Defence Spending
Debate between Mark Hendrick and Philip Dunne(9 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Dunne
No, the hon. Gentleman has had his chance. The defence budget is in balance and our plans are affordable. We are on track to deliver £5 billion of efficiency savings in the next Parliament, including £1 billion from the equipment support plan alone. Incidentally, the half-baked plans in the Labour review “A New Deal for UK Defence” would deliver only some 1% of what we are already saving in the Department. The proof of our transformation was set out in the National Audit Office major projects report for 2014, which showed a reduction in cost of £397 million across our 11 largest projects. That was the Ministry of Defence’s best performance on cost since 2005 and best performance on delivering projects on time since 2001.
Mark Hendrick
Will the Minister tell the House how much money was wasted in the Government’s decision to move two cats and traps for the two aircraft carriers and then to back away from cats and traps?
Mr Dunne
Yes, it cost just under £100 million to make that decision, which is substantially less than the £1.2 billion cost of the deferral to which I referred earlier. I should congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his contribution today. I had not appreciated that, like me a few months ago, he faced some impediments to getting in and out of the Chamber. I hope that his leg gets better soon.
Even the chair of the Public Accounts Committee, not known for lavishing praise on this Government, said only last week that she had
“seen a step change and improvement in performance, which is incredibly welcome.”
She was referring to the transformation in defence.