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I've no idea whether the Gray report has been kicked into the long grass or not. I'm sure it will reveal some pretty awful MoD procurement outcomes stretching back over 25 years (and probably longer).

Remember the TSR2? That was poo-pood by Lord Mountbatten, who preferred a US built aircraft (which was NEVER delivered).

I'm as keen on a rapid release of the report into the MG-Rover fiasco. It stills amazes me that an enquiry over 4 years did not make any of the participants feel that there were grounds for a reference to the Fraud Office or SCO. That only happened when it hit the minister's desk. (Yes, Lond M.) Why?

Either the people conducting the enquiry failed in their civic duty, or there isn't much true reason for referral. Funny that it will take months before any proper assessment whether any funny business did actually take place. Could just take until early June of next year?

Any report paid for by the tax-payer should be made available to us. OK, some aspects may require "redaction" if a judicial (not political) review believes some national security aspects must be protected. But we deserve to know.

Likewise with the Gray Report. I can't see why the Afghan involvement means that any government attempt to improve the way it manages MoD activity would give succour to the enemy. (They have enough insight into the quirks of UK government decisions, anyway.)

It doesn't bode well for the spat of government inquiries running at the moment - it seems to imply that if the government doesn't like the results they will simply the inquiry team back until they get results they do like.

Perhaps we now know why John Hutton resigned. He was always one of the more honest and straight ministers and like the PR guy from the Ministry of Defence interviewed last night rightly did not have the stomach to go on misleading the public about the shortcomings in making the right funding available for the front line.

The incompetency is not just in this one department but is in all departments. We need a party in power who can go through the whole lot like a dose of salts.

This is why the country is in so much debt. Gross incompetency by this government at every level and cowardice in trying to hide it.

Laura, you say "the Tories are pressing the line that Downing Street quashed the report because its findings were too damning"

This sounds entirely plausible as it is typical of Labour to try to bury bad news, or to spin in order to conceal the truth. This Labour government simply cannot be trusted on defense or indeed any other matter.

Our troops are not properly equipped, patrol vehicles are inadequately protected from roadside mines, and helicopters are in short supply or not armoured. Whilst the government fights compensation claims from wounded servicemen, it can still find billions to waste on pet projects such as ID cards and the olympics.

To add insult to injury, Brown is happy to pour billions down the drain with his so-called fiscal stimuli and negligent administration of the economy (some would say a scorched earth policy).

Still, at least the bankers continue receiving their massive bonuses, so it's not all doom and gloom, eh?

Maybe they've just run out of whitewash and need to wait for next months delivery before they can release the report.

Time for a judicious leak of information in the public interest, methinks.

If the report contained anything positive at all about way the government operates, then I am sure that there would be leaks etc praising their successes to the high heavens.

But given the absence of such things, and the governments inability to organise anything without it descending into a farcical shambles, it would not be unreasonable to assume that the report will probably unveil major issues and problems with the MoD.

This seems to be the New Labour way of dealing with such things. "Good days to bury bad news " have been replaced with "to be published after the election".

I have no idea if it is unfinished or simply the truth is unpalatable for the government - but if it way positive about Gordy and his PG Tips Advert of a cabinet, then the report would have been finished and published long before now.

#1 TSR2 was actually killed of in dramatic fashion by messers Wilson
and Healy. Wether MountBatten like it or not does not matter it was the LABOUR gov that killed it in favour of F1-11. Much like today we have the
JSF rather than a naval Thypoon. The bit of JSF that we have are not great from a technology and Industrial point of view the USA has seen to that.

for the Current issues we need to talk Helicopters.

Particulary the chinook MK3 debacle. The replacemwent upgrade of the MK2/2A's (NEP)around 10 only that was rushed into the field then the 4+ year wait to upgrade these to a formal standard, then a MK4 solution could then be delivered another 2-3 years later.

long long after the troops would have liked them.

the reason for the delays was funding issues from the treasury ie Brown+co.

