PDR1
Do you have any evidence of that? I ask because at the time of the 2010 SDSR the first three aeroplanes were on the point of handover to the RAF (they would have entered servive within 90 days) and the RTS was ready for signing.
Hansard, 3 February 2014, during an exchange between Mr Kevan Jones MP (Labour) and Mr Philip Hammond, Secretary of State for Defence. The latter stated:
“It is a bit rich for him to say that the gap in maritime patrol cover was created by this Government. What this Government did was to recognise the reality that his Government had been investing in aircraft that would never fly, would never be certified and would never be able to deliver a capability”
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Yet, two years before, Mr Hammond had repeated the MoD claim that the decision was purely a savings measure: “Scrapping the Nimrod MRA4 was one of many tough but necessary decisions we had to take to deal with an equipment programme that was out of control”.
Hammond has not yet apologised for misleading Parliament, nor the MoD for lying to him in a briefing.
There may have been a Release to Service document prepared, but no-one signed it. There have been many examples of an RTS being signed prematurely, and it is likely ACAS stopped short on MRA4 because his predecessors had been caught out during, for example, the Nimrod and Mull of Kintyre Reviews.