Blame the managers. UK industry has good Engineers, Scientists etc, but a lot of bad managers. A lot of the problem is that many managers do not have any qualifications, training or prior experience in relevent fields. Thus....
a) They become bean counters - and focus on short term savings whilst not seeing the big picture.
b) They lack an "Engineer's feel" for things - by which I mean they are unable to tell if things are wrong unless its put into statistics and simplistic numbers for them.
c) They try to look at it from an arty farty perspective (see below).
I was shocked a few years ago when I stumbled across the details of some media studies type who was being employed by the DPA on FCBA (as it was back in those days). Exactly how was he considered qualified?
Every procurement horror story seems to be the same - bad management by the contractors , bad management by the Services/MOD, and political goalpost moving. And penny pinching.