Government sinks £250m plans for national flagship as successor to Portsmouth-based Royal Yacht Britannia

The national flagship plan was sunk by Rishi Sunak’s administration as Whitehall braced for cuts in the November 17 autumn statement by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt.

Last year saw Portsmouth City Council leader Gerald Vernon-Jackson write to former prime minister Boris Johnson requesting that the planned successor for the Royal Yacht Britannia be moored at the the city’s Royal Navy base.

The former Royal Yacht had been based in Portsmouth for the whole of her career.

But now defences secretary Ben Wallace has told MPs that is prioritising the procurement of the multi-role ocean surveillance ship (MROSS) due to the war in Ukraine.

The defence secretary said: ‘In the face of the Russian illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and Putin’s reckless disregard of international arrangements designed to keep world order, it is right that we prioritise delivering capabilities which safeguard our national infrastructure.’

Mr Wallace told MPs the MROSS would ‘protect sensitive defence infrastructure and civil infrastructure’ and ‘improve our ability to detect threats to the seabed and cables’.

Shadow defence secretary John Healey welcomed the scrapping of the ‘previous prime minister’s vanity project’ and that spending had switched to ‘purposes that will help defend the country’.

The vessel had been expected to be constructed in the UK and take to the water in 2024 or 2025, and would have toured the world as a ‘floating embassy’.

The Commons Defence Committee warned in 2021 that there was ‘no evidence of the advantage to the Royal Navy of acquiring the national flagship’ and that the initial expenditure of around £250 million, combined with a running cost between £20 and 30 million a year and providing a crew, would pile extra pressure on the senior service.

Earlier in the year, The News highlighted how Labour peer and former Royal Navy chief Lord West of Spithead raised his concerns at Westminster about the focus on the successor to the Royal Yacht Britannia.