Originally Posted by
Just This Once...
Not the case Harry as MoD has surprisingly little financial authority. The Treasury has almost total control and are usually behind the most outrageous financial moves with zero responsibility for any outcome. Somehow the media has never truly grasped that the Treasury controls everything above £250k and that the really big ticket items are, in turn, very much at the whim of the politicians.
I understand that but how on God's earth can a Ministry produce a forecast that hasn't addressed the points listed by Skua:-
•A failure to include £9.6 billion in forecast costs for equipment on top of the £1.3 billion omission related to the Type 31e frigates.
•A question over whether there is money to fund the last in a fleet of seven Astute-class attack submarines after the cost of the programme grew by £365 million.
•A lack of “reliable data” to forecast the cost to support next generation F-35 jets and a query over assumed savings in the support plan for two new aircraft carriers “at a time when the department was still to finalise the relevant contracts”.
•No budget to fund increasing costs to keep an older fleet of Type 23 frigates running because of delays in ordering replacement ships.
That is NOT the Treasury's responsibility - they are clearly gross omissions by people who know (or should know) what is going on. If they don't know what is going on is there any point in their existence???