of Newnham (LD):...The noble
Lord, , has just pointed out that
procurement is sometimes about trying to change the spec—maybe
mending or meddling. In defence procurement, contracts regularly
run over length and over budget. Many civilians, many of whom are
not interested in defence, may not have noticed, for example,
questions about the A400M or AJAX armoured
vehicles. It is a bit similar to Crossrail, now welcomed as the
Elizabeth line, being four years over time and over budget. In a
whole series of reports, most recently in November 2021, the
House of Commons Public Accounts Committee has pointed out some
of the problems with defence procurement. Cumulatively, various
pieces of defence equipment are running 21 years behind
schedule—although one assumes that no single item is 21 years
overdue...
(Lab):...My Lords, it gives
me great pleasure to follow my noble friend. I agree with his
views on the public procurement of particularly large projects in
this country. As the noble Lord, , also mentioned, the costs of
preparing bids are much higher here than in many other European
countries, and I believe that the costs relating to HS2 involved
spending £15 billion on consultants. Why do we need so much money
spent on consultants? Is it because the commissioning authority
is frightened of making decisions itself, or is it for some other
reason? It is pretty frightening. The costs of HS2 are very
high—probably double what the Government are saying at the
moment—and ditto with the AJAX tanks,
which the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, mentioned, and, of course,
Hinkley Point, which is not strictly a government procurement
project but which we will all end up paying for in the end. And
dear old Crossrail was opened yesterday—a wonderful project, but
it is £5 billion over budget and three years late...
(Lab):...There is a huge
problem with defence spending, which has bedevilled the
department for a number of years. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith,
and my noble friend Lord Hunt spoke about that. To take one
example, 29 AJAX vehicles
have been delivered to the Government at a cost of £3.5 billion
so far. There are more on the way. We are supposed to have 569,
which were supposed to have been delivered four or five years
ago, so there is a huge problem around this. We need to know how
the Procurement Bill will improve defence procurement and all
that...
