Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to the Answer of 6 July 2020 to Question 67566 on AWACS: Procurement, for what reason his Department made the decision not to make a comparative assessment of the cost of (a) support and (b) maintenance work in the US and the UK for the E-7 Wedgetail contract prior to the award of the main contract to Boeing.

It is common with acquisition projects of this scale and complexity for an incremental approach to be adopted, with contracts for different elements of the project being placed at the appropriate time to align delivery with capability requirement. As the aircraft acquisition contract placed with Boeing in March 2019 did not include future support and maintenance for the RAF E-7 Wedgetail fleet, there was no need to undertake such an assessment at that time. That work is being carried out as part of a different phase of the project.