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Defence Procurement

I certainly agree with that, and I have said that the UOR has been vital in saving the day on a number of occasions. I am not suggesting that the Treasury should be allowed to have its way, but I am simply flagging up a point that has already been made: that the Treasury appears to be getting agitated on this matter. I should also refer to various Defence Committee reports; it has repeatedly expressed worries that the MOD initial budgeting processes do not seem to be all that they should be, and that supplementary estimates are produced later. That is symptomatic of the same situation. General Dannatt has also often stressed in speeches and remarks that the armed forces—specifically the Army in his case—are in desperate need of new procurements coming on stream, particularly FRES, the future rapid effect system, which we have heard about this afternoon. I welcome last week's announcement, but trumpeting the fact that the announcement is two months early rather ignores the fact that it has taken nine years to get to where we are now. This particular announcement might have been two months early but, overall, it is running long behind the curve. FRES is undoubtedly very important, as are some of the other forthcoming procurements, and we can only hope that the budgetary restraint to which I have alluded will not have an impact on the FRES programme's time scale or capability. I gather that the plan now is to get the first vehicles operational by 2012. That is welcome in the sense that the situation could have been a great deal worse, but there is a need here and now for this sort of generation of vehicles. The deployment of some Mastiffs is welcome; but, again, they are clearly plugging a gap. It is also hard to understand quite how the number of Mastiffs that is now being talked about will fit into the future overall inventory.