Procurers are on a hiding to nothing.
Correct. And its nothing to do with them anyway. It is the role of the User to quantify his requirement and make materiel / financial provision. The "procurer" is then given this information and funding.
As the Users stopped doing this in the early 90s, more often than not the M&F provision cannot be reconciled with the actual requirement. Invariably the latter is not matched by the funding. Procurers are blamed for cost overruns, but often all they have done is bought a few spares so the aircraft won't be grounded the first time there is a failure.
For example, and just to show I'm not just having a pop at RAF suppliers
, in 1995 the RN (ASE) stated it would no longer quantify its own requirement, that MoD(PE) should do it. If PE got it wrong, then so be it. If you don't quantify, you can't cost accurately. From that day onwards, many project offices defaulted to one per aircraft, and no spares. It was the one solution that could be justified to beancounters. If they sought spares, the BCs would ask for the User statement of requirement. There wasn't one, so.....