Defence Procurement

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Tuesday 10th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I have personally met the unions and I am aware of their concerns. I have also explained to them the opportunities that this model will create for employees in DE&S. The core DE&S—that is to say the part of the organisation that is responsible for procurement —has about 9,500 people. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that one of the big challenges at the moment is retaining the highly skilled people. We are losing people to the private sector; worse, we are losing people to other parts of the public sector that have greater freedom to hire. That is why we must address this issue in the way I have outlined today.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

In 1984 I was a young major in the Ministry of Defence, and Michael Heseltine, as Secretary of State, definitively told us that he had sorted out defence procurement. It is clearly a basket case and very difficult. How will my right hon. Friend compensate majors and lieutenant-colonels who are doing equivalent jobs to those being done by people from outside the Army but are not getting the same sort of salaries? How will we balance that?

[Mr Hammond]

The military component in DE&S is vital. It is a relatively small number—about 1,500 military personnel. They will of course continue to rotate as part of a career development plan on normal military terms and conditions. For the kind of flexibility that I have talked about today, we will need to hire in specialist skills from the commercial sector and that will not alter or affect in any way the very important role that the military will continue to play.