Lord Lee of Trafford
Main Page: Lord Lee of Trafford (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Lee of Trafford's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Lee of Trafford
My Lords, I very much welcome this report, which has been a long time coming. Parallel to the restructuring that is talked about in the report, should we not also look at the financial aspects, particularly the relationship between the Treasury and the MoD? When one is talking about programmes of the length that run in the MoD, there should be some certainty of finance. Should we not move towards a situation in which ideally there is some cross-party agreement on the percentage of GDP spent on defence? Should not the Treasury give some sort of 10-year commitment to funding so that this report can be sensibly implemented parallel to the procurement process?
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, my noble friend raises an interesting point about the Treasury agreeing to 10-year funding and cross-party agreement on it. This question is very much above my pay grade and I will let my noble friend know. Clearly a lot of the financing of defence was looked at in the SDSR, and it is vital that the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Levene, and the reforms that we bring in are properly funded.