Defence Procurement

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 8:21 pm on 17 July 2002.

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Photo of Desmond Swayne Desmond Swayne Opposition Whip (Commons) 8:21, 17 July 2002

It is a great pleasure to follow Mark Tami. I cannot claim that I agreed with everything that he said, but I agreed with the greater part of it. He argued his case very cogently, and his defence of his constituency interests was a model for us all. I should at this point draw the House's attention to my entry in the Register of Members' Interests.

The sixth report of the Public Accounts Committee, which was published last November, recognised the impressive achievements of our armed forces. However, it also observed that:

"Despite the considerable sums of money spent on defence equipment", our armed forces are

"still faced with using out-dated equipment and relying on other nations to provide elements of capability which should by now have been available to them."

The report continued by expressing the hope that the equipment capability customer organisation—which is responsible for deciding what is required, and for controlling the funding to deliver that capability—will offer a potentially significant step forward in providing the armed forces with the equipment that they need at the time that they need it.

However, the conclusion to the report observes that there was considerable confusion

"between the Capability Customer and the Defence Procurement Agency over the fitting of a sonar to the first three Type 45 destroyers . . . The Committee finds it difficult to understand how the planning for these ships could exclude such vital pieces of kit and views with concern that such a possibility could have been seriously considered. The Committee therefore recommends that the Department should review the arrangements for communication between the Equipment Capability Customer and the Defence Procurement Agency to ensure that those arrangements can be relied on to convey exactly what is required."

I wonder whether the Minister can say in his winding-up speech what progress has been made in implementing that recommendation for much better communication between the capability customer and the Defence Procurement Agency. If he is unable to do so, perhaps he might write to me on the matter.

The report also states that, in the evidence presented to the Committee in compiling the report:

"The Chief of Defence Procurement said that the sonar was being procured because of the headroom provided" by achieving a rather better price on the prime contract. That seems to imply that the sonar would not have been acquired, had such headroom not appeared in the main contract. I find that rather odd, and it stretches credulity somewhat.

The Department has not always undertaken the right analyses at the right time. For example, it is generally agreed that the study on anti-armour weapons should have been carried out before committing the medium-range Trigat project to production, rather than after the project was withdrawn. In future, we would expect the equipment capability customer organisation to specify at the outset of such projects precisely when such studies should be undertaken.

The Department's strategy for meeting anti-armour weapons requirements seems to have evolved over time with a general lack of coherence, and as a result a certain cost penalty has been incurred. For example, in the second order to upgrade additional BL755 cluster bombs for the Kosovo campaign, the unit costs were almost double that of the first order. Also, although the order for Brimstone missiles was reduced, that reduction failed to secure a commensurate reduction in the total spend. Additional Maverick missiles were purchased, at a significantly greater cost. I would expect the equipment capability customer organisation to provide a more timely forecast of the mix of weapons required, so that such cost penalties can be avoided.

I have what the Minister might consider a dumb question about Eurofighter. It is perhaps dumb simply because I have no experience in these matters, but someone who lacks expertise in aviation matters should have such a question—which concerns the decision to remove the gun from Eurofighter, at a saving of £32 million—answered for him. I am sure that a plausible scenario exists as to why we do not need that capability, but it gives rise to the question of why our partners in the Eurofighter project are persisting with arming the aircraft with that weapon. It also gives rise to the further question of why other countries continue to arm their aircraft with such weapons. In order to allay the fear that this is simply a cost-cutting exercise, it would be interesting to hear the Minister rehearse precisely why we have decided to do without that capability, given that other countries have decided to persist with it.

I was always a fan of the SA80 weapon and a supporter of that project. As far as I was concerned, the greatest disappointment arising from it was the failure to deliver the weapon anywhere near the 1980 deadline that gave rise to its name. I have always regarded it as a sophisticated weapon and an amazing piece of engineering which, had we got it right at the start—it is interesting to note that much of the recent upgrade consists merely of the production of the original parts using better materials—would have sold in large numbers throughout the world.

I am concerned about the study that has just concluded of failures in Afghanistan. The Minister said that although the study has been concluded, he is awaiting the report. If the commercial organisation for which I worked before becoming a Member of Parliament had had a problem and dispatched a team to look into it, and if that team had returned and had a board meeting coming up, we would not have sat back twiddling our thumbs and waiting for the team to digest its findings and write its report; we would have ensured that we had a swift briefing, even if the report had yet to be written. The defence procurement debate is being held today and it would have been interesting to hear Ministers' comments about the problems in Afghanistan on the basis of their initial briefing on the issue.