Better Defence Acquisition

Part of GCHQ – in the House of Commons at 5:14 pm on 10 June 2013.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Philip Hammond Philip Hammond The Secretary of State for Defence 5:14, 10 June 2013

As I have already said, Ministers will retain the ability to provide strategic direction. If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I will take no lectures from the Opposition on shifting projects to the right at huge cost, because the previous Government shifted the carrier project two years to the right at a cost of £1.6 billion. What was actually done in 2010, in relation to the submarine enterprise, was a reconfiguration of the programme between the Astute class submarines and work on the Vanguard class replacement submarines, which resulted in a delay to the introduction into service of the Vanguard class, but within the overall constraint that we have in this country of needing to sustain a submarine yard at Barrow, and the minimum level at which we can sustain a submarine yard is building one submarine at a time. However we configure them—Vanguard class first or Astute class first—we have to provide that work flow if we are to keep that sovereign capability. That is the kind of single-source procurement that we are targeting in the announcement I made today on the single-source procurement rules.