Oral Answers to Questions

David Mowat Excerpts

Monday 12th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry]

We all take very seriously all those who suffer from mental health problems by virtue of their service. It is worth saying that the incidence of mental health problems among our veterans is the same as in the population at large. We have ploughed around £7 million recently into making sure that services are available. I pay tribute to Combat Stress, for example, for the outstanding work that it has done. It has had £2.7 million, for example, of LIBOR funding and other funds made available to it. The problem is a serious one, but we have to get it into proportion. Mercifully, the overwhelming number of members of our armed forces do not suffer from mental health illnesses, but when they do, we take that very seriously.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

13. What progress he has made on improving the efficacy of his Department’s procurement since May 2010.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Philip Dunne)]

When we came into office, the major projects report for 2009 identified procurement overruns of £1.2 billion and delays of 93 months in the top 15 defence equipment programmes, after 13 years’ of inaction by Labour. By contrast, we have taken decisive action and made considerable progress in improving the efficacy of defence procurement. The latest major projects report from the National Audit Office for 2013 showed that the cost of 10 of our 11 largest equipment programmes had been reduced by almost £50 million in the last year, and some 98% of our key performance measures are set to be achieved.

[David Mowat]

In December, as the Government abandoned the process to find an external contractor to manage Defence Equipment and Support procurement—the so-called GoCo approach—the Secretary of State said that the Bechtel bid in particular had contained knowledge capital which would be useful going forward. Can the Minister confirm that this has happened and that best practice is being assimilated?

[Mr Dunne]

On 1 April we established DE&S as the first bespoke Government trading entity with wide ranging freedoms from central Government controls, details of which I look forward to publishing before the House prorogues. We are introducing global best practice to the new DE&S through three work package contracts for managed service providers. We are today issuing the invitation to negotiate for the first work package for project delivery to eight world-class companies which have passed the pre-qualification questionnaire process, and we plan to award contracts for the four domains this autumn.