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Defence Policy

I start by paying tribute to all those servicemen and women who have been serving our country in Afghanistan and elsewhere and, in particular, by marking the debt of honour that we owe to all those who have been killed and injured in that service. I also express our sympathy and condolences to their friends, families and loved ones. We should all be very proud of the work that they have done for us. I welcome the opportunity this afternoon to discuss defence policy, with all the political parties now signed up to the principle of the strategic defence review after the forthcoming election. The opportunity looms for a national debate about defence policy, what we want to do in the world, what role we want to play and what we are prepared to leave to allies. Once we have identified what we want to do, we need to discuss how we will go about it. Tough questions must be asked; difficult answers must be sought. Policy is not, and should never be, simply a knee-jerk response to various crises. It should be about guiding principles; about the basis upon which we intend to interact with others; and about what we are trying to achieve in doing so. Having set out our clear objectives, the task before us all—whatever political side we are on—is to communicate that to a wider public that is increasingly confused and parting company with us on some of the things that we are doing. That public's assent and consent is necessary if we are to continue as we are. We are debating in part the Gray report. I think that everyone in the House would have appreciated more time to read and get to grips with it, but even a quick read of the executive summary is enough to make one realise that it raises very serious questions about the state of our defences and, in particular, procurement policies. In many ways the report confirms what we have long suspected and what many commentators have been saying for a very long time: simply that there are systemic failures in the Ministry of Defence and, in particular, the procurement processes, which are crippling our armed forces' ability to act. I very much agree with the general tenet of the report and the observation that the quest for a perfect solution too often gets in the way of achieving a very good solution. As Gray says, when an 80 per cent. solution is a viable option, and when it is in the interests of the armed forces to provide a "good enough" answer, the armed forces could get what they need and there could be far greater export potential. In summary, the report states that""too many types of equipment being ordered for too large a range of tasks at too high a specification"." In many respects, the report is a damning indictment of our procurement processes: the average programme overruns by five years beyond the time specified; average cost increases are 40 per cent, and the knock-on frictional costs to the Ministry of Defence of these delays amount, in monetary value, to, according to Gray, between £900 million and £2.2 billion annually. It is little wonder then that the worries that many have articulated about a black hole in the MOD budget are beginning to materialise.