Defence Modernisation Programme

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, in my short 25 years in Parliament, the best defence review I have seen was the SDSR 1998 of the noble Lord, Lord Robertson. But it was ruined by the Treasury’s 3% year-on-year cost saving, because you can never get such cost savings. Why do we keep including efficiency savings in the defence budget, because you can never get those efficiency savings, nor even the money to pump prime them?

[Earl Howe]

I do not share my noble friend’s scepticism about the efficiency programme. In fact, we already forecast a line of sight to 90% of our formal target of £7.4 billion, as set by the Treasury. I emphasise that these savings will not adversely affect defence outputs. I am talking about things such as transforming the way we procure equipment. We can get a lot better at that. The single-source contract regulations have saved us hundreds of millions of pounds already. We will be saving money by reviewing the military allowances. That programme is in addition to the multiple efficiency drives over recent years, such as improving our equipment support contracts, working more closely with industry partners to drive efficiency in, for example, the submarine programme, changing the way we procure complex weapons and, not least, a reduction in the size of our civilian workforce. Throughout those efficiency drives, we have maintained a world-class military, and that is what we will continue to do.