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Defence Procurement

My hon. Friend is absolutely right—that is my understanding, too. That is why there is serious urgency about this business and why the Minister ought to be as forthcoming as he can be with the House. Perhaps the Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies), will mention the matter when he winds up the debate. Of course, there are commercial issues that he may not be able to talk about, but he needs to be honest with the House about what it will cost if the Treasury fails to approve the compromise proposals. If we do not maintain those skills, they will not be available for new programmes such as unmanned aerial vehicle—UAV—programmes, which BAE and others are developing. Treasury demands for more cuts coincide with reports such as that prepared for the UK National Defence Association by Tony Edwards and endorsed by General Lord Guthrie and Lord Owen, which suggests that the cumulative deficit since the 1998 strategic defence review amounts to some £15 billion and that the planned expenditure for the next five years risks pushing Britain into the second division. Since we last had a full debate on procurement last June, the Government have cancelled or postponed key programmes and faced a torrent of criticism from all-party Select Committees and others. The Public Accounts Committee’s "Major Projects Report" last July stated:""The Ministry of Defence has not made sufficient improvements to deliver major military equipment to time, budget and quality."" Carriers, the cornerstone of the SDR’s expeditionary warfare policy, are delayed again—at a cost of approximately £600 million, I understand from the First Sea Lord. I said in our debate a year ago that the French strawberry, the FRES utility variant—I think that we have to call it the French strawberry now—had gone dead. It has since been binned, in the year by which General Jackson said that the Army had to have the vehicle. The Defence Committee described the handling of the programme as "a fiasco", on which,""the MoD has wasted both its and industry’s time and money.""