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Defence Policy

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, and deserves congratulations on the campaign that he fought. It will be appreciated in his locality. I believe that the strategic defence review must look at everything. There must be no no-go areas for a strategic defence review. We must ask very fundamental questions on a blank sheet of paper about what we want our armed forces to do, and what we need to provide them with in order for them to do it. One of the experts in defence acquisition, quoted in the Gray report, remarked that""the system is failing to produce the equipment we don't need"." That is a damning indictment. However, it is just an opinion. The National Audit Office, and others, have attempted to get to grips with the detail. It reported that last year there was an aggregate increase of 12 per cent. on the costs of defence projects. Often in this House, we debate defence inflation. Over the past year, the NAO has quantified that at 12. per cent.—£3 billion more than originally forecast. The total aggregate of slippage on all projects is now around 483 months—that is, the top 20 major procurement programmes have delays of 483 months—with expected cost overruns amounting to £16 billion. The Public Accounts Committee reported that only 20 per cent. of new Mastiff armed vehicles were classified as fit and ready for use, with the deployed fleet of 87 consuming 176 axles in 13 months. They operate in very difficult terrain—nobody should underestimate that—but that shows, when we are having a discussion about the equipment that we supply to the front line, that there is a great need for improvement. It cannot be stressed how vital helicopters are for troop movement, medevac and helping people to avoid improvised explosive devices, so I welcome efforts to get more helicopters to the front line. However, I suspect that we will need a great deal more than we have heard about so far.