MoD accused of £2.5 billion ‘waste’ cover-up
By Alex Stevenson
Up to £2.5 billion of public money is being wasted by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) every year, according to reports.
Gordon Brown stands accused of initiating a cover-up to prevent the release of the embarrassing internal review, carried out by former MoD special adviser Bernard Gray.
The review reportedly includes scathing assessments of the MoD’s procurement process. Among its criticisms is the delay to the two aircraft carriers currently in the pipeline, which is estimated to have cost £500 million.
Defence equipment and support minister Quentin Davies said the decision to delay had been made “because there’s no point in building these enormous and wonderful 60,000-tonne ships before we have the aircraft to fly off them”.
Speaking on the Today programme, he admitted this had resulted in additional costs of around £1 billion.
“It still seems to me to have been a sensible responsible business decision to take, the sort of thing you might make in any context. It’s not a waste in any sense,” he said.
Mr Davies admitted that “none of us are entirely free from blame” but said the system for procurement was now “far more efficient”.
The government has said it plans to incorporate the findings of the review into a green paper on defence due in the next 12 months.
Shadow defence secretary Liam Fox went on the offensive against the prime minister.
“By trying to suppress this report, the prime minister has demonstrated that he cares more about the reputation of Labour than he does about the well-being of the armed forces,” he said.
“The government has a moral duty to ensure that our armed forces have the equipment they need for the war fighting they are asked to do; instead we have a catalogue of bureaucracy, incompetence and time-wasting.”
This is not the first time the government has been accused of deliberately covering up its financial weaknesses. Last summer the Commons’ public accounts committee accused the MoD of a “conspiracy of optimism” on its spending arrangements.
Paul Cornish of thinktank Chatham House told the Today programme that the £2.5 billion figure was worth taking seriously.
He added it was in Downing Street’s interests to keep the current prevalence of defence stories in the news “under wraps” as much as possible.
“I can see little if any political capital the government can make out of defence,” he said. “I think the instinct from No 10 is to control the defence story, if you like.”
Further negative headlines are threatened if a rumoured shift from British to American fighter engine construction goes ahead.
The Telegraph reports today that up to 750 defence manufacturing jobs could be cut if the MoD chooses an American model over the Rolls Royce engines made in Derby.
The engines are for the joint strike fighters destined to be deployed on Britain’s delayed aircraft carriers.