Our troops need around 100+ chinook helicopters for the job in hand,
we have 10 only. They are being worked into the ground. Robbing parts from the 8 MK3 sitting in a hanger.

Quite simply they have not wanted to back the troops with the right equipement for reasons of cost.

You have to remember that this all occured in the biggest economic boom time in history.

So where did all the money go for this time period.

Squnadered in other departements that waste far money money than the MOD
ever has.

What people do not realise is that these are very complex systems that have long lead times to develop and need very high skill base to succeed.

Something that is currently lacking.

for the last 12 years the defence "industry" has been in a state of stagnation. Given we have been fighting a number of wars this is quite incredible.

#1 fairlyopenmind

I agree with you, I really don't why publication of this review has been deferred although, if it's negative, I could probably hazard a guess... the already flimsy public support (47% against with 46% for our presence according to ICM) would become yet flimsier.

With the Americans wanting more from us, this would be a disaster.

As for the report itself, well, as you already suggest, it's not going to tell us anything new - there have been procurement problems at the MOD for years.

It's interesting, successive British governments have invested their faith in our troops training, believing that this somehow will make up for being under-equiped. This is fine in very small conflicts or missions (Sierra Leone when the SAS liberated members of the army from the West Side Boys), however, not so good in larger ones such as Afghanistan.

Has anyone at the MoD wondered why our special forces select their own weapons?

Excellent!--a running story with the potential to provide us with some insight into the workings of this government.

ps At the time 2001 they new we would need far more Helo's.

We could have licence built the required number over here with British
equipement etc.

But we have the PUMP/Seaking debacle as the Medium light helicopter programme has not even started and would be at least 5-10 years before in service.

PUMA have been around since 1970's and where due to retire 2012 time.
but they tried to go for the PUMP LEP until the Unions found out that a lot of the work would be done in romania and not much in UK. Some was even going to Canada to keep the cost down. Rather than have the British designed solution that the RAF wanted. Thus potential putting the troops in more danger.

So now we are going to modify Seakings but only a small number compared to what is required. Its all tokenism. With no real affinity for the Armed servives and the job they do.

Name ZanuLabur MPS that have come from

1) The Armed Services 00000000000000000000000000000
2) Social Services 40+
3) legal eagles 100+

that says it all really

It seems that pretty much all enquiries serve merely to obfuscate some current issue or other until the media fuss has died down. It squares the circle perfectly because they can claim to be "taking action" by setting up an enquiry or report, in the full knowledge that both events and personnel will have changed by the time the thing is published.

But then again, I was re-reading Yes Minister last week and while it might be a mere comedy, this was listed by Humphrey Appleby as one of the most powerful tools in the arsenal of bureaucracy...

Just watched Harry Patch's funeral live from Wells Cathedral. The choirister sang the old Peter Paul and Mary hit:

"Where have all the flowers gone" about the futility of war.

Nuff said.

When will they ever learn....

typical governmental method if you look at their record.
we are lucky to have an armed force in this country the way they have been treated by recent governments.
you can not cut the budget and at the same time expect the military to do more, half arsed measures result in loss of life to a greater degree.
this government should be fully ashamed of themselves over their handling of out military.

Presumably this report was funded by taxpayers. Therefore it is our property. I delegated to my local MP the job of checking reports on matters like this, so he should be given access to a copy. I think I'll ask him to report on its contents.

I disapprove of the plan to cancel publication so that its contents can be put into the more comprehensive defence review. We bought the study; let's see what it found. Now.

Laura: Thank you for tackling an important topic like this.

Was the Gray report quashed?
Is the Pope Catholic? Do bears etc....

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

~8. At 1:01pm on 06 Aug 2009, IR35_SURVIVOR wrote:
#1 TSR2 was actually killed of in dramatic fashion by messers Wilson
and Healy. Wether MountBatten like it or not does not matter it was the LABOUR gov that killed it in favour of F1-11. Much like today we have the
JSF rather than a naval Thypoon. The bit of JSF that we have are not great from a technology and Industrial point of view the USA has seen to that."

