Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, with reference to page 18 of the Defence Equipment and Support Annual Report and Accounts 2022-23, what recent progress has been made on the automation of key control processes.

Since July 2023, Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) has fully delivered robust, auditable, automated solutions in key control process areas such as declarations of interest and gifts and hospitality. It has extended the control portfolio of processes to also include digitised travel and subsistence checks and a more robust, digitally automated financial letter of delegation process. Collectively, DE&S has increased automation to allow the operation of 114 live automation processes and, to date, has delivered over 3,400,000 automated transactions, saving its workforce over 550,000 hours of automated benefit through transactional or workflow processing. Work to build on this progress is ongoing.