Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200-202)
SIR PETER
SPENCER KCB, DR
IAIN WATSON
AND LIEUTENANT
GENERAL ANDREW
FIGGURES CBE
12 DECEMBER 2006
Q200 Mr Hancock: You might as well
pick any figure out of thin air.
Sir Peter Spencer: No. Planning
long-range is an iterative process. You have rather demonstrated
the conundrum any department finds itself in: you press and press
for an answer and when you get an answer you then start beating
people around the head with it. Why would we want to commit to
anything until we understand the problem? We do not yet understand
the problem. The problem in terms of procurement will be a series
of capital investment decisions which are taken in a better understanding
of what it is we are going to do and of the timescales properly
risk-adjusted so we can set the parameters we are going to meet.
Q201 Chairman: I think the worry
we have is that there are so many variables flying around in this
programme that the people who are suffering in the long run are
the Armed Forces while these decisions and trade-offs are being
made. I think that will continue to be a real concern until some
of these variables can be nailed down. It would be helpful if
you could help us in that process to nail down the variables.
Sir Peter Spencer: I can assure
you that we are about to select the process next year. We have
been in the assessment phase for two and a half years. The intention
is to drive it very hard and not to accept at face value the date
that you have been quoted by the "Systems House". A
very challenging target will be set but we will not go public
and commit to it until we better understand the reality of the
situation and whether or not there are products out there that
can genuinely be further developed to meet it. We will be in possession
of that information in a year's time and then the lead-in to the
main gate will give the opportunity for that to be announced.
Q202 Mr Jenkin: Having listened very
carefully, the conclusion I have come to in my own mind is that
there is a trade-off between having a very broad and perhaps rather
idealised concept for some future programme, which like the hunting
of the Snark, you can never really define because it does not
exist and everybody is attaching their own ideas and aspirations
to it, alongside what actually happens on the frontline which
is you suddenly have to produce a vehicle now to deal with the
protection of the Armed Forces. Does it not beg the question,
given this started out as TRACER and has been going for a number
of years, we are looking at an assessment and acquisition phase
that stretches over nearly two decades and this has only got to
be something that you can bolt other things on to? It seems that
the process that we have got bogged down in is so complicated
and so divorced from the relatively simple things that these vehicles
are going to need to do, this may be the wrong way of going about
it. It does lead to an enormous amount of frustration from frontline
officers and soldiers who complain that the Defence Procurement
Agency and the way we go about procuring things is just so divorced
from reality it is never going to deliver what the soldiers actually
want.
Sir Peter Spencer: It is fine
to keep on using the Defence Procurement Agency as the whipping
boy and, as I said to General Jackson, "If you know the shop
that sells what you want, I will go and buy it tomorrow as long
as you write the requirement like that". That did not happen.
What we have seen over the last three years is an outbreak of
reality. We are now getting more real about the art of the possible.
We are narrowing that down rapidly and we will continue that acceleration
through 2007. We have set out what the Acquisition Strategy is,
why do you not judge us by our ability to deliver during the next
12-18 months.
Chairman: Gentlemen, thank you. We have
kept you long enough. We have given you a fairly hard time, we
are grateful for your answers. Thank you.
| 
