Q71 Austin Mitchell: Yes, improvisation.
Ursula Brennan: Not just IEDs, but other things to do with the weather, the heat-all sorts of things for which we had to adjust our vehicles and get new vehicles. That was specifically for the threats in theatre. We have been seeking to balance our budget and taking money out all over the place to bring it into balance. We didn't specifically target armoured fighting vehicles. We did a balance that said "There is no point in taking out cost from programmes that are already on contract, where the liability is greater than the saving we can make." So yes, it's true we looked at, first, the places where the spend was uncommitted; but that wasn't the only reason why we came to-
Q72 Austin Mitchell: But that means you are getting the vehicles at a higher price, because paragraph 15 says that the cost would have been lower had more armoured vehicle projects of the Department's core programme been delivered as originally planned; so you are paying more for the process of improvisation that is going on.
Ursula Brennan: It's certainly true, and I think we have acknowledged, that there were failings in the procurement of armoured fighting vehicles, and if we had actually delivered some of those vehicles that we planned to deliver on time, clearly some of the cost would not have been nugatory.
Vice-Admiral Lambert: Some of the £2.8 billion has been spent on upgrading vehicles that are part of the core programme; but it is right that, if the core programme had delivered a vehicle for the troops, that would have been used instead of some of the PPVs, so I think that comment here is partly correct.
Q73 Austin Mitchell: Well, improvisation had to go on, of course, because people were being killed, but let's turn now the question of why the core programme didn't deliver; because figure 1 on page 5-if you look at projects that are part of the core programme-looks as though you are making them over-elaborate or gold-plating them beyond the necessary technical limits. "Tactical Reconnaissance Armoured Combat Equipment Requirement... Cancelled". "Multi-Role armoured vehicle... Cancelled." "Future Rapid Effect System-Utility Vehicle... Suspended. "Future Rapid Effect System- Specialist Vehicle...Delayed: in-service." "Warrior Capability...Delayed: In-service". "Terrier armoured engineer vehicle... Delayed: in-service".
Why is all this going on? Why are you making such a cock-up of the standard budget? Or why did you? It wasn't you; because as usual the people appearing before us have been appointed later than the mess; but why did the mess occur?
Vice-Admiral Lambert: I think the TRACER programme was started with the best intention, and there were several other programmes, which started with the best of intentions of trying to get to the cutting edge so that we could deliver equipment right at the forefront of technology-
Q74 Austin Mitchell: They were over-elaborate, though. Men were dying, meanwhile.
Vice-Admiral Lambert: No; the TRACER programme, which was cancelled in 2001, would have delivered a reconnaissance vehicle that would have been at the cutting edge anywhere around the world. It was over-elaborate. The multi-role armoured vehicle programme was something completely different. The requirement was for something that could be deployed very rapidly; with the MRAV programme, as it progressed the view was that it was going to become too heavy to be deployed quickly by air. In hindsight it probably wasn't. In hindsight, the amount of armour that was going on MRAV was probably about right, and our priority of putting deployability over armour was not right. The UV programme got over-complex in the commercial arrangements and part of that was-and this is where they had systems of systems, integrators, etc-a commercial issue rather than an issue of requirement.
Q75 Chair: What did you get right?
Vice-Admiral Lambert: The Warrior programme was right. The whole of the UOR programme has created-
Q76 Chair: The Warrior programme was right but you have delayed it?
Vice-Admiral Lambert: Yes, it has been delayed.
Chair: Well, that's not right.
Vice-Admiral Lambert: The Urgent Operational Requirements are right.
Chair: Tell me about that.
Vice-Admiral Lambert: Things like Mastiff and-
Q77 Chair: That's because you get money out of the Treasury. What did you get right? You just look at this and think there's nothing right here.
Vice-Admiral Lambert: The procurement of those operational requirements-it doesn't matter whether it came from the core budget or the Treasury-and the delivery to theatre were absolutely right for those programmes.
Q78 Chair: But they might not have been the right vehicles.
Vice-Admiral Lambert: They are right for that specific theatre.
Chair: So it isn't right, in that when your predecessors have sat around and thought, "What does the Army need?", they haven't come down to what you ended up getting in Afghanistan. Lieutenant- General Gary Coward has told us about the implications of that decision. It is very difficult to find anything you got right.
Q79 Mrs McGuire: The Department has almost undertaken a handbrake turn. We have gone from gold-plating and Christmas tree-or even, as I said once, gold-plating the Christmas tree-in the procurement process, to something that is more linked to a budget. Vice-Admiral Lambert, how have you managed to change the culture within the MOD? You said earlier that we are now looking at off-the-shelf and a capacity that is more limited than you might otherwise have attempted. How have you managed that change to alert people to the fact that they need to be more price-sensitive, and that, instead of going to Waitrose, they might also find that Asda has the same thing-the military equivalent-only cheaper?
Vice-Admiral Lambert: I think that "gold-plating" has got into our vocabulary and we need to be careful about it. I don't think anybody starts off with the idea that they want a gold-plated solution. They want a solution that, when we go into a conflict zone, protects the people and gives us a chance of winning. My predecessors have always ensured that we have the cutting-edge capability delivered to the theatres of war. What has changed is that, in the past, we used to deliver many of our platforms and we would use the same platform over a long time. So what was delivered on day one would be the same capability we were using 10 or 20 years later. One of the big changes in defence is the idea that you can upgrade quickly and cost-effectively. So the key platform needs to be upgradable and then we need to do a spiral development-a development over a period of time- so that you don't need all the capability delivered on day one and can upgrade over a period of time. Then you can start looking at some of the key cost drivers of those programmes and driving them down. I think that has probably been one of the biggest changes of mindset-you don't have to have everything on day one; you can get it over a period of time.
Q80 Chair: May I ask Lieutenant-General Gary Coward what cutting-edge capability in this area has been delivered to you over the past decade?
Lieutenant-General Coward: In the armoured vehicle area?
Chair: Yes. What cutting-edge capability have you had delivered?
Lieutenant-General Coward: Almost exclusively in the UOR field.
Chair: Cutting edge?
Lieutenant-General Coward: For the theatre? Yes, I would say so. It has been optimised for the theatre. On the basis that our protective mobility vehicles, on which we spend a considerable amount of money-