IR35, I've had so many comments immediately removed or referred to the mods (and killed off) in the recent period, that I have tried to make comments as neutral as possible (and I keep checking the House Rules!).

I concur. The TSR2 proved itself in development. The decision to scrap it was a body blow to the UK aviation industry. The contract for the F-111K (its planned replacement) was itself cancelled because that aircraft became wildly too expensive.

My point was simply that procurement in high-tech areas is extremely difficult, prone to cost-overruns and changing perceptions of need, whichever party may be in power.

You always hope that people in government understand all the issues. They need well-qualified technical (or other pragmatic specialists) to assist in decision making. I'd suggest that there are too many recent projects that appear to have been approved from what I'd call Powerpointitis.

If you want an innovative NHS IT system, you'll get maybe 4 or 5 groups competent to submit proposals that run to 10,000 pages. (I watched one such being developed...) No minister is going to read, understand or be bothered with that level of detail. What they finally get is a highly summarised synopsis of potential benefits from the candidate proposals. Which makes them totally dependent on their department's staff (plus any independent groups who can help analyse the downside or upside of choosing a supplier).

All that stuff gets boiled down to presentations. Smart, well thought through, but almost bereft of fine detail. And very few potential suppliers have the courage to say "Actually, Minister, you don't have a real grasp of the challenges you and we will face".

The MoD is in the unique position that it is responsible for delivering an effective defence of UK interests. The "interests" are determined by politicians. The money allocated is very often tightly managed, constrained in order to effect closer to home political or social ambitions.

I always felt it was an awful decision to place Des Browne in, to make him Minister of Defence as well as Minister for Scotland (while Wales had its own Minister). That was IMHO a reflection of the uncertain grasp that this administration has of the role of the military forces.

If the Gray Report shows up flaws in procurement, so what? If you can't be honest with yourself, what chance do you have of convincing the electorate that you will be honest with them?

Sounds like the government should have taken Sir Humphrey's advice from Yes Prime Minister - "Never agree to a public inquiry unless you know the outcome first."

Defence procurement contracts are in danger taking so long that they are practically deprecated technology by the time they are finished. This is not in our best interests. However, if every step in the administration process will take weeks to complete (as opposed to hours) then it does serve the interests of the bureaucrats who want to keep their cushy jobs. Furthermore, holding everything back can even attract kick-backs from the contractor to speed things up.

It's not unlike the NHS where: transferring your own medical file from one practice to another will take over 13 weeks - unless you physically pick the files up and hand deliver them yourself; where a packet of Paracetamol can cost many times more than the retail equivalent of the same quality, quantity and packaging; where surgical consultants occupying "management" roles continue to resist any change in the organisational structure so they and their cronies can keep getting paid for unnecessary jobs.

And where the failed MP's from the next election can fall into better paid board and management roles with the help of their old-school pals who are happy to return the favour... hence the delay until the next election.

Can the mods tell me please why my posting name has mysteriously changed from "moraymint" to "you"? What's happened?

I won't encourage anyone with an ounce of national duty to "leak" the report as that would probably be illegal ;o)

moraymint 22

My posting name is you as well. Reason is you is you.

#22
I 'you' too!

I have come to regard all these reprots, investigations, inquiries as balance of self-interests - commercial, personal, and political.

Gray will just have to keep on revising the report until he gets it right, then it will be published as an "independent" report.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

Interesting that this report, like so many others recently, will be delayed until after the election. It is almost as if Labour expect to lose, and that the current cabinet will either lose their seats, or have moved on to pastures new, and so not be accountable to Parliament. Surely not?

There are still far too many people on here who cannot accept two simple facts
1) The British Empire is long gone
2) Britain is not a world power.

