Defence: Procurement

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Tuesday 25th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, as the noble and gallant Lord knows, Bernard Gray was appointed CDM last week. This is a very important step for the department; it is a sign of our commitment to drive through further change. The previous Government published the Gray review of acquisition, which examined the way in which new equipment is purchased for the Armed Forces. In February this year, the MoD published a strategy for acquisition reform that outlined a number of measures to improve defence acquisition. Implementation is going well and is now part of the wider defence reform agenda. A key part of the work is to look at how acquisition is managed and structured. We are looking at various operating models to determine the most efficient and effective way of designing our acquisition system.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, a National Audit Office report of 15 October last year, and the year before, found that Bernard Gray’s department was ever improving. Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, said that,

“central departmental decisions were taken to balance the defence budget which had the effect of driving very significant additional cost and delay”.

The same report stated:

“The Strategic Defence and Security Review should provide an opportunity for the Department to re-balance its policy intent and the available funding”.

Can the Minister assure us that funding balances the policy intent in the SDSR and does not leave the great gap that many of the heavyweight newspapers are predicting?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, the noble Lord is obviously referring to an article in the Daily Telegraph this morning. SDSR implementation work is ongoing and the MoD is also undertaking its annual planning round. This is used routinely to look forward over 10 years and ensure that the department’s commitments are in line with available resources. We keep under consideration at all times a range of options on future capabilities, but no final decisions have been made. Premature speculation is not helpful to that process, to our Armed Forces or to the defence industry.