The bill assigned £10 million to ships built under private contract and £11.5 million to ships built in Royal Dockyards. Three quarters of the total was intended for hulls and machinery and one quarter for armament, with construction spread across four and a half years. Salisbury rejected the claim that only the contract portion counted as exceptional spending. He compared the dockyard program with earlier annual construction totals to show that the state-yard expenditure also stood well above the previous baseline. The program joined industrial expansion to a fixed multi-year financial commitment.
Notable Point · 15:08-18:24
How the act divided its £21.5 million program
Salisbury explains the extraordinary spending split between private builders and Royal Dockyards over four and a half years.