) research and development expenditure is published in "Departmental Resources Statistical bulletin" (Excel Table 5), which is available at the following website:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/defence-departmental-resources-2015

There is no fixed forward budget for research and development because development expenditure is mostly part of the equipment programme applied as needed against the development requirements of individual projects. The government will dedicate 1.2% of its growing Defence budget to the Defence Science and Technology Programme, the centralised research budget, under the Department’s Chief Scientific Adviser.