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Defence Acquisition

My Lords, I listened to the vast majority of the noble Lord’s Statement and was considerably shocked by the enormous list of "We will do this and we will do this". There was then the admission of a £35 billion overspend. What on earth have Ministers been doing for the past 13 years? Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the Tory Government were as incompetent as this Government—I do not necessarily take that on board—and that the Government inherited an incompetency; they have allowed it to run for 13 years and have made it worse. This is the most damning indictment that I have ever heard of any government department, and that includes the Tanganyika groundnut scheme that occurred in my youth.