Until this country realises this and stops playing at great power nonsense our defence budget will continue to be grossly over stretched.

Those Tories on here who keep moaning about the defence budget should remember that some of their great heroes were not so great at defence procurement.

Didn't Churchill send HMS Hood an overweight obsolete tub into battle against the Bismarck? Then there was the HMS Prince of Wales/Repulse fiasco. Sunk because of no air cover. Did the Tory papers demand Churchill's head on a plate? Over 3000 dead because of defence procurement problems!

Laura K.
Bernard Gray himself is on holiday and unavailable for comment. Until we hear it from him, we may not know what really happened.

=

Guaranteed, even then you will not know what really happened.

#19 was not having ago just trying to get the real names in the picture
as much of this gets air brushed out. Even if it risks the mods (personaly I prefer rockers)

you are not the onl yone that get moderated out seems that lots do see
my post on the cats away blog.

Something sinister is a foot

I get moded when talking about Ö÷²¥´óÐã lack of being nuteral or family courts quite a bit some of it for of "alleged" off blog. ie they just want to silence you.

now this is strange our UAV is being done by the Isrealise, cause our industry has been steadilty undermined over the years. Yet they want to bring a arm embargo in on the Isrealise. joined up NOT.

Fundanental Zanu-labour and all its previous incarnation does not car about the armed served and the support that is required. Which over the years has made us more and more dependant on the USA, preversly for them.

TRS2 lead to the botched F4-phathom and later the

3-nation Tornado
4-nation EFA

which actually we could have down all our selved just see what the French
have done. Then we might not be such a poddle to the USA in the last 12 years.

29. At 3:16pm on 06 Aug 2009, yellowbelly1959 wrote:
Interesting that this report, like so many others recently, will be delayed until after the election. It is almost as if Labour expect to lose, and that the current cabinet will either lose their seats, or have moved on to pastures new, and so not be accountable to Parliament. Surely not?

-----------------------------------

This was something that started as far back in 1997 prior to Labour gaining power. There were a whole raft of measures that the Tories were set to make decisions on, but under the elctoral rules the Opposition can ask that they be deferred to after the election. Nothing wrong with that.

But in many instances the new incoming government were none to keen about getting their hands dirty and make decisions. One of the issues was power generation in that the Magnox Nuclear power stations were ending their shelf life. Labour prevaricated for 12 years, until early this year when Brown sold british Nuclear to EDF. But some of these old stations are closing now and with nothing replacing them profitable viables smelters for instance are closing down and making hundreds redundant.

Defence spending in many ways has been defined by a spending review in the early years of Blair predicated on Britain not fighting any substantial wars - we only got involved in two! Strategically the UK got caught with its pants down, and there was no Plan B. I think that this government is good at micro managing, but planning over the long term is either ignored or is seen to have no political davantage/benefit and so is given a low priority.

It could be the report is innocuous, but Brown would rather block it in case the opposition might get some mileage out of it. Actually we do not need this report. Simply search on your browser for "UK defence procurement errors" and the story of the Gray report being suppressed is just one of many.

#30 uk_abz_scot.

hope you are not sayign I'm tory ?

You highlighed the problem , you use subtle twisting of history.

you forget that Mr Churchill had been making statements for years about
issues in the 1930's and was powerless to make changes but when he was in power he had to deal with the tools at his disposal. As building capital ships in wartime takes a lot of effort.

After reading Lord Moran book about Mr Churchill's war years it is quite clear he did not like service personal lifes to be thrown away but he was also prepared to make decisions that would cost life because others around were NOT prepared to stand up to the plate.

That wh ywe have a free'ish country today.

What Mr Blair and brown and CO have done to our service personal is shameful utterly shameful.

Mr Churchhill made a famous speech Called "give us the Tools".

Never has that been more apt.

The falklands war was conducted after the IMF had bailed the country
out therefore the finances were a dogs dinner and hard decisions made some of them wrong only because of shortages of money.

