UK MPs urge defence to overcome procurement delays

The UK Commons public accounts committee have said that procurement delays and overspending within the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) had to be addressed. 

UK MPs called on the MoD to sort out its equipment buying programme or continue its “cycle of failure”.
It urged the MoD to provide its forecast for implementing government money-saving demands by April. In a speech later, Defence Secretary Liam Fox will promise that lax spending habits "will no longer be tolerated".

Last autumn's Strategic Defence and Security Review urged savings of billions of pounds by cutting back on warships, fast jet fighters and thousands of soldiers, sailors and airmen.

It included the decisions to cancel the Nimrod MRA4 plane, withdraw the Sentinel surveillance aircraft and to mothball an aircraft carrier when it has been built.

"If it does not [make significant changes], the cycle of failure will continue, with badly needed capabilities being delivered later than planned and cost increases crowding other capabilities out of the equipment programme," the committee stated.

The committee was responding to a National Audit Office report, published in October, which said the "black hole" in MoD procurement had increased by AUD$5.3 in Labour's final year in office to reach around AUD$58 billion.

The committee's chairman, Labour MP Margaret Hodge, said: "In the wake of the defence review the MoD still has to spell out whether and how it has got its defence procurement budget under control.”

"The MoD must demonstrate the same discipline in its defence procurement that our forces demonstrate in the field," he said.

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