Lord Walney
Main Page: Lord Walney (Crossbench - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Walney's debates with the Ministry of Defence
IT Systems (Army Recruitment)
Lord Walney Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Hammond
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and recruiting ex-regulars is an important part of our strategy for building the reserves, not least because ex-regulars drop straight to the trained strength if their regular Army service is recent enough. As he will know, we are currently offering an enlistment bounty for ex-regulars to join the reserves, which reflects some part of the cost saving that we make through not having to take ex-regular recruits through the full reserve training process.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
This administrative quagmire is the latest part of what is becoming a worrying and costly pattern of events under the Secretary of State’s stewardship. He had a good reputation for competence around Whitehall before he took up his latest job. What has happened?
Mr Hammond
The important thing in a Department as large and complex as the Ministry of Defence, with a budget of £33 billion a year, is not to pretend that we can operate the vast range of contracts and arrangements we have in place without some failures. That is never going to happen. The challenge is to grip failure when it becomes apparent, and to manage and resolve it as quickly and efficiently as possible. I am prepared to stand on my record of delivering that kind of outcome.