Defence Reform Bill

Lord Palmer of Childs Hill Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Roper (LD)]

My Lords, like the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, I want merely to express my gratitude to my noble friend the Minister for having brought forward an amendment which, as he explained, goes somewhat further than the amendment we considered on Report. Like others who have been involved in these discussions, I am very grateful that he has taken so much care to ensure that this matter is properly dealt with and that we have in the statute a very good basis so that if at some stage we come to consider the introduction of Part 1, we will have useful material for the parliamentary consideration. I have great pleasure in saying that I am keen to support the amendment.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, all credit is due not only to the noble and gallant Lord and my noble friend Lord Roper but to the Labour Front Bench for starting this ball rolling and developing it into an affirmative or, perhaps I should say, slightly super-affirmative Motion, to which I hope the House will agree.

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister explained the background to this amendment which arose from an undertaking that he gave when we last discussed the Bill. I should like to take this opportunity to explain our position on the amendment and our views on it.

We welcome the amendment as it represents a move from the Government’s previous stance that the affirmative order without any associated requirements stated in the Bill would be sufficient, if passed by both Houses, for a future Government to change significantly defence procurement services by making arrangements for such services to be provided by a company to the Secretary of State under contract. The Government’s amendment does not go as far as we would wish, given that the Government were not prepared, as we sought, to withdraw Part 1 when it became known that they could no longer proceed before the general election with their preferred option to go down the road provided for in Part 1. We argued for a super-affirmative procedure involving an independent examination of a future Government’s case for bringing in an outside company to provide defence procurement services and for a report on that independent review by the House of Commons Defence Select Committee prior to Parliament being asked to make a decision on the affirmative order. That did not find favour with the Government either.

What we do have is the Government’s amendment providing for a report to Parliament on the options for carrying out defence procurement with a requirement, as the Minister said, that one option that must be covered in the report is the carrying out of defence procurement by the Secretary of State in the way it is carried out at the time the report is prepared. In other words, the effectiveness or otherwise of the new DE&S-plus-plus organisation that started to come into effect a couple of days ago, at the beginning of this month, will have to be compared with any other proposed arrangements that a future Government may wish to introduce. That is important because the Minister said in the debate on this issue in Committee that if it had been a matter for this Government rather than a future Government, they would have looked at the outside company option—the GOCO—only if the new DE&S-plus-plus organisation now being introduced did not transform the defence procurement operation.

If a future Government adopt the same approach, the report on the effectiveness of the new DE&S-plus-plus organisation will be crucial, as will be the objectivity of that future Government’s assessment of DE&S-plus-plus and their case for believing that the GOCO option would be more successful. Proper time will be needed to evaluate and consider the report to Parliament from that future Government, as provided for in this amendment, if that Government decide they want to go down the GOCO route and not to continue with the new DE&S-plus-plus organisation.

A big concern we have about the Government’s amendment is that it does not lay down any minimum timescale, either directly or indirectly, between the report on the options for carrying out defence procurement being laid before Parliament and the associated affirmative order being considered by Parliament. A future Government, having made up their mind that they wanted to go down the GOCO route, might be tempted to try to rush through the affirmative order. In that context, I cannot help but recall that this Government, in declining to withdraw Part 1, argued that there might in future be a need to bring in the GOCO option with a minimum of delay—an odd argument, bearing in mind that the Government themselves had just had to delay their intentions on the GOCO option by at least two or three years, but nevertheless an indication of a Government’s thinking that they might seek to make the change as quickly as possible at the possible expense of proper scrutiny. Hence my comments and concerns that the Government’s amendment does not provide any real check on such an intention by a future Government.

However, despite our reservations, we shall not oppose the Government’s amendment, as it clearly represents progress towards our position and a move away from the Government’s earlier stance. We are grateful for the support there has been from other noble Lords in pressing the Government to move from their initial stance that affirmative orders, without any associated requirements that would also have to be met, were sufficient.