Alex Ballinger
Main Page: Alex Ballinger (Labour - Halesowen)Department Debates - View all Alex Ballinger's debates with the Ministry of Defence
Ajax Armoured Vehicle
Alex Ballinger Excerpts(1 day, 10 hours ago)
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Luke Pollard
The hon. Member is right that we need to end this saga. It has gone on for too long, and I am not happy with any of our equipment being used by our service personnel if it is not safe. Since I became a Minister, I have taken a number of decisions to pause the use of certain equipment because I had safety concerns about it. I did so again with Ajax, because the safety of our people is a priority for me. That is something I feel strongly, as a representative of a military city and coming from a military family. It is too early, until I see the reports, to look at what may happen next, but I reassure him that when we get to that stage, we will report to the House.
Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)
The Ajax vehicle was ordered in 2014, and was due to be delivered in 2017. It has now been delivered eight years late, in a state of service that is completely unusable by our personnel. This is a catastrophic failure by MOD procurement. As we increase spending as we respond to the war in Ukraine, how is the Minister ensuring that MOD procurement is fit for purpose, so that we do not have another disaster like this?
Luke Pollard
It is important that we look at what in particular happened with Ajax and the Ajax family of vehicles, to see what lessons we need to learn and what decisions we need to take as a result. However, the wider point that my hon. Friend raises about defence reform is valid. Defence procurement takes too long. It is the system that we inherited in 2024. It is too expensive, and it does not allow for spiral development in the way it needs to. The procurement of Ajax was a novel form, where the platform was procured and brought into service, with iterations then retrofitted on to each platform. I am looking at whether that model and that type of procurement is right for the platforms we are looking to buy.