Douglas Carswell's Blog

Stop the rot at MoD

Today’s excellent Treasury committee report is the latest to examine the Ministry of Defence's appalling record of squandering public money, while providing poor kit to our armed forces.  

However brilliant the diagnosis, too often such reports propose remedies of the why-can't-we-just-make-MoD-properly-efficient-and-streamline-things variety.  Indeed.  But willing efficiency doesn't achieve it.  Technocratic tinkering with a busted procurement system isn’t enough.

The mess that MoD makes of procurement is caused by something more deep seated; if you constrain the range of suppliers in any market, you allow the remaining suppliers to set the terms of trade. So, too, in defence. 

Successive governments have deliberately constrained the range of suppliers able to sell to MoD, through a combination of consolidating the industrial base, and protectionist preferment.

Yet for all the talk of “economies of scale” and strengthening British business etc, it now means that MoD is spending vastly more than she needs to on kit that often arrives late. See helicopters.

In extremis, it has given us aircraft carriers with no aircraft to put on them. Yet we could have bought both for much less.  It has helped contribute to a situation whereby we have lots of tanks and 'planes designed to fight a Soviet enemy that folded a generation ago. Yet we remain over stretched elsewhere.

So what to do?

1.  Scrap the Defence Industrial Strategy – if we’re serious about getting value from what remains of our defence budget, we need to buy the best.  Run the defence budget as a means of equipping our armed forces, not creating jobs or boosting corporate share prices. 

2.  Second, shut the “revolving door” that sees top civil servants go off to work for contractors.  Doing so would ensure there is less chance of any confusion between the interests of the buyer and seller. 

3. Finally, rather than issue yet more reports, Commons committees must be required to annually approve MoD’s budget – and have the right to hold confirmation hearings before the Sir Humphrey-types get the top jobs in MoD in the first place.

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