Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, with reference to page 193 of his Department's Annual Report and Accounts 2020-21, what the £3.581 million MAB Asset Under Construction Write-off refers to.

Within the Ministry of Defence's Annual Report and Accounts 2020-21, an entry has been included as an advanced notification valued at £3.581 million.

Advanced Notifications are cases where formal sign-off cannot take place until all the work necessary to establish the validity and the exact amount of the loss has been concluded. The value of an advance notification is the best estimate and may change once the case is finally closed, which will be separately reported in a future Annual Report and Accounts.

While the specific details of this case, other than the fact that it is MAB related, cannot be released for security purposes the write-offs reflect a number of projects which when scrutinised should have been more properly accounted for as operational expenditure rather than the creation of a capital asset.

The Department is completing final checks on this balance before the final write off value is confirmed and will identify and apply any appropriate lessons learnt.