The Ministry of Defence is set to miss its Christmas deadline for producing an outline of a national shipbuilding strategy because of foot-dragging by the Royal Navy over changing the delivery schedule for its new vessels.

The strategy is meant to be the end-product of unprecedented collaboration between the government and industry to try to secure the future of UK shipbuilders as the navy gears up for its biggest construction programme since the second world war over the next 15 years. The size of the programme, which involves the replacement of all the navy's fleet, led to warnings from industry that it lacked the capacity to meet the navy's delivery timetable.