Recommendation 28

We held this inquiry in the sincere hope that by its end we would have heard clear proposals from the Department as to how this Committee, and by extension Parliament, would be able to scrutinise annually the crucial issue of its forward spending plans.58 The Department acknowledged that it works better with scrutiny from this Committee and the Defence Committee and told us that Ministers were clear that they wanted the Department to be more transparent than previously.59 However, the Department made no proposals for how it might present its plans to Parliament and could not give us a date for when it would be able to do so.60 These answers were entirely unsatisfactory.61 52 Correspondence from David Williams CB, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Defence, re Update - MOD Equipment Plan 2022 - 2032 in Session 2022–23, dated 21 July 2023 53 Revised correspondence from David Williams CB, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Defence, re Equipment Plan 2023–2033: Update on affordability, dated 4 December 2023 54 C&AG’s Report, Equipment Plan 2023, para 2.8 55 Committee of Public Accounts, MoD Equipment Plan 2023–2033, Nineteenth Report of Session 2023–24, HC 451, 8 March 2024 56 Letter from the Minister for Defence Procurement and Industry relating to the Ministry of Defence Equipment Plan 2024, 13 November 2024 57 Letter from the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence relating to the response on the Defence Equipment Plan, 12 March 2025 58 Q 1 59 Q 57 60 Qq 58 and 59 61 Q 60 16