Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how much their Department spent on (a) current and (b) legacy IT infrastructure (i) in total and (ii) purchased in 2013 or earlier in each of the last three years.

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) is committed to reducing our dependence on legacy IT systems. This is in keeping with wider efforts across Government, and in accordance with the Central Digital and Data Office’s Legacy IT Risk Assessment Framework.

As outlined in the National Audit Office report entitled The Digital Strategy for Defence: A review of early implementation in 2022, the estimated annual departmental spend on digital, which includes IT infrastructure, is approximately £4.4 billion. MOD does not routinely collect consolidated information for spending on legacy IT, and so data is not held in the format you have requested; this could only be provided at disproportionate cost.