End of Defence Industrial Strategy?

Liam Fox is preparing a Green Paper on “sovereign capability” to determine what defence equipment has to be made in Britain or whether it can be bought from other countries, reports the Telegraph.

It's my own view those of us arguing for an end to the ruinous, protectionist racket known as the Defence Industrial Strategy are winning the argument.  "Off the shelf" looks more compelling by the day. 

Thanks to DIS, £ billions from the defence budget are spent in a way that suits certain defence contractors - not our armed forces.  The heroic Lewis Page has brilliantly exposed quite how damaging years of this nonsense has been to our military capability.  It explains why we spend £27 million on a helicopter we could have purchased for £8 million.  And which won't be ready for years, rather than months.

Scrapping DIS means we could get vast amounts of kit - UAVs, fighters, ships, helicopters, and, most important of all, personnel - that we need, when we need them.  Our armed forces could literally have the best kit in the world - not what pen pushers at MoD and big corporations allow them.

Indeed, the growing popularity of Urgent Operational Requirements - which by-pass all that nonsense - shows the extent to which our armed forces could benefit from such a move.  And if any politicians seriously think that the primary purpose of our defence budget is job creation, they should stand up and explain that to our hard pressed service personnel. 

If I was on the board of a large defence contractor favoured by DIS, I'd be demanding to know precisely what that army of lobbyists I pay for have actually been doing.  Not winning arguments where it counts, perhaps? 

UPDATE:  Self-styled "Red Tory" Phillip Blond seems to have dived into the debate on Twitter to advocate defence protectionism.  Amongst his profound observations are:

"The trouble with off the shelf procurement sourced internationally is that we undermine our own defence capacity" and "w e have to have a national capacity to ensure supply security"

Far from buying us security of supply, the history of the Defence Industrial Strategy has, paradoxically, been to make our supply base less secure.  Protectionism means we get so much less bang for our buck that our armed forces end up having to cope without.  A non-existent helicopter that's built in Britain is not supply security, Phillip.

Phillip has criticised "private monopolies" and the "market state" where "the elites of industry cohabit with political elites."  But surely that's a pretty good description of the defence industrial racket he's now defending, no?  

Posted on 21 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell

Comments

What's the chance that MoD has a lot of long term contracts which can only be broken at enormous cost. I'm sure there will be arguments like "we've gone so far, if we don't spent the rest of the money, it'll be all wasted".
Unfortunately, we've heard it all before, usually with computer contracts, and particularly with the ID card scheme, and I've no doubt we will be hearing it again!

Posted on 21 November 2009 10:26 by Brian E.

There was a Navy chap in the pub last night: he's leaving. Why? 'Before I get killed, or get someone else killed.' His frigate is 'falling to bits', running on cannibalized parts and he worries that someone in the Middle east is going to get lucky with a Russian missile they can't defend against. He submitted his resignation. The response - an offer of promotion. He said no.

Posted on 21 November 2009 11:47 by Peter

There does seem to have been quite a bit of suggestion that our (hopefully) outgoing Labourists are in the process of signing large contracts in the run up to the forthcoming GE.

I, vaguely, appreciate that the Government enters into contracts in much the same as any other corporation but I'm wondering what scope a future Tory Government would have - if Labour's pre-election contract signings are really so egregiously opportunistic as to justify such a course of action - to nullify contracts that were manifestly not in the public interest.

In extremis, does the Government of the day have that power?

If it does, might it be appropriate for the Tories to sound a few quiet warnings, to companies involved in Labour's last minute orgy of liabilities, that this should be born in mind?

At the very least, would it not be wise to warn those companies that they will prejudice their chances of gaining future contracts under a Tory Government?

Posted on 21 November 2009 12:18 by constructive interference

Douglas, what will our poor, underpaid politicos/civil servants do without the salary augmentations supplied by the military industrial complex, should off-the-shelf solutions be foisted upon them?

It will be interesting to see who gets plum jobs in the industry after the general election.

Posted on 21 November 2009 13:26 by http://faustiesblog.blogspot.com

It's not just defence that is hamstrung this way.

The magistrates courts IT is the responsibility of the Ministry of Justice. They have Logica doing the software. But Logica have subcontracted it to a smaller firm, STL of Bury St Edmunds. STL don't have the staff, so have got an agency, Hays IT, to find freelancers. And Hays have found me! I'm the chap that will do the work.

Now I'm being offered a wretched amount of money, carry all my own insurance, pension responsibility etc etc. But the agency is certainly getting 20% of what is paid. I expect STL is marking up heavily. I expect Logica is marking up heavily on that. And I expect that the Govt is getting screwed.

If the government doesn't want to be screwed over like this, with endless middlemen -- and I remember something very similar at the MoD ten years ago -- then it needs to have a means to check who actually does the work! Otherwise it will always be offshored.

Note that one reason for one layer of middlemen is that only Logica can "security clear" the staff. I'm sat here, waiting around to start, while the paperwork drifts casually up the chain. All Logica provide to the Govt -- i.e. the taxpayer -- is that they make it easier for the civil servants to avoid doing the supervisory job they are paid for, by subcontracting it to Logica. (And the taxpayer pays, of course, for their idleness).

We need to get past this system whereby only big companies can security clear, thereby forcing extra layers of middlemen on every contract. Surely any UK company should be able to apply to clear its staff? More competition would surely drive prices down.

Posted on 21 November 2009 14:23 by F.E.

Douglas

This is OT, but I can't find an email address for you here. I've been trawling through the hacked emails from CRU, and found one that looks suspiciously like parliament was mislead in regard to questions of funding by DEFRA. I know you love this sort of thing, so have a look yourself and see what you think:

http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?eid=943&filename=1228922050.txt

Posted on 22 November 2009 12:19 by boy on a bike

I recently attended a lecture on the UAVs the RAF fly from California. The officer said the RAF wanted to buy more but it has been decided that we will develope our own. They will be ready in about five years time.

Posted on 22 November 2009 16:40 by Barry

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