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Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord): Order. Hon. Members cannot take a conversational approach to the debate.
Mr. Spellar: I do not recall sending a letter, but one may have been sent by one of my predecessors. I shall consider what progress can be made. We greatly value the contribution made by small and medium-sized enterprises within the defence industrial base. Equally, however, we consider arrangements for through-life support, which often involve prime contractors--although they sometimes employ smaller contractors to fulfil part of the work. We shall need to look at the matter, and I undertake to write to the hon. Gentleman on it.
We are achieving the provision of more effective support through application of sensible processes and common practices across defence logistics. The defence logistics organisation is also a major player in the implementation of smart procurement. Increasing emphasis is being placed on whole-life cost estimates, with the DLO pioneering an approach that will provide better advice to the integrated project team and MOD decision makers.
We need joined-up information and joined-up systems. Those are essential to the delivery of the best possible service to the front line, implementation of lean logistics, success in driving down the level of stocks held, and achievement of delivery of stocks as far forward in the supply chain as possible. That underlies the MOD's determination to drive forward the e-business agenda and to be at the forefront of modernising government.
If we are to support our front-line forces in the way that they deserve, we will need steadily to transform our business, join up the MOD's internal business electronically, replace inefficient paper-based systems and deliver a lean logistics support chain. We need to create a single view of our inventory, track assets to and from the front line and around the repair loop, deliver material exactly where and when it is needed, and create transparency in identifying where in the supply chain value is added.
That is why we place such a strong emphasis on the introduction of the defence electronic commerce service--DECS--which will be provided as a commercially managed service under a public-private partnership. We hope to announce our preferred partner in the next month, and to start to roll out our programme in the summer. DECS will provide us with an electronic gateway to our trading partners--indeed, it will be the very environment in which we shall share business with them--so that the MOD presents a modern e-business face to the world.
Such services will help to fulfil one of the SDR's central themes: to make every pound spent on defence count towards our front-line capability, which in turn contributes to defending Britain's interests worldwide. We should not forget that we can do that within a budget of only 7 per cent. of the public purse. There has been too much waste in the past and we are putting that right, not least through smart procurement and the improvements to logistics that I have mentioned.
Let us not forget what the money buys us. It buys us world-class armed forces which, man for man and woman for woman, are the best in the world. It buys us state-of-the-art equipment--such as Tomahawk, Apache and Eurofighter--which is the envy of most other forces. It buys us the ability to intervene as a force for good throughout the world, such as in the Balkans, the Gulf and East Timor. It gives us confidence that our interests and our people are protected around the globe 24 hours a day, 365 days a year--indeed, 366 days this year. That represents an outstanding achievement and says much about all personnel in the Ministry of Defence--service and civilian alike.
Mr. Quentin Davies (Grantham and Stamford):
Before I say anything else, it is right for me to observe--it will not have escaped the attention of many hon. Members on both sides of the House--that something is profoundly wrong. The Secretary of State for Defence is not here, and has absolutely no excuse for not being so because the Government decide the legislative programme. Moreover, his absence follows a discourtesy on the first day of our debate last week, when the Treasury Bench was left bereft of any Defence Minister for certain periods, which brought forth a well-deserved rebuke from the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell).
Mr. David Clelland (Tyne Bridge):
Get on with it.
Mr. Davies:
I will not get on with it; this matter is vital, not merely to defence but to the entire proceedings of our House and, indeed, to our constitution. Not a month--scarcely a week--goes by without a reminder of the contempt with which the new Labour Government treat Parliament. They have become so arrogant, so bloated with their enormous majority, that they no longer care what Parliament thinks or does.
It is clear that the Secretary of State for Defence has no interest in what might be said this afternoon by right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House, be they Back Bencher or Front Bencher. That is a disgraceful state of affairs. Unless we record our sense of outrage at how the House is being treated, the Labour Government will continue to get away with such behaviour.
