Douglas Carswell's Blog

The last days of the defence industrial scam?

Despite being one of the highest spending military powers in the world, it looks like another round of defence cuts is on the way.  

Perhaps this latest round will at last force ministers to confront the question of why, for all those £ Billions on military kit, we get such poor value from the defence budget?

Maybe it is time to stop spending £20+ million on helicopters we could buy for half the amount.   Perhaps it is time to stop blowing the lion’s share of the budget on twenty year old programmes designed to let us combat the Soviets.  Or spending £400 Million on building loitering munitions from scratch, when we lack drones.

The story of defence procurement is a long list of ways in which money has been spent in the interests of corporate contractors, rather than our armed forces. Protectionst defence procurement has prevented us from converting what financial muscle we still have into military punch. 

Even when confronted with evidence of quite how appallingly inefficient defence protectionism is, we hear lame excuses about how “defence inflation” runs ahead of general inflation. All that means is that the suppliers keep putting up their prices. 

The defence industrial policy has been a disaster. Until now, too many vested interests have prevented ministers from shutting down all the dreadful contracts the MoD has entered into, and obtaining better value for money. 

Ministers now have the chance to ditch dozens of protectionist defence contracts – and start buying off the shelf.

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