The Ministry of Defence (MOD) is facing significant scrutiny after a report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) revealed a substantial shortfall in funding for the UK’s military capabilities.
According to the report, there is a £16.9 billion deficit between the MOD’s budget and the required funding for desired military capabilities, despite a £46.3 billion increase in the Equipment Plan budget.
This marks the largest gap since the MOD began publishing these plans in 2012 and represents a significant deterioration from the previous year’s financial situation, which was already deemed unrealistic by the committee.
The report criticises the MOD for not including the costs of all capabilities expected by the government in its budget calculations, only accounting for those it can afford. This oversight is exemplified by the Army potentially needing an additional £12 billion to fund the government’s full list of capabilities.
The PAC accuses the MOD of lacking the necessary discipline to balance its budget and make tough decisions on which equipment programmes to prioritise.
Repeated issues with defence procurement, including delays and budget overruns, have been highlighted by the PAC in past reports. This year’s findings continue to point out these failings, emphasising the need for the MOD to take firmer control of its procurement processes.
The committee has also called for improvements in the transparency and effectiveness of future Equipment Plans to enable better parliamentary scrutiny. It expresses concern over the inability to fully scrutinise spending in certain sensitive areas of defence due to security reasons, suggesting a need for a solution to allow effective oversight across all areas of defence spending and delivery.
In response to the Department’s statement in the House on 28 February 2024 regarding Acquisition Reform and the proposed new Integrated Procurement Model (IPM), the PAC has not yet formed an opinion but encourages future committees to consider the impact of these reforms on the MOD Equipment Plan.
Thanks for leaving the country in the hands of our enemies.
The PAC is basically telling the MOD that it has to cut at least £17 bn from the equipment budget or make cuts elsewhere. And it believes that in practice there also a lot of hidden costs uncounted for which will require more cuts. The sheer scale of the required cuts are breath-taking, e.g. cancelling the last three T26 frigates might “save” £3bn, cancelling the Challenger 3 tank programme perhaps £1 bn. Obviously these salami slices aren’t sufficient, whilst having a devastating effect on overall defence capabilities and industry. It will need something really big to go such as the… Read more »
I have alway supported the NHS and argued on here that we should be able to accomodate a decent NHS whilst also advocating monies for defence and believed they need not be mutally exclusive- However I will do so no longer. To provide monies for ‘IT application enhancement’ following the not so distant bebacle regards NHS IT upgrades that failed miserably is financial suicide and speaks volumes of their incompetance and misguided priorities. I cannot stand Hunt maybe he’s trying to curry favour with the Health Service following his failed tenure as Health Secretary. The sooner they are out the… Read more »
I used to work with the NHS. Absolute mess of management and admin. Just a huge bottomless pit of money. But no Government will dare touch it knowing anyone trying to change it would be the death knell of the party.
It’s a mess tbh. The Doctors and Nurses are superb but it needs to be scrubbed and started again.
For sure Sunak has it will be alright on the night attitude 🙄
What should probably be cut is Tempest. That is something that is simply going to eat the entire defence budget, only to be cancelled a decade down the road. The UK is not going to build a new generation fighter when the US spent $1.7 trillion to develop and build the F-35.
That’ll be a huge cave in and waste. 🇬🇧 needs its flagship developments otherwise others will do it for us and we’ll end up buying from them. Plus damage the relationship with Japan and Italy.
Not to develop and build; US gov accountability office says the F35 will cost the US $1.7tn over the life of the project, which includes LIFEX (is that a thing for planes?), weapons integration, maintenance and disposal.
We’re supposed to spend about £12bn developing Tempest pre-production.
F35 is a 5th Gen aircraft, the Tempest is a 6th Gen Aircraft. Understand where your coming from. But what is the current option after the F35? We need to be planning for the future and regardless of what that is (tank, Ship or Aircraft) it will be costly and there is no getting away from that, unless we buy someone else’s kit and that will not go down well with the public when we have a very capable industry here. What doesn’t help is the MOD’s procurement process.
RB, Agree w/ your analysis (do not have the knowledge/expertise to comment on NHS). Am pondering the hypothesis that, in both the UK and the US, the political class believes that it is sufficiently insulated from the consequences of underfunding defence/defense, that signs of impending conflict can be safely ignored. Business as usual can be conducted until hostilities commence, and then the volunteer, professional forces will absorb the losses, until citizen armies are raised by government fiat. In the States it is sometimes referred to as the mission of the “leading and bleeding” classes. The only way to rectify that… Read more »
Where’s Mr Shapps in all of this conversation to give some “accountability”, pardon the pun, back to the PAC? Bloody big money, must be easy to see on their spreadsheets.
We have to remember. That the increase in defence spending across some EU nations is still below what we have been spending for decades.
Although you right about many EU / NATO countries not spending enough on defence,
the difference between the UK & all other European countries apart from France is we have more than one potential enemy due to having responsibilities outside of Europe. To fulfil these responsibilities we need a large navy & the ability to transport personnel & equipment quickly etc, unfortunately particularly the Tories have significantly cut these capabilities with cuts to the navy & transport aircraft.
Maybe, just maybe it is all meant to collapse? Everything is. The sacred cow of NHS must be fed. The MIC must have its slices of raw profit. Meanwhile, taxed at wartime rates people get poorer. Many more millionaires created due to corruption, corporate greed grows. Worse? A bunch of politicians so out of touch with the populations feelings it is incredible. Doris Johnson, thank you, you are a true patriot.
