Defence Procurement

Lord Walney Excerpts

Tuesday 10th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is a long history of failure in defence procurement by Governments of both main parties going back decades. We now have to construct a model that works. As I just said to the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth), the former Defence Secretary, we can do a lot within the public sector in DE&S plus, but we cannot make the culture change that some people think is necessary. It is right and proper that we do what we can in the public sector to make DE&S, as a public sector body, as high a bar as we can for a private sector challenger to have to match and exceed, but we should not be afraid, once we have done our internal reform work, to allow the private sector to make proposals again to see whether it could deliver yet more value for money for the taxpayer. That is, after all, our principal responsibility.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

There was surely no reason the Secretary of State had to wait until the GoCo option had collapsed before coming forward with these amended DE&S plus proposals. Does that not show that he was never truly neutral on the choice between an in-house option and a GoCo, that he wanted to rig the process in favour of a GoCo, and that that bias has blown up in his face, costing taxpayers and his own personal reputation?

[Mr Hammond]

I remind the hon. Gentleman that his Front-Bench spokesman welcomed the competition and said that we needed to test the GoCo proposition against the DE&S plus proposition—