Defence: Better Defence Acquisition

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on the outstanding questions that he asked during the Queen’s Speech debate. There were quite a lot of them and I was not able to answer them at the time or we would have been here even later than we were. However, I took them back to the department and the officials there were impressed by the depth of the questions. I thought it might be helpful to the House to make copies of the questions and the answers, so I have brought along copies which I am happy to distribute afterwards to any noble Lord because my noble friend’s questions were spot-on. I hope that, apart from the one question that was not properly answered, we have made a big effort to answer all the other questions accurately.

Taking my noble friend’s second question about regional employment issues first, the proposal will not address any specific issues of regional employment policy. The policy on this, as with other matters, will remain with central government and the Ministry of Defence.

As for second-guessing the GOCO, my noble friend will be aware that we will need to make decisions about what the Armed Forces need and then the GOCO will see them through.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

My Lords, I welcome the Statement from the Minister and I particularly welcome the bipartisan way in which he approached it. Does the Minister agree, however, that there is an internal tension in defence procurement because of the very length of time that any procurement takes? The aircraft carriers, for example, have been at the top of the agenda for about the past 14 years, so inevitably these issues go from one Government to another. However, the tension is between maintaining some competition in defence procurement and, at the same time, recognising the importance of protecting the jobs and skills that we wish to secure for the future.

I disagree very much with what the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, said about commercial discipline in the private sector. That may at times be important, but when the private sector concerned is a monopoly private sector, that rather undercuts the argument.

The Minister referred to briefings that he proposes to hold on this issue. Will those briefings be comprehensive in the way that we address this issue? If so, some of the very important issues that have arisen today can be treated not in the rather eclectic way that we are bound to see when we have this sort of discussion, but methodically, so that those of us who have some experience in this field can make a real contribution to the debate?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, on the last point, I arranged a briefing—I am not sure whether the noble Baroness was there—at which the Minister for Defence Equipment, Support and Technology briefed noble Lords. He was hugely impressed by the depth of experience on all sides. He came to see me afterwards and asked if it would be possible to brief either individually or as a group. He is very keen to hear any suggestions and observations, and is aware that I am looking at noble Lords who have had huge responsibilities on this very subject in the past and know a great deal about it—a great deal more than I do. We are in the assessment phase. We are listening and learning and want to hear any suggestions. No decision will be made until next summer, so there is still plenty of time to hear what any noble Lord tells us.

Picking up on what the noble Baroness said, we obviously want to keep skills as far as possible and we feel that the GOCO would do that. We feel that of all the disciplines that it would bring to this, it would help to cut down the time taken for procurement. Taking the carriers as an example, with all the disciplines that it could bring, and being able to employ higher-paid people, it may be able to do things quicker. I do not want to take anything away from what DE&S has done—the noble Lord mentioned that—and I pay tribute to all the very hard-working civil servants and members of the Armed Forces who have worked there. However, they are constrained by Civil Service restrictions and we need to get more discipline and more incentive to get equipment for the Armed Forces quicker and more efficiently.