The NHS is simply too expensive and the people who use it the most aren’t sharing most of the burden.
NHS fees need to go up. The “free for all” health care promise is unsustainable.
The nhs is still just about the cheapest system in the west. The issue is our population refuse to take care of themselves.
Whilst I agree that many don’t follow sound advice I really don’t think thats the real root cause of the issues- thats a far too simplistic and deflective stance.
My opinion is that the lack of early diagnosis of many problems subsequently cause further issues requiring multiple treaments.
The track record of treatment once diagnosed is commendable however our capability & capacity to identify issues early enough necesitate far more costly treatment later.
But what causes the lack of early diagnosis is overwhelming demand…a service that is managing so much I’ll health cannot manage preventative care…at present our GP services see around 45% same day need…and 55% long term conditions management…but it should be 20% same day and 80% planned long term management…but you cannot not see the same day…so the problem becomes a doom spiral that is created by over-demand..all the services I work with would love to do more preventive healthcare…but what do we do…let the people who need care now just die why we go off and engage with the… Read more »
The problem isn’t the ambition of providing free for all healthcare, the problem is, and I hate to sound all conspiracy theorist here, the vast number of non-jobs and hangers on. I work in the NHS (Wales) and the sheer number of “managers” who couldn’t manage their way out of a wet paper bag is mind-boggling. You could genuinely sack 50% of the managers and the frontline staff wouldn’t even notice. They do nothing to improve the frontline treatment of patients. It’s a bit of a cliche now but every trust has a suite of diversity and inclusion “managers”… why?… Read more »
Agree, I worked in adult psychiatry for 20 years, the waste was appalling. It is not there for the “users”, it is there for the people who work in it. And you are right, the need for compulsory health insurance has never been greater.
To be honest, I’m struggling to understand why, the NHS is being mentioned in the same conversation as the Armed Forces budget cuts?
I think a lot of people like to blame the NHS…for many things.
I don’t think its necessarily a case of people blaming the NHS directly for the decline of the armed forces, more the recognition that this particular public service is absorbing more and more of the national purse leaving nothing for the other equally important departments. I know that you know that more than most and I don’t know enough about how the money is spent in the NHS to offer any solution. I am genuinely interested in what those who know more think can be done to halt and even reverse this interminable trend.
To be honest Andy, it’s not so much an NHS project as a societal one as well as a moral dilemma that the politicians and public don’t wish to face and the beast we face is health care inflation and demand. If we look at healthcare inflation…it’s not the same as normal inflation..it’s usually a bit behind normal societal inflation and it’s also generally around 2% or so higher..so a graph of healthcare inflation will have the same shape as a normal inflation graph but be a bit later ( as it reacts to wider societal inflation) it also runs… Read more »
So a drift towards increasingly sedentary lifestyles coupled with the sheer cost of modern frontline treatments plus an increasingly aging population = financial overburden. Whats your take on the often repeated criticism of bureaucratic overload and excessive middle management in the NHS?
pretty much although I would say one of the key elements around the loss of public health and cost to the NHS is ultra processed food…it’s probably the biggest driver of long term conditions and poor health in our society by a long way and the effects of it probably suck a majority of the NHS budget as is affects every system in the body ( cardiac, respiratory, all organs) if you just look at obesity and diabetes as two of the complications of ultra processed food your looking at 20 billion a year in costs. That whole middle manage… Read more »
Thanks for the comprehensive reply 👍
Because NHS it is a giant part of the budget.
It is time the politician took defence seriously. They like to sit at the top table but frankly and I hate to admit it, we are rapidly becoming a paper tiger and in an increasingly dangerous world, that is a very vulnerable place to be.. Yes we spend 2% but it is an accounting exercise and nothing like that goes to our front line conventional forces. At least 15 billion goes to maintain the Nuclear deterrent. Building the Dreadnaught boats is a massive drain on the budget. It is time that the nuclear deterrent was separately funded again, as it… Read more »
It comes down to this: politicians believe that there are higher priority areas to spend money. They likely believe this because that is what their constituents believe.
Given that money is finite, what are you willing to cut? Foreign aid? Climate change spending? The NHS? Alternatively, are you willing to raise taxes? Most Labour and Conservative politicians are almost certainly going to answer “no” on cuts in any of those areas. And both parties are likely to be extremely hesitant to raise taxes. So given that, the defence budget is not going up. It’s as simple as that.
I am well aware of the political landscape and the countries economic situation and also the realities of the public purse.
My point is simple,defence of the country is any governments No 1 priority, we are living in an increasingly unstable word and I very much doubt that either Putin or his buddies will wait for us to grown the economy
In theory yes … but the CDS just stated (and presumably the Government agrees) that Russia would “easily and quickly defeated” if it attacked NATO. Hence, they believe there is no need to increase defence spending.
Let’s hope Russia got the same memo.
And the US, since they will be responsible for 95% of the ‘defeating’.
Europe needs to stand on its own two feet as it is clear as long as the republicans are in the equation. US cannot be depended on.
There are some very worrying signs of poor cognition in Downing Street. They are more than just Defence Blind. They are defence disinterested. If there was a decision which was a 100% required which meant they had to spend additional money on defence and not on a department that they liked more they still wouldn’t do it. Defence simply just isn’t their thing. They don’t talk about it. They don’t think about it and when reality ever intervenes to interupt their practised ignorance they ignore it. They would rather virtue signal another pointless sacrifice of money to the “Holy NHS”.… Read more »