Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 3
Forty-Eighth Report - MoD Equipment Plan 2022–2032
Published 19 Apr 2023
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee MoD Equipment Plan 2022-2032 All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
The Department has not demonstrated the necessary urgency to deliver enhanced capabilities to deter hostile parties. The Ukraine conflict has demonstrated the renewed importance of land capabilities. However, the Department acknowledges there is significant risk that the UK could not provide NATO with an operational Army division and that the current Equipment Plan does not resolve this. Lessons from Ukraine show that the Army needs to increase its long-range precision artillery, air defences and medical supply chain beyond the capabilities included in the current Plan. Furthermore, the Department is struggling to deliver existing projects to modernise current land capabilities. Notably, timetables for introducing Boxer and Ajax armoured vehicles have slipped significantly, leaving the Army reliant on out- dated vehicles and unable to provide the necessary deterrence of adversaries. Even when Ajax is finally introduced it will not operate to its full potential without the Morpheus communications system, which is also delayed. We are unconvinced by the Department’s assertion that it is doing all it can to speed up these programmes or its claim that it could only be quicker by taking more risks. Recommendation 3: The Department should reconsider whether it strikes the right balance between risk and delivery speed in procurement and write to us alongside its Treasury Minute response setting out its scope to deliver programmes faster. It should also set out in next year’s Equipment Plan how it will ensure that the Army fully benefits from the investment in new equipment by the timely delivery of military hardware and the technology needed to enable interoperability.
From: Public Accounts Committee, Forty-Eighth Report - MoD Equipment Plan 2022–2032 (HC 731), 19 April 2023
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 21 July 2023 (deadline 19 June 2023).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government disagrees with the Committee's recommendation to publish a timelier Equipment Plan report, and agrees with its recommendations on the Integrated Review refresh, delivery speed, uncertainty, affordability and supply chains.
- On publishing a timelier Equipment Plan report, the government disagrees: the department "does not plan to publish a full equipment plan" while it adapts the plan to the Integrated Review Refresh and manages inflation, but "will write to the Committee with an update".
- It agrees that capability requirements arising from the Integrated Review refresh should be set out to HM Treasury, with a target implementation date of Summer 2023 (Defence Command Paper Update) and Winter 2023 (update to the Committee).
- On delivery speed, it agrees and recognises "the need to balance risk with the speed of capability delivery", noting there "may be scope to take more risk" but "not in every case"; it will write to the Committee by December 2023.
- It agrees to reassess affordability by September 2023, and to provide by December 2023 an assessment of the key sources of uncertainty and risk in the forward plan.