Alison Seabeck
Main Page: Alison Seabeck (Labour - Plymouth, Moor View)Department Debates - View all Alison Seabeck's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(11 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Hammond
I will probably not share with my hon. Friend all the thoughts that I would like to offer to the Treasury and some of my colleagues, but I will say this: while it is easy to draw attention to such things as the number of horses in the army, the moral component of our armed forces—that which links it to the great tradition of military service in this country—is a very important part of delivering military capability and is money well spent.
Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)
Included in those discussions will be the projected savings from the proposed changes to Defence Equipment and Support announced in last week’s White Paper. For the benefit of the House, will the Secretary of State set out what specific flexibilities he has won from the Treasury—one assumes he got its agreement before publishing the White Paper—so that the DE&S-plus model can compete openly and fairly with the Government-owned, contractor-operated option during the assessment phase?
Mr Hammond
That is precisely the purpose of the assessment phase: to explore the boundaries of how far we can take a wholly public sector DE&S-plus model as a benchmark against which we can score the bids we receive for the alternative GoCo proposal.