Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the finding of the National Audit Office in its report, entitled The Equipment Plan 2016-2026, published in January 2017, that his Department must generate £5.8 billion of new savings from projects within the Equipment Plan to meet its new commitments; and how his Department plans to make such savings.

The £5.8 billion savings target within the Equipment Plan over the next 10 years was agreed with the Cabinet Office and Her Majesty's Treasury during the 2015 Spending Review. It was built into our policies and assumptions, including those relating to the Equipment Plan, at the time.

As laid out in the National Audit Office's report, the savings will be found from the following areas:

£1.7 billion from reviews of contracts under the Single Source Contract Regulations;

£3.3 billion from transformation activities within Defence Equipment and Support;

£0.8 billion from a number of other sources, including continuing reviews of support projects and test and evaluation expenditure.