The current situation of divided and delegated responsibility for the delivery and affordability of the EPP and ESP leads to lack of clarity on accountability for the affordability (and delivery of value for money) from the equipment programme as a whole for years beyond "Year 0" (i.e., the current year).
This results in a situation where the managers of the programme (i.e., the MoD Capability Sponsor) are unable to exercise restraint in curtailing the programme in out years. This leads to unrealistic forecast spending levels being embedded in DE&S and industry thinking at levels lower down the organisation, which are then revised on a year to year basis through the planning round process in order to ensure the Year 0 projection is affordable.
More generally, financial responsibility is dispersed across the Department, being split between DG Strategy (who deals with long-term strategic planning), DG Finance (whose planning horizon is much shorter) and the finance functions that exist within each TLB. The introduction of the dual DG Finance and DG Strategy roles is a recent innovation, which was only introduced in 2008. Previously the plan was submitted to the Defence Board, as part of the wider defence programme, by DG Finance (with an annexe from DCDS(EC), as was)
The separation of long-term planning from more routine, shorter-term budgeting has the potential to strengthen the financial oversight applied to the Equipment Plan and to some extent this may serve to diminish the single-Service pressures that have lead to the generation of such an overheated EP. But since DG Strategy is neither responsible for the EP in the way that DCDS(Cap) is, nor the budget holder who determines where money is actually spent, it seems unlikely that this change will resolve all of the problems that are identified elsewhere in this chapter.