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Defence Acquisition (Independent Review)

The hon. Gentleman castigates us, but fails to mention the fact that we commissioned the report in the first place. We did that knowing that it would not be a glowing exposition of a Department that got everything right. The reason for the report was that it was needed. I wonder whether any Liberal Democrat Government whom the country might ever have imposed upon it would dare to commission such a report. The hon. Gentleman says that a £35 billion hole in the budget is exposed by the report. That is not true. That is not what the report says. From an extrapolation from some projects, the point being made is that there is the potential for a £35 billion growth from the original estimation to the final delivery, which is why forecasting is an absolute skill that needs to be upgraded within the Department. It is an extrapolation from a few samples and it does not try to say that there is such a gap in the budget. I think the hon. Gentleman has read that wrong. However, I agree—the hon. Gentleman is right, and it is an issue that we have to grapple with—that in this area the best often becomes the enemy of the good. That is a major problem that we ought to tackle. It is far better dealt with in the urgent operational requirement process. Bernard Gray says that, although he did not look into the UOR process in any detail. Where there is urgency, for current operations, we get a better balance between what is needed, timeliness, and what is good enough to do the job that is badly needed by our armed forces. On time scale, we will look to publish something in line with the Green Paper in January that brings forward a number of acquisition reform issues. We have not yet bottomed out a legislative process for dealing with the recommendation that a strategic defence review should be scheduled for the start of every Parliament. I should not have thought that that was beyond the wit of man. Working together, I think we could achieve it. We certainly could if there were cross-party agreement to do so.