The higher than planned cost of building two aircraft carriers may force the Royal Navy to scrap five frigates and destroyers next year, according to a Ministry of Defence e-mail.

The pressure on the Royal Navy budget has emerged since the Government set out the MoD’s expenditure for the next three years. It will rise by 1.5 per cent a year in real terms, a lower rise than for most other spending departments.

The internal e-mail, leaked to The Sunday Telegraph, acknowledged that the funding granted to the MoD in the Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) had been “poor” and savings were needed to trim equipment programmes to ensure enough money for the two carriers which are to cost £3.9 billion. The 65,000-tonne carriers were originally to cost £2.9 billion.

The e-mail said: “For the RN [Royal Navy], the poor CSR deal and the commitment to 2 carriers is such that a proposal for the immediate decommissioning of 5 ships (frigate and destroyers) from April next has been considered. This would reduce the RN’s capabilities to just one small-scale operation and that is it.”

The warship most vulnerable to cutbacks is the new-generation Type 45 destroyer, pictured above.

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