More bangs for the buck – Centre for Policy Studies
This is the foreword by Lord Guthrie for the Centre for Policy Studies report on Defence spending. It will make hard reading for Bob Ainsworth and his lackeys.
This paper is an alarm call.
It should make everyone in the Ministry of Defence realise that they cannot go on as they are. The shameful waste and delay which characterise the sorry history of equipment procurement should never have been tolerated. In the past, such indulgence was wrong. Now it is both wrong and unaffordable.
The huge government budget deficit is going to require great sacrifice on the part of the taxpayer. Defence spending, already too low for the commitments being asked of our Armed Forces, is going to come under even greater pressure. It is crucial therefore that we squeeze as much value as possible from every pound we spend on kit.
23,000 people are employed in Defence Equipment and Support. Yet all too often our Armed Forces have to put up with substandard equipment. Yes, the Government may have finally released the funds to pay for helicopters and equipment so urgently needed in Afghanistan. Yes, the Urgent Operational Requirement scheme is at last getting the right equipment to the front line. But it has taken seven years to do so. World War II was over in less time than that.
It may be right, as the Government has just announced, to pay for the equipment that is needed by raiding military budgets elsewhere. But that can only be a short-term measure. No. The time for a hard-nosed attitude to defence procurement has come. The cosy arrangements with the big contractors must cease.
And the detailed recommendations put forward both here and in the Gray Review must be implemented.
The Ministry of Defence claims that it recognises that the world has changed and that a new approach is required to Defence Equipment, Procurement and Support. Any number of studies have reported and made recommendations. But too often they have met with resistance from vested interests from both the MoD and the defence industry, and excuses found which lead to the shelving of new ideas which would be appropriate to our new circumstances. That is no longer acceptable.
To quote Churchill:
“Action this day. Not “keep buggering on”.
Lord Guthrie
December 2009
PDF article is here.
Press Release is here, it has a bad link to the PDF.