This time there was no shortage of money it was just withheld by Brown.


I have highlighted a 4-6 procurement gap in the middle of a war at the hight of GDP growth, A situation (GDP growth) Mr Churchill was not lucky enough to find the UK in, but we had the required bave people like now.

I think the word would be a better place if we had a bit more power as this might allow use to stand up to the USA and prevent some of there foolies, which might then please you

22. At 1:59pm on 06 Aug 2009, moraymint wrote:
"Can the mods tell me please why my posting name has mysteriously changed from "moraymint" to "you"? What's happened?"

I asked the same question 5 times on the last blog. I am not "you either. Unfortunately, the only answer the mods gave was to delete my postings..even though they also contained comments relevant to the blog.
To comply; This government in general and Gordon Brown in particular have never given proper front-line funding to where it was needed. Big fancy up date of MOD HQ..zilch for the abominal living quarters servicemen & their families have to endure. £1k a pop for office chairs for the MOD staff.- not enough £135 a go body vests for the troops.
iver £2billion a year wasted on failed procurements...nothing left for proper armoured vehicles, helicopters etc.
The real shame of the last 12 years...the illegal invasion of Iraq..took all the attention away from the real fight in Afghanistan...so troops who lost comrades taking ground, had to watch it being it re-taken by the Taliban because they had insufficient armour, equipment and actual troops on the ground.
notsosilentmajority

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

Just a note: the only person who can see the posts posted by "You" is yourself. If that makes sense.

How about: Posts which you post will be listed as written by "You" because You wrote them.

Or perhaps: If, for example, notsosilentmajority wrote a post, they would see that post as being written by "You". However, everybody else could see it as being by "notsosilentmajority". If you log out, you should be able to see your name instead of "You".

I'm still not making much sense with this, I think... Hope it helps some people?

#30 uk_abz_scot

We disagree on a number of things, but I am wholly in agreement with your

1) The British Empire is long gone
2) Britain is not a world power.

Whichever nation-state we choose to be, our future has to lie in being a defensive European one, not an aggressive, interventionist, regime changing one.

#34 IR35_SURVIVOR

"I think the word would be a better place if we had a bit more power"

Just as Britain improved the world through the Opium Wars in the 19th century?

Google the cost of redecorating and refurbishing the MoD HQ to see where their priorities lie.

To General_Fondue at 37

Many thanks General....you are quite correct...
Now the only question is why has this been happening today? It hasn't happened before, and I'm not the only one caught out.
For those who haven't seen it yet - Laura has logged a significant update on this story..with more to follow.
I agree with many other bloggers..Laura seems to write without paying attention to the sort of "spin" we have become used to.

34. At 4:35pm on 06 Aug 2009, IR35_SURVIVOR wrote:

"I think the word would be a better place if we had a bit more power as this might allow use to stand up to the USA and prevent some of there foolies, which might then please you"

=

I think the 'power' should come from being more self sufficient in energy and manufacturing, not military muscle. Unfortunately we're selling off our assets and borrowing like mad so we'll always be poor relations in the industrialised world.

Laura:

Bernard Gray himself is on holiday and unavailable for comment. Until we hear it from him, we may not know what really happened.

Until, Mr. Gray is unavailable...I am keep my own opinion regarding the quashing of the report...Unknown, since, I want to make an informed decision...

~Dennis Junior~

Good work Laura, this is EXACTLY the kind of thing our erstwhile Political Editor SHOULD have been doing over the last 12 months. Excellent stuff, keep it up!

Anybody who works in the defence sector, either in uniform, for one of the myriad of service providers or as a consultant knows all about this and worse.

In fairness to them, not all of it is down to the civil service. Most of it is, but not all of it. The three service chiefs themselves have an awful lot to answer for.

And as I hinted at, these are just the ones that make it into the public domain. You'd be surprised just how much of a pigs ear can be made from the silk purse of public funding.