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Defence Procurement

I know all the arguments, and that is entirely true, but the Government have been in office for 10 years, during which they have sat around trying to cope with the problem and decide what to do. The failure to resolve that procurement issue is a failure of ministerial decision making. At the end of the day, the Minister knows that if he were asked to make that decision today, he would not be in a position to judge, but would have to rely on his experts. Indeed, he has already said in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) that he has to rely on his experts. The question then was: why did the experts get it wrong in that case? Now the question is: why have Ministers taken seven years to resolve the matter?