Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Ben Wallace and Ruth Jones

Monday 13th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving such thorough answers, which I am sure the House appreciates, but I ask him to be a little quicker, because it would be good if we managed to get everybody in. I call Ruth Jones.

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

T4. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is good to see you back in your rightful place.Labour’s dossier of waste in the MOD has found that at least £15 billion of taxpayers’ money has been wasted since 2010, so can the Minister explain to people in my constituency of Newport West why this Tory Government have failed to get a grip of the defence procurement process and have failed to secure value for money for the taxes that they pay?

[Mr Wallace]

I would point the hon. Lady’s constituents to the 2010 National Audit Office report on her Government which gave some really interesting clues about why procurement was so bad. It said that the Department under her Government contracted for aircraft carriers when it knew that that was not affordable. Or perhaps I could point her to the Public Accounts Committee, then chaired by the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), who said:

“Delays and cancellations to programmes”—

this is about the land systems under her Government—

“have resulted in gaps in armoured vehicle capability that will not be filled until 2025.”

There are lots of clues for the hon. Lady’s constituents—she should direct them to those reports.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Ben Wallace and Ruth Jones

Monday 13th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

T9. Labour’s dossier on waste in the MOD found that at least £15 billion had been wasted since 2010, and that £6 billion has been wasted since 2019 while the current Defence Secretary has been in post. Can he explain why the Government are failing to get a grip of the defence procurement process to secure value for money for the taxpayer?

[Mr Wallace]

I know that the hon. Lady will be familiar with the phrase “dodgy dossier”, because I remember that her party produced one, historically. The procurement dossier that Labour has produced is so dodgy that it actually has double counting. It includes £594 million for the Warrior sustainment programme followed by the integrated review project cancellation of £540 million, and it adds those together to make £1 billion. It also confuses the retirement of old systems, claiming it as waste. I am sure she would not like to go to war with old equipment that is out of date, and that she would rather it was retired and replaced with modern equipment. Her party has added retirement to the dossier and pretended that it was waste. Labour needs to do a lot better if it wants to be taken seriously on defence procurement and the defence of the realm.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Ben Wallace and Ruth Jones

Monday 15th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

The new economic crime plan brings together all the different actors on the stage the Government have invested in and identifies all those areas that need to be solved. It is a better analysis of economic crime. We have set up the NECC to bring together all the assets of government—everything from UK Visas and Immigration and the Home Office to the intelligence services—to focus on some of the biggest money launderers and to implement the new powers in the Criminal Finances Act 2017, to deal with criminals and money launderers and to take the money back from them.

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

17. Given that the Government are constantly telling us how much more money they are putting into funding the police forces across the UK, can the Minister tell us how many detectives were assigned to serious organised crime in 2010, and how many there were in the latest available data?

[Mr Speaker]

Including of an economic character.