It looks like the new government are now beginning to discover just how bad a situation they have inherited.
Labour hid ‘scorched earth’ debts worth billions - TimesOnline 16 May 10
The “black holes” that ministers have already unearthed include:
- A series of defence contracts signed shortly before the election, including a £13 billion tanker aircraft programme whose cost has “astonished and baffled” ministers.
Actually, it was signed off quite a while ago IIRC, but I can understand their bewilderment.
Gerald Howarth, the new Tory minister for defence procurement, disclosed that the financial pressures on the Ministry of Defence (MoD) were even graver than he had been expecting. “The appetite for new programmes exceeded the capacity of the MoD’s stomach, particularly in the run-up to the election,” he said. “In the past few months there was a rush of new orders. What we are going to have to do is ensure the equipment programme matches the military need.”
Defence sources say the military has been using the urgent operational requirement (UOR) to borrow money from the Treasury to fund equipment for Afghanistan that the MoD could not afford to buy. “They’ve been using the UOR system like a credit card,” one source said, “and they’ve been maxing out on the card to the point where they’re around £700m over the limit. It’s all got to be paid back.”
Standby for a very interesting Defence Review!