---

Strategic Defence Review (Green Paper)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind comments— despite his motives in making them. Can I just point out one thing to him? He claimed that I made defence cuts in December, yet in the same response he said that we were a little late in providing the wherewithal for the Army in Afghanistan. We did not make defence cuts in December; we prioritised, over three years, £900 million of the core defence budget for equipment that was needed for the Afghan conflict. We are doing that, but he criticises us for not doing it, and then he claims that those measures were cuts when, in fact, they were reprioritisations. They were reprioritisations within a budget that never fell. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is prepared to admit or accept that. The budget never fell; I moved money within the budget. It was right to do so, and I make no apology for that, but one thing that I say in the Green Paper—and I think I say it with the genuine support of many people who know about these matters—is that our planning structures will have to be more adaptable. We cannot have planning assumptions that effectively prevent us from moving money within the budget when there are pressing needs; we have to have a structure that supports the adaptability of our armed forces. That must be the overwhelming priority. The hon. Gentleman talked about the problems with the equipment programme, but I remind him that it was this Government who commissioned the Gray report. We did so to get to the bottom of problems that do exist but, when judged against international comparators, are no worse than hardly any and, indeed, better than many. But, those problems need to be addressed, and there are inefficiencies. We commissioned the Gray report, and I hope that, when the hon. Gentleman has the time to study it properly, he will see that there is a real way—albeit an uncomfortable one for future Ministers—of ensuring that we have a defence procurement methodology that prevents the overruns that we have had. Transparency will be the main tool for doing that, but regular defence reviews, enshrined in legislation, will help as well.