Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, with reference to page 9 of the NAO's report entitled The Ajax Programme, which body is responsible for the Quarterly Programme reports; and for what reason those reports did not include reference to noise and vibration issues until March 2021.

The quarterly programme reports are prepared by the Army Programme Office on behalf of the SRO.

It is normal for a programme to be dealing with and overcoming technical challenges such as noise and vibration in the demonstration phase. However, the Ajax noise and vibration safety review, published on 15 December 2021, found that safety risk was not being systemically managed within the Army trials, with ineffective risk escalation mechanisms. It found that from 2018 onwards, instances of noise and vibration were not reported through a single coherent system, potentially impeding the ability to investigate and build a trend-based picture of noise and vibration. We have accepted and are in the process of implementing the recommendations of the review aimed at ensuring this does not happen again.