Defence Equipment and Support

Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom Excerpts

Tuesday 17th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nick Harvey]

May I correct the hon. Lady’s first proposition? It is clear that no decision has been made. A study is being carried out, which involves value-for-money work. If, when that appraisal is completed, we take this option forward, that is the point at which the decision will be made. Only when the model had been worked up and thoroughly tested would we finally take the decision to go ahead. Of course, we would come back to the House at that point.

The hon. Lady suggested that we had slipped this announcement out. I would say that the contrary is true. If the House had not been about to go into several weeks of recess, we would not necessarily have made a statement yet. We have done so to give the House the greatest possible transparency about what is going on and to send the clearest possible signal to the potential commercial partners that we are serious about this matter and are taking it forward. I stress that the decision about timings will be taken towards the end of this year. The commercial partner would be sought in a competition during the course of next year and a decision on whether to go ahead would be taken early in 2014.

The hon. Lady asked whether this model would include the nuclear component of defence. I remind her that the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston is a Government-owned, contractor-operated organisation, and that it works extremely well. The last Labour Government and previous Governments have made extensive use of the private sector in providing critical elements of our defence and other public services. I see no reason to believe that it would be any less capable of doing so in this area.

The GOCO option has looked better in the early explorations because if we stuck with an ENDPB, the work force and the management would remain in the public sector, and the greatest possible private sector involvement would be the use of a consultant. If we go for the GOCO option, the entity will have all the freedoms of a private sector operator: it will recruit people on private sector terms and conditions, and will have an incentive to make the thing work in a way that an ENDPB would not.

[Mr James Arbuthnot (North East Hampshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this is a matter of such crucial importance that it is important that it should not become a party political plaything, and if it can be done in such a way as to attract the support of all sides of the House, the benefits that will flow from these changes will come sooner and they will flow much more copiously, and we will reach the sunlit uplands of wonderful defence procurement?

[Nick Harvey]

I strongly agree with my right hon. Friend. It is worth recalling that the previous Government asked Bernard Gray, a former Labour special adviser at the Ministry of Defence, to conduct his study of defence procurement. He came forward with a compelling and, to some extent, damning report. Central among his recommendations was the proposition that there should be a GOCO to run DE&S in the future.

We have now recruited Bernard Gray to be the Chief of Defence Matériel and given him the opportunity to go into further depth, and it has become increasingly clear that he was absolutely right. Of course these issues will have to be debated, and I have explained that the timelines are still quite long. No decisions have yet been taken, and proper value-for-money studies will continue.

To answer a question that the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) asked, those studies will be made available for everybody to have a look at. This does not need to be a political football, and I hope it does not become one.