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Defence in the World

I agree with my hon. Friend. I would go further. Many of those mistakes are ones that she, through her diligent research, has brought to light. The country and the armed forces should be grateful to her. We could go through many individual procurement projects—some have been good, some have been bad. The Prime Minister has said that the armed forces have never had such good personal equipment. He is absolutely right. When the Committee visits the armed forces in Afghanistan, Iraq or wherever, they are full of praise about their personal equipment. But let us distinguish properly between their personal equipment and other equipment, such as vehicles, about which they do not always say the same thing. The urgent operational requirement process has sometimes worked well and sometimes less well, but it does work quickly. However, it works at considerable cost. In the face of urgent requirements, we should not begrudge that cost, but we should wonder whether the process could be better dealt with by better anticipation and foresight, so that the suggestion in the Bernard Gray report that some things should have been discovered long in advance bears some fruit—we have been in Afghanistan for a very long time.