Mr. Spellar:
I might have expected that sort of approach from the hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith), whose views on Europe are known, but, given his views, I am sure that the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies) will be pleased to
Mr. Davies:
The Minister has got it completely wrong, and I am amazed that the Labour Government have Ministers who are so unsure of their duties. Ministers' duties to the House of Commons take absolute priority over all other duties.
I have no doubt that the Secretary of State for Defence had considerable notice of the meeting in Portugal, which he apparently prefers to attend this afternoon. He could easily have had a word with his right hon. Friend the Leader of the House of Commons and rearranged today's debate. Perhaps these events are merely the product of new Labour incompetence: if so and if, at the last moment, the Secretary of State found himself caught short, he should at least have apologised to the House.
Mr. Tom King:
May I reinforce my hon. Friend's comments? I complained officially about the timing of the debate, because it was most unsatisfactory that the first day should be on Tuesday and the second today. I was told that the timing could not be shifted, because it fitted in conveniently with Minister's other engagements and would enable them to attend.
Mr. Davies:
My right hon. Friend underlines the sorry state of affairs to which the House has come after two and three quarter years of Labour government. In addition, I was pretty shocked to notice that the Minister for the Armed Forces would not take an intervention from my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King), who is an extremely distinguished former Secretary of State for Defence. That, too, makes it absolutely clear that the Government do not want to listen to what Parliament has to say, especially not those Members of Parliament who know a great deal more about the subject than they do.
The right approach to the debate is to look at the strategic defence review itself. The first paragraph of the first chapter states:
Instead of creating a "firm foundation" for our armed forces by "modernising and reshaping" them, the Government are in the process of losing control over the important procurement programme. As the first day of our debate made clear, they are quite incapable of formulating any clear policy on two essential strategic matters: the ballistic missile issue and the future of Trident. In addition, they have committed themselves to a budgetary process, which, if continued, will mean that the armed forces face a diminishing flow of resources in years to come. That can only lead to the fatal emasculation of our defence capability.
I have said that the Government are in danger of losing control of the procurement programme. In spite of the complacent words uttered by the Minister for the Armed Forces this afternoon, I insist that my statement is strictly accurate. It is not my judgment--I have been in my present role for only three weeks. It is the judgment that emerges from the National Audit Office report into the defence procurement programme, which makes it clear that something nasty happened to the development of the procurement programme between 1997 and 1998. That is shown by a graph. The average delay in the 25 major procurement projects, which was 32 months in 1993 and which fluctuated but never went up or down by more than 10 per cent. from the mean until 1997, has risen since the Government came to office and is now 43 months--a rise of 20 per cent. and much the biggest rise in the series.
In case the Minister is inclined to argue that that is due to the fact that certain new projects have come into the programme and the comparison is therefore unjust, the National Audit Office anticipated that. Paragraph 3.9 on page 28 of the report states:
If the Minister is minded to argue that those are all technical issues and that Ministers cannot be expected to go into the workshops and work on the lathes, or go into the labs and sort out complicated technical problems--"Not our fault, guv"--the typical line from the Labour Government, let me quote to him from paragraph 3.11 of the report, which states:
The Strategic Defence Review . . . By modernising and reshaping our Armed Forces to meet the challenges of the 21st century . . . will give our Services the firm foundation that they need to plan for the long term.
This country has a right to expect action that accords with those brave words. The events of the two and three quarter years of Labour government make it clear that those words are the ones by which the Government will be condemned.
For those 10 projects common to the 1993 and 1998 Reports, estimated slippage has risen from an average of 36 months to 57 months.
That represents an even worse state of affairs.
Since 1993, four factors have dominated delays: technical difficulties, budgetary constraints, project definition and the collaborative process . . . Comparison between years shows that all factors now give rise to more delay than they did in 1993, but that the "technical difficulties" factor has grown by only around 10 per cent., while the other categories show delay increasing by up to 100 per cent.
Those other categories are budgetary constraints, project definition--or rather, failure of project definition--and the failure of the collaborative process, all matters on which there has rightly been a great deal of press comment recently.
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