Oral Answers to Questions

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2022 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

1. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the defence procurement system.

[The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Ben Wallace)]

Defence procurement is some of the most complex in Government, but our defence and security industrial strategy, published last year, represents a step change that will see industry, Government and academia working ever closer together, while fundamentally reforming regulations to improve the speed of acquisition and ensure we incentivise innovation and productivity.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

It has been reported that the Ministry of Defence has wasted £15 billion of taxpayers’ money on mismanaged procurement since 2010, with £5 billion of it since 2019. Might the Secretary of State just set out in a little bit more detail how he is going to deal with that type of waste and stop it happening in the future?

[Mr Wallace]

I am afraid that the right hon. Lady has obviously lapped up the Labour Front Benchers’ dodgy dossier on defence procurement. Of course, over half of the figure she used was under the previous Labour Government. Labour double-counted, including in that dossier, and indeed made no reference to the fact that the top 15 projects under Labour, in its last period of power, produced a £4.5 billion overspend and a 339-month out-of-date period for projects.

As I said, these are very complex processes. We often make sure that we try to meet the demand and the threat, but some of these projects last 20 years. We have made significant steps to change and reform that, and the right hon. Lady will be glad to know that this year—or last year and the year before—the MOD came in on budget for its overall budget, with a balanced budget for the first time for decades.