"Inertia" threatening Portsmouth defence firms and jobs as union slams "self-harm" of Investment Plan delays
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Increasing delays and uncertainty over the Defence Investment Plan threatens businesses and jobs in Portsmouth.
Unite union has slammed the government over the time it has taken to publish the DIP, which outlines how armed forces reforms will be costed. The document was originally due to be published in the autumn of 2025, but this has slipped further behind with no specific timeline from the government.
Sharon Graham, general secretary for the Unite union, said: “The government's inertia on this issue is an act of self-harm. With employers planning in the dark and threatening job losses as a result, the government needs to stop the dither and delay.
“Failing to back British defence manufacturing would be a devastating own goal, destroying jobs and skills. When the announcement was made for higher defence spending, it came with guarantees around jobs, skills and innovation. We now need to move beyond the warm words and deliver.”
The union is calling on the government to urgently publish the DIP, and to make sure it includes provisions for the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) Military Satellite Communication System (Skynet) to keep being built in Portsmouth and Stevenage. Airbus, based in Anchorage Park, has long been connected to the Skynet programme and is one of the city’s biggest employers.
Unite also urged the MoD to award a new medium-helicopter contract to Leonardo in Yeovil, Somerset, as the Italian firm threatens to close down its UK factory. It also called for old RAF aircraft to be replaced with new Typhoons fitted with Rolls Royce engines, with British-based MBDA weapons and to be assembled at BAE Systems sites. Unite represents thousands of workers across the defence sector. The organisation has written to prime minister Sir Keir Starmer directly, calling for swift and decisive action to retain jobs.
Criticism of the government’s handling of the DIP have been growing. This proceeds the Strategic Defence Review published in June 2025, which outlined sweeping reforms across the Royal Navy, Army, RAF, Royal Marines, and other parts of the MoD. At the time, Sir Keir said all 62 accepted recommendations were financially viable.
When asked if the SDR was financially viable, he previously said: “I’m 100 per cent confident this can be delivered, because it was baked in from the very start of the review.”
Despite this claim, the costing of the reforms and news of backing substantial contracts has been pushed back to the DIP. The government has pledged to raised defence spending to 2.6 per cent of GDP by 2027, and to reach Nato’s target of 3.5 per cent on core defence by 2035. Despite these pledges, critics said politicians are moving too slowly given the new threats it faces, and the UK’s reliance on the US becoming strained.
More uncertainty was poured on the SDR by Chief of Defence Staff Sir Richard Knighton. Speaking to the defence select committee, he described it as an “external document” and said the government couldn’t fund its current commitments and SDR reforms under the current spending envelope.
Conservative MP Jesse Norman described it as a “disavow” of the reforms. He added: “It was never actually costed? They did some work, thought it was costed, but it wasn’t really costed?”
Sir Richard said: “We had not done all of the detail we are doing right now to make that work. That was a position the government decided was the appropriate one to take, by having the external review first and doing the detailed costed plan to follow.”