British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said last week his department had fixed a 38 billion pound “black hole” in the defence equipment budget that the government says it inherited from its Labour predecessor and did not expect to make further cuts to the armed forces.

He set out plans for a defence equipment programme of 152 billion pounds over 10 years which he said included funding for a new class of nuclear submarines.

The government has already announced that the main spending decision on the new generation of submarines will be delayed until 2016, after the next national election, in another gesture to Lib Dem sensitivities on the issue.